Everyone’s phobias tend to look a little flimsy when exposed to reality’s harsh light. Airplanes? Bridges? They don’t really fall down that often. Clowns? Usually aren’t evil serial killers outside of sensational fiction. Meteors? They don’t usually strike just because you’ve stepped foot outside of your house for the first time in three months.
My phobia of car washes, however, is one hundred percent, unshakably, unquestionably genuine and grounded in nothing but fact.
I know, I know. It sounds silly to admit that I’m afraid of car washes, but there it is. It sounds like one of those silly little things one confesses over drinks at a party, hoping to endear oneself as a quirky oddball. But no. I genuinely am afraid of the things. I can’t drive into one to save my life.
What am I afraid of? I’ll tell you. The whole automated car wash is a Rube Goldberg contraption designed solely to reduce my car to a smoking pile of scrap iron. If I don’t align my tires perfectly with the tracks designed to grip them and run the vehicle through the tunnel of suds, if I neglect to put the gear into neutral, if I neglect to wait at the end and shift into drive before the track has let go of the car—well, it’s over, isn’t it? Not only will I induce the wrath of a dozen rag-wiping men, but my car’s wheels will fall off. It’s too much pressure, I tell you. Too much!
I also have an equally well-established phobia of oil change establishments. Frankly put, they scare the heck out of me. I know that when I drive over that pit below, where the men work, that I’m likely to swerve unexpectedly and send three thousand pounds of car crashing down blow, possibly killing someone. But while I really don’t have to wash my car, I do have to get the oil changed on occasion. So while other people rev confidently into their local Jiffylube, I’m the guy who’s creeping forward over the pit, inch by inch, while the fellow trying to guide me in impatiently beckons me forward and looks at his watch, hoping that I’ll make it inside by the time his shift is over.
So basically what I’m saying is that if you’re driving in the metropolitan Detroit area and you see someone with an impossibly dirty car, it’s probably me. But I have reasons.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Author Copies
Yesterday I sent The Buccaneer’s Apprentice off to my editor. Usually by this point in the creative process I’m sick of the book. Not so with the tale of Nic and his friends. That book was a joy to write.
And yesterday, by some kind of weird, fluky chance, I got my author copies of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s a beautiful-looking edition. The cover’s gorgeous. The map is amazing, on the page. It’s a pleasure to hold and to look at.
When I wrote the acknowledgements to The Glass Maker’s Daughter, I dedicated the book to one of my former college professors. I studied playwriting with Dr. Louis Catron at the College of William and Mary for a solid year. His classes were rigidly structured; we wrote a couple of one-act plays per semester, and revised each play three times. Many of the best hours I spent in college were in Dr. Catron’s warm and airless little office, listening to other students read their plays, or reading mine while they closed their eyes and tried to imagine my words on the stage. My belief in the revision process comes almost entirely from the things he taught me. There were times, for example, that the third draft of a play was almost entirely unrecognizable from its original conception—and that can be a good thing. From him I learned that it’s possible and sometimes even desirable to lose entire chunks of text, or even pages and pages, in order to get to the important parts.
Naturally, after my handsome acknowledgements, I wanted to give him a copy of the book. But it’s been twenty-five years, and his website hasn’t been updated in a dog’s age, and I’d known he’d retired a long time ago. I knew I should call and try to find out his current address. In my head, though, I feared doing it. I could’ve made the call months ago, but dragged my feet. What I dreaded, actually, was that I’d ring up the department and have them say, “What kind of former student are you? Didn’t you know he died back in 1993?”
This morning I finally forced myself to call. And luckily, the scenario didn’t play out that way. The fellow who answered the Theatre Department’s phone was very helpful, and offered to forward on the book. Problem solved.
I need to fret less, and do more.
And yesterday, by some kind of weird, fluky chance, I got my author copies of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s a beautiful-looking edition. The cover’s gorgeous. The map is amazing, on the page. It’s a pleasure to hold and to look at.
When I wrote the acknowledgements to The Glass Maker’s Daughter, I dedicated the book to one of my former college professors. I studied playwriting with Dr. Louis Catron at the College of William and Mary for a solid year. His classes were rigidly structured; we wrote a couple of one-act plays per semester, and revised each play three times. Many of the best hours I spent in college were in Dr. Catron’s warm and airless little office, listening to other students read their plays, or reading mine while they closed their eyes and tried to imagine my words on the stage. My belief in the revision process comes almost entirely from the things he taught me. There were times, for example, that the third draft of a play was almost entirely unrecognizable from its original conception—and that can be a good thing. From him I learned that it’s possible and sometimes even desirable to lose entire chunks of text, or even pages and pages, in order to get to the important parts.
