Toolbox

Toolbox, Fabio Morabito, Bloomsbury USA, 1999

This is a group of twelve short essays that take as their subject things like hammers, oil, string, sandpaper, screws, sponges; some of the inhabitants of the average toolbox. It has been said that one day, tools will become our masters; Morabito aims to divert that threat by giving the tools human characteristics.

A few quotes from the book: "Oil is water that has lost its get up and go, its cheeky forward drive." "The point of a knife is radically void of memory and of bonds, it knows nothing at all, it is indebted to no one for anything, it casts no shadow." "String is a dot elongated to the point of obsession, or to put it more precisely, it is a long succession of victims." "A bag stops objects from falling, but unlike a table or shelf, which halts things once and for all, a bag keeps halting them at every instant, since it can't fix them in place, can't offer any guarantees."

Morabito looks at normal things in a slightly off-center way. He finds poetry in places that no one else thinks of looking. He has written a very interesting, but unique, book that will make the reader look at a toolbox in a different way.