Category: LOST

Walker Percy’s Lancelot is no knight in shining armor. He is a southern liberal lawyer, but a better drunk, and a member of New Orleans’ faded aristocracy. In 1976 he discovers his wife’s infidelity and sets out to launch a sort of new revolution in which chivalry will return to replace the amoral and permissive culture that surrounds him. He seeks a holy grail, but this Lancelot’s grail is evil itself. He wants to know that evil truly exists. His curiosity sends him on a grisly quest for revenge.

Lancelot’s story is told in the first person as he relates his inward journey towards violence and revenge to a friend and former classmate, who is either a priest or a psychologist, or perhaps both. The friend is visiting Lancelot in a mental hospital were he has been for the past year. Lancelot describes the events surrounding his discovery of his wife’s affair, but he also recounts the older, more romantic years of their early relationship. All of this is threaded through with his musings on the state of moral decay in the United States.

It’s an interesting journey into the mind of a man whose sanity is questionable at best, whose calm manner makes him all the more frightening. At times humorous, at times unsettling, always interesting, Lancelot explores the cultural fabric of late twentieth century America from the viewpoint of a dark knight. It also has the best last two lines of any book I’ve read in a long time. I won’t give it away; just read it yourself.

In terms of ABC’s Lost, Lancelot fits in with several of the other books we’ve read in terms of presenting the reader with a very unreliable narrator (h/t to Jessica for getting me thinking about unreliable narration, a characteristic of many of the Lost books we’ve read so far). He’s in a mental institution and though he speaks rationally, his talk of starting a new world, and a third revolution is rather delusional at best.

Lancelot appears in the episode “Maternity Leave.” Sawyer is reading the book when Kate comes to ask him for a gun. She is about to go one her own quest along with Claire to try to discover what happened to Claire when she was kidnapped by the Others while pregnant so that the Others could take her baby.

The most general connection between Lancelot and Lost I found was Lancelot’s idea of starting some kind of new world order in which he will be something of an Adam in search of his Eve. Now, we don’t yet know much about the Hanso Foundation on Lost, but I do wonder if their research is aimed at something similar. Is this why the Others want to take the children from the survivors as well as collecting the survivors whom they claim are “the good ones?” Of course, I’m assuming that the Hanso Foundation and the Others are the same or at least related.

The other connection lies in Lancelot’s incarceration in a mental hospital. Lost‘s Hurley, as we see in flashback a few episodes later in “Dave,” spent time in a mental hospital, though at this point we don’t know why. One thing we do know, though, is that he had an imaginary friend, someone that the viewers of Lost did not realize was imaginary until the end of the episode. My wife questions whether or not Lancelot’s friend to whom he relates the story is really there. I wonder about that as well.

For more of my Lost book posts, check out The Lost Book Club.

Why did I not read this when I was younger? A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle is a wonderful tale of travel through space and time, full of charming characters, human and alien, who all want to help Meg, a young misfit, find her long-lost scientist father.

Accompanying Meg on her journey are her friend Calvin and her younger brother, Charles Wallace, who is very young, but possess the intelligence, if not the wisdom, of an adult. He also seems to have some kind of powerful psychic ability, though L’Engle does not really delve too deeply into the whys of this aspect of Charles’ character.

A Wrinkle in Time appears on Lost as one of the many books that Sawyer is shown reading. It appears in the episode “Numbers” in which we learn Hurley’s backstory and the tale of how he won the lottery using a set of numbers that he has come to believe are cursed and that seem to have something to do with the island. Hurley sets off across the island searching for answers and in this way, his journey parallels Meg’s journey for answers about her father.

Along the way, Meg and company find that many worlds are shrouded by a black thing, a darkness, that sounds more than a little bit like the mysterious black cloud that both Mr. Eko and John Locke have seen on Lost. Here we have what is apparently the closest Lost connection.

