Stuff rules. At its most elegiac, this fact of modern living is manifested in novels such as Leanne Shapton’s Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry, its very title lampooning the auction catalogue that can be unwanted stuff’s ultimate stop, or in Web shticks such as the Significant Objects Project, in which writers use stories to infuse hitherto neglected objects with meaning and then test their new worth on eBay. At its worst is the dull revelation that we simply keep producing it. Already, the laminated cloth bags that were meant to be emblems of recycling stuff are their own glut, about to pollute our creeks or fly in the wind just as an old plastic one did in Sam Mendes’s film, American Beauty.

A friend of mine likes to recount how his partner, a dynamic woman who heads a large successful company—you’ll see why—entered the vacated room of her university-bound son and, picking up a framed photograph of him as a boy, cooed uncharacteristically for a brief moment before abruptly turning on her heels. “Right then,” she said, waving her partner into the room. “All this must go.” Continue…