Rob Walker's Blog, page 6
October 31, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-10-31
Via @nprnews: Sci-Fi's Cory Doctorow Separates Self-Publishing Fact From Fiction | http://t.co/zy84Q3t #
Stuff found in used books, collected and blogged: http://www.forgottenbookmarks.com/ #
50 most hated characters in literary history. http://bit.ly/cycO4k #
Disturbing, delightful and very, very short: Fiction in 25 words or fewer – Boing Boing http://t.co/aZOOuRN #
Cool video of used-book domino stunt – Boing Boing http://t.co/ZIHzjAK #
RT @YoungAmerican Great interview with William Gibson, author of "Zero History (and S.O. contributor!) http://bit.ly/byiy65 #
Vintage rejection form. Fantastic. http://tumblr.com/xr4n54wyi #
HOWTO use Google AdWords to prototype and test a book title – Boing Boing http://t.co/upOq6NC #
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Happy Halloween!
… from your friends at Significant Objects.
PS: Speaking of Halloween, over at HiLobrow today, S.O.s Joshua Glenn reveals the secret of Boo Berry's weird new skin flap.
October 29, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Ben Ehrenreich, Gabriel Levinson.
1) Ben Ehrenreich has an essay on the violence in Mexico in the October 14 issue of the London Review of Books [subscribers only], a long article about death in the November issue of Los Angeles magazine, and a review of (fellow S.O. author) Tom McCarthy's C in the November 4 issue of The Nation. He's also happy to report that City Lights Books will be publishing his second novel, Ether, next fall.
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2) Gabriel Levinson has announced a goal of raising $10,000 by June 1, 2011 for his Book Bike project. This amount will cover all operating costs for its three-month season; thousands of dollars of which will be spent on books at indie Chicago bookstores over the 12-week period (July 1 to October 1). Making a donation will put you in the running for prizes!
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MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
October 28, 2010
Significant Objects Meme (23)
Portland, OR-based eBay seller "kamoh" recently listed a travel alarm clock, and also a leaf-shaped stapler (with ladybug), for auction.
The stapler's item description contains a note from an Elf whose forest was laid off; also included in the item description is the actual layoff memo from the Elf's ex-boss, Lord Finklewise II, Of the Grand Restructuring and Profit-Sharing Endeavour, Forest #39184, Kingdom of His Luminescence Bo'Ama.
The alarm clock's item description begins: "Mother hated how I would act around her new boyfriend, but understood at the same time. This man, who had suddenly appeared at the dinner table one night, lingered in the rooms of my house like the stale air of a belch. He always tried to show me how to play some stupid song on his guitar, like I needed lessons from him."
Ben Serviss, of Portland, who may or may not be "kamoh," sums it up well in this tweet.
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For more evidence of the Significant Objects Meme, click here.
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
October 27, 2010
S.O. Book News
IN THIS POST: Matt Klam, Benjamin Percy, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Josh Kramer, Annie Nocenti.
This is the thirteenth installment in a series of twenty posts announcing — in no particular order — which 100 stories will be collected in the Significant Objects book (forthcoming in 2011 from Fantagraphics).
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61. Matt Klam's DUCK VASE story. Excerpt:
Chucky said to me, "HELLO MY LITTLE FRIEND. I am your GOD. Shift administrative tasks to your REPRESENTATIVE IMMEDIATELY. Prepare for LOVE SYMBOL.Ha ha. And well we know what that love SYMBOL is now, DO WE NOT?
Certainly this object may have other uses. Keep it as an antique vase or planter, or with slight modification use as liquor locker, gun cabinet, bomb safe, champagne cooler, cocktail pitcher, etcetera. Dental detail alone is worth the price. Cannot verify that all parts are included. Cast iron is in excellent condition, however: do not microwave!!
