Significant Objects

Missouri Shotglass

Friday, November 13, 2009

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Jonathan Lethem, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $76.] Listen, friend, forget about the bartender, you could wait all day in this dive, we might as well be invisible over here, I kid you not. Here, let me pour you a drink. No, really, I insist, [...]

Rooster Oven Mitt

Friday, November 6, 2009

1 Comment

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Victor LaValle, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $51.99.] Who the hell goes to Portugal? In my family? The question arose as my sister and I were going through my grandmother’s things—her effects. She’d died of old age at Queens General Hospital and she’d been longing for [...]

Amoco Yo-Yo

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

3 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Mark Sarvas, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $41.] When I was seventeen, I was expelled from high school. My father, reasonably enough, gave me a choice: Get a job or get out. The only job for a 30-mile radius was the night shift behind [...]

Felt Mouse

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

0 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Meghan O'Rourke, has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $62. ] After my mother died, a stranger emailed me. He told me that my mother had been the most important person in his life. They went to Catholic school together. He was unpopular, she was popular; [...]

Swiss Medal

Thursday, October 29, 2009

2 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Kathryn Borel Jr., has ended. Original price: 50 cents. Final price: $16.] 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 [...]

Wooden Animal

Monday, October 26, 2009

19 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Meg Cabot, has ended. Original price: 75 cents. Final price: $108.50.] So Brandon was going to Cabo for spring break and I saved up all my tip money for a year to chip in for the rental car to go with him. But then at my last cleaning [...]

Dilbert Stress Toy

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

5 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Betsey Swardlick, has ended. Original price: 25 cents. Final price: $26. This story is the third in a three-part series produced in collaboration with The Center for Cartoon Studies. ]

Alien Toy

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

1 Comment

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Nomi Kane, here. Original price: 49 cents. Final price: $37. This story is the second in a three-part series produced in collaboration with The Center for Cartoon Studies. ]

Fish Spoons

Thursday, October 15, 2009

1 Comment

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Mark Doty, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $76.] As a young man I read a poem I’ve never run across again since. I found it in the school library. If you already knew what you wanted in this haphazard collection, you were sunk, but if [...]

Indian Maiden

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

8 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by R.K. Scher, has ended. Original price: 99 cents. Final price: $157.50.] Visitors never fail to ask about my squaw. It’s what I like to call her, although one of those visitors, an earnest young art critic, did try to impress upon me the incorrectness of the term. [...]

“Hawk” Ashtray

Friday, October 2, 2009

12 Comments

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by William Gibson, has ended. Original price: $2.99. Final price: $101.00] In 1969 my friend’s dad was a Pentagon technocrat. My friend said that when his dad came home with a new tie-tack, it meant there was a new weapon in the works. Not that there would be [...]

Crumb Sweeper

Thursday, October 1, 2009

1 Comment

[The auction for this Significant Object, with story by Shelley Jackson, has ended. Original price: $1. Final price: $30.99.] When I first met him, the moon — a chip of bone in the pale blue of morning — was just past full. I can be sure of that, though it was only later that the phases [...]

Tag Archive | "First-Person Narrator"

Missouri Shotglass

Rooster Oven Mitt

Amoco Yo-Yo

Felt Mouse

Swiss Medal

Wooden Animal

Dilbert Stress Toy

Alien Toy

Fish Spoons

Indian Maiden

“Hawk” Ashtray

Crumb Sweeper

S.O. v1 — the EXPERIMENT

S.O. v2 — for 826 National

S.O. v3 — for Girls Write Now

Special Epistolary Week