As it is described in A Wrinkle in Time, the black shadow is some kind of manifestation of pure evil, but on Lost in may be something else. In the first season it appears to be some kind of unseen monster, but after looking into it, Locke claims that he has looked into the eye of the island and found it beautiful. In season two, Mr. Eko has a similar experience, but the monster is revealed as some kind of black smoke or shadow that shows Eko images of his past.

In A Wrinkle in Time, we have another book that suggests alternate reality and psychic manipulation. It focuses on the presence of some kind of all-encompassing evil that has the power to distort reality and trap people where time has no meaning; in fact all of A Wrinkle in Time takes places over the course of a few seconds on Earth.

I’m not sure time has stopped on Lost, but one thing that’s interesting to note is the fact that the only two characters to face the monster and survive are the two who are most driven by faith. The issue of faith vs. reason is a recurring theme on Lost, and as I ponder A Wrinkle in Time, I remember that it was Meg’s faith and her love for her brother that saved her. On Lost, Mr. Eko, a true man of faith, was ultimately saved by the love of his brother.

Perhaps A Wrinkle in Time is something of a red-herring on Lost, designed to make us wonder if the characters on Lost are trapped in a wrinkle in time of their own, or perhaps under the spell of some kind of psychic manipulation. Maybe the darkness on Lost isn’t really darkness, or perhaps it further blinds the men of faith. Whatever may happen on Lost, though, A Wrinkle in Time is a worthwhile read.

For more of my Lost book posts, check out The Lost Book Club.

I first read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce (the full story is online – just follow the link) a few years ago while searching for a short story to teach on a Friday during summer school. Recently, it showed up on the Lost episode “The Long Con” as one of the books that John Locke is seen organizing in the hatch.

“Owl Creek” tells the tale of the Confederate saboteur Peyton Farquhar’s execution by Union soldiers during the US Civil War. The story begins with Farquhar about to be hanged from the Owl Creek Bridge. He is pushed over the bridge, but the rope breaks and he falls into the river, where he dodges bullets and swims to safety.

He makes his way through a forest that grows increasingly primeval and sinister the closer he gets to home. As he reaches his house, he feels a terrible pain in the back of his neck, the rope breaks, and Farquhar hangs dead from Owl Creek Bridge, the entire story of his escape a flight of imagination occurring in the space between falling from the bridge and the rope snapping his neck.

Great story, beautifully imagined and written, but why is it referenced in Lost?

It seems to me that “Owl Creek Bridge” is something of a suggestion to the viewer that perhaps the survivors of Oceanic 815 are not really survivors, but are experiencing the final moments just before their deaths. This theory has been discredited by the show’s writers, but apparently The Third Policeman (another Lost book, which I’ve not yet read) also suggests this interpretation.

One thing that stood out in rereading “Owl Creek Bridge” was this description of the forest as Farquhar runs from the Yankee troops:

The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great golden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which–once, twice, and again–he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

Anyone addicted to Lost will certainly be intrigued by this passage particularly the reference to mysterious voices in the woods, which often occur on the show just before strange things happen. There is also the hint of a suggestion that Farquhar has entered another world, perhaps some kind of parallel dimension existing just on the edge of death.

I don’t think the survivors of Oceanic 815 are in their final seconds of life; I think that’s a bit too easy, but I do wonder if they are in some kind of alternate or psychically created world, or at least one in which psychic manipulation occurs.

If you haven’t read “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” check it out because it really is a great story. Also read Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Secret Miracle,” a similar story, though one that hasn’t (yet) shown up on Lost.

For more of my Lost book posts, check out The Lost Book Club.

Good, as in God, the style of Henry, or if I might call him so, Mr. James, author of The Turn of the Screw, who in the late nineteenth century wrote the thin ghost story, is torturous, as a stretching on the rack. One might imagine, if so inclined as to imagine such a horror, a horror beyond compare, the voice of Shatner, William Shatner reading each phrase, set off with a preponderance of punctuation in the form of commas, commas that precede every unnecessary phrase, like a water torture of Chinese design and implementation, dripping prose into one’s mind in an effort to present a story, a tale, of ghosts and other mysteries.

