Significant Objects

This seems like a reasonable position to take on a signature’s...

murketing — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:20:39 -0400

This seems like a reasonable position to take on a signature’s legal significance. But authors’ signatures have a different kind of significance, one that isn’t located in mere consent. That’s why Donald Rumsfeld couldn’t appeal to his legal counsel when it came out in 2005 that he’d been using the autopen to sign condolence letters for families of soldiers killed in action. It’s no surprise that the families (and the media) found the autopen signatures crucially lacking. A traditional signature requires time and personal attention. It is a sign of sacrifice, an element unnecessary for producing legal objects but essential for crafting sacred ones. Rumsfeld’s signatures may have been authorized, but they were utterly insignificant.

Fascinating piece about book-signing machinery.

(via May I Have Your Pantelegraph? The Ritual of Book Signing in a Digital Age | The Awl)

Dutch creative director Raphael Dahan has nearly 20 years of...

murketing — Tue, 14 May 2013 16:41:49 -0400

Dutch creative director Raphael Dahan has nearly 20 years of experience as a digital artist and photo retoucher, and he demonstratess his expert hand in a series of images of books that are intended to look like busts… which is to say that you the images are remarkably photorealistic renderings, easily mistaken for photos of actual books that have been carved to resemble faces.

(via Facebooks, Literally - Core77)

According to Greg Kindall at Seven Roads: Anyone who handles...

murketing — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:20:51 -0400

According to Greg Kindall at Seven Roads: Anyone who handles old books will have come across these small and sometimes beautiful labels pasted discreetly (more or less) into the endpapers. Booksellers, binders, printers, publishers, importers, and distributors of books used to advertise in this way their part in bringing the book to market.

(via Book Trade Labels: OBlog: Design Observer)

J.J. Abrams’ Next Project, a Novel, to be Published by Mulholland Books | Mulholland Books

murketing — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:40:29 -0400

J.J. Abrams’ Next Project, a Novel, to be Published by Mulholland Books | Mulholland Books:

S.
A NOVEL
Written by Doug Dorst, based on a story by J.J. Abrams

J.J. Abrams has created, written, produced, or directed groundbreaking television shows such as the Emmy and Golden Globe Award–winning Lost and Alias, and Felicity and blockbuster films such as Star Trek, Cloverfield, Super 8, and Mission: Impossible. His work is renowned for its sense of wonder and invention, and for helping reshape what’s possible in film and television today.

S., conceived of and developed by Abrams and written by award-winning author Doug Dorst, is Abrams’s first foray into publishing and will be released by Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and Company on October 29, 2013. At the core of this multilayered literary puzzle of love and adventure is a book of mysterious provenance. In the margins, another tale unfolds—through the hand-scribbled notes, questions, and confrontations of two readers. Between the pages, online, and in the real world, you’ll find evidence of their interaction, ephemera that bring this tale vividly to life.

“We are thrilled to be publishing J.J. Abrams, in partnership with someone as critically acclaimed as Doug Dorst,” says Mulholland Books editorial director Josh Kendall. “S. will be a literary event, and is truly a love letter to the printed word.”

This sounds like the coolest thing for Doug Dorst … since his triumph with top-selling object in the Significant Objects original experiment!

The theme for this year’s annual meeting is Storytelling,...

murketing — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:20:37 -0400

The theme for this year’s annual meeting is Storytelling, and we’ve recruited Rob Walker, co-designer of the Significant Objects project, as a thought leader to help us explore how stories add tangible value to the objects they are connected to. You can join me on Tuesday, May 21 from 10:15 – 11:30 am for a conversation with Rob about Significant Objects. I invited him to share a bit about the project here on the blog, both to prime us for the meeting, and to share a bit about his work with those who won’t be able to join us in Baltimore.

(via Center for the Future of Museums: On Objects, and Storytelling)

thetypologist: Typology of chairs. Collections of: Indianapolis...

murketing — Fri, 10 May 2013 12:22:45 -0400

thetypologist:

Typology of chairs. Collections of: Indianapolis Museum of Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Compiled via the Digital Public Library of America.