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62. Benjamin Percy's RUBBER BAND GUN story. Excerpt:
I brought to school a rubber-band gun I bought at the mall. I bought it at that store with the tarot cards and the stink bombs and the beer T-shirts and the posters of women in thongs bending over on beaches with sand stuck to them in all the right places. So I brought to school the gun and showed it off to Stacey Swanson. I was a little in love with her. By that I mean I regularly jerked off into an athletic sock when thinking about her naked.Normally she would not talk to me except to say, "Don't even talk to me — you haven't even gone through puberty yet." But this time, when I held out the rubber-band gun, she said, "Let me see that." She grabbed the gun and weighed it in her hand a moment before lifting her arm and staring down the line of it and shooting me directly in the eyeball.
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63. Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's GREEK ASHTRAY-PLATE story. Excerpt:
"I don't know why you tolerate them," I said. We were in the sofa, by then, the Greek ashtray nestled into the concave of my belly. "If they turn on you, then what?" Hilary had scars where she'd been bitten and an oozing wound that she wouldn't let me tend.The dogs were practically feral.
"I don't tolerate them," she said. She leaned over and twisted her cigarette softly on Orpheus's leg, watched his skin peel off. "I have no idea about them, at all," she said. "They like me. They lick and nip. It's play that goes too far."
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64. Josh Kramer's FAKE BANANA story. Excerpt:
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65. Annie Nocenti's JFK BUST story. Excerpt:
Let me see here… Salt Lick JFK. When I was thirty and Edith was eight, we'd go into the department store, and she'd rush up and down the aisles licking everything that took her fancy. She was a terrible embarrassment to me. I'd dig my fingernails into her until her arm glowed with a row of red crescent moons. But that little tumbleweed would twist out of my grip and be off licking a ceramic gnome or Easter egg or whatnot. I took her to the doctor and he said it was a "compulsion" she'd grow out of. She didn't, but that's another story.
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MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
October 25, 2010
Author Updates
IN THIS UPDATE: Matthew Sharpe, Sari Wilson.
1) Matthew Sharpe continues to tour in support of his new novel, You Were Wrong.
Monday, October 25, 7:00 pm.
Reading at Book People
603 N. Lamar,
Austin, TX 78703
Tuesday, November 9, 8:00 p.m.
Reading at the National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park S
New York, NY 10003
Thursday, December 2, 6:00 p.m.
Reading at Labyrinth Books
122 Nassau St., Princeton, NJ
Sunday, December 5, 3:00 p.m.
Reading at Sunny's Bar
253 Conover St.
Brooklyn, NY 11231
More tour information here.
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2) Sari Wilson is working on a nonfiction book for Scholastic. State of Emergency profiles two artists and writers — Dave Eggers and Josh Neufeld. The book will discuss Eggers' oral-history project Voices of Witness and how it grew out of his book Zeitoun. Neufeld's profile will discuss his Red Cross volunteer experience and the book-length comic that grew out of it, A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge. State of Emergency is scheduled for publication in 2011. It will be used in middle school and high school classrooms throughout the country.
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MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
October 24, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-10-24
Only a few hours left to back Hypothetical Development project on Kickstarter… http://kck.st/dqyDpC #
T-shirts of vintage book covers – Boing Boing http://t.co/JdjqrVO via @boingboing #
Chris Wright's paintings of commonplace objects that have "a peculiar purpose." http://tumblr.com/xr4mez6ux #
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October 23, 2010
S.O. Book News
IN THIS POST: Blake Butler, Ben Katchor, Ben Ehrenreich, Amy Fusselman, Adam Davies.
This is the twelfth installment in a series of twenty posts announcing — in no particular order — which 100 stories will be collected in the Significant Objects book (forthcoming in 2011 from Fantagraphics).
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56. Blake Butler's UTAH SNOW GLOBE story. Excerpt:
In each of the cubbies there was a little globe. Each globe held another little thing, each named with a label for what the thing was. There was a cubby with a globe containing FIRST EVER REDWOOD TREE. One containing PERRY MASON. One containing PEAS. The globe containing JOYOUS LONGING held a bright pink liquid smoke. PERRY MASON looked pissed off.The globe containing UTAH made a burning sound against my head, and there were all these people chanting, and face got all sandy and all wet. I shook it and it made my blood tingle and some coins appeared in my hands. I had so many gold coins I could live forever. Some of the coins were chocolate, which was food.
