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Post by Dante on Apr 13, 2014 13:42:44 GMT -5
I remember commenting a long time ago that in TRR Lemony does not seem to recognise the difference between amphibians and reptiles; toads appear among the 'reptiles' at Dr Montgomery's house. Clearly he is now making up for this. (A similar case is David Lodge: in Changing Places he has identical twins of opposite sexes; in the sequel, Small World, he has a character commenting on how absurd it is to think there could be identical twins of opposite sexes.) Perhaps someone pointed this out to him... although if I were so inclined, I would suggest that Monty knows full well that not all of his creatures are covered by the discipline of herpetology, but is keeping them largely because he likes them. (And on the subject of authors correcting themselves, I believe Agatha Christie made a similar admission regarding the size of a blowpipe.) I don't know if I would say "innocent," but yes indeed, this is the sort of thing I'd like to read Lemony Snicket for. Speaking as somebody who was plugging for The End to include a fake Chapter Thirteen and ending.
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Post by The Duchess on Apr 14, 2014 13:41:50 GMT -5
I thought about ordering this book for my (how fitting) 13th birthday, but my library just got it. I can't believe this book made me ask more questions than all ASOUE. I will post my remarks later. About the cases: I thought they will be more of a encyclopedia brown style suitable for little kids, but I like it that way better. I managed to solve only about four suspicious incidents so far.
Inside Job- I thought her name was supposed to be Colette. Why did he change it? Pinched creature- so parcheesi is a bit like the game Trouble. And now we can be sure that Dr. Orwell is not Moxie's mother. And that she is also much older than Olaf (if the optometrist is actually Georgina Orwell.)
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Post by Dante on Apr 14, 2014 14:17:25 GMT -5
Duchess, may I please request you not post several times in a row within twenty-four hours? Please use the Modify button; thank you. It pads out the forum a bit otherwise. Inside Job- I thought her name was supposed to be Colette. Why did he change it? A few theories have been raised; it's possible that the reference to ASoUE in the use of the name Colette was completely accidental, and he removed it as it was meaningless. Or he did intend it as a reference but then realised it wasn't really doing anything for the character, unlike, say, Kevin Old, who is at least implied to be ambidextrous. It's a bit baffling, though... but so too is the renaming of the book itself. I still say that File Under: Suspicious Incidents (no 13) was the better title, and it's also clearly the intended title which the intro page makes the most sense in conjunction with.
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Post by bandit on Apr 14, 2014 16:21:39 GMT -5
Pinched creature- so parcheesi is a bit like the game Trouble. No, it's like backgammon.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 14, 2014 16:24:47 GMT -5
I don't know Trouble. Parcheesi, I believe, is the game which in Britain we call Ludo. It never struck me as being very like backgammon, but I can see that at some level of abstraction it is.
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Post by Dante on Apr 15, 2014 2:16:27 GMT -5
Parcheesi, Trouble, Ludo and backgammon are all very alike to me, in that I've never played them and don't know how to.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 15, 2014 15:14:22 GMT -5
So I've finished reading this for the first time. Just a few immediate thoughts:
1. Has anyone spotted who Lois Dressing really is?
2. I think it's significant that the message in 'Nervous Wreck' has twenty-six words, thirteen of which are crossed out.
3. There are a lot more absentee and inactive parents in this book. It's striking, especially in he light of the title of the next book, how many children are working (and don't seem to see this as a problem). Some have one present and active parent, but none seem to have two. Except one - Stew Mitchum. Um.
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Post by Dante on Apr 15, 2014 16:06:22 GMT -5
1. Has anyone spotted who Lois Dressing really is? I'd be embarrassed if this was an ASoUE reference and I didn't get it. Is she... this? Good eye; that makes the joke of the message's lack of significance even funnier. I think all the absent parents and working children are... well, partly it's a theme of the series, but I also think it's partly a sign of how broken it is. The usual rules of reality and society have been suspended and all of these children have to fend for themselves, to a certain extent.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 15, 2014 16:16:24 GMT -5
1. Has anyone spotted who Lois Dressing really is? I'd be embarrassed if this was an ASoUE reference and I didn't get it. Is she... this? No, it's not an ASOUE reference. And I must admit I hadn't heard of Louis Dressing, though as it's for seafood I suppose it is vaguely appropriate. Think rather of Nabokov and Kornbluth.
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Post by The Duchess on Apr 15, 2014 20:39:40 GMT -5
Some more notes: I think that the figure in fog was Ellington Feint, and that Seth thinks that too. But why was the solution to Three Suspects so easy? Even Bad Joke was less confusing than the rest of the "solutions".
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Post by Dante on Apr 16, 2014 2:40:26 GMT -5
But why was the solution to Three Suspects so easy? There are a few reasons. The first is because it's a joke story. You're meant to spend the entire time suspecting something complicated and unexpected and asking yourself if the solution can really be as obvious as it's suggested to be, even down to the solution's title being "Very Obvious," and the punchline is that it is - whereas right up to the solution I was expecting something like "the second brother was wearing an apron to cover blueberry stains on his own shirt." The second reason is because it's pushing the format. If you've ever read The Puzzling Puzzles, you have to understand that Lemony Snicket can't take puzzles entirely seriously, and so he can't write a virtual puzzle book like this without playing with the story-and-solution formula. "Three Suspects" and "Figure in Fog" take the format to its logical extreme - one where the puzzle's answer is unbelievably obvious, and the other where there simply isn't an answer at all. So the book covers the full breadth of possible jokes at the formula's expense.
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Post by Hermes on Apr 16, 2014 8:00:39 GMT -5
I agree that Seth thinks it is Ellington.
As to who it really is - I think its being Ellington might be a bit of a problem, because if L does meet her again at this point that would surely have to come into the next book of the main series. L does make one other suggestion - that it's an associate of his (from VFD, I take it), which would of course fit what happens in the thirteenth chapters of other books. And there's a reference to root beer floats, which might make us think of a particular associate.
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Post by The Duchess on Apr 16, 2014 8:36:45 GMT -5
It seems that Lemony thinks about Ellington all the time and is so charmed by her that he forgot Beatrice. But it might be her too.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Apr 16, 2014 9:29:07 GMT -5
I think the way you interpret "Last Word" also affects whether you think the figure in the fog is Ellington, and vice versa. Aside from it being easy to assume the figure in the fog to be Ellington after having read ATWQ so far, this implication is further suggested by "Last Word," where her name fits the blanks, and Lemony calling out for the figure (it's not said which name he calls) would actually be the last piece of spoken word in the book. But "Last Word" could also be unrelated to whoever's name Lemony called out, and in fact not even a name at all (Abandoned? Bombinate? Biohazard? Blackmail? Checkmate?).
I also like how Handler kind of foreshadowed the fill-in-the-blanks thing to Sherry Ann regarding the third crime.
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Post by Dante on Apr 16, 2014 15:06:42 GMT -5
For my part, I think that there is no canon answer to the identity of the Figure In Fog - but if there was, it'd be Ellington. Note that it being Ellington and Lemony pursuing her does not guarantee a subsequent successful meeting; ?3 could get away without ever mentioning it, or with Snicket simply mentioning that he thought he had seen her in the fog one time. Although the chronological positioning of File Under may not be straightforward; there are a couple of moments where I wonder if it's already aware of the events of ?3. I also like how Handler kind of foreshadowed the fill-in-the-blanks thing to Sherry Ann regarding the third crime. If that was a genuine connection to File Under - what an incredible man. Any minor circumstance can become a self-reference.
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