Lost Book-Club Ballyhoo

OK, seriously, this is why I can't sleep:

If you don't watch Lost, or if you watch it casually, you may not be aware that it is deeply rooted in the literary arts. Everything has a meaning, especially names, and these guys drop literary allusions like sunflower seeds at a baseball game. (Hey look, I made a sports reference! $20 says that won't happen again...) What I mean by this is that there are literally hundreds of books to which details big and small connect themselves--it is a finely crafted conglomerate of tasty tidbits for the avid reader.

Take, for just one tiny example, the idea posed to me yesterday by my more brilliant and fashion forward teaching partner/partner in crime/partner in search of all things entertaining or appalling on the internet: the relationship between Daniel Faraday and his benefactor Charles Widmore has a host of commonalities which can be distinctly linked to the Pip/Miss Havisham benefactorial relationship in Dickens' Great Expectations. Whew! That was a mouthful. Now, Dickens is scattered throughout Lost lore, (Lindelof and Cuse confirm that they are both Dickens "afictionados", admiring him for his ability to tell sprawling, character-driven stories and for being the "master of coincidence"--is this sounding familiar yet?)--but I never would have come up with this connection on my own. So when asked to explain her thinking, Mrs. Sinibaldi replied as follows:

"...Pip has a secret benefactor that was both a blessing and a curse, evoking mixed feelings from the reader. Do we feel happy for Pip/Dan and glad that he has this benefactor who takes care of him and leads him to success in his desired field? Or concerned for him because now he's going to owe this person because of this tie? And what if your benefactor is evil? Does that make you evil also? Can you reject an evil benefactor when they've done so much for you? Then something you said about Charlotte/Vegetable-girl made me think of Pip's issues with Estella and Biddy--unsure of who he should love and who he does love..."

I am confident that, somewhere out in the vast universe of the world-wide-web, there is someone as nerdy as I whose sleep is also invaded by similar thoughts of giant literary conspiracies. But since that person is not here (which is actually a good thing because I'm not wearing pants and didn't plan on fetching any), and I have gotten that off my chest, I think I will go back to sleep now.


Check out the Lost Book Club for a complete list of references big and small. Sweet dreams.