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Post by Dante on Feb 23, 2014 14:59:53 GMT -5
I don't think it's deliberately ambiguous as to whether the town is Stain'd or not, unfortunately; it seems too populous. It'd have to be pre-ATWQ Stain'd. But there's definitely some self-reference going on there. Fun fact: I had to revise my review shortly after posting it after learning somewhere that the original version of the story had been written since 1993.
Will the book be appearing in the U.K. at some point? I personally doubt it; it's a McSweeney's production, and I don't think those really get across here. With that said, I found it perfectly orderable, though slow, from Amazon.co.uk.
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Post by Hermes on Feb 23, 2014 15:51:25 GMT -5
I don't think it's deliberately ambiguous as to whether the town is Stain'd or not, unfortunately; it seems too populous. It'd have to be pre-ATWQ Stain'd. Though FU13SI also seems to make it more populous than we imagined. In which case perhaps it is the inspiration for Stain'd.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Mar 18, 2014 7:01:54 GMT -5
I've read this now, inspired partly by Dante's and bandit's reviews, and while I agree the setting has a Stain'd-esque atmosphere, I don't think it takes place there. There would need to be something concrete to indicate it, and there are no such landmarks (well, there is a black cat). I don't think I would have noticed the duskjacket map myself until much later, but it's very clever. When you slide it off it appears to have a standard background except that the image is upside down, inkeeping with the book's theme of questioning the slightly-out-of-ordinary. Perhaps more stylistic than a callback as such, myth #10 reads "A woman went in once and came out fifteen minutes later wearing the exact same outfit." Isn't there something similar in the UA introduction? I'm most fascinated by the final myth: "People get sick all the time, but nobody gets better because of the Swinster Pharmacy." The Pharmacy doesn't heal anyone - the medication they may or may not sell does? In any case, I feel the final part of the "official" review merits repeating; indeed, it's one of the major reasons I continue to enjoy Snicket's work. We’ve all passed by without a second glance the odd small and unobtrusive store in the street, but Snicket and Brown encourage us to look at them again from another perspective – to find something wonderful and mysterious in what’s ordinary, to think about what makes even the most normal of places tick in its own unique way. Likewise, 29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy may be a short book, but it’s worth stopping to take a look, and to wonder – and to keep on wondering, long after you’ve moved on and it has passed out of sight.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 14, 2014 9:20:27 GMT -5
Some reactions to the book, now that I have it - Myths 1-13. Spoilers not only for 29 Myths but for other recent books. 1. The first myth is a bit odd, because it says 'We travelled all the way from the next town to find out what it sells', and yet it seems from other pages that the narrators live in the same town as the pharmacy.
2. Presumably when we get two fonts like this one of the narrators has corrected the other (though I don't think there was any real doubt of the meaning in this case). See also myth 4.
3. The note seems to say 'WHILE YOU WERE OUT - I'm leaving early'. I take it that 'While you were out', which doesn't fit the rest of the message, is printed.
5. 'all the arson in town' - so there is something odd going on in town (well, we know that, of course, now we know what town it is) though not necessarily in the pharmacy specifically. (It would seem to put the action of this story a bit later that WDYSHL.)
10. Here we have something very unsurprising turned into a puzzle. I take it 'What do they sell there?' is a reaction to the bag the woman is carrying - though there may be an implication of 'clearly not clothes'.
11. Is this part of the poem which one of the narrators was planning to write? It seems rather different in style from earlier remarks. In what sense does the town ache? The book on the floor would seem to be The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, in what looks like an old Penguin edition, though it may be an American equivalent. It's a book I like, though the plot is rather improbable.
13. I take it it's odd for a pharmacy to be closed at weekends? I know in old American books one comes across a place called 'the drugstore' which sells everything form hardware to ice-cream sodas, and as I understand it this happened because drugstores were the only shops that were allowed to open on Sundays.
