 Seth navigates the city on foot — cars , bicycles , and public transportation rarely even appear – as he talks with friends or rifles through used book shops . For literary theorist Barbara <unk> , the character fits the archetype of Walter Benjamin 's <unk> — the wandering urban pedestrian out of touch with his own time and obsessed with the past . Seth pines for a past not his own and obsessively collects consumer items from earlier in the 20th century . His focus is primarily on the period from the 1930s to the 1950s , a time he feels particularly " Canadian " . He goes as far as to wear an old @-@ fashioned overcoat and broad @-@ rimmed hat , for which passing teenagers taunt him , saying he looks like Clark Kent or Dick Tracy . He declares to Chester : " I do think life was simpler then ... easier for people to find personal happiness . " Brown disagrees , saying , " I think it 's always been difficult for people to be happy . " Seth dreads the future and allows his memories of childhood to dominate his thoughts , but recognizes and criticizes his own obsessions : " There 's something in the decay of old things that provokes an evocative sadness for the vanished past . If those buildings were perfectly preserved it wouldn 't be the same . " Despite this consciousness , he continues to pursue his collecting . 
