One
of my favorite television shows ever is Lost. I quickly became addicted to trying to solve
the puzzles surrounding Jack, Kate, Locke, and the rest. I was a staunch defender when people tried to
say that it “jumped the shark” and was one of the few who loved the ending (I
could analyze it forever.).
When
S. came out, conceived by Lost producer J.J. Abrams and written by
author Doug Dorst, I was excited to dive right in and even more excited when I
saw the actual book. If I could give a 5
just for presentation, I would, for no small detail is spared with S.
From the slip jacket cover to the musty book smell, every incidental is
well thought out. A reader could get
overwhelmed with all the multicolored margin notes, footnotes, and slips of
paper inside, but I was too excited to begin to think about that.
S. is the very definition
of a multifaceted reading experience.
There is the story itself, The
Ship of Theseus, but there is also a story in the margins about a budding
literary relationship. Combine that with
the editor’s manuscript footnotes and all the extras inside, and there is a
whole lot to read. There is also quite a
bit of disagreement on how to read it; some say read the story, then the first
colored notes, then the second colored notes, etc., but I read it all at
once. And I wonder if that was my
problem. I quickly realized that, much
like some aspects of Lost, there were
parts to S. that made no sense or
puzzles that were left unanswered.
However, unlike Lost, I found
myself not really caring about either the main story or the side story and just
wanted to be finished with it already. A
book shouldn’t be a chore to pick up; Abrams and Dorst should have concentrated
less on the gimmicks and more on the meat.