Naturally, after my handsome acknowledgements, I wanted to give him a copy of the book. But it’s been twenty-five years, and his website hasn’t been updated in a dog’s age, and I’d known he’d retired a long time ago. I knew I should call and try to find out his current address. In my head, though, I feared doing it. I could’ve made the call months ago, but dragged my feet. What I dreaded, actually, was that I’d ring up the department and have them say, “What kind of former student are you? Didn’t you know he died back in 1993?”
This morning I finally forced myself to call. And luckily, the scenario didn’t play out that way. The fellow who answered the Theatre Department’s phone was very helpful, and offered to forward on the book. Problem solved.
I need to fret less, and do more.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
In the third person
One of the reasons I enjoy writing in the first person is that it allows me to leap into a story feet-first with a clear voice. A first-person narrative seems immediate. It can be as personal as a long letter from an old friend, and as intimate as listening to someone talk about his life late at night, while you lie side by side on a mattress on a hot night. There’s no mistaking what’s to come when one encounters a first-person narrative like this:
All of Holden Caulfield’s disaffection with his life, his jadedness, his education, his precociousness—it’s all there in that lazy conjunction of strung-together phrases that opens the book. Whether or not you like him is a different matter. He’s laying it all out as plainly as possible, in the most intimate narrative manner possible.
What many new writers don’t often realize is that third-person chronicles have their own voices as well. The narrator is usually unnamed. He or she rarely appears as a character in the story. It’s therefore easy to assume that all third-person stories are much the same, dispassionately relating a tale without intruding.
This narrator, from For Whom the Bell Tolls, keeps his distance on the book’s first page.
There’s so much distance, in fact, that the reader doesn’t even learn the name of the ‘he’ until four pages later. What we have is a flat description of place and action. It couldn’t be more different from another famous first line, from Pride & Prejudice:
Both Hemingway and Austen employ the third person. Austen’s narrator is blatantly cheeky, though, forthright about both her own prejudices and those of her era, and as chock-full of personality as Hemingway’s is carefully devoid of it. You might hire Hemingway’s narrator for a reporting job, but Austen’s is the one you want gossiping next to you at a party.
One of the difficulties I originally had when I started The Buccaneer’s Apprentice was that I couldn’t get the narrative to flow. Using the third person seemed to impede my progress, rather than help me make any. After a couple of abortive pages, I had to stop and do a little exercise. I closed my eyes and tried to picture my narrator—to make him an actual person, rather than a simple device. I settled on the image of a crusty old mariner with weathered skin, surrounded by curious listeners. He carried a pipe, plenty of tobacco, and had nothing but time on his hands to share his tale. He would have a tendency to be garrulous, omniscient, and utterly in control of how he spun his story.
Once I abandoned my initial start and let him start talking, the story started to flow. And flow. His voice carried me through the book’s tougher-to-write stretches. I let him dictate the story’s pace. The decisions of what scenes to portray or elide were his. He’s a strong personality, and as a result, the narration is confident and vigorous.
Like any good narrator, my crusty old mariner might not have played an actual role in the novel’s action. He might be invisible to most readers. But he’s as important a character as any of the protagonists.
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
All of Holden Caulfield’s disaffection with his life, his jadedness, his education, his precociousness—it’s all there in that lazy conjunction of strung-together phrases that opens the book. Whether or not you like him is a different matter. He’s laying it all out as plainly as possible, in the most intimate narrative manner possible.
What many new writers don’t often realize is that third-person chronicles have their own voices as well. The narrator is usually unnamed. He or she rarely appears as a character in the story. It’s therefore easy to assume that all third-person stories are much the same, dispassionately relating a tale without intruding.
This narrator, from For Whom the Bell Tolls, keeps his distance on the book’s first page.
“He lay flat on the brown, pine-needled floor of the forest, his chin on his folded arms, and high overhead the wind blew in the tops of the pine trees.”
