Davy Rothbart
Davy Rothbart's magazine Found is dedicated to discarded notes, letters, flyers, photos, lists, and drawings found and sent in by readers. The magazine spawned a best-selling book, Found: The Best Lost, Tossed, and Forgotten Items from Around the World, published in April 2004. A second collection was published in May 2006. The magazine is published annually and co-edited by Rothbart's friend Jason Bitner.
Rothbart, a former Chicago Bulls ticket scalper, often tours the country to share finds and invite others to share their finds with him. His brother, musician Peter Rothbart, often accompanies him on these tours.
The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas, a collection of Rothbart's short-stories, was published in August 2005 by Simon & Schuster. A shorter version of the same book was previously self-published by Rothbart's own production company, 21 Balloons Productions (named after Rothbart's favorite book, The 21 Balloons, by William Pène du Bois). An Italian edition, Il Surfista Solitario del Montana, was published in 2007 by Coniglio Editore. In 2008, actor Steve Buscemi optioned the book for film adaption, to be developed by Olive Productions; Buscemi has written the screenplay and plans to direct.
“It's appealing to imagine that if we can just get that one thing in our life to work out-- [...] that everything will be solved, absolved, good to go for good. I slipped into that way of thinking way too often, I admitted to Missy, even though I knew that sometimes in life all of a sudden there you were--standing with your Technics turntables just across the Canadian border, and you're not a new you, you're just you, but in Canada.”
“I often wished that I could split myself a hundred ways and live a hundred separate lives [...]. But in the end, I supposed, we only had one life to lead, and the roads not taken would always outnumber and outshine the roads we end up taking, day by day, without plan.”
“I had abandoned Elana; I deserved her uncertainty. I closed my eyes and focused on her touch. Perhaps she wouldn't have understood had I tried to explain it to her, but to me Elana was not only Elana--she was the sad-eyed love of mine who used to bag groceries at Woodley's in Buffalo; she was the sweet one who always sat across from me on the city bus in Niagara Falls; she was the girl I'd picked up hitchhiking in Mobile and dropped off in New Orleans, brash, full of sarcastic humor, but truly lonely and scared; she was the one I'd nabbed pinching Newports for her dad from the Marathon station I'd worked at in Bakersfield (I'd softened and paid for the pack myself); yes, she was the girl playing basketball with all the boys in the park, collecting cans by the side of the road, keeping secret pet kittens in an empty boxcar in the woods, walking alone at night through the rail yards, teaching her little sisters how to kiss, reading out loud to herself, so absorbed by the story, singing sadly in the tub, building a fort from the junked cars out in the meadow, by herself in the front row at the black-and-white movies or in the alley, gazing at an eddy of cigarette stubs and trash and fall leaves, smoking her first cigarette at dusk by a pile of dead brush in the desert, then wishing at the stars-she was all of them, and she was so much more that was just her that I still didn't know.”
“My dashed hopes putt-putted bravely to life once more, like a bug that gets stomped on but keeps pulling itself across the floor.”