Trash is treasured

Davy ROTHBART, as many already know, is a rescuer of all things lost, an archivist of the abandoned. At Los Feliz’s Skylight Books not long ago, he gave an animated reading from a selection of fragments from Found, his magazine filled with forgotten photos, misplaced letters, torn diary entries and bits of disregarded shopping lists collected by the 27-year-old writer.

Drinking Olde English malt liquor and expounding on the magazine’s philosophy of finders, keepers, Rothbart -- who lives, works, collects and publishes from his parents’ home in Ann Arbor, Mich. -- is an utterly engaging performer. He shouts, swears, struts and hams it up, reading from schoolgirl notes in a piercing whine and from lost to-do lists in a deadpan monotone. Along the way, three volunteers were enlisted to perform a found four-page play (which happened to be missing Page 3) and several people in the crowd shared their sidewalk discoveries.

Accumulating new entries via his own diligent scavenging and that of friends and readers (who send discoveries from all over the country), Rothbart has managed to create a fascinating and wonderfully moving collage of human emotion.

“I hope that Found encourages people to pay a little bit more attention to what’s around them,” he said, of the annual publication, whose first issue came out in 2001.

“All you have to do is take that extra moment to pick up that piece of paper floating down the street. A lot of times is will be junk, but every once in a while, trust me, you’ll find gold.”

Found is a kind of stranger’s scrapbook -- a note from an angry neighbor, an obscene love letter, the scrawl on an eighth-grader’s math quiz -- filled with the moments and memories of others.

Still, as Rothbart puts it: “It’s amazing to me, when I find these things, to see how much alike we all are.”