Two Books to Help You Get LOST
With summer upon us, fans of the TV show Lost are stuck facing long, hot months without their fix of the show’s trademark twists, mysteries and increasingly enigmatic characters. Season two answered a lot of questions, but brought up even more, and with the online game The Lost Experience pulling people in further, it’s only natural to look for more Lost wherever you can find it. Two books have recently hit the shelves to help you do just that, including one that’s actually part of the game.
One of the passengers on the doomed Oceanic Flight 815 was author Gary Troup, who was returning from Australia after negotiating the publication of his newest novel, Bad Twin. Troup didn’t survive the crash, but his book did, and characters on the show have been reading it on the island. Now Hyperion Books (a publishing arm of Touchstone Television’s parent company, Disney) has released Bad Twin, giving viewers the chance to delve into the same book as the characters on the show.
Read on its own merits, Bad Twin is a really engaging mystery novel. Paul Artisan is a private detective hired by a wealthy young man to track down his misanthrope twin brother. As he begins a cross-country and, eventually, cross-planet search, the things he uncovers cause Artisan to question which of the men is truly the "bad twin," the nature of good and evil and how perception plays into reality. While it's not quite as high-falootin' as some of the advance hype would suggest, it's a gripping read that keeps you interested and reading right through to the final twist at the end.
Artisan is a private eye in the classical sense, and even thinks of himself at one point as a man out of time. He’s the sort of hard-boiled gumshoe you used to get from the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The book is peppered with other intriguing characters - a salty sea captain who makes illegal runs to Cuba, a beautiful woman who joins Artisan on an airplane and the various eccentrics of the Widmore family. Artisan has a mentor who frequently provides the commentary to his life, winking a bit at the reader as he drops in comments that clearly are intended to relate to the television show.
Read in the context of the Lost universe, the book is even better. The book makes extensive use of the Widmore family and the Hanso Foundation, real entities in the world of Lost, where this book is allegedly fiction. Furthermore, as a sort of in-joke, much of the novel takes place on various islands, and there is heavy discussion about the concept of purgatory -- even Gary Troup's name is an anagram for "purgatory." Many fans of the show have postulated that the characters have died and are in purgatory, and although the producers have repeatedly denied that is the case, I think there is merit in comparing the idea to the situation of the television series in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one. This book is easy to recommend, both for fans of the show and for people just looking for a satisfying mystery.
The other book is for those who are out to delve into the mythology of the show, the ones who stay up at night trying to figure out what the numbers mean, how Desmond got on the island and why so many of the castaways seemed to interact with Jack’s father before the fateful flight. Unlocking the Meaning of Lost by Lynette Porter and David Lavery is a solid, scholarly work intended to unravel the dozens (if not hundreds) of plot threads woven by the show’s creators to help the fans begin to crack the clues.
Porter and Lavery have constructed a very thoughtful and (more importantly) thought-provoking analysis of the show, the story of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, which crashed on a mysterious island where nothing is as it seems. The book discusses each of the main characters, outlines connections between them and dissects many of the "ancestor texts" -- other TV shows, movies and books that are perceived to have influenced Lost and which may contain clues to unlock the show's mysteries. The book also presents a great many of the theories behind those riddles and even talks about the innovative production and promotion of the show, which has used the internet to create a community of fans that interact with the creators in a way that no television show has done before.
Interestingly, for a book concerned with "unlocking the meanings," this book is very short on speculation. The authors content themselves with discussing the facts of the show as known and the ideas put forth and supported by the fan communities, but they don't put forth or endorse any theories or ideas of their own. It's a surprisingly journalistic approach to the subject matter. The book covers the entire first season of the show and a bit more than half of the second season, presumably all of the series that had been aired at the time the book went to press.
Overall, this really is a well-written, well-researched book that serves best as a recap for longtime fans as a way to refocus their thinking and go over what fans have uncovered so far.
One of the passengers on the doomed Oceanic Flight 815 was author Gary Troup, who was returning from Australia after negotiating the publication of his newest novel, Bad Twin. Troup didn’t survive the crash, but his book did, and characters on the show have been reading it on the island. Now Hyperion Books (a publishing arm of Touchstone Television’s parent company, Disney) has released Bad Twin, giving viewers the chance to delve into the same book as the characters on the show.
Read on its own merits, Bad Twin is a really engaging mystery novel. Paul Artisan is a private detective hired by a wealthy young man to track down his misanthrope twin brother. As he begins a cross-country and, eventually, cross-planet search, the things he uncovers cause Artisan to question which of the men is truly the "bad twin," the nature of good and evil and how perception plays into reality. While it's not quite as high-falootin' as some of the advance hype would suggest, it's a gripping read that keeps you interested and reading right through to the final twist at the end.
Artisan is a private eye in the classical sense, and even thinks of himself at one point as a man out of time. He’s the sort of hard-boiled gumshoe you used to get from the likes of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. The book is peppered with other intriguing characters - a salty sea captain who makes illegal runs to Cuba, a beautiful woman who joins Artisan on an airplane and the various eccentrics of the Widmore family. Artisan has a mentor who frequently provides the commentary to his life, winking a bit at the reader as he drops in comments that clearly are intended to relate to the television show.
Read in the context of the Lost universe, the book is even better. The book makes extensive use of the Widmore family and the Hanso Foundation, real entities in the world of Lost, where this book is allegedly fiction. Furthermore, as a sort of in-joke, much of the novel takes place on various islands, and there is heavy discussion about the concept of purgatory -- even Gary Troup's name is an anagram for "purgatory." Many fans of the show have postulated that the characters have died and are in purgatory, and although the producers have repeatedly denied that is the case, I think there is merit in comparing the idea to the situation of the television series in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one. This book is easy to recommend, both for fans of the show and for people just looking for a satisfying mystery.
The other book is for those who are out to delve into the mythology of the show, the ones who stay up at night trying to figure out what the numbers mean, how Desmond got on the island and why so many of the castaways seemed to interact with Jack’s father before the fateful flight. Unlocking the Meaning of Lost by Lynette Porter and David Lavery is a solid, scholarly work intended to unravel the dozens (if not hundreds) of plot threads woven by the show’s creators to help the fans begin to crack the clues.
Porter and Lavery have constructed a very thoughtful and (more importantly) thought-provoking analysis of the show, the story of the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815, which crashed on a mysterious island where nothing is as it seems. The book discusses each of the main characters, outlines connections between them and dissects many of the "ancestor texts" -- other TV shows, movies and books that are perceived to have influenced Lost and which may contain clues to unlock the show's mysteries. The book also presents a great many of the theories behind those riddles and even talks about the innovative production and promotion of the show, which has used the internet to create a community of fans that interact with the creators in a way that no television show has done before.
Interestingly, for a book concerned with "unlocking the meanings," this book is very short on speculation. The authors content themselves with discussing the facts of the show as known and the ideas put forth and supported by the fan communities, but they don't put forth or endorse any theories or ideas of their own. It's a surprisingly journalistic approach to the subject matter. The book covers the entire first season of the show and a bit more than half of the second season, presumably all of the series that had been aired at the time the book went to press.
Overall, this really is a well-written, well-researched book that serves best as a recap for longtime fans as a way to refocus their thinking and go over what fans have uncovered so far.