Carrie.

Dang, Carrie.
Stephen King's first book makes its first appearance in Episode 3x01 "Tale of Two Cities". The Other's book club is meeting to discuss it at Juliet's pad, and their bickering is interrupted by the cacophonous arrival of Oceanic Flight 815. It also appears in Juliet's flashback in 3x07 "Not in Portland" and is read by Ben in 3x16 "One of Us."

Here's the exciting news I have to report: Carrie the book is better than Carrie the movie, and probably applies a little better to LOST. The book and the film cover almost exactly the same material: the terrifying terrain of high school, hyper-Christian home-life, and telekinesis. However, the book gets inside of multiple characters heads by interspersing real-time narrative with fictional news articles and book excerpts which discuss the origins of Carrie's telekinesis and the impact of her prom blow-up.

Carrie, a misfit, gets her first period in locker room showers and other girls make merciless fun of her. The girls who made fun of her get in trouble. One of the teasers gets barred from the prom, and plots revenge. Another feels bad, and gets her boyfriend to take Carrie to prom. Carrie's mom is a crazy Christian who is obsessed with battling evil, especially in the form of sexuality, and is thus furious about Carrie's period, prom plans, and basically anything else she does. Oh yeah, and Carrie realizes somewhere in here that she can move stuff with her mind.

Bucking her mother's demands with teenage will and telekinetic force, Carrie goes to the Prom. Once there, she gets crowned Queen, gets pigs blood dumped on her head, gets laughed at and loses it, starting an electrical fire which more or less kills every prom-goers. She then goes home, starting some fires in the town along the way, and stops her mothers heart with her mind, but not before her mother stabs her, causing her to slowly bleed to death. Oof. Heavy stuff. Gorey. And tons of fun--Carrie lays it on thick with teenage angst, questions of good and evil, supernatural occurences, and some serious, but not senseless violence.

With the exception of teenage angst, all of these sound pretty darn Lostean. And we know that Stephen King is an unapologetic Lost fan whose also had some pretty serious influence on the show. The Carrie connections are less grandiose than The Stand's end-times battle or the multiple realities of The Dark Tower. What it comes down to, for me, is the "special child" thread which Stephen King and LOST both embrace. Walt's possible special powers come to mind, especially his apparent ability to appear in more than one place at a time.

But since she's a major player in the three episodes where we see the book, Juliet seems like a stronger candidate for a Carrie connection. Stephen King depicts Carrie as a social misfit both by nature and by situation, and lets us sympathize with those who have cast her out at times ...though the book follows Carrie, we never really get inside her head. We know that her actions aren't all bad (she's getting some rightful revenge) or all good (she's hurting tons of innocent people). This seems to me much like the way we can't be certain of Juliet's motives, and feel ambivalent about them even when she seems to explain them...or does she? Furthermore, Carrie focuses a ton on the danger of female sexuality--Juliet's life's work involves fertility, an important part of that sexual equation. Plus, yo, Juliet's kind of creepy, pretty unhappy, and one time she willed that her ex-husband get hit by bus, and lo and behold, he did. She's proved that she could be a powder-keg, in a manner of speaking, if the circumstances were right.

That said I think there could also be some special child stuff going on with Hurley, Ben, or even Alex. Alex, especially, since I saw her recently on an episode of That's So Raven as a telekinetic kid. Eerie.

But I digress. In addition to the "special child" theme, I can see the Terrible Parent (a mother instead of a father this time around), extremes of good and evil and the space between them that the most people occupy, and the news reports, interviews, and book excerpts which effectively let the reader flash back and forward, as pretty Lost-like.

So that's it. I don't (at this point) think that this book is going to be any real key to the show, but its got character, thematic, and literary style connections, plus its fun. I like to say that what little Stephen King I have read is sort of like a bag of potato chips--you can devour it all at once, and you feel a little gross afterwards, but it sure was tasty while you were eating it. And that while you were reading it, at least, it made you feel like you were smart for understanding the dilemmas at hand. Not unlike Lost, in some respects.

p.s. Emilie de Ravin was in a 2002 TV remake of Carrie, as the girl who plans the pigs blood stunt...hmm... bad sign for her?

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The Turn of the Screw

Ok, here we go.

LOST stuck this book in one of the most prominent spots on the show, no freeze-framing or squinting necessary to catch it. In episode 2x03, "Orientation", Desmond tells Jack and Locke to watch the titular film, hidden behind a copy of TotS. So is this book our training video?

Man, I hope not. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed TotS. But it's designed to be a frustrating experience, a ghost story with lots of questions and no clear answers. Just like the orientation film, TotS is both mesmerizing and frustrating, important details missing, enigmatic phrases suggesting layers you'll never see.

The basic story is pretty simple *Heavy spoilers for the book ahead, so proceed with caution*: a young governess is put in charge of two seemingly angelic children, Miles and Flora, at a country estate. She begins to be haunted by two ghostly figures, and becomes increasingly convinced these ghosts are trying to steal, possess, or kill the children. The governess finds out that the ghosts she sees look like two dead former servants who used to spend a lot of time with the kids but died under mysterious circumstances. The children, in turn, act increasingly bizarre, sneaking away, lying, and being generally creepy.

After she finds Flora wandering outside alone, she sends her away and attempts to confront Miles. In this final confrontation, she tries to get him to explain what's going on and own up to some past misdeeds, and he starts to do so. In the midst of all this, she sees the ghosts again, and pulls poor terrified Lil' Miles close to her. The governess thinks she is finally beating this thing, but Miles jerks suddenly, and falls into her arms, dead. The End.