Today we are pleased to offer you an exclusive Q&A with one...

murketing — Mon, 06 May 2013 10:06:00 -0400

Today we are pleased to offer you an exclusive Q&A with one of our favorite contributors: Ben Greenman. His new novel, The Slippage (Harper Perennial), is out this month, and has already received praise from the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Observer, and others. What a perfect excuse for us to ask him some things we’ve always wanted to know! Here goes:

You agreed to participate in Significant Objects on the basis of a blind email I sent you through your web site. If I remember right you agreed right away, and pretty much no questions asked. What motivated you, did we get lucky and catch you during a slow period?

I always like to participate. Creating is at least fifty percent play. The other not quite fifty percent is the other thing: discipline, revision, long dark nights of the soul (if I had one). But the play is the fuel that propels you from spot to spot. When I get emails about things that sound interesting, I want to do them. I like to do them. And so I do them. Also, thinking about things and writing about the things I’m thinking about is pretty much all I do. It’s not like I have a side job wrestling alligators, as far as you know.

Fair enough. But eventually you became a multi-time contributor, often cooking up new ideas for us (the identical objects experiment for instance), and I know you’ve been involved in other object-related projects (Underwater New York) — do you have a particular interest in objects & narrative?

Yes. I think I do. I wonder about objects all the time. What is an object in a piece of fiction? It’s usually a symbol, but what if it’s not? Then it’s just something that the author invented to give his fictional world solidity. Sometimes it even seems like a prop: Seinfeld used to have a joke that his standup routine wasn’t really acting, but that if he picked up a coffee cup as he spoke, that was acting. That can also be the difference between philosophy and fiction. If a character wonders about the way his life gradually takes choice away from him, that can be a philosophical monologue. If he wonders about that same thing with an object near him, or in his hand, or on a shelf near him, then suddenly it’s fiction. So much of our lives is spend trivially navigating and manipulating objects. And then there’s a second issue, which is the history of objects. People carry their own memories with them, and sometimes broadcast them. Objects are dependent upon us to do it. But that doesn’t mean that they are any less interesting, or have learned any less. They just can’t share what they learn.

Your book Correspondences was itself an unusual object — a limited edition letterpress format, in a lavish box. Did you go into that with a particular interest in experimenting with the design/format of the book-as-object? Or did it come about some other way? And later I believe this material, or some of it, recurred in a traditional-format book, What He’s Poised To Do. So basically I’m curious to what extent you were experimenting, and thus what you learned/concluded in the end.

Correspondences, which came out in 2009, happened in part because I had another book, Please Step Back, coming out around the same time. I didn’t want to release too much in too short a span that seemed too similar. But I also had a set of stories sitting around that all seemed related to one another. Around that time, I started talking to Alex Rose and Aaron Petrovich, from Hotel St. George Press: they had wanted to work with me and I liked the ideas they had regarding how books could (or even should) be objects as much as vehicles for prose. Then we had more ideas together as we planned the book, which ended up being a kind of book-box (a boox, we called it, without any seriousness) that folded out into a kind of cruciform flat with two-sided accordion books in each flap. It was a great experience. They were dedicated to the notion of doing something surprising with the form, and they made good choices about size and expense and difficulty of assembly, which were all things I had never considered before, since I was working mostly in the mindspace of fiction. To watch at close range as construction advanced content was very comforting and educational.

Given that you’re a full-time editor at The New Yorker, and a prolific novelist, and I a parent as well, how do you balance all that with participation in side projects and the like?

I never know how to answer this question. Less sleep than I would like? A good sense of how to invest my time in projects so that they bear fruit? An obsessive character?

You get asked this a lot then, eh? I have to press just a little: Are you a relentless scheduler & planner, or do you (as “obsessive character” suggests) improvise what you will do when?

