Rob Walker's Blog, page 9
October 4, 2010
We're back! With a special week of stories benefiting San Francisco's Root Division
That's right, readers. Starting in a matter of hours we'll publishing one all-new Significant Objects story each day this week, all leading up to the first-ever S.O. live event, in San Francisco. Please alert your friends!
Our contributors this time (in alphabetical order): Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Beth Lisick, Miranda Mellis, and Katie Williams.
Our beneficiary: Root Division, a community arts and education organization in San Francisco.
The thrilling climax: All five authors will read at Root Division, as part of Significant Objects' contribution to the Litquake Lit Crawl. That's also going to be the site of the first-ever Object slam. Confirm your attendance at this Facebook event page. Details:
Saturday, October 9, 2010 6-7p.m.
ROOT DIVISION
3175 17th Street (at South Van Ness)
San Francisco, CA 94110
[Map to Venue.]
Part of the Litquake Litcrawl.
Stay tuned for the first story, coming this afternoon!
See these Significant Objects in person
October 3, 2010
Significant Tweets for Week Ending 2010-10-03
Very large book cover archive: http://bookcoverarchive.com/ #
New Republic looking for "literary intern." http://bit.ly/cDFWzT #
Books added to our "store" all the time. Lately: Damion Searls, Alissa Nutting, Myla Goldberg. http://bit.ly/SOBooks #
Details of our @Litquake event in San Francisco. Consider yourself invited. http://bit.ly/SOxLitquake #
The Old Pornographers: Richard Nash and Mike Edison on Banned Books – The Awl http://t.co/VymK7FT #
Enjoyable podcast episode about "Soldier Frum" cargo cult. http://bit.ly/9Cnks4 #
Inside the World's Most Opulent Private Jets. http://tumblr.com/xr4jwepmo #
Interesting interview with William Gibson: "We live in a world of artifacts." http://bit.ly/ah7BVs #
This site is called Awful Library Books and of course they all look great. http://awfullibrarybooks.net/ #
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Marking the release of "Why They Cried" collection — including an S.O. story!
We love to give regular updates about the doings of all our contributors, but this might be a first. Jim Hanas' new book Why They Cried, a collection of stories, may be the first such item to include a Significant Objects tale.
Learn more about the collection at WhyTheyCried.com.
Plus: Those of you New York be interested to know that:
The October 5 installment of Adult Education — Brooklyn's favorite "useless lecture series" — will tackle the topic "The Future of the Book" and serve as the launch party for Jim Hanas's just released e-book story collection Why The Cried. The evening, hosted by Charles Star, will include lectures by Hanas, Stephanie Anderson, Anna Jane Grossman, and Rachael Morrison.
Full details are available at adult-ed.net.
Why They Cried has also just been added to The Significant Objects bookshop.
Check it out.
October 1, 2010
S.O. Book News
UPCOMING EVENT: On October 9th (from 6-7 p.m. at San Francisco's Root Division, as part of Litquake's Litcrawl), SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS will present its first live event: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!
***
This is the eighth 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).
***
36. Kathryn Davis' YELLOW BEAR story. Excerpt:
In the morning when the sorcerer brought Mary her breakfast tray of tea and toast he found her propped on her pillows, the bear at her breast. Mary was no longer smiling but had tears running down her cheeks. "I don't know if I can do it," Mary told him. The jingling sound was very loud now, ear-splitting. "She won't stop," Mary said. "She needs something from you, too. That's how babies get made, in case you forgot."
***
37. Jonathan Lethem's MISSOURI SHOTGLASS story. Excerpt:
See that freaky little bird? That's the state bird, my friend. The Missouri Hunt-and-Pecker. Never heard of 'em? Well, then I guess you've never been to Missouri, have you? Maybe passed through, didn't get out of the car. Or changed planes in the airport, or went up in the Arch once, just to say you'd done it. But that's not Missouri to me. St. Louis is the gateway, sure, but you want to know Missouri you need to drive a few hours into the corn, you want to visit St. Joseph, up through Maryville — skirt the Iowa border, though Iowa's a sore point from where I sit. You need to get lost in Missouri or you never really were there in the first place. Even then you won't be likely to meet the Hunt-and-Pecker unless you circulate a manuscript or two.
***
38. Joe Lyons' LETTERS AND NUMBERS PLATE story. Excerpt:
One day Samuel was using the plate to cool down nails he was making in his shop. He looked down at the metal shavings floating in the water he had in the plate and said aloud, "Will these nails hold true?" Suddenly, the shavings joined together and floated to the edges of the plate until it spelled out "Yes." Intrigued, Samuel continued: "How many will I need for Jonathan's barn?" The shavings pointed to two, then five, then zero. Convinced his eyes were deceiving him, he asked, "What happened to my best hammer last spring?" After about fifteen minutes, the shavings eventually spelled out "Hezekiah pilfered it."
