The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon: the best book title ever

Dear Stephen King,

I love you. Have you heard? I love that you do not require me to make a commitment to a world outside of my own understanding, let me read a book in a few days, and manage to set stories in a very specific time by mentioning such cultural identifiers as Surge soda and Tubthumping, and that you don't require me to be a devoted fan to have a lot of fun with any individual book.

I really love The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, a short novel about a 9 year old girl who gets lost on the Appalachian trail. She strays from her mother and brother's bickering for a moment, and ends up having to fend for herself in the wilderness for quite a long time, to the tune of a few weeks. She hikes and falls, tries to sleep, wades through pretty large marshes, makes wrong turns that take her to Canada, and has a prolonged vomiting and other bodily emissions spell as her body adjusts to its primitive diet of nuts, berries, raw fish, and dirty stream water. Eventually, hallucinating like crazy, she finds her way to a forest road, she confronts the fear that has been chasing her through the woods, and a hunter finds her and takes her to the hospital. Although he's interested in putting her through a lot of pain, King is interested in letting the girl die... but in how she manages to live.

Although the book isn't mentioned or read in Lost, it was featured on a Lostpedia Stephen King connections list, and with good reason. The whole scenario of being thrown off the beaten path and surviving on your wits has been played with on Lost--There was plenty of survival questions being asked in Season 1 that the introduction of the Hatch sort of diverted us from.
Remember the good old days of Locke skinning boars (and the camera dwelling on it for long periods of time). Of Charlie trying to catch a fish to impress Shannon? Remember when everyone would sit around the fire and talk and the montage-y music would play and the camera would pan out to the stars? Sigh.

In The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, survival doesn't depend on society..the only other person out there is an hallucination. Trisha has her Walkman with her, and is able to tune in to Boston Red Sox games for a few days before the batteries run out. Tom Gordon, the relief pitcher, is her hero--she wears a Red Sox hat and his jersey while in the woods. She talks to him, and sees him with her every so often, and he keeps guiding her through the woods when she feels like giving up. Along with this good spirit, she also senses (and King hints spookily at) another, malevolent, presence, whom she decides is "The God of the Lost," who basically wants to get her and tear into tiny pieces. These visions, like those on LOST, serve a clear (albiet spooky purpose for the seer. Furthermore: both good and evil in the supernatural--since we don't know what is good and evil on LOST at this point, I'm going to make a guess that things like the Smoke Monster and Jacob are a little bit of both. There's even the slightest hint of a yearning for God: Trisha thinks back to her father's belief in "the subaudible", the spiritual essence in everything, and gets mad. The Subaudible isn't going to help you when you're lost in the woods for days on end--she needs real protection and more importantly, strength, and in Tom Gordon she gets it.
I guess it might be nice to mention, too, that King doesn't go very big in making up mythologies and supernatural stuff for this book (which I think makes it sort of unique for his work?)...which makes it kind of like Lost, in that its just enough to whet your whistle.

So basically it's great, there's survivalism, cultural context, good and evil, and a little yearning for divine protection. Thanks Stephen King! So what else is on our plate: I'm going to report on the Ransom trilogy (I just finished it! Yay!!), Aurora's still going to talk about trios and Harry Potter and other nerd things, and she's slogging through The Fountainhead while I slog through Our Mutual Friend. But as she pointed out recently, we've got 7 months to go. We've got plenty of time to get through lots more books.

A couple of tidbits, survivalism+Lost related.
I read a piece about Jeffrey Lieber, who gets created by credits, but envisioned the show as way more just about survivalist, Lord of the Flies type stuff. The article is a little whiny, but interesting. I Love The Monster, so...I can't be too sad he wasn't kept on.

ALSO: Yesterday I found out the Terry O'Quinn is from Newberry, Michigan!!! This explains so much! I've been there a few times. It's in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, near Lake Superior, pretty far from much of anything, especially in the Very Very Snowy Winter. It's not hard to see how he could have some seriously engrained experience with big,scary woods and basic survival skills up there. As if it weren't already big enough, my love for him grows and grows. How could it not?... Bye!

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The Wizard of Oz: I can't come back, I don't know how it works!

What can really be said about The Wizard of Oz that hasn't already been said?
Not too much, especially since its not all that complicated of a book, and most of what people say sort of ruins the fun. Besides, its lasting fame is due just a little more to the 1939 movie then to the 1900 book. LOST , for one, references a line from the movie in one of its most awesome episodes: 3x20: "The Man Behind The Curtain". In the book, after all, he's behind a wood screen, not a curtain. And the red shoes on a man buried under rubble that Desmond sees in Flashes Before Your Eyes come from the movie--in the book they're silver.

In the interest of not rehashing a plot that anyone with much interest in popular culture probably knows, I'll talk about where I saw connections and had questions, giving a little bit of thought to the differences between the film and the book.

One of the best things about The Wizard of Oz in any form is the well-developed characters and their interactions with and concern for one another. Along the way they all demonstrate that the gifts they seek are already inside of them. Sound familiar? Well, I think so.

