Significant Objects

Collects the results of a literary experiment in which a best-selling or popular author wrote a short fictional prose story about an object on eBay, raising its value; the profit from the object’s sale then went to charity.

Please note:  In the spirit of discovery that the book promotes, this product has two different jackets (pink or blue) pictured above.  The customer will be shipped at random and will not be able to specify one jacket or the other. 

100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS

SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: A Literary and Economic Experiment

Can a great story transform a worthless trinket into a significant object? The Significant Objects project set out to answer that question once and for all, by recruiting a highly impressive crew of creative writers to invent stories about an unimpressive menagerie of items rescued from thrift stores and yard sales.

That secondhand flotsam definitely becomes more valuable: sold on eBay, objects originally picked up for a buck or so sold for thousands of dollars in total — making the project a sensation in the literary blogosphere along the way.

But something else happened, too: The stories created were astonishing, a cavalcade of surprising responses to the challenge of manufacturing significance. Who would have believed that random junk could inspire so much imagination?

The founders of the Significant Objects project, that’s who. This book collects 100 of the finest tales from this unprecedented creative experiment; you’ll never look at a thrift-store curiosity the same way again.

FEATURING ORIGINAL STORIES BY: Chris Adrian • Rob Agredo • Kurt Andersen • Rachel Axler • Rob Baedeker • Nicholson Baker • Rosecrans Baldwin • Matthew Battles • Charles Baxter • Kate Bernheimer • Susanna Breslin • Kevin Brockmeier • Matt Brown • Blake Butler • Meg Cabot • Tim Carvell • Patrick Cates • Dan Chaon • Susanna Daniel • Adam Davies • Kathryn Davis • Matthew De Abaitua • Stacey • D'Erasmo • Helen DeWitt • Doug Dorst • Mark Doty • Ben Ehrenreich • Mark Frauenfelder • Amy Fusselman • William Gibson • Myla Goldberg • Ben Greenman • Jason Grote • Jim Hanas • Jennifer Michael Hecht • Sheila Heti • Christine Hill • Dara Horn • Shelley Jackson • Heidi Julavits • Ben Katchor • Matt Klam • Wayne Koestenbaum • Josh Kramer • Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer • Neil LaBute • Victor LaValle • J. Robert Lennon • Jonathan Lethem • Todd Levin • Laura Lippman • Mimi Lipson • Robert Lopez • Joe Lyons • Sarah Manguso • Merrill Markoe • Tom McCarthy • Miranda Mellis • Lydia Millet • Maud Newton • Annie Nocenti • Stephen O’Connor • Stewart O’Nan • Jenny Offill • Gary Panter • Ed Park • James Parker • Benjamin Percy • Mark Jude Poirier • Padgett Powell • Bob Powers • Todd Pruzan • Dan Reines • Nathaniel Rich • Peter Rock • Lucinda Rosenfeld • Greg Rowland • Luc Sante • R.K. Scher • Toni Schlesinger • Matthew Sharpe • Jim Shepard • David Shields • Marisa Silver • Curtis Sittenfeld • Bruce Sterling • Scarlett Thomas • Jeff Turrentine • Deb Olin Unferth • Tom Vanderbilt • Matthew J. Wells • Joe Wenderoth • Margaret Wertheim • Colleen Werthmann • Colson Whitehead • Carl Wilson • Cintra Wilson • Sari Wilson • Douglas Wolk • John Wray

Full color throughout

Joshua Glenn is editor of the website HiLobrow; in the ’90s he published the independent zine/journal Hermenaut. He’s co-authored and co-edited several books, including The Idler’s Glossary, The Wage Slave’s Glossary, and the kids’ field guide to life Unbored (October 2012). In 2011, he produced a brainteaser iPhone app, KER-PUNCH!. In 2012, HiLoBooks will serialize and reissue six overlooked classics of science fiction. He lives in Boston.

Rob Walker contributes to The New York Times Magazine and Design Observer, among others. He is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, and Letters from New Orleans. More at www.robwalker.net.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of six novels, including the bestsellers The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.

Gary Panter has lived in Brooklyn since 1985. A multimedia/fine artist, his pioneering, post-underground comix work helped define the alternative comics movement in venues such as Raw, and his aesthetic remains influential. He is a Cullman Study Center fellow and a recipient of a Daimler/Chrysler design award and a Pollock/Krasner Foundation grant. He also has three Emmys for his design work on the classic PeeWee’s Playhouse television series.

William Gibson is a professor of ecclesiastical history at Oxford Brookes University. He is also academic director of the Westminster Institute of Education.