I am a relentless planner, and pathologically punctual, and easily bored. Somehow those things have combined in profitable proportions to help me do writing rather than combining in unprofitable proportions to make me a restless trainspotter or something. Recently, I was on a panel about writers’ rituals, and I said that one thing I try to do is finish a piece every day. They’re rarely long pieces. Some turn out to be less good than I had hoped when I started them. But there’s something about the feeling of completion that gives me the boost I need to then go and attack a longer piece that is resisting me. This is also why I plan to keep alternating longer book-length projects with short stories and pieces that are even shorter than that.

That nice review in The Times the other day noted that your newest novel is more traditional than much of your prior work, which is often experimental on some level. Any special reason for that?

You could argue that the traditional nature of it is itself a kind of experiment: What does it mean to render reality without effects, without flash powder and linking rings? There are other reasons, too, one of which is that I have been married for a long time now, almost fifteen years, and I thought it was time to let myself think through some of those things in a realistic fictional context. How do two people persist in each others’ company? What makes them happy? What happens when they’re not happy? What do they want from life as it moves along, anyway? Momentum? Inertia? Familiarity? Novelty? And even once they know what they want, how much control do they have over the process? You could argue that it’s roughly none.

One last question — what about film and TV? Are those forms you’ve ever experimented with or been interested in? Traditional variations or otherwise?

I have not experimented with them yet, mainly because I have a great interest and want to make sure that when I turn my attention to it, I can do it right, whether that means going back to square one and apprenticing myself or just holing up in a corner of my head and making sense of them the best I can. Both are fascinating as narrative containers, and also as conventions/ways of breaking convention. And I feel like I have consumed so much TV and so many movies that at some point it’s my obligation to pay back the forms by making something.

What a great interview, right? Our thanks to Ben Greenman for answering a few questions. If you missed the link before, his new novel is The Slippage.

And of course: To read all of the extraordinary stories about ordinary things that Greenman and 99 other great writers created as part of the Significant Objects project, pick up our book, on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.

Lucian James: Personal Ritual Object #1 - Nabil Azadi

murketing — Sat, 04 May 2013 10:39:56 -0400

Lucian James: Personal Ritual Object #1 - Nabil Azadi:

lucianjames:

“So there’s this hammer that I keep on my desk. I made my first sculptures with it, I hammered the bolts into the first copy of For You The Traveller with it. I’m building my home with it now. Before I started learning how to do all these things and was getting called an artist, I never felt…

William Gibson, Google Glass (by 1800joe.com) William...

murketing — Wed, 01 May 2013 13:20:32 -0400

William Gibson, Google Glass (by 1800joe.com)

William Gibson’s tweet for more context:

I also got to try Google Glass, if only for a few seconds. Was faintly annoyed at just how interesting I found the experience.

Awful Library Books is a collection of amusing and/or...

murketing — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:40:45 -0400

Awful Library Books is a collection of amusing and/or questionable library holdings found in real libraries and curated by librarians Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner.

(via Awful Library Books: OBlog: Design Observer)

Ina Hughs: Objects are stories solidified » Knoxville News Sentinel

murketing — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:20:47 -0400

Ina Hughs: Objects are stories solidified » Knoxville News Sentinel:

Everything has a story. The little treasures of our lives we display in bookcases and on dresser tops means something special — and if they could talk, would tell a good tale.

That’s the premise behind a book a friend gave me for my birthday: “Significant Objects: 100 Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things,” edited by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn. In it are stories owners tell about knickknacks and ordinary objects that have special meaning: a cow vase; a poodle figurine; a Charlie’s Angel thermos; a lighter shaped like a pool ball; a pincushion owl.

