LOST: A FEW QUESTIONS GET ANSWERED

A friend of a friend has a friend inside the writers' room at LOST.  And that guy (I assume) answered a few questions in an email.  And that email got forwarded to me.  But I cannot post it, because I do not have permission.  So instead I will make a list of the info I learned from that email which I found useful in pondering the LOST finale.

Here we go:

•The Island was real.  Everything that happened on the Island was real.

•The final image of the plane crash was just there to show how far all the characters had come over the course of six seasons.  (I feel good about this, because that's what I've been telling people on FB, without any verification.)

•The purpose of the island is to keep good and evil balanced in the world.  That has always been its purpose, and always will be.

•The Island has always had a Protector, even before Jacob, even after Hurley. 

•Jacob was, however, unique as a Protector because he had the Man in Black working against him; the devil, as it were.  Jacob needed to kill the MIB but the Rules of the Island kept him from doing so.

•Jacob brought the candidates to the Island to kill the MIB.  He had brought other candidates to the Island before Oceanic 815, but the MIB always got to them first and corrupted them.  Richard Alpert was the one who made Jacob see he had to get more actively involved if he wanted his plan to work.

•Jacob brought the Dharma Initiative to the Island as part of his big plan.  The original intention was for the Dharma Initiative to work for good.  However, the MIB messed up this plan by corrupting Ben Linus.  The MIB made Ben think he was doing Jacob's work when he was really serving the MIB.

•The Others and Ben killed off the Dharma Initiative and later tried to kill all the candidates from Oceanic 815 because that's what the MIB wanted.  Apparently the same Rules that kept Jacob from killing the MIB also kept the MIB from killing Jacob's candidates.

•Jacob wanted to give his candidates something he had never been given:  free will.  (And his brother, the MIB, also had never had free will.)  This is why he let the candidates choose who would have the job of killing off Smokey/the MIB in the end.  This was always the key question of the show:  Free will vs. predestination.  (With the second dichotomy being science vs. faith.)

•No one will officially say whether Jack needed all six seasons to get to the point where he could kill Smokey/Fake Locke.  But some people think this is the case.

•Jack was happy at the end because he did what he always wanted to do:  Save his fellow castaways, get them off the Island.

•We all have people in our lives who are with at the "most important moments," as Christian Shepherd says at the end.  Think of them as your reincarnation buddies -- the people you move from one lifetime to another with.  The castaways on LOST had this sort of "soulmate" relationship with one another.

•The Sideways world was a version of purgatory, subconsciously created by the castaways as a sort of "holding place" where they would exist until they could find each other and move forward to the afterlife.  It's not "Live together, die alone," as Jack said in season 1.  It's "Live together, die together."

•The castaways were meant to be on Oceanic 815 together.  And it wasn't just because Jacob wanted it or predestined it, but because it was meant to be in a more cosmic sense.

•In the science vs. faith dichotomy of the show, the writers chose to come down on the side of faith, which is ultimately the answer to all the mysteries. 

•Michael wasn't allowed into the Sideways/"purgatory" world because he failed his test on the Island, and was not worthy to move on.  Same with the MIB.

•Those we saw in the church did pass their tests and were allowed into the Sideways world when they died.  Some died prior to Jack's death, some died after Jack's death.  Hurley possibly died centuries after Jack's death. 

•Those who were in the Sideways world but were not in the church -- Anna Lucia, Faraday, Danielle, Alex, Miles, Frank, etc. -- have to find their own "soul cluster" [to use a phrase Doc Jenson is using on ew.com] before they can awaken and move on. 

•Ben didn't go into the church and isn't ready to move because he hasn't yet connected with the people he must connect with.  He needs to awaken Danielle, Alex, and others.  And he has to atone more for all the harm he did, more than just being Hurley's #2 on the Island.  He has to become what Hurley and Desmond were:  The connector that helps the others in his "soul cluster" to connect with each other.  When everyone else in his "cluster" is ready, he will get to move on, too.

•Same is true for the others we didn't see in the church:  Daniel, Charlotte, Eloise, etc.

