On Fannishness

We've shifted furniture around to allow Wax to snap some clear photos of the antique ones that we hope to sell from MIL's estate. In the process we found a drawer full of MIL's father's army medals from the Winter War and apparently all the correspondence he ever saved in his life, his coin collection, etc. Wax had to arrange and photograph the medals to show to antique stores for a quote as well, and staring at the collection of war medals was quite surreal because it really makes you think about the nature of fandom. Of course learning about historical wars is important, and often very interesting, but the passions of people who collect these medals are something else, and it's quite difficult to understand how people can be fannish about them and collecting them (for me, habitually).

I did manage it eventually by imagining that each individual medal was instead a piece of a pen or mechanical pencil the same age, which enabled me to have some empathy for the collector's interest. Of course, medals aren't potentially used, but then I'm well aware that, unlike me, most of the people with interest in fountain pens collect them far beyond what they could even attempt to use and mostly just keep them in boxes.

Then my mental exercise rebounded on me, giving me a brief, cold glimpse through the eyes of someone uninterested in antique writing instruments, or even fully functional and useful ones, and I had an awe-inspiring moment of contemplating the nature of all fannishness, even beyond fannishness that is interested in the curation of objects. Suddenly I remembered that nearly every topic can provide enough to write a doctoral dissertation or publish a life's work on, if you have the right set of magnifying glasses, and that fannishness is rooted in the human brain and not in the information itself. (Except in the brains of the unfannish and uncurious - and I don't think any amount of empathy will grant me any insight to them.)

favorite lines: Over My Dead Body and Where There's a Will, Nero Wolfe 7 & 8

"When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn't occur to him that a robber might draw the line somewhere."

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