flattening a command substitution

["Decklin Foster" <fosterd@hartwick.edu>]

Is there a way to perform a command substitution and flatten it all at
once? For example, say I want to work with a pwd that has spaces:

; pwd
/home/decklin
; mkdir 'foo bar'
; cd 'foo bar'
; ls `{pwd}
ls: /home/decklin/foo: No such file or directory
ls: bar: No such file or directory
[nonzero status 1]
; ls ``(){pwd}
ls: /home/decklin/foo bar
: No such file or directory
[nonzero status 1]
;

Now, there are two ways I can get it to work: use a newline as the
ifs-value, or have a temporary variable:

pwd=`{pwd}
ls $^pwd

Neither strike me as being very elegant. The first option doesn't
generalize to commands with multi-line output, and having to waste a
variable seems wrong. Does anyone have a better idea?

-- 
There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There
are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong. -- BSD fortune(6)