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?

The illustrations are lovely and the story is appealing. There's a quirkiness about the book that is calming and beautiful. It's a lovely book to share.

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.

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.

This is one of my favourite children’s books and one I tend to buy as a gift for parents. I don’t have kids myself but I really enjoy the whimsical world Shaun has created. His ideas and drawings are unusual and a delight among the standard animal, fairy, princess etc stories we’ve all seen too many times. It’s a story like no other and one that’s going to delight parents and kids alike.

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

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)

Got this for my 5 year old boy after he had read it at school and raved about it. I've been reading it every night now for about 2 months and I enjoy it just as much as he does. Brilliant book with wonderful illustrations and also great if you want to promote "different thinking" and "not getting too pre-occupied with stuff". Hopefully, my son will always look up when everyone else is looking down!

Shaun Tan will never cease to amaze me. You can be 4 of you can be 40, and you will still love this book and keep on reading and re-reading it. I can vouch for that. This man, his writing and his artwork - everything is brilliant! Must buy!

Ojalá la versión de pasta dura no difiriera tanto de precio. El cuento es hermoso y el papel muy bonito.

Je suis on ne peut plus satisfait et je vour remercie bien!

I bought this "children's book" in 2005 and I am just now reviewing it. Yes, it has stuck with me that long. The Lost Thing is one of those creative works that’s marketed towards kids, yet might have even more value for adults. Sort of a “picture book” equivalent of Watership Down. With its highly detailed steampunk aesthetic—both in its main images, and the pseudo blueprint schematic designs along the borders—it reminds one of Terry Gilliam, Orwell, German expressionism, and in a weird way, the films of Hayao Miyazaki. Like Miyazaki, Shaun Tan seems to have a tremendous ability to create a surreal world—one that runs on its own internal logic which in itself serves as a mirror to reflect the illogic of how we behave in our day-to-day lives. Frankly, it’s a masterpiece. Some have expressed ambivalence as to the theme and purpose of the Lost Thing. To me, it could not be more obvious. In addition to just having plain gorgeous, dystopic artwork—the Lost Thing is clearly a despairing cry against conformity, apathy and worldliness. You see, the titular "Thing” is a very strange hybrid between robot and animal. It’s bright red and almost Lovecraftian in its size. It makes its first appearance on the beach, in clear view of everyone. People should be gawking at this behemoth. Just witnessing it should leave an indelible mark on their brains, a story they could tell their grandchildren. Yet, save for the main character—a boy who happens upon the Thing during a bottlecap-collecting excursion—no one even gives it a second glance. From all the beachgoers to the main character’s parents to the downtrodden occupants riding the subway trams… It’s not so much that the Thing isn’t accepted or that it sticks out like a rusty thumb; it’s that no one cares. The characters have become so apathetic—their value systems so revolving around the latest news of the day, normalcy, and a media so pervasive that it has killed all sparks of curiosity in its audience—that when something rare and wonderful appears, these automatons don’t reject it so much as they are blind to it. (The boy's parents literally just go on watching TV even as this big red Thing occupies their living room.) Being aware of this book’s theme makes the ending subtly dark. After having successfully delivered the Thing to a new “home” of sorts—a strange little world of misfits, hidden from the “regular strangeness” of the rest of the book—Tan implies that the main character is destined to become just like his soul-blind parents. As the years go by, he will become more and more assimilated to “normalcy.” He will adapt the value system of the world he inhabits. Mature adults know that life is all about working in a cubicle, collecting that paycheck, vegging out in front of the TV, and never, ever feeling wonder or curiosity about anything. Wonder and curiosity are fine for silly children. But at a certain point one needs to put aside such childishness and be a real man (or woman); do your job, don’t question, don’t stick out from the crowd, and pass those Cheetos. The parting words from the main character say it all: “I still think about that lost thing from time to time. Especially when I see something out of the corner of my eye that doesn’t quite fit… I see that sort of thing less and less these days though. Maybe there aren’t many lost things around anymore. Or maybe I’ve just stopped noticing them. Too busy doing other stuff, I guess.” And throughout this monologue, Tan pulls the “camera” back to show the boy as just another passenger speck on a subway tram amidst a sea of subway trams. It’s like Terry Gilliam’s Brazil for grade-schoolers. *** I have to emphasize how entrancing the artwork is. Another reviewer said that he found himself coming back to this book a couple times a week ever since he bought it. I’d wager that it’s because of the artwork. This is NOT one of those kids books in which the author and publisher cynically try to outdo one another in how far low than can set the bar, based on the idea that “Kids and their parents will buy any old crap. Just pump something cutesy out so we can market it.” (More on one such children’s book below.) Rather, every page of The Lost Thing is suitable for framing. From the Kafkaesque government building depicted from an extreme top-down view, to the shot of our main character sitting amidst rows of identical industrial suburban houses, to the hidden alleyway offset by the massive gear in the foreground—you might be compelled, as I was, to investigate if framed prints are available to purchase. (They are. They’re expensive.) On that note, can we hope for a scanned pdf release in the future (like they do with comic books)? True, it’s not the same as an actual copy of the book, but it would do in a pinch. At present, it looks like physical copies of The Lost Thing are only available "used and new from these sellers," and I'd hate to think of a world in which Shaun Tan's masterwork disappears entirely. *** EDWINA… I’d like to do something a bit strange at the end of this review and contrast The Lost Thing to another, totally different children’s book that we happened to purchase right around the time we got The Lost Thing. (It's totally different, yet in its own blundering way, manages to evoke the same themes.) And that other book is called “EDWINA: The Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct” by Mo Willems. You see, in all the ways that The Lost Thing is wonderful, Edwina is awful. Whereas Edwina seems to convey all the wrong lessons with its skin-deep insipid narrative, The Lost Thing is remarkable in its mission statement and the brains it uses to convey that statement. Whereas Edwina seems to be from the school of children’s books that say, “Hey, it doesn’t matter if the artwork is terrible because it’s just for little kids”—Tan takes the stance of a true artist and seems to have put his blood sweat and tears in every image, regardless of the fact that such details might likely be lost on the book’s target audience. But most importantly, whereas Edwina seems to celebrate conformity and mediocrity, celebrate going along with the crowd, and makes fun of those that would question the status quo—Shaun Tan delivers a beautifully-rendered, passionate and subversive critique against such a grotesque worldview. Mo Willems' Edwina seems to believe that above all else—above being true to your convictions—people should just be content to fit in and “go with the flow.” Shaun Tan on the other hand recognizes that oftentimes single bodies of water can be stagnant, and that conformity inevitably leads to the death of human potential. Shaun Tan celebrates the individual, whereas Mo Willems mocks it. In a strange way, because it is so mindless–Mo Willems' book makes for an unwitting companion piece to Shaun Tan's thoughtful masterwork. The contrasts are striking. By being so diametrically opposed to the values of curiosity, non-conformity, and sticking one’s neck out—Edwina's mere existence only drives home the themes of The Lost Thing even deeper. I've no doubt that Edwina and her friends--uninquisitive Stepford ciphers, all of them--would feel right at home on that beach where the Thing first makes its appearance. They'd fit right in with the automatons.

Excellent product and prompt delivery.