The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien

Rating: 4/5

Lost References:

Desmond packs it up as he’s leaving the DHARMA Swan hatch.

There are a bunch of similarities, but these are the big ones…

• AFTERLIFE/TIME/ETERNITY: Apparently, eternity can be reached through a church in either universe, and it takes people a while to realize that they’re dead.
• BLACK AIR: The book frequently references a (fictional) physicist/philosopher named de Selby who has a lot of crazy theories. One is about “black air” produced by volcanic activity, which creates night. The Island, of course, has its own black smoke problem.
• THE BLACK BOX: (No, not the black box from an airplane.) The main character in the book is questing after this black box throughout the book, while the Losties all have other things that they’re obsessed with. The black box contains omnium, or energy, which can make anything. . It’s a bit like a metaphor Ben gave Locke.
  • Ben: What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be?
• THE BUNKER: As in the Swan hatch, the novel has a bunker where two men must keep strange equipment closely monitored. As it turns out, they don’t have to; it’s just another guy messing with them, which is one thing that Desmond thinks as he’s pushing the button in the hatch in Lost.
• CRIME: The main character is a robber/murderer, and the majority of the book takes place in a police station or around police, while Lost is packed with cops and criminals.
• NAMES: The main character doesn’t know his name, though he puts some effort into coming up with one. On the Island, there are plenty of aliases going around, and there’s the Man in Black who’s never given a name.

Thoughts:

For a heavily metaphysical book about a murder in hell, this was a surprisingly comfortable read. It’s hard to say more than that, except that I laughed a bit and that I’ll never look at bicycles the same way again.

Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Rating: 3/5

Lost References:

Ilana has a Cyrillic edition of this book; Hurley finds it after her death. Thematically, it’s about suffering, and it touches on the free will vs. predestination debate. Also, the philosopher Rousseau is referenced (the one Lost’s French woman is named after).

Thoughts:

I’ve read some of Dostoyevsky’s short stories before, but remember enjoying them more than this novella. (I’m afraid I’m just not a fan of existentialism.) As in Notes, he sketched characters so vividly and realistically (flaws and all) that I have to admire him for that. Also as in Notes, he doesn’t always trouble himself with much plot, but that’s easier to get away with in a short story. Here, the first half of the book was taken up with a philosophical essay, and even after that was over, the narrator still did a lot of musing. I think I’ll take a break from Dostoyevsky before diving into The Brothers Karamazov, though I hear it has more of a story line.