Woof. It’ll drive you nuts but perhaps that’s the point.

An unnamed narrator has been appointed to take care of two young children at an English country estate called Bly. The owner, a gentleman in London, has inherited the children and wants nothing to do with them so he hires a governess who promptly falls in love with the beautiful, innocent, angelic children.

Then she starts seeing ghosts. The apparitions are the former governess and her lover both of whom died under mysterious circumstances. No one else sees them, but it’s clear the children, Miles and Flora, are somehow involved.

At times I wondered if the narrator was seeing things that weren’t there, which caused me to question her sanity, but her spot on descriptions of the former servants whom she never met, led to me suspect that the ghosts were real.

The spirits seem to be engaged in some kind of communion with the kids, but it is unclear (intentionally so, I think) whether they are controlling the children or if the children are summoning them.

Applying this to Lost, the most obvious parallel becomes the story of Michael and his young son, Walt. When Walt’s mother dies and his step-father wants nothing more to do with him (apparently because Walt seems to exhibit some kind of psychic abilities) Michael comes to Australia to take Walt back to the US, which is why they are on the plane. While stranded on the island Michael comes to idealize Walt in much the same that the narrator of The Turn of the Screw comes to idealize her charges.

As with Miles and Flora, there may be more to Walt than meets the eye. Strange things seem to happen around him as if his thoughts alter reality. There are suggestions of this throughout the series, both on the island and in flashback. At times certain characters see ghosts, and Walt himself has been seen in places it’s impossible for him to be. Michael does not know it, but it seems that Walt (or his spirit anyway) is what led Shannon to her death.

Astral projection? Shaping reality? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s clear that Walt has some kind of profound power that no one – not even Walt – understands.

At one point in The Turn of the Screw, the narrator describes a day spent playing with the kids on the grounds as a day in which she lived in a world of their creation. One wonders how much of the world of Lost might be a world of Walt’s creation in the form of some kind of psychic projection. There are suggestions that this might be the case as well as the ominous pronouncement in the season two finale that the Others do not want Walt because he turned out to be more than they bargained for when they kidnapped him at the end of season one.

The Turn of the Screw, like Lost, is very vague about what is actually occurring. In both stories the living see the dead, there are children who appear innocent but who possibly harbor tremendous powers, and there are adults who are driven to the brink of sanity in an effort to save those children.

Reading Turn of the Screw makes me think of Walt and raises a question about how his presence on the island affects the lives of the other survivors. Is Walt a cause of their problems or is he, like them, a victim of other unknown forces either natural or supernatural. I think Walt is probably controlling, perhaps unintentionally, some of the strange things that happen on the island.

Check out my other Lost book posts at The Lost Book Club.

In our effort to read new books while hopefully gaining insight into the various mysteries on ABC’s Lost, my wife and I are reading the books that appear on the show. We are, of course proceeding on the assumption that the books referenced and shown are included because of the way they interact with the show’s themes and not just because any given book was what the propmaster had on the truck when an actor needed something to do with his hands.

I started with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. It’s about a sixth grade girl whose family moves to the suburbs. She buys her first bra, discovers boys, and hopes to not be the last to get her first period. Margaret also struggles with religion. Her mother is Christian and her father is Jewish, but she’s being raised without any religion, and she desperately wants to belong to one.

Reading this as a 35 year old man is probably akin to reading the literature of space aliens, but I did appreciate it for what it was: a book for pre-teen girls nervous about adolescence, and I can see why it’s so popular with that age group. It’s upbeat, hopeful and it makes it clear that it’s okay to be who you are. It’s also very honest and realistic, which I assume is why some people take issue with Judy Blume and try to ban her books.

