Announcement: We’ve just posted a page dedicated to the Significant Objects project’s press clippings. We’ll keep it updated. Earlier this week, Rob Walker posted an update in which he noted (among other things) that several journalists and bloggers have commented … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Claire Zulkey, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $5.50.] Apparently, people collect these things. I’m not sure I understand why. Is it for the candy? I find that hard to believe. There are … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by James Parker, has closed. Original price: $1.25. Final price: $15.53 ] “You know, of course,” said the periodontist, as he bore down with his scalpel, “that Nancy Pelosi is insane?” Floyd … Continue reading
Significant Objects launched one week ago — which means the auctions for our five opening-day items are ended. Let’s take stock, shall we?
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kurt Andersen, has closed. Original price: $2. Final price: $15.50.] Although I live now in Indianapolis, I grew up in Gas City, which is a town (not a city) about an … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Lizzie Skurnick, has closed. Original price: $1. Final price: $11.50.] When I was four I thought it was a periscope, or what I thought at the time was called a periscope. … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Susannah Breslin, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $36.88] I reached my hand into the drawer, withdrew it, and looked at what lay in my palm. “ALL AMERICAN OFFICIAL … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jonathan Goldstein, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $6.25.] Twenty years after the man’s death, I still can’t rightly say whether my uncle Dwayne was a benevolent old-timey Grandpa Walton … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jenny Davidson, has ended. Original price: 12 cents. Final price: $3.58.] I blame it on the book: a pocket-sized lined notebook with a black matte cover, bound at the left-hand margin … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Sharpe, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $14.50.] This is the statue of the mule that I have sculpted by my hands, but if you are the serious person … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Ben Greenman, has ended. Original price: $2. Final price: $32.08.] This object is best known from its appearance in the 1939 film No News From the Navy, a comedy starring James … Continue reading
[The auction for this Significant Object, with story Mark Frauenfelder, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $23.] Matt saw the tiny blue bottle on the third step of the main entrance to the Los Angeles Central Library. It was … Continue reading
[The bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Lydia Millet, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $22.72.] I went with my friend G to her great aunt’s house a few weeks after the aunt passed away. G … Continue reading
[The bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Matthew Battles, has ended. Original price: 29 cents. Final price: $11.50.] You had passed him at the entrance to the subway station countless times before, not so much sitting as thrown … Continue reading
[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Annie Nocenti, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $26.] I’m long off the vine. Eighty, truth be told. I refuse to be one of those biddies that dies with clutter. Found … Continue reading
[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Lucinda Rosenfeld, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $26.] My grandmother, Zippy Friedman, was an administrator at Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital in Stockbridge, MA, for several decades beginning in the 1950s. … Continue reading
[Bidding on this Significant Object, with story by Luc Sante, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $17.79.] Only now do I feel free to tell my part in the theft of the famed Light of the East diamond from … Continue reading
THE IDEA A talented, creative writer invents a story about an object. Invested with new significance by this fiction, the object should — according to our hypothesis — acquire not merely subjective but objective value. How to test our theory? … Continue reading