There’s so much distance, in fact, that the reader doesn’t even learn the name of the ‘he’ until four pages later. What we have is a flat description of place and action. It couldn’t be more different from another famous first line, from Pride & Prejudice:
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Both Hemingway and Austen employ the third person. Austen’s narrator is blatantly cheeky, though, forthright about both her own prejudices and those of her era, and as chock-full of personality as Hemingway’s is carefully devoid of it. You might hire Hemingway’s narrator for a reporting job, but Austen’s is the one you want gossiping next to you at a party.
One of the difficulties I originally had when I started The Buccaneer’s Apprentice was that I couldn’t get the narrative to flow. Using the third person seemed to impede my progress, rather than help me make any. After a couple of abortive pages, I had to stop and do a little exercise. I closed my eyes and tried to picture my narrator—to make him an actual person, rather than a simple device. I settled on the image of a crusty old mariner with weathered skin, surrounded by curious listeners. He carried a pipe, plenty of tobacco, and had nothing but time on his hands to share his tale. He would have a tendency to be garrulous, omniscient, and utterly in control of how he spun his story.
Once I abandoned my initial start and let him start talking, the story started to flow. And flow. His voice carried me through the book’s tougher-to-write stretches. I let him dictate the story’s pace. The decisions of what scenes to portray or elide were his. He’s a strong personality, and as a result, the narration is confident and vigorous.
Like any good narrator, my crusty old mariner might not have played an actual role in the novel’s action. He might be invisible to most readers. But he’s as important a character as any of the protagonists.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The Oracle
I’m always surprised to relearn that the process of writing a novel’s first draft, for me, is more like channeling than anything else. I can’t describe it save in supernatural terms—it’s like speaking in tongues, or acting as medium for a seance. I sit down for a couple of hours at a time and begin typing, slowly and painfully at first. Gradually my conscious mind recedes, and I fall into a trance-like state in which I’m typing away. Then I realize my self-appointed time has elapsed, and that the manuscript has somehow accumulated another five or ten pages.
The Buccaneer’s Apprentice is my fifteenth published book. You’d think by now I’d know my own process.
But no. Yesterday I was reviewing in my head one of the last few scenes left to write. I paused a moment to consider how well one of the plot’s conceits turned out—that its hero assumes the identity and mannerisms of a minor character who disappears early in the book. Oh yes, agreed part of my brain. The editorial part, perhaps. That was my contribution. It seemed a shame to have that character vanish and be disconnected from the rest of the story, so I suggested he return in this way. Didn’t it work out well? Oh, and you know what also really worked, that I contributed? said my brain. That thing with the origami boats. You know the bit.
I did know the bit. It did fit nicely, and it hadn’t been part of the book’s original conception. I settled down, quite happy to realize I’d contributed two little things to what I am thinking is a very good novel.
Then I realized, hey, wait a minute. I wrote the two hundred and eighty-odd pages. I made a lot more contributions to it than just those two elements!
It’s amazing how big the disconnect is between the editor-writer in me and the mystical oracle who drafts the pages. The former is alert and conscious and sees the book’s structure from a more clinical aspect. The latter communes with the ether and produces page after page of automatic writing of which my consciousness has no memory.
Apparently the oracle’s tendency to ban the editor from the room when he’s communing with the muses has created quite the schism between them. Maybe when I give the editor free reign next week and send the oracle back to whatever hippie commune he lives in, they’ll gain a little parity.
The Buccaneer’s Apprentice is my fifteenth published book. You’d think by now I’d know my own process.
But no. Yesterday I was reviewing in my head one of the last few scenes left to write. I paused a moment to consider how well one of the plot’s conceits turned out—that its hero assumes the identity and mannerisms of a minor character who disappears early in the book. Oh yes, agreed part of my brain. The editorial part, perhaps. That was my contribution. It seemed a shame to have that character vanish and be disconnected from the rest of the story, so I suggested he return in this way. Didn’t it work out well? Oh, and you know what also really worked, that I contributed? said my brain. That thing with the origami boats. You know the bit.
I did know the bit. It did fit nicely, and it hadn’t been part of the book’s original conception. I settled down, quite happy to realize I’d contributed two little things to what I am thinking is a very good novel.
Then I realized, hey, wait a minute. I wrote the two hundred and eighty-odd pages. I made a lot more contributions to it than just those two elements!
