What, you were expecting updates?

Well, I'm thinking of instituting the Dewey Decimal system in my home library (books only).

"Bad Twin:" The End

As the final chapters of the book wound down, I was starting to grasp at anything that might be significant to the plot of “Lost.” I didn’t find anything.

Of course there were a few references to John Locke (the philosopher and not the bald-headed mystic) and Cindy the flight attendant showed up. There was even a reference to some of the numbers (8-15 is Zander’s b-day and 8-16 is Cliff’s b-day). But nothing concrete enough about the Windmore family to shed some light on their connection to Hanso (except that Hanso guy, Thomas Mittlewerk, who showed up on the Windmore board supporting Cliff Windmore) or how they might be connected to Desmond and the race around the world.

In fact, the most glaring difference between the book and the show is that the book makes no mention of Windmore’s daughter, who is supposedly in love with Desmond and the focus of the first real-time, off-island scene we saw at the end of season 2.

Since taking the case, Windmore goes on the prowl. He talks to Zander’s associates in New York, Florida and Havana. After he talks to people, though, they start to die under mysterious circumstances. The most important people he meets are the Windmore family, aside from Cliff.

Mr. Windmore and his trophy wife live in a very fancy house. He is obsessed with Scottish heritage and wants to tell his son something about the fight they had right before Zander leaves. At times he seems both senile and more coherent than most. It’s odd, because he seemed vaguely menacing during the season finale in his association with Desmond.

Because this is a detective book, I don’t want to give up the secrets of the plot, but it ended up being a pretty good read. The second half was also full of references, some of which might be interesting:
+ Atistan’s last name meaning shepherd
+ The step mom’s name is Shannon
+ The Basque people (Artisan’s ancestry)
+ Jacob and Esau in the Bible
+ “The Divine Comedy”
+ “Trent’s Last Case”
+ “Lord of the Flies”
+ Mr. Clucks Chicken, a California restaurant
+ Adam, Eve and the Garden of Eden
+ Purgatory (in the afterlife, or life as Purgatory)
+ More “Odyssey”
+ John Locke
+ “King Lear”
+ Black pearls

The references that came up the most were the ideas of father figures who don’t really know what they are doing and opposites (in the case of the twins, two personalities in almost exactly the same person). There were a lot of contrasts as well – Artisan talked to a woman named Sun in Florida and went to a town named Luna in California. They talked about black pearls being just like the white only completely different.

The Jacob and Esau story in the Bible, for those that don’t know, involves Jacob screwing his older brother out of his rightful good fortune (ala prophecy from father Isaac, who is tricked into blessing the younger son). Esau finds out and wants to kill his brother. Jacob runs away and makes lots of babies. When he comes back, he and his brother make up and share goats.

All in all it brought up the interesting question of what makes us bad or good – is it a choice that we make or is it something in our genetic makeup.

Also of not is the idea of an easily swayed father figure, who may not always have the best intentions in mind when dealing with his progeny. It’s something that will surely come up in the next book, “The Brothers Karamazov.”

What do you think? Do you think people are inherently good or evil – that they have a destiny of temperament to play out? Or do you think it’s a choice that people make on their own? What about father figures (an important theme on lost)? Because the fathers in this book don’t really know what’s going on any more, do you think the main father figure in “Lost” (Alvar Hanso, in my book) is corrupted? Or is this an example of the island’s father figures (Jack, Locke, Eko, etc.) being easily swayed and tricked?

"Bad Twin" 1

Page count: 60
Chapter: 10

Well, 60 pages in and “Bad Twin” isn’t quite offering the deep insight into our favorite castaway showcase that I hoped it might.

Sure, it’s full of allusions and a few references that might be a little interesting, but as a whole it isn’t really offering that much for me. It’s a quick read, though, and if I didn’t read it at night as I am falling asleep I might be done with the whole thing by now.

First a little background about the book itself. Written by fictional author “Gary Troup” (which too many people have pointed out is a jumble of purgatory), the book was submitted to publisher Hyperion right before Troup boarded the fateful Oceanic Flight 815. When the plane crashed somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, according to the jacket copy of the book, the publishers decided to showcase what is considered one of Troup’s finest works. And it’s pretty middling.

So far most of the intrigue has come from the “real world” information from the book about the author. It seems Troup was an American who loved to log frequent flier miles between the U.S. and Sydney. His popularity, while waning in the states, was flourishing in the land down under. He also fell in love with a flight attendant who worked the Oceanic route, one Cindy Chandler. You may remember her as the flight attendant who disappeared without much hoopla right before Shannon was shot in the tummy – the one who producers say we might not have seen the last of. It’s to Cindy that the book is dedicated.

Which brings us back to …

The story so far is about a private detective named Paul Artisan. He spends a lot of his time catching two-timing husbands and insurance fraudists. He gets a job from one Cliff Windmore, heir to the Windmore empire (how he relates to Desmond’s Windmore woman whose name I already forgot since the finale, I don’t know yet). Cliff wants Artisan to find his brother Alexander Windmore, known as Zander – a drifter who moves from crappy situation to crappy situation to spite his rich family.

At this point in the story, Artisan has just taken the Windmore case and talked to a few people. There’s been a couple of mentions of the Hanso Foundation and its connections to the Windmore Corporation and a mention or two of Hanso’s possibly shady dealings.

Artisan is also good friends and co-dog owners with a retired literature professor, who seems to be there only to make the literary references a little more obvious. The main reference so far is the story of the Prodigal son from the Bible (if you don’t know at least the basics of this story, you really need to read the Bible). There’s also a reference or two to The Odyssey and other ancient Greek tales. There’s even a reference to “A River Runs Through It” (the book and not the movie).

The imagery is pretty similar to “Lost.” There are a lot of dualities and contrasts between two characters, most notably between the good and bad twins (Cliff and Zander Windmore). There’s even that ever so subtle “Lost” suggestion that not all is what it seems on the outside – with each of the Windmore twins, with the Windmore company, with the Hanso foundation, and possibly even with Artisan himself.

Any thoughts on the book so far? How about the idea of complete contrasts and Biblical imagery? How could this tie into the show (father issues, contrasts, slightly askew backstories), and what is your favorite use of allusion and imagery in the show?

(Just a quick editor's note: up next on the "Lost" summer reading program is the mamoth book of the bunch, and the one most likely to need some discussion. I'm talking about "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I'll be reading the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation, so you might start looking for it.)