Teaching Notes for The Nouns
Use in the classroom to discuss: doorways; hallways; alleyways; static objects; static subjects; short prose forms; catalogs as constructive units; kitchens; catalogs as containment devices; phrase/word origins; mark making; writing about writing; observation and surveillance; transversal movements; family dynamics; dump sites; humor; body parts; beer bottles; sexual organs; kettles; cauldrons; naming conventions; patent applications; traces; imprints; public performances of the personal; place studies; the suburbs; the commons; “America”; tissues.
Pairs well with Flat Stanley Reports Back to his Third Grader; Waiting for the Miracle; and Reports.
The Nouns by Quinn Gancedo
84 pages.
Perfect bound.
In anonymous homes in unspecified subdivisions, humdrum expectations abound. But what if we perceived the perpetual force of an ordinary object? Winner of The Cupboard Pamphlet’s 2021 Annual Contest, Quinn Gancedo’s The Nouns inventories the household items that execute our most autonomic domestic duties. As Gancedo sets each table, tissue, and telephone in its explicit and appropriate station, this much becomes clear: there is an apparatus that anchors a tongue to an utterance; there is a definite distance between the wolf and the door. We need only to look to know it.