The Toy Collector
2000

  

Book Synopsis: In the summer of 1995, a 25-year-old orderly named James Gunn starts pilfering drugs from New York City's Saint Dominic's Hospital to finance his addiction to buying the retro toys he loved while growing up in St. Louis. When he's not on one of his frequent, blind-drunk benders, having sloppy sex with random women, Jimmy basks in the magnificence of Charlie Barlow's antique toy store, where he spends thousands of dollars on TV paraphernalia, action figures, robots and games, in an attempt to recapture the few moments of beauty in his mostly horrifying childhood. Jimmy and his younger brother, Tar, survived delusional parents, cruel peers and the suicide of one of their friends by sticking together, with creative violence and wit. Those moments, sensitively told in flashback without the burden of sentimentality, often involved the boys' favorite toys, like Scrunch 'Em, Grow 'Em Dinosaurs. His pack growing up included Tar; Gary Bauer, the awkward misfit; and Nancy Zoomis, who played "I'll show you mine" with Jimmy. As the Gunn brothers matured, Tar became responsible and respectable, able to cope with his rage and bitterness about his parents and about society. But Jimmy is still an immature wastrel, who gets blotto daily and has tantrums that ruin his intimate relationships. As Jimmy attempts to heal old wounds by recollecting his painful past, he must face what his toy collection represents: a nostalgic coverup for his life's disappointments, a "longing for innocence" to quell his "rage and sadness."

What James Says: "A couple of questions come up when people read The Toy Collector. The first is,  James, how did you get so damn funny? I usually tell them I use humor to block my memories of the sexual abuse I suffered at the hands of my uncle. There s absolutely no truth to this statement, but it often stops them from asking me the second question, which is,  Where do you get your nutty ideas? In fact, it regularly stops them from asking any questions whatsoever.

But if they re persistent, they cut to the third question, being,  What on earth possessed you to name the protagonist of the book James Gunn? To this I reply I like the sound of my name, I ve always been somewhat enamored of myself, and what better advertising for ME than having my name on every single page? I forgot Hubert Selby Jr. s name for a couple of years after I read Last Exit to Brooklyn; but if he had named the protagonist after himself, well, it might have been a different outcome altogether. Although it s dark, and sometimes lonely, and it s sad, because it s about loss, this novel is as honest as I could be at the time. Though perverse, violent, and even bileful, I wrote it with a sincere heart. My agent, who s a pretty nice fellow, mentioned that reading this book is like watching a train wreck. But it s a train wreck giving you a hug, which is what deep down we all want anyway, isn t it? Tragedy isn t quite as bad when you embrace it."