It’s amazing how big the disconnect is between the editor-writer in me and the mystical oracle who drafts the pages. The former is alert and conscious and sees the book’s structure from a more clinical aspect. The latter communes with the ether and produces page after page of automatic writing of which my consciousness has no memory.
Apparently the oracle’s tendency to ban the editor from the room when he’s communing with the muses has created quite the schism between them. Maybe when I give the editor free reign next week and send the oracle back to whatever hippie commune he lives in, they’ll gain a little parity.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Body count
Last night, for the first time in three months, I didn’t fall asleep while reviewing in my head the chapter I was going to write the next day. That’s because yesterday afternoon I finished my big, sprawling draft of The Buccaneer’s Apprentice. Well. Everything except for a tiny little epilogue that I’ll write after I’ve completed the revisions.
I think this novel has the highest body count of any book I’ve written. I killed off:
And the last two items are during the first two chapters alone.
So yes, it’s somewhat less than the average one-hour episode of 24, and yet more than The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which I think had a single death in it. No! Two! I’d forgotten one of them.
In both novels there are probably civilian casualties while the city is under siege, but they’re not discussed, really. It might be interesting to address the issue in the third book in the series, A Traveler to Nascenza.
I think this novel has the highest body count of any book I’ve written. I killed off:
- Sixteen Frenchified warships carrying approximately 200 sailors apiece;
- Around twelve of the hero’s former masters;
- One ambassador;
- One French assassin;
- One small merchant ship’s captain and his ten or so crew; and
- Four mean pirates who really deserved it.
And the last two items are during the first two chapters alone.
So yes, it’s somewhat less than the average one-hour episode of 24, and yet more than The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which I think had a single death in it. No! Two! I’d forgotten one of them.
In both novels there are probably civilian casualties while the city is under siege, but they’re not discussed, really. It might be interesting to address the issue in the third book in the series, A Traveler to Nascenza.
Into the Breach
I’ve been a bad journal-keeper lately. I’m trying to finish the manuscript for the sequel to The Glass Maker’s Daughter, which currently is titled The Buccaneer’s Apprentice. The book’s reached that point where everything is avalanching into completion. But yesterday a curious thing happened.
The Glass Maker’s Daughter takes place entirely within an imaginary city very much like pseudo-Renaissance Venice. Its main character is part of that culture’s aristocracy; the story takes place very much the city’s largest estates and in its palace. Then there are a few detours to a couple of seedy spots, giving the heroine an awareness for the first time that there are indeed a number of indigents within her city’s walls who are as vital to its future as she. The Buccaneer’s Apprentice focuses on those people. Its protagonist is a poor kid who, thanks to Cassaforte’s draconian system of work-debt, has spent all his life as an indentured servant of one sort or another. He’s only just managed to escape the worst of them and to obtain a spot as servant to a really poor (in every sense of the word) troupe of traveling actors, when the ship on which they’re sailing is attacked by pirates—who are part of a political intrigue that threatens Cassaforte itself. By the end of chapter two, the actors are taken for slaves, the ship is sunk, and poor Nic is left to fend for himself on a deserted island.
The book’s story is how, after so many years of being owned and directed, Nic manages to come into his own independence. It’s about how he manages to bluff and scrape his way home, collecting allies as he does, and how he defends a country that admittedly hasn’t given him any of the advantages boasted by the heroine of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s also about how living on society’s margins have given him an insight and flexibility that the more aristocratic classes might not have.
Anyway. Yesterday I had a fairly straight-forward scene to finish in which Nic and his allies, having made their way to a seedy shipping port before sailing for Cassaforte, had to find a used-boat salesman. They’d been given the address of a tavern where the guy was hanging out, and they’d made their way through the city’s dirty streets while avoiding drunkards, beggars, and buckets of muck being slopped from upper story windows, when suddenly they all balked, en masse. “He’s not in there,” they told me, nodding at the tavern I’d picked out for the scene. It was a nice, smelly tavern, too. “He’s in that place.” They pointed to the doorway across the street.
“But that’s a whorehouse,” I told them. “See? I just wrote a little sentence about the buxom woman sticking her head out of the window and flirting with them. Did you see how she jiggled her breasts? That's because she’s kind of a hooker.”
“He’s in there,” said Nic and company. They crossed their arms.