***
39. Jim Shepard's STAR WARS CARDS story. Excerpt:
"So what is it?" I asked her a little while later. She went into her room and came back with a little package wrapped in candy cane paper. I tore off the wrapping and I'm standing there with a little box of Clone Wars collectible cards in my hand."You always liked Star Waters," she said. One time in school a teacher asked what my mother's first language was and I told him she didn't have one.
"I'm thirty-three years old," I told her.
"That means you can't like cards?" she said. "That means you can't enjoy anything any more?"
***
40. Jennifer Michael Hecht's "HAKUNA MATATA" FIGURINE story. Excerpt:
Kathy is smoking a joint in the kitchen and looking at Michael Phelps on a Corn Flakes box. Phelps won eight gold medals swimming in the Olympics and then lost his Corn Flakes endorsement deal because of a photograph of him smoking a bong. Kathy's boyfriend saw a pre-bong cereal box at the supermarket and snatched it up. He likes things like this. Now the Phelps cereal box has been mounted prominently for many months on a kitchen shelf. Phelps is in the pool up to his neck, holding up one finger and smiling like crazy. She takes a hit and smiles back at him. She replies to his "We're number one" finger with her own. She rests her lighter on a ceramic figurine of the "Hakuna Matata" guys from The Lion King. Kathy had been to Kenya with her second husband and people there said "Hakuna matata" the way we say, "No problem," and they pronounce it like a machine gun, fast and hard.
***
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!
September 30, 2010
Author Updates
UPCOMING EVENT: On October 9th (from 6-7 p.m. at San Francisco's Root Division, as part of Litquake's Litcrawl), SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS will present its first live event: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!
***
1) Ben Katchor invites Significant Objects readers to check out the following events:
Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 7:30pm
Slideshow Lecture:
"The Great Museum Cafeterias of the Western World."
Carleton College
Boliou Hall
1 N. College St.
Northfield, MN 55057
free and open to the public
October 8 – November 6, 2010
Group Exhibition: Ink Plots: The Tradition of the Graphic Novel at SVA
Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, 15th floor
New York, NY 10001
212.592.2145
***
2) Stephen O'Connor will be reading from his new collection of stories, Here Comes Another Lesson, at the following times/places:
New York City, Thursday, October 7:
7:30 PM
Sweet! Actors Reading Writers
Three of Cups in the East Village: 83 1st Ave @ 5th St.
Brooklyn, NY, Tuesday, October 12:
8:00 PM
Reading w/ Martha Colburn & Thollem McDonas (Films & Live Music)
Issue Project Room, Old American Can Factory: 232 3rd St.
$10 ($9 advance)
Brooklyn, NY, Thursday, October 14:
Reading
Community Bookstore: 143 Seventh Avenue, Park Slope
Free
San Francisco, Saturday, October 16:
9:30 PM
Reading/Signing Writers with Drinks
Make-Out Room: 3225 22nd Street
San Francisco, California 94110
Los Angeles, Monday, October 18:
TBA
Reading/Signing Rant & Rave Reading Series
THEATRE THEATER: 5041 Pico, Los Angeles, CA
$15
Los Angeles, Tuesday, October 19:
TBA
Reading/Signing
Pilgrim School: Los Angeles (Private)
Los Angeles, Wednesday, October 20:
7:30PM
Reading/Signing
Skylight Books: 1818 N. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90027
Free
San Francisco, Thursday, October 21:
7:30PM
Reading/Signing
Booksmith: 1644 Haight Street, San Francisco, California 94117
Free
Berkeley, CA, Saturday, October 23
3:00-5:00 PM
PEN West
Margaret Schaffer's house: 1 Quail Rd. (Private)
San Francisco, Saturday, October 23
8:00-9:30 PM
Reading/Signing (w/ Tsering Wangmo Dhompa & others) Bernal Yoga Literary Series
461 Cortland Avenue at Andover Street
Free
***
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!
September 29, 2010
RIP, Lyall Watson
Lyall Watson was a South African-born botanist, zoologist, biologist, anthropologist, zoo keeper and BBC presenter who wrote Supernature: A Natural History of the Supernatural (1973), among other popular books that helped usher in the Seventies' New Age trend. Among other dubious but undeniable accomplishments, he coined the term "hundredth monkey" — referring to the hypothesis that a sudden spontaneous and mysterious leap of consciousness achieved when a species' "critical mass" point is reached. Significant Objects hails Watson for his 1990 book The Nature of Things: The Strange Behaviour of Inanimate Objects, a Fortean account of rings that find their way back to their owners and so forth; the book helped inform our Fortean (not New Age) TALISMANS object category. Watson's revival of the Victorian meaning of the term "notional" also helped us in our thinking about our IDOLS object category. Watson describes as notional any "inanimate object which… demands attention and exercises power over those people to whom it appeals."
We're a little bit late with this — he died in June 2008, but we've just learned about his passing. Moment of silence, please.
S.O. Book News
UPCOMING EVENT: On October 9th (from 6-7 p.m. at San Francisco's Root Division, as part of Litquake's Litcrawl), SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS will present its first live event: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!
***
This is the seventh 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).
