Literary Lost

If anywhere the idea applies that in order to suck the life out of something all you have to do is overanalyze it, then it is here. When I approached the book initially — intrigued by its title — I was hoping for a reflection of what I believe New TV to be about: an extension of the novel as form. Many of the series of this new era, both good and bad, are nothing more than dramatized novels: they exist in large form, over at least dozens of hours, and contain stories which arc and which all, more or less, come together under a ur-story, the spine of the work. Deadwood, Breaking Bad, House of Cards (both the UK and US versions), and The Sopranos represent perhaps the best of the lot. It is serial storytelling, as apposed to episodic. Others — House pops most readily to mind — are a combination of the serial and the episodic, still important perhaps for the larger story, told over seasons rather than minutes.


It is to this aspect that I was hoping the book would address itself. Instead, we are offered an inane psycho–spiritual analysis of the series, using Lost's many literary allusions, direct or implied, as lenses through which to view the show. OK, this would have been an intriguing aspect in the context of a larger book, but half that would have been fine, thank you all the same. Hell, half of half that would have been too much. Ironically, the approach that the author has taken to the work leaves the book itself feeling very episodic. There is no cohesion, mere endless and exhaustive (exhausting) analysis. A reader of the book which had never experienced the series would likely find something else to watch after putting the book down.


In the end, “Lost” is not Dostoevsky. Whatever pretense to depth the series offers is just that, pretense. Saying so isn't a slight. The series writers knew what they were doing. They were telling a fun story, but doing so with the courage to extend themselves over a very long expanse of time. This is the novelist's courage, the reason that the novel as form is still relevant today. A book which addressed itself to this aspect could have been a fascinating read. Unfortunately, this is not that book.