Lost: A reading list

I was going to open this post with one of two desperate leads: a quote or a joke. Except the quote was more of an accusation and the joke is still not funny, and even I could smell the desperation like the tang of my own unbrushed breath at five in the afternoon. Instead, I am beginning with this slightly less desperate (but not quite minty fresh) self-reflexive apology. I am just out of practice. Be glad I didn't sink to starting with "The dictionary defines...".

So, how is Lost (the TV series) like a TS Eliot poem? (See, I warned you the joke isn't funny.)

With its very first word, Eliot's epic The Wasteland introduces itself as a friend of the great-grandfather of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer. The poem ends with guttural syllables that sound like a baby's first swings at speaking or the phonics of Chaucer's early English, but are to those in the know Buddhist principles laid out in the text Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Like The Wasteland, Lost is a catalogue of our times and texts that conspire to make the average viewer feel somewhat below average.

To start with, many of the characters in Lost are named after philosophers. For example, there is Danielle Rousseau, a French women driven mad by her isolation on the island, who is named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he of the 'noble savage'. Desmond Hume, a Scotsman trying to prove his love for a woman he dumped in an act of inexplicable cowardice, is named after David Hume, the philosopher who wrestled causality away from God himself.

These characters act out their brands of social philosophy and metaphysics against plots, ideas and symbols dragged from stories as varied (but still mostly predictable) as Alice in Wonderland, Heart of Darkness, Lord of the Flies and the Bible.

But most of this background belongs to other blogposts (suppress your joy at learning the extent of my obsession with this very obsession-worthy series). This post is about the books that the characters are seen reading in different episodes, specifically those read by the character Sawyer, himself named after the tween adventurer written by Mark Twain. The director and camera-man go to great lengths to show the covers and titles of the books, so we might as well make these lengths worthwhile by reading some of them. Or, at least, planning to.

However, this list constitutes a promise to read these books, which is why it is not a quintessential list. I left off the books I don't want to read.

• The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien. The idea for this list started when Desmond Hume puts aside the copy he is reading to discover the madness that is the character named John Locke. I noticed because, instead of using a bookmark like a civilised reader, he sits it down spreadeagled, thereby damaging the spine as well as bending the pages. The author was contemporary and countryman of James Joyce, which bodes both well and ill for this book.
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Sawyer is reading this book when he starts to have severe migraines and Jack diagnoses him as hyperopic - as a result of reading so much. As the title suggests, the novel is an adventure in time travel, in which a young girl and her brother have to rescue their scientist father.
• Lancelot by Walter Percy. Kate interrupts Sawyer as he is reading this book to ask for a gun. The book is about a man who blows up his house and murders his wife, much like Kate did her father.
• Bad Twin by Gary Troup. This book was written for Lost: it is the unpublished manuscript of one of the casualties of Oceanic 815.
• Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Sawyer is reading this novel in a flashback to his time spent in prison, proving that Sawyer was a closet bibliophile before being stranded on a tropical island with excess time on his hands. You know, when he isn't struggling to survive.
• Watership Down by Richard Adams. Sawyer is reading this when the former owner of the copy accuses him of hiding his sister's asthma pumps, which were in the same suitcase. Sawyer doesn't have them, but only reveals this after a beating and a kiss. The novel is also an animated movie, mere stills from which bring tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat. Which is the same reaction I have to the last two episodes of Lost.
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. This novel appears twice, in two separate episodes, suggesting it takes some time to finish even if you have all the time in the world. I just know this book is going to rile me up. I can feel it like a static force field surrounding the book.
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce. This novel is one of a shelf of books in the hatch that Locke is alphabetising. In it, a man time travels just before he dies. Sounds like a sure winner. 

In the fifth season of Lost, Jack asks why Sawyer is sitting and reading a book instead of making decisions and taking action. Sawyer says what we all want to say, just more succinctly: that he is thinking, rather than reacting, as Jack did when he was in charge. That, my friends, is why we should all be readers.

PS. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens gets its own list. Our dear Des plans to read this book before he dies - as in just before he dies, rather than at some point before he dies - because obviously these things can be planned. This is also one of the few books that I have started and never finished. A list that is growing longer and longer, I'm afraid.