Lost Thing

Shaun Tan's fable about a thing that is lost in a city addresses a variety of social concerns, some of which I will touch on shortly. The thing is found by a boy who stumbles upon it while out collecting bottletops. His search for these useless objects leading him to the seemingly equally useless thing. As he worked on the book Tan became interested in the idea of `a creature or person who really did not come from anywhere, or have an existing relationship to anything, and was `just plain lost.' The story centres on the boy's attempts to find out where it belongs. It's organic body is enclosed in a metal case that looks like a discarded piece of machinery. I imagine that, like a hermit crab, the thing inadvertently made its home in the metal casing for want of a more appropriate place to live and simply adapted to or maladapted to the city for the same reason. A lot is left open to interpretation. There is room to exercise your imagination, not least because the cities inhabitants seem to have so little. The thing stands out like a sore thumb in the homogeneous society that the author has created. Paradoxically Tan manages to make this bland environment rich in detail. Making it interesting enough to readers who care to pay attention. The dystopian city dominates every other element of the illustrations. The book's website describes it as a place where `a lot of things don't actually work' but where `as long as the appearance of productivity is maintained, life can continue.' In my view most things in the city worked well enough, in their own terms at least. It's just that their terms were rather too narrow. We often justify our involvements by claiming that they have some noble overarching purpose or worthy outcome. When in fact more often than not we are driven by a simple desire to perpetuate our existence and the existences of the organistaions that we are involved in. This desire is after all the foundation of our evolutionary make up and when combined with our technological prowess it can so easily lead us to adopt the kind of factory mentality that is in evidence in Tans story.The boy finds a newspaper advertisement posted by the federal department of odds and ends. Their motto is 'sweepus underum carpetae.' He decides to hand the lost thing over to the department but a cleaner tells him that if he really cares about the thing then he shouldn't leave it there because 'this is a place for forgetting, leaving behind, smoothing over.' The cleaner directs him to a side street depicted in a picture which places the viewer behind the pipes and cogs which form part of an unidentified machine in the foreground. While the thing and the boy stand before a 'dark little gap' below. The boy is dwarfed both by the thing and by the city which surrounds them, giving us a sense of its all encompassing giganticism. This also evokes the experience that children often have of being at the whim of a largely unknown world which is much bigger than themselves and in which they have little power. In the kind of world depicted in the story you would think that adults would also feel this way. Yet everyone seems to be rather insensible to the world around them. The reader might get the impression that they have merely buried these feelings.In the opening frames of the book the boy finds the lost thing on a crowded beach and despite the thing's size and its bright colour the sunbathers fail to notice it. Disregard is a recurring theme. The book is subtitled: `A tale for those who have more important things to pay attention to.' Likewise the people in the story are not ignoring everything; their disregard is selective. For example the boy searches with a keen interest for bottletops to add to his collection. We tend to loose sight of the bigger picture when we focus on minutiae. The main focus of the cities population seems to be on maintaining the strict order which is suffocating it. The boy asks various people that he encounters about the thing but none seem to be interested. He and the thing and the stories incidental characters all have difficulty communicating. For the thing this difficulty is probably inevitable seeing as it has no face or voice with which to express itself. The boy is less than demonstrative, while the rest of the cities inhabitants all seem to be preoccupied. The fact that they come equipped with faces and mouths doesn't seem to help them much. The thing is the most expressive character in the book in spite of it's disabilities. In one frame there are statue's of two men holding briefcases, one of whom has a television camera where we would expect to find a head. He is interviewing the other who has a television instead of a more conventional head. The two figures are linked via a tube connecting their `heads.' In this way the media is shown to be caught in a self-referential loop. I suppose the statue would make a good visual representation of Baudrillards view that our culture has lost much of its connection to reality and that our symbols tend to refer only to each other or else to nothing at all, creating some sort of `hyper-reality.' Tan deals with our disregard for reality as we concentrate on the abstractions involved in creating and maintaining the techno-industrial civilisation in which we are caught and with the theme of the rest of natures displacement by that civilisation.In a frame which hints at this, the boys mother is reading a newspaper with the headline: `FLAMINGO RECAPTURED.' She seems to be focused on and yet at the same time bored by what she is reading, and doesn't notice the thing towering above the family in their living room. I'm reminded of reading a newspaper article about the `Holocene extinction' which is the mass extinction occurring presently. The article suggested that we are unlikely to have heard of this extinction, which is one of only six mass extinctions to take place in the earths history. Other themes include belonging and the dislocation that is so prevalent in cities and the bureaucratic order which helps to create it, as well as the related marginalization of creativity. These themes remind me of Max Weber's observation that bureaucratic authority leads to: 'The dominance of a spirit of cold, formalistic impersonality. Without hatred or passion and hence without affection or enthusiasm.' In Tan's own words, his book deals with questions `of apathy, particularly the suppression of imagination and playful distraction by pragmatism and bureaucracy, conditions that affect both a society and its individuals.' The book brings to mind the notion that we desperately lack creativity because it has been separated from our actual experience, and the way in which the industrialisation of art and the fact that it is practised by a select few diminishes the honest expression of all kinds of emotion. We are encouraged to live in our heads where we concoct blue prints which we use to create the culture which encourages us to live in our heads. The boy draws no such conclusions from his encounter with the thing and doesn't seem inclined to even attempt to understand it's puzzling existence. Perhaps the reader will have better luck answering or at least asking some of the questions that 'The Lost Thing' begs. How do we relate to that for which we have no use? How should we approach those whom we don't understand? What is the modern world doing to us?

Very unusual book which captivated my son. He had initially borrowed it from the local library and although I didn't see what the attraction was, he wanted to get it out on loan again, and again, and again. I have warmed to it actually, the illustrations are very unusual and quite intriguing and the story is very strange though is told in a gentle manner. A nice alternative to the usual, run-of-the-mill books these days - refreshing to see something a little different that strikes a cord with young readers and doesn't follow the usually format. Would recommend

Having just purchased this book I have to say that it excels in so many different areas and i was delighted upon opening my amazon parcel.This book is a wonderful synergy of excellent production, style, poetry and artistry:The physical construction of the book, for a paperback, is solid and wonderful to touch and oozes quality.Stylistically the books character is consistantly eclectic and inventively playful it is a delight just to page throught the book without reading it.The story itself is full of curious little quirks and has lovely pace and rythm.This is a wonderful book for both children and adults alike and I would recommend it to you.

Fabulous book and the children yr3/4 produced some great writing about their own lost thing.

Came quickly and one happy little boy

I chose this book for my grandson (9) as he is fascinated by cartoons and drawings. The graphics and the detail are superb, lots to look at and discover. It's not a laugh out loud book, but it does trigger smiles and amusement. My 4/5 rating is because in the final analysis it doesn't win my heart in the way that I want it to. I will enjoy observing my grandson's reaction.

A creative story with some great teaching points. Great for exploring differences.

Bought this for my 5 year old son who likes his bedtimes story a bit 'quirky' - wasn't too sure what to expect but this was surprisingly good - has become a favourite which we keep coming back to. Lots of ambiguous ideas which have prompted discussions. Would recommend this book for older primary school children - well illustrated and different from the usual kids picture book (We also found an excellent 15 minute animated version of this on youtube)