***
31. Margaret Wertheim's PINCUSHION OWL story. Excerpt:
Throughout those ghastly years, other high-tech hubs in India and China faded out of the matrix and fear gripped the planet. Dr. Svetskaia conducted tests of her own, for she was not convinced by the flux thesis. Sometimes she noticed that when the Minkometer in her office was turned toward the corner where the little owl stood, it flickered erratically. She assumed this was a circuit fault, but when efforts at repair failed she realized that the owl itself was affecting the matrix — positively. Somehow, it was strengthening the fabric of spacetime — not the curvature, which Einstein's field equations described, but the strength of the membrane.
***
32. Lydia Millet's CHILI CAT story. Excerpt:
I'd never met the great aunt but as the sun sank low outside, G and R's laughter floated in to me, and shadows crept over the bare living room floor I started to feel bad for all those abandoned barnyard animals. I picked through the pigs and roosters with a kind of sadness until finally I found Chili Cat. Ugly as sin, there was no getting around that. No reason at all for the cat to be festooned with red chilis. There was a Mexican motif, I guessed. Maybe Tex-Mex. Chili Cat was supposed to be festive.
***
33. Lucinda Rosenfeld's CREAMER COW story. Excerpt:
Anyway, for whatever reason, Norman brought this golden cow creamer with him to Riggs—and then failed to bring it home. Which is how it ended up in my grandmother's kitchen in nearby Pittsfield, where it sat on the windowsill next to a Provencal rooster (also made of porcelain) until her death in 1983. What's more, according to my mother, at some point my grandmother started referring to the creamer as "Norman," as in, "Let's all have tea—someone grab Norman."
***
34. Luc Sante's FLANNEL BALL story. Excerpt:
Time passed. The seasons came and went: hockey, muskrat, sweeps week, estrus. I grew a mustache and shaved it off, twice. I enjoyed the stylings of eight cars for varying lengths of time. I fell in love with Sheila, Bambi, Marla, Candy, Darla, Brandy, and Concepción. At work I climbed from office boy to field officer to regional sales manager to CFO, and then back down again. My apartment grew ever denser with stuff. I could barely move around, and tended to use and wear only things from the top layer, a fleeting category. One time I was poking around for some itch cream when my hand grasped the ball. I couldn't move it.
***
35. Kevin Brockmeier's ROPE/WOOD MONKEY story. Excerpt:
Samantha was always coming home with these trinkets she would pick up at thrift stores or flea markets. One day, on the kitchen counter, I found this little rope and wood figurine, about the size of a saltshaker. It looked exactly like a toy my dad had bought for me at a garage sale when I was a kid: the same spoon-shaped ears, the same Chinese hat. I had named him Mickey the Drum, I remembered. I had a vivid recollection of looking at him on the shelf above my dresser and feeling this bottomless sadness that he didn't have a mouth.
***
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!
September 28, 2010
Your chance to invent Significance: Be part of our Litquake OBJECT SLAM.
This awesome illustration by Noma Bar has nothing to do with our event. But isn't it great? Click to enjoy more of Bar's impressive work.
The first-ever Significant Objects live event, part of Litquake in San Francisco, will of course include fantastic all-new stories, read live by five of our esteemed contributors, breathing fresh Significance into a new batch of objects hand-picked by this project's curators. But there's something else too: YOUR chance to invent Significance, and convert a worthless doodad into a valuable object with the power of your narrative-making imagination.
Here's what will happen.
1. You will attend the event.
2. You will sign up there to participate in the Object Slam. (Get there early for this – there will be a limit.)
3. Beth Lisick, Rob Baedeker, Miranda Mellis, Chris Colin, and Katie Williams will entertain you with extraordinary stories inspired by unremarkable things.
4. And then, as if that weren't already a finer evening than any other object-focused literary publication would dare to offer … THE 'OBJECT SLAM' OBJECT WILL BE REVEALED.
What could it be??
5. There will be an intermission, during which YOU, the Object Slam participant, write a story about that thing on the spot, perhaps writing in your Moleskine notebook, or using some kind of fancy iPad interface.
6. You and other participants will then take the stage (one at a time, please) to read your flash-fiction creations.
7. The BEST STORY, chosen by our panel of writers, in consultation with the audience, will be published here, on SignificantObjects.com, putting you in the company of the many fine storytellers we've published in the past.
What will the "Object Slam Object" be?
There is only way to find out.
COME TO OUR EVENT:
October 9th, from 6-7 p.m.: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the
first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!
September 27, 2010
Author Updates
UPCOMING EVENT: On October 9th (from 6-7 p.m. at San Francisco's Root Division, as part of Litquake's Litcrawl), SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS will present its first live event: An Evening of Remarkable Stories about Unremarkable Things featuring Rob Baedeker, Chris Colin, Miranda Mellis, Beth Lisick, and Katie Wiliams. PLUS: the first-ever Object Slam. Map to Venue. Confirm your attendance on Facebook!
***
1) Myla Goldberg's new novel, The False Friend, is being released by Doubleday on October 5, and ...