“You heard me say it’s a whorehouse, didn’t you?” They all nodded at my question. “Are you sure? Tavern? Drinks? I could put in a bawdy tavern wench.”
“You already had a tavern scene,” Nic said. “Chapter four. Remember? When I get traded in a card game? Do you really want to repeat yourself?”
“Yeah,” said the blue-face pirate who had accompanied him throughout most of the book. “I’d like the whorehouse, too. I'm adult. It's been a while.”
“Is a whorehouse even appropriate for a young adult book?” I asked.
They were already stomping ahead of me. “Your editor will love it,” they called back.
So before I really knew what was happening, my characters barged through the whorehouse, looking around with wide-eyed wonderment, giving each other advice on how to behave (and not to kiss the women with sores on their lips), sniffing with disapproval, and generally having the time of their lives as they hunted down the used-boat salesman for ten pages.
They do that sometimes, one’s characters. Sometimes their rationales for running amok aren’t very well justified. At other times, though, they have the right instincts. I think they did, here. Any town can have a seedy tavern. In a port town catering to adventurers and freebooters, however, a nice, grimy whorehouse really can set the mood, plus it gives one’s cast a chance to sound off and show themselves for what they really are—prudes, libertines, or something in between.
The Glass Maker’s Daughter takes place entirely within an imaginary city very much like pseudo-Renaissance Venice. Its main character is part of that culture’s aristocracy; the story takes place very much the city’s largest estates and in its palace. Then there are a few detours to a couple of seedy spots, giving the heroine an awareness for the first time that there are indeed a number of indigents within her city’s walls who are as vital to its future as she. The Buccaneer’s Apprentice focuses on those people. Its protagonist is a poor kid who, thanks to Cassaforte’s draconian system of work-debt, has spent all his life as an indentured servant of one sort or another. He’s only just managed to escape the worst of them and to obtain a spot as servant to a really poor (in every sense of the word) troupe of traveling actors, when the ship on which they’re sailing is attacked by pirates—who are part of a political intrigue that threatens Cassaforte itself. By the end of chapter two, the actors are taken for slaves, the ship is sunk, and poor Nic is left to fend for himself on a deserted island.
The book’s story is how, after so many years of being owned and directed, Nic manages to come into his own independence. It’s about how he manages to bluff and scrape his way home, collecting allies as he does, and how he defends a country that admittedly hasn’t given him any of the advantages boasted by the heroine of The Glass Maker’s Daughter. It’s also about how living on society’s margins have given him an insight and flexibility that the more aristocratic classes might not have.
Anyway. Yesterday I had a fairly straight-forward scene to finish in which Nic and his allies, having made their way to a seedy shipping port before sailing for Cassaforte, had to find a used-boat salesman. They’d been given the address of a tavern where the guy was hanging out, and they’d made their way through the city’s dirty streets while avoiding drunkards, beggars, and buckets of muck being slopped from upper story windows, when suddenly they all balked, en masse. “He’s not in there,” they told me, nodding at the tavern I’d picked out for the scene. It was a nice, smelly tavern, too. “He’s in that place.” They pointed to the doorway across the street.
“But that’s a whorehouse,” I told them. “See? I just wrote a little sentence about the buxom woman sticking her head out of the window and flirting with them. Did you see how she jiggled her breasts? That's because she’s kind of a hooker.”
“He’s in there,” said Nic and company. They crossed their arms.
“You heard me say it’s a whorehouse, didn’t you?” They all nodded at my question. “Are you sure? Tavern? Drinks? I could put in a bawdy tavern wench.”
“You already had a tavern scene,” Nic said. “Chapter four. Remember? When I get traded in a card game? Do you really want to repeat yourself?”
“Yeah,” said the blue-face pirate who had accompanied him throughout most of the book. “I’d like the whorehouse, too. I'm adult. It's been a while.”
“Is a whorehouse even appropriate for a young adult book?” I asked.
They were already stomping ahead of me. “Your editor will love it,” they called back.
So before I really knew what was happening, my characters barged through the whorehouse, looking around with wide-eyed wonderment, giving each other advice on how to behave (and not to kiss the women with sores on their lips), sniffing with disapproval, and generally having the time of their lives as they hunted down the used-boat salesman for ten pages.
