Regarding Sawyer's book: The girlfriend caught a glimpse of her silent movie idol Louise Brooks on the cover. Google tells us it's called The Invention of Morel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Morel

Takes place on an island; main character is a fugitive. Interesting, no?

"For example, fans of the video game Myst believe this novel is one of its sources of inspiration, while the plot of the episode "Dave" from the television program Lost mirrors one of fugitive's theories--that he is on a psychiatric hospital dreaming he is on an island."

The plot summary makes for interesting reading....


He comes up with all sort of theories about what is happening on the island, but finds out the truth when Morel tells the tourists he has been recording their actions of the past week with a machine of his invention capable of reproducing reality. He claims the recording will capture their souls, and through looping they will relive that week forever and he will spend eternity with the woman he loves. Although Morel doesn't mention her by name, the fugitive is sure he is talking about Faustine.

After hearing that the people recorded on previous experiments are dead, one of the tourists guesses correctly they will die, too. The meeting ends abruptly as Morel leaves in anger. The fugitive picks up Morel's cue cards and learns the machine keeps running because the wind and tide feed it with an endless supply of kinetic energy. He understands that the phenomena of the two suns and two moons are a consequence of what happens when the recording overlaps reality--one is the real sun and the other one represents the sun's position at recording time. The other strange things that happen on the island have a similar explanation.

He imagines all the possible uses for Morel's invention, including the creation of a second model to resurrect people. Despite this he feels repulsion for the "new kind of photographs" that inhabit the island, but as time goes by he accepts their existence as something better than his own. He learns how to operate the machine and inserts himself into the recording so it looks like he and Faustine are in love, even though she might have slept with Alec and Haynes. This bothers him, but he is confident it won't matter in the eternity they will spend together. At least he is sure she is not Morel's lover.

Thanks for the plot summary. "... the recording overlaps reality..." Whoa.

sounds kind of like another time loop reference

Sorry if this has been mentioned. I was wondering if anyone knew what book Sawyer was reading right before Hurley put Xanadu on. I can't tell from the screen cap I have.

It was The Invention of Morel by Adollfo Casares

Cool, thanks!

Sawyer gets from the "reading club" the book "The invention of Morel"
There's a screencap in:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_v13Tp-eefAY/R780ezJRDXI/AAAAAAAABaA/YO5g2JRaYuA/s1600-h/lost404egg_book.jpg

"The invention of Morel" is about a fugitive that escapes to an island(!), known by being infected by a disease in the past(!), killing everyone there.

Besides their appearance and the relevance for the series, I STRONGLY recommend all of you to read it before discussing, and Borges' "Ficciones" (an anthology of short stories) too. "Morel" is a short novel, beautifully written (I didn't read the English translation, but assuming it has only the "acceptable losses", it will keep the great work of Bioy-Casares) and, to discuss the connection with the Island, some spoilers must be told. About "Ficciones" some GREAT SPOILERS WILL BE TOLD, so I recommend again reading it before. These books diserve that.

Adolpho Bioy-Casares (1914-1999), the author, belongs to a specific group of distinguished Argentine writers that worked in fantastic narratives and enigmatic plots. He and his contemporaries Raúl Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges were one of the greatest acquisitions to the world literature in past century. There's a book of Cortázar that can be read in any order, it has like 200 chapters of a few pages each, and he recommends an order of reading different from the linear (!).

Jorge Luis Borges, the closiest friend of Bioy-Casares, published an antology of his own short stories called "Ficciones". And the appearance of "...Morel" in LOST made me think of and strange semantic-crossover envolving 3 of the stories -

"The Library of Babel"
"The Circular Ruins"
"The Garden of Forking Paths"

- and the essence of the relevant discussion in"Morel" to the series, that is the perception of reality and the passing of Time, in which Time is devorating us, making our souls and the our "lives" (=path) to turn into the same thing.

. "The Library of Babel" is a metaphor of the universe, like an infinite library, made (at least most of them) in a certain format (number of pages, lines and columns) and size, with the same number of characters, and using only 25 signs: 23 letters, stop and comma. All possible books made of that "pattern" are in there. I got (using logarithms) an estimative to the number of books, using this information - it's about 10e1800000 . The number of particles in the universe is about 10e80, as an example of the unthinkable meaning of this quantity. [ Me and some friends use to play in naming some of the books that are in there (considering it has ALL the possible books), like "Dreams of everyone that lived in Earth, vol. 2378848584 - John Smith", "Meaning of life, by Jesus", "All the things I did since I was born, in 2344 volumes", and all of them in all the languages known, and in all imaginary languages, and etc].

"The Circular Ruins" is about a man who discovers, in an island, alone, that he's only a dream of another man, in somewhere, with much more metaphysics and beauty than this text I wrote. He dreams every night of another man, each one he puts some more "essence" in that man, until he appears to be complete.

"The Garden of the Forking Paths" is a "policial" story about an ancient chinese manuscript in which the protagonist appears to be dead at chapter 2, and in chapter 3 he's getting married, and etc, but it wasn't "flashbacks", the character looks like to be going (mostly, at least) in the same direction of us in Time, but the facts doesn't match at all - and the "detective" (narrator) concludes it's a metaphor of the different possibilities of time and the effects of our choices, putting parallel realities together to show how Time works and our possibility of intervention in this process.

They are like 3 simultaneous acts of LOST:

"Ruins" is the illusion in the Subject itself (perception of Time)
"Garden" is the static structure of Time
"Babel" is the dynamic structure of Time

All the 3 "stages" are in parallel, are the "same thing" in a reduction, and the episodes play along their "crashes".

When the Old Lady talks to Desmond about course-correcting, she says that some "paths" must be taken instead of another, and that one is just a few part of the infinite possibilities of Time, at the same ratio of the books that are just an aleatory spit of characters and the books that "mean" something, by example.

I'll put that on the to do list for spring break. I would read them now but i got to worry about mid-terms :eek2:

I bet they will put some reference to Borges in next episodes. It's impossible not to know him if you read Bioy-Casares.

I'm gonna read this book i love the story!
But i couldn't buy it last time, it wasn't available so i bought VALIS instead who also appears in this episode....i read 1/3 of the book and it's really good too...and very lost-type! lol
To come back to this book..i think the machine who reproduce reality could fit with what happened in lost... and there's also the same idea in VALIS at one point so it must be an idea that the scenarists wants us to take in account!
(sorry for my english...i would have writen an extract of the book to show you but i'm french and i wrote the book in french so... lol )

Jorge Luis Borges, the closiest friend of Bioy-Casares, published an antology of his own short stories called "Ficciones". And the appearance of "...Morel" in LOST made me think of and strange semantic-crossover envolving 3 of the stories -

"The Library of Babel"
"The Circular Ruins"
"The Garden of Forking Paths"

Not sure how this might relate, but the mention of these stories reminded me of Danilo Kis' Encyclopedia of the Dead. Worth a read. Kis, from what I understand was also a friend to Borges.

I recognised Louise Brooks instantly too - and we're back to Pandora's Box again (the name of a film in which she starred) John spoke to Hurley about it during the trip back from the Black Rock.

Just another chocolate egg - or an I missing something?