The Believer Logger: Ben Greenman and Darin Strauss Discuss How to Write Fiction Now

murketing — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:20:34 -0400

The Believer Logger: Ben Greenman and Darin Strauss Discuss How to Write Fiction Now:

believermag:

Darin Strauss and Ben Greenman live in Brooklyn. Both have written large amounts of published fiction: Strauss’s most recent book is a memoir, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award-winning Half a Life. Greenman’s new novel, The Slippage (Harper Perennial), comes out in May, and on…

unconsumption: The other day we noted plans to repurpose...

murketing — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:41:08 -0400

unconsumption:

The other day we noted plans to repurpose Denver’s unused train station into a hotel. Turns out it’s not the only former train station that’s finding new life:

The heyday of railway travel may have passed, but the nostalgic allure of architecturally striking infrastructure has ensured that it’s not the end of the line for many historic station buildings. We recently learned that Union Station in Denver, which opened to passengers in the late 19th century, will be transformed into a trendy hotel, with adjoining restaurants and a beer hall, by 2014. Click through our gallery to see how other train stations have been repurposed into thriving cultural centers, libraries, and more.

Train Station Library

Library attendance numbers in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands were dwindling. A public service organization decided to bring books to the people instead of waiting for people to come to the books. They created a public library in part of the Haarlem train station, providing a literary oasis for busy commuters.

More: 10 Incredible Repurposed Train Stations – Flavorwire

The Independent Bookstore is Not Dead (Part II) | The Billfold

murketing — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:20:32 -0400

The Independent Bookstore is Not Dead (Part II) | The Billfold:

Last November, Ann Patchett wrote a piece in The Atlantic detailing how she opened an independent bookstore in Nashville, Tenn. after the remaining two bookstores in the city shuttered its doors. Her bookstore has become a success, due in some part to Patchett’s celebrity. But as a feature about Boswell Books in this month’s issue of Milwaukee Magazine shows, you don’t need to have the celebrity to have a successful indie bookstore.

"I had the feeling that my children thought that I stood frozen inside the house while they were at..."

murketing — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:40:26 -0400

“I had the feeling that my children thought that I stood frozen inside the house while they were at school, only to be reanimated when they burst back through the door at the end of the day. Sure they knew I was a writer, but what did that actually mean to them?”

- Marisa Silver, “While I Was at Home on Business: When Writing Life Meets Family Life.” (via millionsmillions)

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To read all of the extraordinary stories about ordinary things that Silver and 99 other great writers created as part of the Significant Objects project, pick up our book, on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.

Presentation Zen: Should we be suspicious of stories?

murketing — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:20:45 -0400

Presentation Zen: Should we be suspicious of stories?:

Should we be suspicious of stories?

We are wired for stories. “Evolutionary biologists confirm that 100,000 years of reliance on stories have evolutionarily hardwired a predisposition into human brains to think in story terms,” says research scientist and engineer Kendall Haven in his book Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story. “We are programmed to prefer stories and to think in story structures.” Stories are ubiquitous in our lives. Jean-Paul Sartre said, “A man is always a teller of stories. He lives surrounded by his own stories and those of other people. He sees everything that happens to him in terms of stories, and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.” Most people agree that stories—for better or worse—have a special ability to engage an audience, to hold their attention, and impart a message. Sometimes stories merely entertain us in the moment and then quickly fade from memory. Other stories inform and persuade and educate the listener. Many stories inspire the listener to make a change and to take an action. Stories have great power to communicate and to influence, and because story has this great power, it is reasonable to ask whether or not we should be suspicious of story.

Tyler Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the economics blog Marginal Revolution. In his TEDxtalk he says that we should be suspicious of stories. Watch it on the TED site or watch the YouTube version below.

I point to this talk above because it’s just provocative enough to get people thinking and questioning. That’s a good thing. But what would have made the talk better would have been a clear definition of what story is, or at least what definition he was using. We have to assume he was using the term story rather generally for things which may be factual, based on facts, or completely imagined. But even things which are completely made up (many of the ancient myths, for example) while not serving as reliable historical accounts, nonetheless are instructional, illuminating or inspiring for the listener.