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Post by Dante on Apr 14, 2014 11:38:16 GMT -5
11. Is this part of the poem which one of the narrators was planning to write? It seems rather different in style from earlier remarks. In what sense does the town ache? The book on the floor would seem to be The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin, in what looks like an old Penguin edition, though it may be an American equivalent. It's a book I like, though the plot is rather improbable. I actually read this book because of 29 Myths - I was also on a golden age detective fiction kick at the time. Improbable is half the point, really; I enjoyed it considerably. Trust a Snicket book to make compelling literary allusions in the illustrations.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 14, 2014 14:41:14 GMT -5
True enough - Crispin's plots are definitely surreal; it's not surprising that Snicket likes them. The bit I always remember is when our heroes are looking for a young woman who owns a small spotted dog, and they see a young woman with a large spotted dog (but 'it might have grown'), and of course she is the one they are looking for. I wondered if we would see a romance novel as well, but I can't find one. Myths 14-23. 14. This is another poetic line; clearly it's the boy speaking it this time. What the girl says can't strictly be a lie, as it's a question, but we know what he means.
18. The serpent in the Garden of Eden - a link here with The End.
20. The missing cat and dog are not surprising - indeed one might expect rather more animals to go missing in fourteen years; the goldfish, rather more so. Especially now we know what town this is.
21. An out-of-town policeman because in-town police would be too much of a giveaway?
26. This one confused me at first, but of course they are just playing at journalism, as in 24.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Apr 14, 2014 17:36:25 GMT -5
1. The first myth is a bit odd, because it says 'We travelled all the way from the next town to find out what it sells', and yet it seems from other pages that the narrators live in the same town as the pharmacy. This perplexed me also. "The next town" could merely mean the protagonists live a short while from the pharmacy, but are still, due to the title of their residency, technically visitors; however, "all the way" would seem to imply greater distance. Is there a difference between a drugstore and a pharmacy? I had taken them as more or less the same thing.
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Post by Dante on Apr 15, 2014 2:06:02 GMT -5
18. The serpent in the Garden of Eden - a link here with The End. I got very excited about this one because I managed to misread "tyre" as "tree" and thought it was constructing an even more complex idea. Nope.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 15, 2014 7:35:42 GMT -5
Is there a difference between a drugstore and a pharmacy? I had taken them as more or less the same thing. Oh yes, they are the same. What I meant is, if a pharmacy was historically the only shop that was allowed to open on Sundays, it would be particularly odd for it to be closed on Sundays. So it seems there is something odd about the pharmacy, though a lot of it seems to be the children's imagination. Myth 28 - this also seems to show that there is actually something mysterious going on. Though the visiting policeman seemed to think it was quite straightforward what they sold there. And so did the character who went there in another book (from which it emerges that they do indeed sell sodas) - he found it creepy, but not mysterious as such. From the cover, it appears that the cat is not altogether lost - and if you unfold the dust jacket, perhaps the goldfish isn't, either. The map, however, seems to suggest another theory of what happened to the goldfish. What do you make of the statue by which it is swimming? Meanwhile in the map, the fire station is flying an American flag. Does this mean that it isn't Stain'd after all? Perhaps there are parallel Swinster pharmacies existing in different worlds.
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Post by The Duchess on Apr 17, 2014 16:16:45 GMT -5
I saw the book in a bookshop today. Along with FU13, it makes Stain'd look like an almost ordinary town, even a town that should have a bit of tourism. I was in towns with less businesses. The vanished ink and sea can't be the only reason for people to leave!
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Post by Hermes on Apr 25, 2014 13:06:21 GMT -5
I tend to agree, Duchess, but I suppose it depends a bit on how big the town is; there are some indications it is really quite big, almost big enough to be called a city, and compared with that I suppose the number of businesses left may be quite small, and the town gradually emptying.
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Post by Dante on Oct 3, 2014 5:48:18 GMT -5
Fun fact: Daniel Handler's official website classifies 29 Myths as part of All the Wrong Questions.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 3, 2014 7:11:03 GMT -5
Interesting. Though it seems to me the structure of his site doesn't quite fit the reality of his work anyway: quite a lot of books that were actually published as by LS are listed in other sections (including, even more oddly, Horseradish, which I would have thought rather obviously went with ASOUE).
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Post by Dante on Oct 3, 2014 8:25:19 GMT -5
That was my consideration, too, for which reason I haven't updated my ATWQ information thread to include 29M. Nonetheless, interesting to see it promoted in that way.
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Post by bandit on Oct 3, 2014 9:06:20 GMT -5
More importantly, what's with the carrot?
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