Rob Walker's Blog, page 49
November 2, 2009
Jar of Marbles
Object No. 90 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Ben Ehrenreich, here.]
I pull a marble from your skull each time we kiss. "Give it back," you say, each time.
"Darling," I say. "Baby," I say. "No."
I put the marble in my pocket. Later, I will hide it with the others. But not now, because now you're watching. Now you're getting mad. I knew you would, and now you're doing it. You cross your arms. Your features droop. Not just your lips but your eyelids and ears and the cleft...
Weekly Project Update
Aggregate cost of objects, sold so far: $112.02
Aggregate sales, post-Significance: $2,857.22
Coming up this week: If you haven't already, you will enter our Six Word Contest with SmithMag, and perhaps join the ranks of Significant Objects contributors as a result; deadline is Friday. The auction for the object made Significant by the winner of our Slate contest ends tomorrow. Also: Objects with stories by Ben Ehrenreich, Meghan O'Rourke, Victor LaValle, and more.
Recent reactions from...
November 1, 2009
What some of our current writers have to say
It's always interesting when our writers blog about Significant Objects, because they give us new insights about our own project. And sometimes it also gives a little look behind the scenes on any given writer-object relationship. It so happens that several of our writers with items in our store blogged about the project last week. (Actually, it seems that traffic from contributor Meg Cabot's blog, along with traffic from the Slate contest and possibly this Huffington Post mention of our new ...
October 30, 2009
Cracker Barrel Ornament
Object No. 89 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Maud Newton, here.]
This astonishing "Cracker Barrel" artifact appears to be a souvenir of modern vintage, representing a down-home North American restaurant-and-country-store chain that upholds Christian values by refusing to hire gay people. In fact, the object dates to the Bronze Age and was unearthed last week in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, on what is believed by several prominent archaeologists to be the site of the...
Six Words, several numbers
Earlier this morning I checked in on the progress of our Six Words Significant Objects contest, in collaboration with SmithMag. In its first 24 hours, the contest has attracted 144 submissions. Josh notes that this works out to a story every ten minutes (and since each story is six words, that's a word every 100 seconds for a solid day!). Pretty impressive!
Six Words Will Make It Significant
That said, we of course want the submissions to keep coming, and to that end I will now invoke our old f...
October 29, 2009
Swiss Medal
Object No. 88 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Kathryn Borel Jr., here.]
Marc's room smelled like half-open tins of chewing tobacco. He liked Skoal butternut, and I loved it too. Not to chew — I was only seven — but I loved the way its manky smell would tussle and fuse with all his other teen things: his gym bag with its tube socks and olive work shirt, the after-effects of a spritz from his Polo cologne. I'd sneak in there before he got home from Ramapo High, before he'd l...
Another contest? Yes! Significant Objects X SmithMag's Six Words
We couldn't be more thrilled with the creative results of our contest in partnership with Slate (600+ entries), and the economic results are looking good, too: As I type, bidding on the Bar-B-Q Jar + Story by Matthew J. Wells is at a very healthy $54! But even before we had settled on a winner, we had decided that the response to our first contest justified another one. We didn't simply want to repeat ourselves, of course, so we had to think of a new angle, a new wrinkle to add to our data...
October 28, 2009
Flip-Flop Frame
Object No. 87 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by Merrill Markoe, here.]
Any image that has been carefully placed in an antique gold frame embossed with angels and laurel wreathes becomes transformed in to something elevated and celestial. "All you need to know about this old person/building/animal/plate of food/scenic vista/bleeding martyr is that it is sacred to me and holds a very special place in my heart," the frame seems to tell us.
But what if you are the kind of...
October 27, 2009
BBQ Sauce Jar
Object No. 86 of 100
[Bid on this Significant Object, with story by (Slate contest winner) Matthew J. Wells, here.]
Booth 106 was the regular table of Evelyn Nesbit — it's where she was introduced to Charles Dana Gibson, who used her as the model for his famous Gibson Girl drawings; it's where she met the young John Barrymore, who became her lover and got her pregnant twice (once in the booth itself and once in his apartment); it's where she was introduced to architect Stanford White by fellow ...
Slate/S.O. fiction contest — we have a winner!
Congratulations to Matthew J. Wells, whose BBQ Sauce Jar story — entered in a Significant Objects contest earlier this month — triumphed over 600+ other entries to earn top honors, from a panel of judges from Slate.com, as well as S.O.'s own Rob Walker and Josh Glenn.
Wells invented Significance for the BBQ Sauce Jar by way of a thrilling and chilling tale involving the real-life murder of architect Stanford White by Harry Kendall Thaw (the husband of White's ex-lover, chorus girl and model...