I think of the meaning of “story” not in terms of content but rather in terms of a shape or structure. Story, then, in and of itself is neither good nor bad. Elements of story structure, such as Syd Field’s version of the classic three-act structure, can be applied to many (but by no means all) of the narratives we wish to create. In the talk above, Cowen seems to be suggesting, at least in part, that stories include anecdotes and personal testimony regarding events and ideas, etc. If so, then he is certainly correct that we need to be very suspicious indeed of this kind of “storytelling.” Story structure backed by honest research and supported with evidence and concrete examples can be clear and transparent and relatively trustworthy. But personal testimony alone, while often engaging depending on the speaker, is the least reliable form of evidence (assuming evidence is what we require).

Rather than offering a convincing critique on storytelling per se, Cowen seems to be offering a critique on the reliance we place on anecdotal evidence today. And this kind of “story” is indeed something of which we should be very suspicious. We should always maintain a healthy does of skepticism and suspicion. Surely an important aspect of being an educated person, whether we went to school or not, is having a critical mind and a reasonable approach to obtaining information and to inquiry.

Well, it’s been a while since one of our objects was...

murketing — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:40:43 -0400

Well, it’s been a while since one of our objects was united with the author who invented its significance! But it’s happened again: Here is Ben Katchor, with the Maine Statues Dish. Photographs courtesy of Jeannie Roule, who (along with Trifin) we cannot thank enough!

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And of course: To read all of the extraordinary stories about ordinary things that Katchor and 99 other great writers created as part of the Significant Objects project, pick up our book, on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.

At this year’s Milan Design Week, Japanese design studio...

murketing — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:20:45 -0400

At this year’s Milan Design Week, Japanese design studio YOY presented a series of objects designed to enhance your current storage facilities. One of the stand out concepts was “book” - a cleverly disguised flower pot that can also be used as a divider or book end. Made from PVC to keep it waterproof, the fake book’s front cover opens up to unveil the soil and roots underneath. Other designs presented include a bookend which extends your current bookshelf and a food tray which clips onto the side of your coffee table to both extend it and give the effect that it’s floating on thin air.

(via Hidden Bookshelf Planter | HUH.)

The Believer Logger: "I HADN'T YET FOUND THE FORM THAT RELEASED MY BEST INTELLIGENCE." - INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SHEILDS

murketing — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:40:36 -0400

The Believer Logger: "I HADN'T YET FOUND THE FORM THAT RELEASED MY BEST INTELLIGENCE." - INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SHEILDS:

believermag:

After about twenty-five emails back and forth, David Shields wrote to say he was flying into Los Angeles and that I should come by his hotel on Sunset to talk. We walked around the area for two hours–at one point trying to get into the Getty. (David Shields: Can we walk up to the Getty?…

Great interview with David Shields in The Believer (which of course was one of our team-up partners for a five-story cycle on SignificantObjects.com).

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And of course: To read all of the extraordinary stories about ordinary things that Shields and 99 other great writers created as part of the Significant Objects project, pick up our book, on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.

The “Significant Objects” project posed a simple...

murketing — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:20:54 -0400

The “Significant Objects” project posed a simple question: Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object?

The answer — a resounding yes — is expressed in these stories about the flotsam and jetsam of life, cast away in thrift stores, yard sales and flea markets.

The authors recruited wonderful storytellers to imagine the importance of all sorts of wacky stuff through short stories: Curtis Sittenfeld tells of a marriage through a figurine of spotted dogs; Kurt Andersen explains the importance of a Santa nutcracker to an Indiana boy.

The handsome volume is more than a collection of heartbreaking and funny short stories with beautifully photographed objects: The authors listed each object for auction on eBay, included its invented story, with a starting price of the object’s original cost. The result: The stories elevated each object’s value. A motel room key bought for $2 sold for $45.01, and a tiny pink horse originally bought for $1 fetched $104.50.

Readers can try this at home, or visit significantobjects.com for inspiration.

— Elizabeth Taylor, literary editor

(via Editor’s choice: Significant Objects - chicagotribune.com)

Significant Objects project book is available on Amazon or from your favorite bookseller.