•Ben is also not in the church because the final church scene was written immediately after the pilot was written.  When the writers said they knew the ending from the very beginning of the series, this is what they meant.  They did not change what J.J. Abrams originally wrote.  Ben was therefore not included, because his character was meant to have a tiny 3-episode arc and be out.  However, they loved the actor, and kept him in the show.

•The original ending starts at the moment when Jack walks in and sees the casket and ends when he sees the Ajira plane fly overhead and closes his eyes.


....Okay, this answers a few questions for me, and helps me understand why I didn't necessarily catch everything in the finale.  I'll weigh in with my own thoughts on the finale very soon....

THE BOOKS OF THE FIRST QUARTER -- PART DEUX

So yes, I am aware that the second quarter of the year is almost over, and I will have far fewer books to remark on.  But let's move on to the second half of the alphabet, if only as a reassurance that I have not forsaken this blog!

NORTH OF BEAUTIFUL by Justina Chan Headley
This was the first book we read in our mother-daughter book club, and it was an excellent choice for those purposes.  It tells the story of Terra, a teenager with a perfect body but a port wine birthmark on her face that makes her feel ugly.  Terra is also saddled with an emotionally abusive father and a grossly overweight mother who soaks up the abuse like suntan oil.  When Terra and her mom get into a car accident with a Goth Chinese teenager named Jacob (because all the cool teen guys are named Jacob, apparently) and his mom, a friendship is begun, and the four go to China together and expand their emotional horizons.  I wouldn't recommend this book to many adults, but for teen girls, it's a terrific conversation starter about body image, choices, dealing with abuse and bullying, all sorts of relevant issues.  Vivid characters, unexpected twists, and I'm surprised at how much stayed with me months later.

A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
One of the most spellbinding experiences of my life was my first reading of THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP -- I still remember the open-mouthed horror I felt when Garp turns off the ignition to float into the waiting driveway with his two sons in the car....  Sadly, Owen Meany did not quite live up to Garp.  It has all the elements of mythos, horror and compelling characters, but somehow they don't add up to the same power.  Perhaps it's the structure of the book, with the most horrific moment occurring near the end (which makes the whole book set-up).  Perhaps the narrator isn't as interesting (to me) as Garp.  I liked it.  But it just made me want to go read Garp again....

UGLIES / PRETTIES / SPECIALS  by Scott Westerfeld
These are actually three separate books, but really inseparable as a series.  It's hard for me to imagine reading only one of the three (unlike some series, where you might pick and choose which books you want to read).  Sabrina gave me these books to read, insisted I read them.  It was an odd read; I found them both intriguing and sometimes plodding -- sometimes almost at the same time.

The intriguing side comes from the dystopian world in which the stories take place.  It's a world in which children are separated from their parents to live in a dorm-type situation, in preparation for their eventual cosmetic surgery, which transforms them from "Uglies" to "Pretties."  Uglies, one quickly realizes, are people who look like you and me (okay, like me; you can decide about you).  The post-surgery Pretties are physically perfect and gorgeous.  But there's a problem:  Apparently the surgery not only makes you physically beautiful, it also mutes a part of your brain:  the part that makes you unique, that might make you want to rebel.

And rebel our heroine Tally does, running away to find other rebellious Uglies living in the wilderness.  In PRETTIES, she is forced to undergo the surgery, but finds a way to break the hold it has on her.  And in SPECIALS, she is captured and given more surgery to turn her into a fighting machine -- and again has to fight back.

I think these are terrific books for any teenage girl to read, bearing so directly on issues of body image and peer pressure, but set in a fascinating and sometimes terrifying world.  I'm not recommending them with a link, however, because of that plodding factor -- I always wanted to know what was going to happen next to Tally, but sometimes I felt it was an uphill battle reading my way through somewhat generic prose to get to it.

THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE by Kevin Roose
A fascinating book.  When Kevin Roose was a sophomore in college, he took a semester off from Brown University and enrolled at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University as a sort of undercover student.  He went to classes, lived in the dorms, went to Falwell's church, even got dragged into a street witnessing trip to Florida.  He told no one that he wasn't a Christian, and did a clearly very good job of faking it.  One might expect his book, told from a very blue state perspective, to be condescending, but, much to its credit, it's not.  Roose is honest about what he found appealing about his time at Liberty, and honest about the shortcomings of the world he snuck into.  The only reason I am not linking to the book is because of its underlying assumption that the extreme fundamentalist Christianity Roose experienced at Liberty U is a standard that most Christians in the U.S. would buy into (when, frankly, I'm not sure I could survive a semester there at all).  If that isn't an issue for you, by all means read UNLIKELY DISCIPLE.

THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin
Cory insisted I read this, which is an unusual occurrence.  So I read it... and wondered why he was so insistent and why it won a Newbery Medal.  Maybe it's me, but I just found it contrived and not that interesting.  Sam Westing dies, and in his will he leaves clues for his heirs that will purportedly lead to his killer.  I found the clues very easy to figure out, saw the end coming, and wasn't that interested.  Oh well.



THE WOMAN IN WHITE by Wilkie Collins
As a lover of Victorian-era novels, I can't believe I had never heard of this book.  I really loved it.  It's a mystery/thriller, but told in a unique way:  Through the voices (and actually, through the documents -- diaries, letters, etc.) of each of the characters.  So you get a little literary RASHOMON a century or so before the movie existed.  I loved the shifting first person point of view, and how it kept me on edge as we try to unravel a family-based mystery centering on an inheritance.  Wonderful characters, wonderful suspense.  Loved it.

...Okay, I already have some books lined up to talk about for the second quarter (which, of course, we're over halfway through), but those will wait till July. 

Let me know if you've read any of these, or if you've read anything I should be reading!

THE BOOKS OF THE FIRST QUARTER 2010

Yes, we're well into the second quarter of the year, I realize that.  Which makes it more imperative for me to sit down and work my way through what I've read so far this year....

If I link to the book, that means I think it's well worth your time (and that it was well worth mine)...



 
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES by Lucy Maud Montgomery
It was surprising to us all that no one in our mother-daughter book group had ever read Anne of Green Gables.  And having read it, it was absolutely astonishing to me that I never discovered it browsing around the extremely limited collection of my local library growing up, or that no one ever said, "Here, read this."  I read a lot of stories about orphans for some reason (enough that I thought for a while that one had to be an orphan to have adventures), and I can't believe I missed this one.

I loved it.  I loved Anne's unabashed imagination and passion, loved stepping into a beautiful world I'd never been to, loved seeing Anne and Gilbert not realizing the obvious (well, mostly Anne), loved watching Marilla learn to love Anne.  And I'm so glad that Sabrina read it as well...

While cleaning out my mom's condo, I found the entire set of Anne books.  I kept them all.  Maybe they will be my summer reading.

THE BIG OVER EASY by Jasper Fforde
This is the first in Jasper Fforde's NURSERY CRIMES series, which I had to read for work.  Fforde, best known for his THURSDAY NEXT series, creates worlds in which fictional characters, in this case nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters, live side by side with "real" characters in something that might approximate the real world.  His books are always very dense with literary allusions, puns, and clever detours; as a result, they are very intellectually challenging, and not always what I have in mind when I want to curl up with a good book.  This particular story is a whodunit about the murder of Humpty Dumpty.  As always with Fforde, intensely clever, with moments of brilliance and moments of jumping the shark.

THE CHRISTIAN IMAGINATION by Leland Ryken
This is a group of essays and other short works, some by authors (C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, etc.), some by theologians, on the relationship of Christianity and the arts.  A few of them are very good -- I don't remember the writer, unfortunately, but I liked one about the fallacy of thinking that something has to be "safe" to be Christian.  Many of them are deadly boring -- usually these are the ones by the theologians and the literary critics, who tend to make it clear that they have never created a fictional work in their lives and are purely writing from the "outside."  I found myself skimming it. 




COLUMBINE by Dave Cullen
A stunning read and a masterful work of journalism.  The factual story of the 1999 school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, this book dispels myth after myth propagated in the early days (and even the early years) after the tragedy.  (No, Cassie Bernal did not "say yes."  No, the killers were not Goths.)  Even more important, it gives us an understanding as to why this happened, with a detailed account of the FBI hostage negotiator who happened to be on the scene and therefore got involved in digging to the root of the killers' psyches.  A remarkable and fascinating book.

