An Interview with Davy Rothbart

Photo by Dan Busta. 

Davy Rothbart has made a career out of collecting things: notes, people, stories, life lessons—all of them in some way found. I first came across his work when a friend left a copy of Found Magazine with a note on my desk, and I couldn’t help but find it funny, because in 2000, Rothbart started the magazine in much the same way—he found a note written for someone else on his car’s windshield, and decided to Xerox it and share it with others. The magazine, which you can also find online, publishes pretty much every kind of found note imaginable. More recently, he released his first book My Heart is An Idiot, a collection of personal essays littered with insight and humility.

Last week we spoke over the phone, me from San Francisco and Davy on the road in Boston, on his way west to Woodstock, New York.

I. Feeling As Strangers Do

THE BELIEVER: Has putting the found objects online changed the way you compile the magazine?

DAVY ROTHBART: I put the magazine together once a year as a print magazine. I do print and my friend James Molenda does the website. I’d say about half of what we receive is mailed in, the other half is scanned and e-mailed. So if somebody mails one in, it comes to me and goes into one of the magazines or the found books, if somebody e-mails it in then James considers it for the website. I know that we have the same criteria, which is to find ones that give you the most instant, powerful response. A response of strong emotion, an interesting combination of story and emotion, the hint of a narrative. Something intriguing, something to wonder about, something that gives you a powerful glimpse into somebody else’s life.

BLVR: So if it’s been online it’s not going to be published in the magazine?

DR: Exactly. It might have happened a couple of times, but generally it will either be on the website or in the magazine.

BLVR: Did you find, as the magazine grew in notoriety, that owners of the found objects began to contact you?

DR: Yeah, it’s happened a few times. When it does, they’ve been really cool about it. Either they’re a bit honored, or more often, they’re just totally mystified. Kind of wondering, “why would anyone care about these little details of my love life?” I explain to them that I can relate to it. I’ve written the same love note a hundred times myself. This one girl, she wrote to us recently, she had seen a note in an issue of...