Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
“Arresting and imaginative, The Nouns achieves what the best works of fiction aspire to: it shows us the world as we never knew it existed. This book is the child of Gaston Bachelard and Ben Marcus, a strange, unnerving, and bold portrayal of the objects living beside us. You’ll never look at your vacuum the same way again.” Isle McElroy, 2021 Contest Judge and author of Daddy Issues and The Atmospherians, a NY Times Editors’ Choice
Review
“A book of delightful circumlocutions that packs a wicked punch. Gancedo’s brilliant poetic taxonomy of household items plumbs the depths of nuclear family life and its everyday indignities, each piece lapidary in its exactitude, insight and offbeat logic. Who knew our objects had so much to tell us?”
Janet Sarbanes, author of Letters on the Autonomy Project and The Protester Has Been Released
Review
“Heidegger suggests that language can allow us to be at one with the world--but too often language serves as an obfuscation for what our relation to things really is. Gancedo reveals the way in which simple, sharp, surprising redefinition can strip away the cultural detritus that keeps our sense of things and their relation to us safe and unexamined. The Nouns is a funny, absurd, revelatory and unnerving investigation.”
Brian Evenson, author of Last Days and The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
About the Author
Quinn Gancedo is the author of The Nouns (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2022). His other work has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Diagram, Tammy, New Delta Review, 3:AM, and Potluck Mag. In 2020 he co-founded Elbow Room, a non-profit arts organization focused on providing material support, mentorship, and community for artists experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities in Multnomah County. He lives in Portland, Oregon.