They do that sometimes, one’s characters. Sometimes their rationales for running amok aren’t very well justified. At other times, though, they have the right instincts. I think they did, here. Any town can have a seedy tavern. In a port town catering to adventurers and freebooters, however, a nice, grimy whorehouse really can set the mood, plus it gives one’s cast a chance to sound off and show themselves for what they really are—prudes, libertines, or something in between.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Show that I No Longer Understand
Whenever I watch Lost these days, the experience is a little something like this:
Then, as it cuts to a commercial, I’ll sigh and say, “I don’t understand this show.”
“Me neither,” the Mont will reply. Then we’re into the plot again.
Another commercial. “I don’t understand this show,” I’ll murmur.
And I really haven’t understood Lost at all for the last three seasons. Week after week I watch it, through shocking revelation after shocking revelation, and though I have a vague grasp of the plot—I think it has something to do with them needing to go back to the island—I honestly couldn’t summarize in a succinct way where the show has been or where it might be going.
There are frustrations. I get a little bit baffled at how characters who weren’t introduced until last season are allowed to carry so much of the story now, while good characters like Juliet get to tromp around in the background with an air of “What the hell. I don’t know what’s going on, either.” A lot of the show’s mythology has gotten so complicated that it takes a flow chart or a real Lost-o-phile to get any of the nuances. Flaming arrows, nuclear weapons, time travel, hidden relationships, mysterious figures . . . Lost is so chock-a-block with them that I feel a little bit desensitized when the Next Really Important Thing happens. Explosions? Groovy, but I’ve seen them before. Strangers with guns? Oh, that’s so Season Two. Secret Dharma Initiative installations? Well duh!
I no longer understand the show. But I let it all wash over me and don’t worry about making sense of it all. It’s an enjoyable enough ride, so long as I don’t examine too closely what makes it go.
KATE: They can’t take my son!
HUGO: Where are the Fritos, dude?
BEN: We have to go back to the island.
CHARLOTTE: I have a headache.
DANIEL: How is your headache?
CHARLOTTE: I still have a headache. Why are you looking at me like that? Do you know what’s happening to me?
DANIEL: Yes. I mean, nuh-uh.
SAWYER: Watch out for the flaming arrows!
Then, as it cuts to a commercial, I’ll sigh and say, “I don’t understand this show.”
“Me neither,” the Mont will reply. Then we’re into the plot again.
BEN: We have to go back to the island.
RANDOM WOMAN FROM TWO SEASONS AGO: They have to go back to the island.
LOCKE: They have to come back to the island.
DESMOND: This has something to do with the island.
SOME CHICK ON A BOAT: I don’t want you to go back to the island.
HUGO: Dude, where are the Hot Pockets?
DANIEL: How is your headache?
CHARLOTTE: Wow, my head hurts. Why . . . why are you looking at me like that? Do you know something?
DANIEL: I am doing my best to convince you that the nosebleed you get every time the island transports itself through time and space has absolutely nothing to do with anything and is probably just a case of the sniffles, while I wrinkle my eyebrows in obvious worry, and this is how you repay me? With questions, woman?
CHARLOTTE: I can see in your eyes you know something.
DANIEL: Oh, that. It’s probably just a sty.
SAWYER: Duck! It’s a nuclear bomb!
Another commercial. “I don’t understand this show,” I’ll murmur.
And I really haven’t understood Lost at all for the last three seasons. Week after week I watch it, through shocking revelation after shocking revelation, and though I have a vague grasp of the plot—I think it has something to do with them needing to go back to the island—I honestly couldn’t summarize in a succinct way where the show has been or where it might be going.
There are frustrations. I get a little bit baffled at how characters who weren’t introduced until last season are allowed to carry so much of the story now, while good characters like Juliet get to tromp around in the background with an air of “What the hell. I don’t know what’s going on, either.” A lot of the show’s mythology has gotten so complicated that it takes a flow chart or a real Lost-o-phile to get any of the nuances. Flaming arrows, nuclear weapons, time travel, hidden relationships, mysterious figures . . . Lost is so chock-a-block with them that I feel a little bit desensitized when the Next Really Important Thing happens. Explosions? Groovy, but I’ve seen them before. Strangers with guns? Oh, that’s so Season Two. Secret Dharma Initiative installations? Well duh!
I no longer understand the show. But I let it all wash over me and don’t worry about making sense of it all. It’s an enjoyable enough ride, so long as I don’t examine too closely what makes it go.
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