Phew. Those summary paragraphs were incredibly hard to write, mostly because I've left out one important detail. Through all of the story, no one but the narrator ever definitely sees the ghosts, and we have no idea whether all this is in her increasingly unstable head. Apparently scholars have argued viciously about whether you can trust this unreliable narrator ever since the book was published, with no consensus yet.

The ghosts are pretty Lost-ey, and not just because they refer to them as "The Others". The governess begins to suspect that the apparitions are trying to lead the children to their doom, like happened to Shannon with Walt, or might have happened to little Ben with his Mom. The governess speculates about why a ghost might want to take the children "She suffers the torments...of the lost. Of the dammed. And that's why, to share them...she wants Flora." Yick.

The creepy little boy in the story reminds me pretty hard of Ben. He's constantly lying, and saying shit like "I'll tell you everything, I will. But not now." It's never clear in the story whether he believes in any of it, or how much he's been corrupted by the evil that surrounds him. Is he a conniving demon or a just a gullible, lonely boy? Search me, man.

I totally recommend it, both for pleasure reading and for Lost purposes. For one thing, it's a classic with a tough reputation, so that will make you feel smart. But its not really that hard, and only 100 pages, it's a quick read. As far as Lost goes, I don't think you're going to find a book that says more about the way the producers are building their mystery (sorry, anyone who has Sarah Mclachlan stuck in their head now). I just hope Lost doesn't end in a way that leaves scholars arguing about it for a hundred years.

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This is how it will work.

Alright.
Here's the deal. We are best pals and roommates (thus the blog title). We are Lost Fans. We have hour long discussions about it, have a door devoted to pictures from it, and do the jigsaw puzzles. Not surprisingly, distraught by the hiatus from its very first day, we sought something to fill that void in our lives. Some might have taken a walk, volunteered with children, or learned how to cook. We, however, decided to fill our TV void with books.

As any good fan knows, Lost has lots of literary references, obvious, implied, and in episode titles. A lot of these books are classics or just plain good stuff that I am embarrassed not to have read yet, so it seemed like a great opportunity. Stuff like Watership Down, The Turn of the Screw, Catch 22--It is a worthy challenge!

So here's the rules: We're going to read each of the books. I'll read some, and Aurora will read some, and we'll both read important ones. We'll weigh in, give a summary of the book, talk about interesting plot threads, how we think it relates to Lost in general or to specific characters or episodes. We'll talk a little about cultural ties and criticism of the book outside of LOST. Finally, we'll give our opinion of the book on its own and its potential relevance to the show. But um, probably we will spoil books a little, and we'll be talking about LOST through the end of Season 3, so don't get spoiled, OK?

Lostpedia's list serves as our guide to what we will read, DarkUFOs list works too. J. Wood's blog is probably a little (a lot) smarter than ours will be, but we will probably be indebted to it sometimes, and its cool. We don't plan to read any of Lost's philosopher references, and it will probably be awhile before we get around to The Fountainhead, but we'll read some comic books, maybe talk about related TV and films a teeny bit, and about books that we see connections to which haven't been mentioned on the show.

We will also let you know if we see Locke's face in a peanut butter sandwich. Here's hoping.

Coming Soon: posts about The Turn of the Screw, Carrie, The Moon Pool, Of Mice and Men, Lancelot, and um.. Rainbow 6.

In the mean time, please enjoy this Sawyer montage.
Adios.

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Orientation Pt. 2

Hi Internet. How are you today?

Favorite Book: The Watchmen, Matilda.
Favorite Lost Character: Hurley. Sayid is a badass, and I love Sawyer, but make fun of Hurley and I will cut you.
Other TV Shows I Enjoy: The Office, Buffy, Veronica Mars, Jeeves and Wooster.
One Thing I Think Would Make Lost Better: Swordfights.
One Thing I Would be pretty mad if Lost did/stopped doing: Was completely and utterly explainable by science.
Favorite Pizza Toppings: Banana Peppers, Olives.
5 Reasons I Watch Lost:
1) The WTF.
2) Thinking about it, trying to be a detective, learning all kinds of weird interesting shit.
3) The characters.
4) Its lack of cynicism and willingness to take on themes like redemption and faith. I can't think of another show that even talks about this stuff.
5) It's funny. Remember that time Jin told a ghost story?

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Orientation Pt.1

Hi.
Ok, so we're going to read books that are featured on LOST, and we thought it might be appropriate to make clear our deep devotion to the show before we get started.
We've already started reading, but we're still working on our format, which we will let you know about soon. In the meantime...

We have introductions to attend to! So. Here are some self-posed questions about Lost and other cultural subjects. And here are my answers:

Favorite Book: Peter Pan!
Favorite Lost Character: Locke (duh). Sawyer OR Hurley second.
Other TV Shows I Enjoy: The Office, Veronica Mars, Boy Meets World, 21 Jump Street.
One Thing I Think Would Make Lost Better: Another strong (not romantically entangled) female.... Ana-Lucia.
One Thing I Would be pretty mad if Lost did/stopped doing: Had it be all in someone's mind. Sorry, Dave, you were a great episode, but you would have been a let down.
Favorite Pizza Toppings: Anchovies and Green Olives
5 Reasons I Watch Lost:
1) Really Good Storytelling
2) Christian Undertones
3) Roughing It.
4) Really smart literary and cultural references
5) Hotties. Or good actors, either way.

And that is all I can think of. I'm sure many more of my feelings on our beloved program will soon come to light. Now dharma whateversenstein will introduce herself.
Good luck, dweeb.

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LOST

LOST

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