Okay now on to Lost.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret makes its cameo in the episode in which Sun finds out she is pregnant (“The Whole Truth”). Presumably, she has just missed her period. In the hope that he might have a pregnancy test, Sun goes to Sawyer, who has been hoarding everything he scavenged from the plane crash. Sawyer is naturally reading a book he found in the wreckage. The books Sawyer reads seem to reflect on the episode at hand and in this regard Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret seems a clever joke considering Sun’s circumstances.

There are two other connections that I wonder about.

The first is the way in which Margaret constantly develops the wrong impression about people. She believes the lies told by the other girls about Laura Danker, the girl in class who has clearly already entered puberty. Everyone says she’s mean and something of a slut, and all the other girls make fun of her. It turns out she’s not any of those things as Margaret learns when she hurts Laura’s feelings. The other case of mistaken assumption concerns a boy: Philip Leroy, the most handsome boy in the class. Margaret and all her friends think that Philip is quite the young gentleman, and they all list him at the top of their “boy books” but he’s really just a mustard throwing, spitball slinging, girl tormenting little turd.

This is all important to keep in mind when thinking about Lost because as all the drama of Sun’s pregnancy is being played out on the beach, Henry Gale is being held hostage in the hatch. Who is Henry Gale? He’s one of “The Others” and we are to assume that this makes him one of the bad guys, but I’m not one hundred percent certain that the Others are the bad guys. Are we misreading Henry – assuming he is evil simply because we don’t really know much about him – just as Margaret misread Laura and Philip?

The second Lost connection concerns matters of faith. Margaret wrestles with faith and her relationship with God in much the same way that John Locke wrestles with his. Every night Margaret talks to God and asks for guidance and help with her problems. Locke’s act of daily devotion is to enter the numbers into the computer and push the button in the hatch every 108 minutes. It’s his prayer and what gives meaning to his life, but events in this episode lead to the season finale in which Locke decides to quit pushing that button just as Margaret quit praying.

The issue of wrestling with one’s faith is the clearest connection between Lost and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. It’s a central theme on the show and its treatment in Blume’s book of adolescent angst is what makes it’s inclusion in the show more than just a humorous juxtaposition created by the image of the rugged, hard, and cynical Sawyer engrossed in a book written specifically for pre-teen girls. It’s a subtle reminder of the way in which faith and reason frequently go to war with one another both in real life and on Lost.

My wife and I have become addicted to ABC’s Lost. One of the things we’ve noticed is that the characters often reference or are seen reading interesting books. Some of them I’ve read and others she’s read and some neither of us has read, but probably should have.

Wikipedia’s Lost page lists all the books that have appeared or been “somewhat mentioned” on the show, and so we decided to start a two-person book club in which we will read (or reread) the various books before the October 4 start of season three. Some of the books purportedly provide clues to what in the hell is really happening on that island. Others just reflect certain themes in the show. Either way, it’s an interesting list. I’ve put asterisks by the books I’ve already read and will be rereading:

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle;
2. * Watership Down by Richard Adams;
3. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume;
4. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien;
5. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum;
6. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky;
7. * Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll;
8. * Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad;
9. * Lord of the Flies by William Golding;
10. Turn of the Screw by Henry James;
11. * “An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce;
12. Lancelot by Walker Percy;
13. The Epic of Gilgamesh;
14. Bad Twin by Gary Troup (written specifically for the show); and
15. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens.

It should be an interesting summer of reading. I’ll be writing about these books as I finish them (as usual) and trying to relate them to Lost. If you’ve read any of these and watch Lost, feel free to join the fun in the comments or on your own blog and let us know what you think.

I’ll be getting the shortest one knocked out of the way first: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Update: Here are links to my posts about each book:

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
• The Turn of the Screw
• “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
• A Wrinkle in Time
• Lancelot
• Heart of Darkness
• Lord of the Flies
• Bad Twin
• The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
• Watership Down
• The Third Policeman
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Epic of Gilgamesh
• The Brothers Karamazov

Update 2: I am no longer updating this post. Updates are now linked to this page, which includes the season three books.