Collin Vs. Blog

Tonight's episode of Lost offers plenty more names and references for the conspiracy theorists to cut their teeth on, so rather than attempting a catalog of them, I thought I'd mention the one that jumped out at me the most, and that's the appearance of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, which is the partially obscured book past which Desmond runs as he packs up his stuff and leaves the station.

Why this book? Well, once upon a time I thought I might write a dissertation in Irish Literature, and I would have almost certainly taken O'Brien as my subject. Third Policeman is one of his best books, unappreciated at the time he wrote it, and probably doesn't cross the radar even of most literature students. Of 3P, Bookslut offers the following in her plot synopsis:

In The Third Policeman, our hero and narrator, a nameless young man with a wooden leg, assists in a money-motivated killing, and, after trying to retrieve the stashed goods some time later, passes into a strange otherness -- a place that superficially resembles the Irish countryside, but which casually disobeys the normal laws of How Things Work. He encounters a small building of impermanent and shifting geometry which turns out to be the local barracks -- it is here that he meets the policemen. The novel has that special quality -- the fantastic made believable, yet retaining its power to amaze -- that is the hallmark of authors like Borges, Kafka, or Barthelme. The events are alternately frightening, baffling, and hilarious, and are brought into three dimensions by perfect, musical prose.

Some of this should sound more than familiar to us who watch Lost, yes? It's been a long time since I've read 3P, but I'll have to see if I can't dig out of whatever box I've laid it in, and see if there's anything else worth mentioning. It's been a long time, too, since Turn of the Screw--perhaps someone else can offer a connection/hint?