collapse and delight

the compelling life stories of common objects


Earlier this morning, I was lying in bed listening to the sounds of the Sunday morning pundits wafting in from the other room. Eventually some senator or other was asked by George Stephanopoulos whether he thinks Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed for the Supreme Court. He said of course and began to rattle off the many reasons why she should be, one of which was her — brace yourself — “compelling life story.”  I have no opinion on Sotomayor, but I am increasingly irritated by our need for public figures to have Compelling Life Stories along with — or even instead of — actual job qualifications. This, after all, is how Sarah Palin found herself in line for the Vice Presidency. (Although, no matter how many times I’ve heard her praised first and foremost for it, I can’t find a single compelling thing about her particular life story.)

It seems inarguable to me that we, as a nation, are problematically motivated by stories we are told or, perhaps moreso, that we tell ourselves. Just look at the rabid consumerism that has led us into this economic crisis — largely an act of trying to rewrite our own life stories. We, the people, are living lives we can’t afford in an attempt to measure up to other people’s stories (other people who themselves often can’t afford the life they're living). While I don’t exclude myself from this by any means, it’s one of my favorite reading subjects.

So I was interested just now to read about a rather fascinating experiment called Significant Objects. It’s the brainchild of Joshua Glenn (Taking Things Seriously) and Rob Walker (Buying In): “Our question was this: Can stories, even fictional ones, transform insignificant objects into significant ones? If so, how to measure this qualitative transformation?”

They’ve picked up a bunch of thrift store trinkets and enlisted a group of talented, well-known writers (from Stewart O’Nan to Kurt Andersen) to invent short histories for those trinkets. They’re posting the trinkets and stories on eBay and seeing what they sell for as compared to the price they paid. Unsurprisingly, a compelling life story can really boost the auction price of an unexceptional doodad. Especially one that gets 15 minutes of fame on BoingBoing.

And that’s what this really comes down to. The compelling story these things are benefiting from isn’t the made-up history itself — none of this is being done blind. The benefit is that they’re part of a larger project, one that has garnered the involvement of people whose names you know, one you read about at some hip website. And if you buy one of the objects involved in that project, you become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you.

So when someone says they really like your funky ashtray, you have a compelling story to tell.

a trip around oliver sacks’ desk

Seed has an interactive exploration of Oliver Sacks’ desk, and although there’s no indication of this (apart from it having been labeled, Workbench) I’m hoping it’s the first in a series.

Eero Saarinen, hopelessly unromantic

My friend Gina recently linked to this marvelous collection of illustrated letters, which I marked for future reference. When I finally went to look at it just now, I was bowled over by the presence of a love note (I guess you’d call it) — on office stationery — from Eero Saarinen. Complete with slanty writing and a 3D heart. All my illusions would be officially shattered were it not for the fact that the note is almost distressingly unromantic and the heart is offset by a sketch of the Michigan Music School. Between that and the repeated misspelling of WOR[K]ED, it’s somehow endeared him to me further.


walt whitman then and (sort of) now


I’ve been promoting this all over, but I’m a big fan of the blog A Journey Round My Skull and got a kick out of this week’s post Poets Ranked by Beard Weight — not least because it contains the exquisite photo of Whitman (sporting a “Hibernator”) seen above. Coincidentally, I’ve just been directed to this charming video of a Whitman impersonator, from a new TV show about books debuting this week:

waiting for his wings


I’ve been thinking, somewhere in the way back of my brain, about everyone’s favorite oversimplified metaphor: the caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Do you ever wonder if the butterfly ever yearns for its caterpillar days? Or how it feels about the change as it sets in? Anyway, I just came across this great post at Open Salon — with magnificent photos — and was struck by this line: “Because he’s waiting for his wings to be ready, he’s immobile.”

learning from melville’s experience

In this funny piece about searching for a kind of kinship with Melville aboard a cruise ship, this paragraph stuck out at me:

I did manage to make a list of what he and I shared and where our experience differed. I’d booked an inside cabin on the Star Flyer’s bottom deck, hoping to approximate his berth on the Acushnet. I had a gimpy left leg on the trip, just as Melville had as he struggled through the Marquesan jungle; it made me feel close to him. I was mutinous, refusing to snorkel. That was about it. He had had no sunblock, no mosquito repellent, no sorbet course, no piano bar, no steward to turn down his bedspread (no bedspread), no chocolates on his pillow. And yet he produced two bestsellers.

We do have a way of getting in our own way.

puzzled by the vogels


I just posted at Readerville about this amazing story — The Vogel Collection: thoroughly modest Medicis. And it is thoroughly amazing. But the thing I can never understand about a story like this — as a person whose mood and, er, sense of well-being are deeply impacted by my surroundings — is how people with such a finely honed aesthetic sense could live in this room. No snark intended; I truly can't reconcile that.