14/05/16: Davy Rothbart – Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World (2004)


The idea is great: people send in curious things they found in the street, from love letters to random-seeming notes. All human life is here – disturbing, funny, angry, sometimes poignant. What lets it down is the design, which blurs the distinction between the found item and its presentation. The labels of who found what and where get mixed in with the items themselves. Plus, it's not always clear where one find ends and another begins, so it feels artificially "arranged" and "designed". With a slightly more logical, documentary-style layout, this could have been one of the greatest books ever. Instead, the self-consciously "fanzine-y" feel never quite lets the humanity of the found items live and breathe. That's a shame, as there is some incredible material here.

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