Significant Objects was a literary and anthropological enterprise devised by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker.

It began as an online experiment demonstrating that the effect of imaginative narrative on any given object’s subjective value can be measured objectively. Various online sequels, a book, and a number of events and collaborations have followed.

Read more of the project’s backstory on SignificantObjects.com. But in short: The original experiment (and its online sequels) involved auctioning off thrift-store objects via eBay; for item descriptions, short stories purpose-written by over 200 contributing writers, including Meg Cabot, William Gibson, Ben Greenman, Sheila Heti, Neil LaBute, Jonathan Lethem, Tom McCarthy, Lydia Millet, Jenny Offill, Bruce Sterling, Scarlett Thomas, and Colson Whitehead, were substituted. The objects, purchased for $1.25 apiece on average, sold for nearly $8,000.00 in total. (Proceeds were distributed to the contributors, and to nonprofit creative writing organizations.)

The project collaborated with Slate on a writing contest; guest curators and partner editors including The Believer, Electric Literature, Underwater New York,The Center for Cartoon Studies, and MoMA design curator Paola Antonelli; and organized a reading and participatory “Object Slam” as part of San Francisco’s Litquake, featuring Beth Lisick, Rob Baedeker, Miranda Mellis, Chris Colin, and Katie Williams.

Most (ahem) significantly, a collection of 100 of the project’s finest stories was published by Fantagraphics in a highly impressive volume, masterfully designed by Jacob Covey. This was covered by The New York Times and NPR’s All Things Considered, among others, and inspired a collaboration and contest with Kurt Andersen’s Studio 360. The book debuted with a sold-out event at The Strand in New York City, featuring contributors Luc Sante, Matthew Sharpe, Mimi Lipson, Ben Greenman, Annie Nocenti, Shelley Jackson, and Jason Grote.

The book is now hard to find, but you might try Amazon or AbeBooks. All the project’s stories are archived on this site.

Here is a video that describes the project by way of interviews with several participating authors:

And here is a video of our book launch event at The Strand in New York, NY: