13 posts tagged “powells.com”

This is it – this year's final Powell's Books Lost blog post for this season. The episode was a mindbender, pulling together threads from previous episodes and previous seasons, knotting them up, and leaving new ends of narrative trails to follow. And the mirror-twinning aspect was in full effect.

There was also something I've been holding on to for a while; since “Not in Portland” and the Clockwork-Orangish overstimulation chamber, I've been looking for nods to Kubrick. The finale sealed it. The Looking Glass hatch doesn't have a will of its own like HAL, but both seal off human communication, and many of the shots in the Looking Glass recall shots from “2001: A Space Odyssey.” There's also a bit in there about the strange symbols seen throughout the season, again with a nod to Kubrick.

And since the Minkowski thing was pretty much verified (the guy on the freighter answered “Minkowski”), I tried to work out a good way to explain how this works – because it's not all that difficult once it's understood. It works like hacking a CSS file. So here it is:

DES HACKING FATE'S CSS FILE

Any web site has two basic elements, content and presentation. All presentation is controlled by a single file (or sometimes a few different ones, for flexibility). Think of the Powell's Books site; there are thousands upon thousands of pages, and they all have a consistent look to them. That look is controlled by four CSS files if you look at the source code).

Change one element in one of those CSS files -- like the color of the banner -- and the banners on all of those thousands of pages change.

If we're dealing with Minkowski space (and I think we are), the past/present/future are all existing simultaneously, just like all the pages in the Powell's web site are existing simultaneously. We just don't experience them all at once. So when Des alters the outcome of one of his flashes, it's like he's hacking fate's CSS file. He makes one change, and the entire site changes, every page, past/present/future.

But something to consider is if a site isn't well-designed, you can break some pages when you change the CSS file. I've done it plenty of times. And that raises the question: Are we dealing with a poorly-designed site/world? In a poorly-designed world, one CSS change could break the logic of some of the other pages in the site – like the dead having never died in the first place (like Christian).

If we go back to all the various theosophical/gnostic elements alluded to throughout the season, we can look at how those traditions view our world. And they're not kind. In fact, in the gnostic tradition, god didn't create this world, because god is perfect and this world is far from it. That tradition, laid out most clearly in the Nag Hammadi library, suggests that this is a poorly-designed world made by a demiurge that exists between us and the perfect god. Their line of thinking is that the way to get around this is through accessing wisdom, as opposed to faith. Think of this demiurge as a programmer.

Taken all together, we have a poorly-designed (i.e. poorly-coded, poorly-programmed) world having its CSS file hacked by someone who isn't sure what he's doing, Desmond. And he's breaking some of the pages.

The Powell's Books Lost blog post for "Greatest Hits" is up, and there's a lot more going on than meets the eye.

It looks like we have some evidence that every time Des saved Charlie, he not only changed the future, but the past and present as well.  Because first season, Charlie couldn't swim.  Some real proof would be from past Charlie flashbacks; if he was taking scag and not wearing the ring, then we have something.  "Fire + Water" complicates that, because in one flashback when he wakes Liam from a nod, it doesn't look like he is, and in the diaper commercial flashback he is.

And there's plenty in there about Tolkien, Nick Hornby and Kierkegaard.  And  little Lewis Carrol and Joseph Campbell thrown in for good measure. 

Now we've finally seen Jacob, and I've posted a column about it at my Powell's blog.  The real question at this point is if Locke actually did or didn't see that strange old man.  

The biblical overtones are getting interesting.  In Genesis, Jacob gave Benjamin this blessing: "Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning devouring the prey, and at evening dividing the spoil."

"The Brig" was the first episode written by Darlton Cuselof we've seen in a long time, and it was well worth the wait.  The post is up at the Powell's Books Lost blog, and there's a lot there about war and slavery.  It all comes from Locke and Cooper's namesakes; the philosopher Cooper had a theory of moral sense that the narrative is developing (especially with Sawyer), and the philosopher Locke had a particular approach to war and slavery that gets enacted by Lost Locke putting Lost Cooper in the slave ship's brig.  I've never seen television perform ideas like this.

The episode has quickly made the shortlist for best of the season.  For a lot of people, it made up for Bai Ling.

The discussion on the "D.O.C." Lost blog post at Powell's Books ramped up in no time.  This "D.O.C." was more of an extension of "Catch-22," and carries over many of the book's themes, as well as some by the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin's "God and the State."  

There's plenty going on with the narrative's own mirror-twinning; this episode thickened some of the thematic webbing.

And if you go there, check out the easter egg grab on Charlie's "Highway 61" t-shirt; the first verse of Dylan's song is about the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice Des and Campbell discussed.  

There's a great discussion developing on my Powell's Books Lost blog about the latest episode, "Catch-22."  I dig Heller's book; it's creepy and funny, and the writers did a fine job of incorporating elements of its narrative into this episode -- nothing overt, it's all worked into the story.  Which is something Lost is proving all the time -- showing is always better than telling.  What's interesting is the ways they developed their various catch-22's in the episode; the basic one is that the only way to not have to sacrifice a person is to accept that you have to sacrifice a person.  I'm starting to think every time Des saves Charlie, he's changing the past, present and future.

Two other references that were there, but seemed to take a bit to hit the internets, was Lord of the Flies (Naomi the parachutist at the end, but instead of a dead man, it's a live woman hung up in the trees -- goddess from the machine), and the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher George Campbell, who had a real beef with David Hume and his take on miracles.

The blog post for the latest Lost episode, "One of Us," is now up at Powell's Books.  The symbol that appears on the tree actually means a lot in this episode.  Yeah, it looks like a Russian letter, but it also looks very much like the symbol from a mystic religious sect from 19th C. Italy.  What's more, the sect (the Giuirsdavidicans) emerged after the found, Davide Lazzaretti, went penitent in a grotto for 47 days; it seems Saint Peter visited him and seared the mark into his forehead.  And the grotto has the same name as the mother who died on the operating table in the flashback. 

Ya gotta love these little games...

And doesn't it seem like there's echoes of Children of Men going on in the show?

Entertainment Weekly's Doc Jensen just gave my Lost blog a nice plug:

In my humble opinion, the best Lost blogger is a bookish fellow by the name of J. Wood, author of ''Living Lost.'' Wood specializes in deconstructing the literary references in the show and advocates a more thoughtful reading of episodes that transcends the madcap monkey business Doc Jensen revels in. That said, Wood's scholarship can function as theory: I think his videogame analogy of The Dharma Initiative is a totally viable explanation that actually might get voiced on the show itself one day. You can read about it here, and you can check out his episode analysis at powells.com, the website for one of the best bookstores on the planet.

Thanks Doc; glad to see you're reading it.  I'll try to keep the quality up.

My Powell's Books blog column for the latest Lost episode, “Left Behind,” is now live. This was a subtle episode, despite the girl fight and Smokey; there were a number of little subtle narrative links across the episode itself and back to previous episodes, which serve to thicken this entire storyline.  Watership Down gets a nice revival, with some interesting depth.

And there may be something happening with the previews and foilers (false spoilers); I saw one of Claire reading a book on astrology that I couldn't find anywhere in the episode. It's like the Hanso Foundation commercials, but it's not an ARG, it's a game with the audience.

After a couple of technical snags, my Powells.com blog post for the latest Lost episode is up, Lost Exposed. I had a couple extra meetings on Thursday and couldn't get to writing until later in the afternoon, and since I included a image of some graphed narrative connections in this one, an extra page had to be added.  It meant a day late, but hopefully, it's not missing too much.  The people at Powell's Books have been great with this stuff, can't thank them enough.