THE FOURTH BEAR by Jasper Fforde
This is the sequel to The Big Over Easy (above), and the second in Fforde's Nursery Crimes series, and again, I read it for work (which is different from reading for pleasure).  I liked it quite a bit better than Over Easy, particularly loved the very precise explanation of why the Three Bears' porridge was all different temperatures if it was all dished out at the same time.  As with all Jasper Fforde, there were moments of sheer screaming brilliance surrounded but a lot of "huh?" -- or maybe I'm just not quick-witted enough to track with everything going on at once.  Masterful plotting, as always with Fforde, but an acquired taste for the sheer weirdness of it all.

GOING BOVINE by Libby Bray
We read this for our mother-daughter book club.  The story of a slacker high school kid who contracts mad cow disease and runs away from home, heading off on a wild road trip that oh-so-roughly parallels Don Quixote, accompanied by an odd dwarf and visited periodically by an angel named Dulcie (get it?)... In the end, it turns out the road trip has been a hallucination and he has been in the hospital the whole time.  Yes, I know that was a spoiler, but believe me, I have just saved you hours of your life.  This book could have cut 200 pages and it would still have been too long.


GOOD IN A ROOM: How to Sell Yourself (And Your Ideas) and Win Over Any Audience by Stephanie Palmer.
This book could really be subtitled: "How To Take a Meeting."  I had to rush through this book, but I found it very encouraging, in part because I realized I already knew so much of what she was saying.  It's a definite must-read for anyone who *doesn't* do meetings every single day (If you do, you will probably yawn because you know it all already).  Lots of little hints, and good focus on what's important and what's not.  A clear yes.

THE GUARDIAN by Nicholas Sparks.
Another read for our mother-daughter book club, chosen because one of the girls had heard a book report on it in class and was intrigued....  Julie's husband has died, but he arranged for her to have a Great Dane delivered after his death.  The dog is an intensely great judge of character.  He growls whenever he sees Richard but he loves Mike.  Julie's not smart enough to realize this.  Richard stalks Julie, almost kills her, but the dog dies to save her....  Melodramatic to the extreme.  I know Nicholas Sparks has millions of fans but this book did not make me one of them.

HIMALAYA by Michael Palin.
This is a companion piece to a BBC travel documentary that Palin did a few years back, sort of his travel diary while making the film about the trip.  I needed to read it because I have been working on a project set in the Himalayas.  Frankly, I would have expected far more from a member of Monty Python.  It just wasn't that interesting to read, almost as if he phoned it in, or as if someone else wrote it up based on some scribbles in his journals.




THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins
Sabrina started telling me I had to read this book months ago.  Okay, I put it on the list.  Then I started seeing other mentions of it, notably at The Hogshead.  So I put it on hold at the library and waited.  With a little trepidation, I have to admit.  I get nervous when a book (or TV show or movie or whatever) is hyped so much that my expectations are raised.  What if I didn't like it as much as I wanted to?

No worries.  I was mesmerized by The Hunger Games.  Haunted by it.  I dreamed about it, couldn't get it out of my mind.  A corner of my mind is still working it over, weeks later.

As you probably know, The Hunger Games is set in a post-apocalyptic world where North America has been divided into districts, most of them quite poor and downtrodden, and children from each district are chosen by lottery annually to take part in the Hunger Games, a massive televised competition that is part Survivor, part Truman Show and part Lord of the Flies... because the children not only have to survive, they have to kill their competitors.  Last one standing wins.

I wondered if the style of the book caused problems for some people, given that it's written in first-person, present-tense.  (As a screenwriter, present tense is my default option.)  I'd be interested in hearing from others.  In any event, I won't keep writing about it here because it would throw this post out of whack (maybe I'll give it its own post).  Suffice it to say that it's the first book to go on my sidebar as fave books of 2010, and I have already placed the sequel (Catching Fire) on hold... but I am number 41 on the holds list... sigh.

......Okay, that gets us halfway through the alphabet (apparently I didn't read anything between I and M...).  Coming up soon, the second half!