I was really trying to develop some theory of who was who in the merry band. Some have lovingly lined up the characters with Michael/Jacob's list for the Others --Kate, Hurley, Jack, and Sawyer are Dorothy,The Cowardly Lion, The Tin Man, and The Scarecrow respectively (thanks, Lostpedia). I'd totally get behind Hurley as the Cowardly Lion--he has a lot to offer but has some trouble doing it, as he showed in the last few episodes of Season 3. Other than that, I pretty much disagree. I think Sawyer's the most like the Tin Man. In the book, particularly, the Tin Man goes back and forth between making sure not to step on cute little bugs and (on multiple occasions!) decapitating beastly enemies that threaten his comrades. Sawyer, in his own words, is "a complicated guy, sweetheart." He's maybe the biggest romantic on the show, but he's also probably the most hardened by his pre-island situation. Plus, he comes through in a pinch. I think the one connecting factor between him and the Scarecrow is his straw-y hair. So who do I think is the Scarecrow? Hm. I'd really like to give this to Jack. He's a know-it-all, he's bossy, and um, just dumb sometimes. There are also times when he's a good leader, and his brand of bravery pays off. Similarly, when the Wizard of Oz leaves, he leaves the Scarecrow in charge of the Emerald City...Hm. Is someone going to put Jack in charge?

Which brings us, rightfully so, to the love of my life, John Locke. Sigh. He can probably be the Scarecrow too--he's wrong as often as he's right, but when he's right its pretty useful. But I'm going to have to make a weird case. I think he's Dorothy. Sorry Kate, being pretty and a girl isn't going to cut it. So here's why: Dorothy is in a different position than the others in her little band. She's more curious and more amazed by the entire world of Oz because she is truly a stranger to it. For her, the whole trip is an exploration. Nobody has picked up on seeing the Island as a fascinating new world to explore more than Locke has. For another thing, Dorothy has the power of the silver/ruby slippers pretty much from the get-go. Locke's got something going on in the magic department early on too, with his miraculous ability to use his legs and all. And...although Locke doesn't want to go home and Dorothy really does, both of them are interested in asking the big questions and getting sufficient answers. I'd also like to make the case that Dorothy infiltrated the Wicked Witch's castle most successfully since the Wicked Witch can't touch her due to the shoes, and that Locke most successfully infiltrated the Others and wasn't touched for similar reasons (they might have been a humbug, of course). But well, does that fall apart when Ben pits him? Maybe. Ok, there's my wacky little assessment.

That takes us to titular Wizard. Aside from some physical resemblance to Locke (short and bald!), I'm going to argue for a split bill between Ben and Jacob. The case for Ben is that he's definitely keeping some things for the Losties, and, as evidenced by the tumor and the ensuing mess he gets into with his fellow others, he doesn't have as much power as he'd like to make it seem. Be that as it may be, he's still the boss, even if he's pulling some humbug. So why'd he call himself Henry Gale--wouldn't he be more aptly named Mr. Marvell? I know, its not a one-one correlation, but I must think about it.

I'm going to throw Jacob into the mix now. I know that The Wizard, the Man Behind the Curtain, is a humbug, but there's plenty of real magic in Oz too. In the book, particularly, The Wizard makes himself appear in different forms to the different visitors--to Dorothy, a giant head, to the Scarecrow a beautiful woman, and so forth. I'm on the "Jacob appeared as an older Locke" train, and the smoke monster appears to people in different forms, I think the idea that different people see the Wizard differently ties in well. If Jacob/The Island/The Smoke Monster is being controlled, who's making Jacob appear the way he does?

So is there really a humbug in The Wizard of Oz? Clearly--in the book, everyone in the Emerald City wears green glasses so that everything will appear green, and the Wizard is a fake. But there's plenty of real magic in the Land of Oz too--heck, there's a living scarecrow, flying monkeys, and magic shoes! I think its sort of the same on Lost. There's certainly some humbug going on, but there's magic bigger than the humbug too.

And ooh! Who reveals the Wizard in the book and film? Toto! Who makes sure that "nothing stays buried on the Island for long"? Quite arguably, good old Vincent! Hooray for the weird dog as plot device!

There are a couple of other loose ends--The name Oz recalls the poem Ozymandias, which is about pride and the fall of empires and which.... everybody loves! It comes up in other LOST influences like the Watchmen, and Lost's four-toed statue has been seen as a reference to the broken-down statue of the ancient king. In the Wizard of Oz, likewise, The Wizard is the ruler of an opulent city at the center of a much simpler kingdom. The story has been seen as a populist fable (which I don't want to spend much time on, really)... are the tyrants supposed to be falling in LOST and is the common man to be championed? Well, I hope so, but I'm not really counting it. The rise and fall of empires is fascinating, no matter.

There's also this experiment I got to in my Wikipedia searching. Make of it what you will. But the whole human-technology interaction thing rings a bell with me. And of course, it's mighty nifty that Oz is a nickname for Australia. I'm sure you got that, but its fun.

Thats all I've got. I think the Wizard of Oz is totally relevant--it presents a cool mythology but relies on character development, it employs both real magic and slight of hand, and it keeps getting at that question: who's in charge and what does it mean for the little guy? Read it, watch it... enjoy it. In the mean time, I'm still working on the Ransom Trilogy. I love C.S. Lewis, you know. Aurora will be working on Harry Potter for a good while... so it might be a few weeks. In the mean time... read!

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