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starladyTan, Shaun. Lost & Found. New York: Scholastic, 2011.
This was probably not the book to pick up to read when I was exhausted; any infelicities in the following are, even more than usual, entirely my fault, and as always, I welcome corrections.
The Red Tree (2001).
Lost & Found is a collection of three of Tan's early works; The Red Tree is the only one that I already owned. This time, having been primed bycoffeeandink's review of it, I was able to find the red leaf in each of the paintings. Actually, in that respect, reading this while I was exhausted was good, because one of the things I still find most frustrating about reading graphic novels, manga, comics, picture books, is how I have been unconsciously trained to prioritize the text over the images, and how even when I'm trying to make a point to pay attention to the art, it's hard. Being very tired, and knowing that the girl-protagonist, in her depression, can't see the leaf that's always there with her, a spot of color in a grindingly drab landscape, helped me to be able to take the time to look for that leaf, and to appreciate finding it.
I am fortunate, as an individual, never to have suffered from clinical depression; others in my family, friends and people I love, have and do, as has Shaun Tan, from his afterword. But as someone who has occasionally felt, on the worst days of her life, that a black cloud had descended over me and that nothing (except maybe time, and I doubted even that) would alleviate it, the painting where the horrible fish flies over the girl, following her around, really struck me: yup, that's what it felt like. The painting in which she is onstage, unable to read the signs in Finnish, and she doesn't know what she is supposed to do, also struck me powerfully.
I suspect that as a visual depiction of clinical depression goes, YMMV.rushthatspeaks has yet a different viewpoint. This is Tan's depiction of his experience, and as someone who has only even approached that on, as I said, the worst days of her life, I can't really say how it seems to someone who has struggled with it day in and day out, or still does. I love Tan's art; it's gorgeous and clever and affecting, and that hasn't changed. In the end, the girl comes home to a tree that was never and always there before; but what about tomorrow?
The Lost Thing (2000).
I think I may have flipped through this in a bookstore at one point, because it seemed familiar, but taking the time to actually read it, both the text that makes up the background to the text and the images, and the images themselves, changed my opinion of it for the better. I think I'm now in the minority in thinking that this is a very good, subtly creepy, powerful book in its own right.
It's about, as those who have seen the movie will know, a young man (teenager?) who finds, on the mechanized beach of his mechanized city, a lost thing. In a fit of responsibility, he takes it home and feeds it, but he knows he can't keep it. Instead, he tries to take it to a lost & found, where a janitor tell him, if he cares about the lost thing, not to leave it there, and gives him a strange card: a wavy arrow. When the boy and the thing find the place it indicates, you have to turn the book a full 90º, holding it vertically, to see the place where the lost thing finds other lost things, enough to feel at home, or to be able to make a home. The young man leaves the lost thing with its fellows and goes about his business; these days he doesn't see many such lost things anymore, he says, maybe because there aren't many around anymore. Or maybe because he's just stopped noticing them; too busy doing other things, maybe. Like looking at his collection of bottle-tops.
This is, he tells the reader completely unaffectedly, the only story he remembers anymore--and that, for my money, is far creepier than any Elder God or whatever. Much like "The Amnesia Machine" in Tales from Outer Suburbia, the book is a pointed critique of global capital and the lies it wants to tell us, wants us to believe: today is the tomorrow you expected yesterday. Everything is as it should be. There's no need to notice those things that have a weird, lost, sad, look. They don't exist at all. What things? Everything is as it should be. Today is the tomorrow you expected yesterday.
This was probably not the book to pick up to read when I was exhausted; any infelicities in the following are, even more than usual, entirely my fault, and as always, I welcome corrections.
The Red Tree (2001).
Lost & Found is a collection of three of Tan's early works; The Red Tree is the only one that I already owned. This time, having been primed by
coffeeandink's review of it, I was able to find the red leaf in each of the paintings. Actually, in that respect, reading this while I was exhausted was good, because one of the things I still find most frustrating about reading graphic novels, manga, comics, picture books, is how I have been unconsciously trained to prioritize the text over the images, and how even when I'm trying to make a point to pay attention to the art, it's hard. Being very tired, and knowing that the girl-protagonist, in her depression, can't see the leaf that's always there with her, a spot of color in a grindingly drab landscape, helped me to be able to take the time to look for that leaf, and to appreciate finding it. I am fortunate, as an individual, never to have suffered from clinical depression; others in my family, friends and people I love, have and do, as has Shaun Tan, from his afterword. But as someone who has occasionally felt, on the worst days of her life, that a black cloud had descended over me and that nothing (except maybe time, and I doubted even that) would alleviate it, the painting where the horrible fish flies over the girl, following her around, really struck me: yup, that's what it felt like. The painting in which she is onstage, unable to read the signs in Finnish, and she doesn't know what she is supposed to do, also struck me powerfully.
I suspect that as a visual depiction of clinical depression goes, YMMV.
rushthatspeaks has yet a different viewpoint. This is Tan's depiction of his experience, and as someone who has only even approached that on, as I said, the worst days of her life, I can't really say how it seems to someone who has struggled with it day in and day out, or still does. I love Tan's art; it's gorgeous and clever and affecting, and that hasn't changed. In the end, the girl comes home to a tree that was never and always there before; but what about tomorrow? The Lost Thing (2000).
I think I may have flipped through this in a bookstore at one point, because it seemed familiar, but taking the time to actually read it, both the text that makes up the background to the text and the images, and the images themselves, changed my opinion of it for the better. I think I'm now in the minority in thinking that this is a very good, subtly creepy, powerful book in its own right.
It's about, as those who have seen the movie will know, a young man (teenager?) who finds, on the mechanized beach of his mechanized city, a lost thing. In a fit of responsibility, he takes it home and feeds it, but he knows he can't keep it. Instead, he tries to take it to a lost & found, where a janitor tell him, if he cares about the lost thing, not to leave it there, and gives him a strange card: a wavy arrow. When the boy and the thing find the place it indicates, you have to turn the book a full 90º, holding it vertically, to see the place where the lost thing finds other lost things, enough to feel at home, or to be able to make a home. The young man leaves the lost thing with its fellows and goes about his business; these days he doesn't see many such lost things anymore, he says, maybe because there aren't many around anymore. Or maybe because he's just stopped noticing them; too busy doing other things, maybe. Like looking at his collection of bottle-tops.
This is, he tells the reader completely unaffectedly, the only story he remembers anymore--and that, for my money, is far creepier than any Elder God or whatever. Much like "The Amnesia Machine" in Tales from Outer Suburbia, the book is a pointed critique of global capital and the lies it wants to tell us, wants us to believe: today is the tomorrow you expected yesterday. Everything is as it should be. There's no need to notice those things that have a weird, lost, sad, look. They don't exist at all. What things? Everything is as it should be. Today is the tomorrow you expected yesterday.