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57. Ben Katchor's MAINE STATUTES DISH story. Excerpt:
This beautiful, but slightly worn, example of early 20th century porcelain "bookware" was manufactured and distributed free-of-charge along with newly printed copies of the Maine Revised Statutes Annotated — a dreary compendium of state laws.This example, formed in the style of a small, shallow aperitif or snack dish, holds fifty salted peanuts. It was meant to encourage lawyers and public advocates to acquaint themselves with the latest revisions to state law. On one dishful of peanuts, a reader could make his way through several Titles and Chapters of the book.
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58. Ben Ehrenreich's JAR OF MARBLES story. Excerpt:
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 ball of your chin. All of it droops. I laugh at you. "Come here, Droopy," I say, and I try to kiss you, but you pull away."Give it back," you say.
"I don't know what you mean," I say.
"Give it back," you say, again.
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59. Amy Fusselman's MASSAGER story. Excerpt:
Guess what I found, the tiny carpet of wooden balls!It was in her linen closet, wrapped in a couple of those tea towels with the bluebirds on them.
You remember this, right? When she was trying to improve our "perceptions"? And we stood on the floor in the kitchen and held carrot sticks in our hands and told her what they felt like and then we stood on the tiny carpet of wooden balls on the same floor and felt the same carrot sticks and told her what they felt like then, and she wrote it all down?
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60. Adam Davies' NUTCRACKER WITH TROLL HAIR (OR SOMETHING) story. Excerpt:
Jacob Tauxe, the notorious "Swiss Voodoo Houngan" from Bern, designed the original line of ceramic Mr. Yodels figurines employed by frustrated suitors as love totems. By a feat of acoustic engineering yet to be explained satisfactorily, all custom-made Mr. Yodels figurines produce a distinctive upper-and-lower register song — the "love yodel" — when placed at an open window by which the loved one walks, provoking powerful spontaneous feelings of pair-bonding, veneration, and leghumpery.Dangerous and unsanctioned Do-It-Yourself models — those made without knowledge of the proper techniques or precautions — are rumored to be responsible for the unions of Julia Roberts and Lyle Lovett, Woody Allen and relatives, Elizabeth Taylor et al., Chrysler and Daimler, and others.
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MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
October 22, 2010
Tip for owners of Significant Objects
Dear readers:
A select number of you have not only enjoyed reading our stories, you have won auctions and obtained actual Significant Objects.
A Google News Alert received today at S.O. Headquarters (South) leads to this vital information from an article (disastrously) titled: "Make Back Pain Management Half of Your Life":
Correct techniques for lifting
When lifting significant objects it's important the heaviest half is close to the body. Keep your back straight and hold objects shut to your body.
Got it?
The article also contains advice for owners of "serious objects." But that's not our problem.
October 21, 2010
Significant Objects Meme (22)
When I was at SXSW, earlier this year, I met Raina Lee, author of Hit Me With Your Best Shot: The Ultimate Guide To Karaoke Domination. She told me about this blog she was starting, the Infinite Garage Project. The blog documents Lee's process of clearing out 35 years of her parents' stuff. The IGP, which I found funny and moving, is going strong now — findings have included collections of string, gun cartridges, Christmas sweaters, her grandmother's (full) purse, coins from the '64 Tokyo Olympics, Nintendo cartridges, and '80s power suits. Some of this stuff is for sale via Etsy.
Check it out!
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For more evidence of the Significant Objects Meme, click here.
MORE NEWS: For updates about the Significant Objects project and forthcoming collection, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. For Author Updates, visit the archive and subscribe via RSS. Also: Check out the Significant Objects Bookstore!
