Today I was in Fremantle, walking to the train station after dropping off the car for repairs, and I realised that there’s
something I failed to pick up the last time I went book-hunting.
It was too early (and too far to walk when I already had a circuitous route home) to go to the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre – but I noticed that Dymocks Freo has expanded to take over what used to be a little kitchen-knick-knack store and became a coffee-and-book place.
And there it was. A poster displayed over a prim rack featuring Shaun Tan’s new book. It’s taken me that long to get a copy, I am so ashamed. It came out at the end of May, after all!
There was a radio interview with him today (apparently ‘The Australian Chamber Orchestra is doing a series of concerts inspired by two of Shaun Tan’s books “The Red Tree” and “The Arrival”. The tour begins in Canberra on the 12th July travels to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane‘) – and you can check out a transcript of another interview with him from ABC’s The Book Show here:
I come up with lots of ideas for stories and images that don’t move me, even though they’re quite good images, and there’s something about things being lost or misplaced or a kind of alienation or a misunderstanding that…maybe it relates to feelings that a lot of children have too. I think children are tuned in to this. Their sense of compassion and their sense of natural moral justice or something is very inbuilt and acute. I think in some ways I tap into that as an adult, although I think you continue sharpening it as an adult through experience.
“Tales From Outer Suburbia” is, like all of his work, just brilliant. Little short stories, intricate illustrations and since I was just re-reading Derren Brown’s suggestions regarding memory retrieval tricks, I think that if you ever wanted to have great visuals for the linking system (page 71 of Tricks of the Mind) – use Tan’s style in your mind. You’ll never forget a thing again.
I’ve written about Tan’s work before; this new collection holds many of the intensely charming aspects that you’ll find in “The Lost Thing and “The Arrival”. Many of the tales, as you can see from what he says himself, come from the perspective of childhood reminiscences, family anecdotes and interpretations of what happens to personal items – one that particularly struck me was a cut-and-paste story of what happens ‘to all of the poems [that] people write… the poems they never let anyone else read’:
…two or more pieces of poetry drift towards each other thorugh a strange force of attraction and ever so slowly cling together to form a tiny, shapeless ball…given time and luck, the poetry ball becomes LARGE HUGE ENORMOUS: a vast accumulation of papery bits that ultimately takes to the air, levitating by the sheer force of so much unspoken emotion. It floats gently above suburban rooftops when everybody is asleep, inspiring lonely dogs to bark in the middle of the night…
…One morning, everyone will wake up to find a pulpy mess covering front lawns…to each reader, they will whisper something different. Something joyful, something sad, truthful, absurd, hilarious, profound and perfect. No one will be able to explain the strange feeling of weightlessness or the private smile that remains.
In addition, The Australian’s “Suburban Dreaming” features Tan talking more about this new collection of stories.
Okay, so I’m a big follower of Tan’s work. He was born the same year as me, lived in suburbs nearby and his
high school was in a suburb near mine too. When he illustrates suburbia, it is so familiar to me. His lectures are fantastic, his books are a marriage of quirk, sensitivity and surrealism – his artistry sublime. I was particularly struck by ‘Eric‘, the tiny tale of a “foreign exchange student” (it is so like ‘The Arrival’ in many ways) and ‘Grandpa’s Story‘, an interpretation of the journey of a relationship, primarily told in awe-inspiring visuals of immense challenges meeting the mundane. I’ll never complain about taking my car in for repairs again, because at least I never met a traffic-jam involving huge wind-up penguins!
Shaun Tan himself discusses ‘Alert But Not Alarmed’ in the Bookshow radio interview:
Michael Shirrefs: The story that’s thoroughly unambiguous is ‘Alert But Not Alarmed’ which shows a world where everyone has an intercontinental ballistic missile in their backyard. It’s a really nice take on just how banal collective paranoia can become.
Shaun Tan: Yes, but it’s also, I think, a very positive story too about how the Australian public are a sceptical bunch and…
Michael Shirrefs: Tell what people have done to their ICBMs.
Shaun Tan: Well, the government wants people to store military weapons in their backyard because it relieves pressure on arms storage facilities, so they can look after them, repaint them, check the oil levels and things like that. But because people become so used to having these things standing next to their garden sheds or their clothes lines, they decide to decorate them. So it starts off with coloured stencils and things like that, and eventually renovating them so that they become useful spaces for children’s…
Michael Shirrefs: Garden sheds, play equipment, a place for your pot plants…
Shaun Tan: Yes, dog kennels, pizza ovens, you know…
Michael Shirrefs: I particularly like the pizza oven.
Shaun Tan: Yes, which is a quite practical use for a missile.
Michael Shirrefs: And the image that you’ve created of it is beautifully colourful, it takes that suburban landscape and turns it into something completely different. So you’ve got this landscape of tall objects that look more like minarets than…
Shaun Tan: Yes, it becomes like a joyous landscape which…I don’t know, it’s just a very interesting thing that emerges from painting and drawing, you just try out different things and you imagine them in your mind. That was one where the image and the text developed simultaneously and they feed off each other, it’s like a little tennis game and builds towards a story.
Michael Shirrefs: You had fun with that, didn’t you.
But you don’t have to take my word for how fun and great his work is. Take Neil Gaiman’s:
Gaiman is not concerned about the large number of graphic novels being published.
“I’ve seen at least one boom and bust in the late ’80s because publishers had no idea what they were doing — they’d ask a waiter if he was writing a graphic novel and if the waiter said yes, they’d sign him.” But he adds: “In the long run, the good stuff takes care of itself.”
The good stuff, according to Gaiman, includes Shaun Tan’s fully illustrated The Arrival.
“This book could never have been a novel — it’s utterly unique and you read the book on an experiential level.”
He was so keen, he even made a special effort to hear him speak when they were presenting last May in Melbourne at the Children’s Book Expo.
I will boast though – Gaiman also won in a silent auction a painting called ‘The Sweet Hereafter’ (a bottle-top! I wonder if it featured in ‘The Lost Thing’…) But I have him beat with several signed originals, sketches, and a few of these prints – the one here even features in the book ‘Tales of Outer Suburbia’ and to me, is the most accurate depiction of the joy of owning your very first pet cat.
I plan on taking a few books with me en route to Dragon*Con as presents for those I meet. Do yourself a favour and get any Tan book you can get a hold of, and likewise, send them to people!
Oh, if you want some ideas for teaching his work, I have some stuff on “The Red Tree”, “The Rabbits” and “The Arrival”. A great blog called ‘Educating Alice’ has a wonderful sequence of how she taught his graphic novels to fourth graders; I’ve taught to high-schoolers to great acclaim too. His work is that diverse and that broadly applicable when communicating ideas and issues across ages and experiences, so I strongly recommend his books in that aspect. Oh – book signing tour details here!
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