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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 21, 2016 18:44:00 GMT -5
Lemony has all these romantic letters from different time periods, so why do you think that he doesn't include letters from the older and dead Beatrice?
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Post by Dante on Sept 22, 2016 1:53:41 GMT -5
Because that would have confused the structure of the book. The letters are from two people only: Lemony Snicket, and the younger Beatrice Baudelaire. Adding in the older Beatrice would have muddied the waters unnecessarily.
You see, to a certain extent, the structure of the book is intended to create confusion about the chronology of the letters. They're intended to superficially appear like an exchange between two people, when in fact they're occurring in totally different time periods and not in joint sequence, just in individual sequence. But each set of letters is, crucially, telling a different story: Lemony's letters are telling a story about the past, and Beatrice's about the future. Adding in the older Beatrice's letters would not only dilute the future element of the story, but would also be redundant because Lemony's letters are designed to tell us all we need to know about the past.
It's also possible, within the fiction of the universe, that Lemony no longer has the older Beatrice's letters. It's somewhat strange that he only possesses the letters that he sent, rather than the ones he received; this suggests that, after the breakup between him and Beatrice, they returned each other's letters (with the final telegram bouncing back unreceived).
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 22, 2016 7:27:59 GMT -5
But why do you think he mentions getting both the first Beatrice's letters and the second B's letters? What could he mean since he says that multiple times in his note to the Editor? (Isn't this book so fascinating?) And then the younger Beatrice mentions she has a letter collection? I think in BB to LS #2
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Post by Dante on Sept 22, 2016 8:51:17 GMT -5
I recall that that is something we've puzzled over before, but it's possible that when he refers to the first Beatrice's letters he means the ones which he sent to Beatrice - which are, in a sense, as much Beatrice's letters as ones sent by her. The letter collection in BB to LS #2 is probably the older Beatrice's letters (i.e. the LS to BB half of the book). Disclaimer: TBL is kind of finicky to get out of my shelf so I haven't actually checked it for these references.
Also it just occurred to me to wonder why all of these TBL threads are in The Gloom Looms rather than Anguished Appendices, so I'm going to move them. You should get a PM about this.
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Post by gliquey on Sept 22, 2016 15:50:29 GMT -5
Hang on a second - I don't have my copy of The Beatrice Letters with me, so I can't check, but I was not under the impression that TBL was a collection of letters made in-universe by a character. I remember there is a Kind Editor's note at the back (the 13th and final letter, after six by Lemony and six by Young Beatrice), but I don't remember if it was from Lemony. If so, does this mean the entire book was compiled by Lemony? What is the explanation for the hidden message "BEATRICE SANK" - is Lemony lying in TE when he says he doesn't know what happened to the Baudelaires after they leave the island? Or has he gained new information since he published TE? I had always assumed "BEATRICE SANK" was nothing more than a clue for Handler, and that there was no in-universe explanation for why twelve letters by Lemony and Young Beatrice had been accumulated and published together. I'm not even sure if it is clear that Lemony actually received Young Beatrice's letters.
Anyway, from a real life perspective, as Dante says, I think the fact we get Lemony's letters to Beatrice [calling her Old Beatrice seems rude] and Young Beatrice's letters to Lemony has three reasons:
(1) intentional confusion - the plot twist is when the reader realises there are actually two separate Beatrices, and especially to those who read it before TE (as it was published before TE), this should be quite a shocking realisation. The whole point of the work, in my opinion, is to ask more questions than it answers, just like TUA [The Unauthorized Autobiography] does, and although I think most readers should eventually realise that there are two different Beatrices, this adds to the confusion.
(2) it feels more symmetric and aesthetically pleasing - we shouldn't get letters from Beatrice to Lemony if we don't get letters from Lemony to Young Beatrice, and were there letters from all four parties to one another it would be maybe a bit too complicated.
(3) to avoid redundancy: we can imply quite a bit from the way the letters, especially Lemony's (I think, based on my admittedly poor memory), follow on from previous ones we don't get to see. In particular, when Lemony responds to the 13 questions Beatrice asks him, some of these were written by Handler as a joke because there's no way we can possibly guess what the answers mean (I believe there was a sequence of "Yes."/"No." answers somewhere - it's a shame I don't have my copy with me), but other answers make sense even without the question: his answer to question nine makes it quite clear that Beatrice asked him "Why do you love me?" or "How can you love me?" or some similar variation to this.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 22, 2016 16:30:10 GMT -5
The letter to the editor, though not signed, is certainly from Lemony: there's 'because I loved her so much', and also the reference to him looking at the sonnet in a glass case, which young B saw him do. And he does refer to his setting out to collect the letters and the accompanying ephemera. (This also means, by the way, that we don't need to think he had the letters from him to Beatrice senior all the time: he may have found them in an archive somewhere.) I don't think, though, that we need suppose he is responsible for the anagram; that is something outside the story, visible only to the reader.
On the other hand, after meeting young B it's hard to suppose he does not know that Beatrice sank: and the poster shows relics of the sinking collected in what seems to be his cave. What he does not know, I take it, is whether the Baudelaires survived the sinking: if B did, they may have done as well, but there's no way to be sure.
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Post by Dante on Sept 22, 2016 16:36:11 GMT -5
I know that you don't have your copy of TBL with you, but when you can next lay hands on it, you should really revisit the Kind Editor letter. The problem of the hidden message, though, I think applies regardless, but considering the ambiguity and non-linearity of the anagram, I think it's more of a... cosmic coincidence, if you like.
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Post by B. on Sept 22, 2016 16:47:23 GMT -5
Title of this thread is absolutely classic.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 23, 2016 7:28:42 GMT -5
I know that you don't have your copy of TBL with you, but when you can next lay hands on it, you should really revisit the Kind Editor letter. The problem of the hidden message, though, I think applies regardless, but considering the ambiguity and non-linearity of the anagram, I think it's more of a... cosmic coincidence, if you like. What do you mean? Any extra details would be awesome. Title of this thread is absolutely classic. My threads, or do you mean other threads just like this one?
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Post by Dante on Sept 23, 2016 8:39:34 GMT -5
I know that you don't have your copy of TBL with you, but when you can next lay hands on it, you should really revisit the Kind Editor letter. The problem of the hidden message, though, I think applies regardless, but considering the ambiguity and non-linearity of the anagram, I think it's more of a... cosmic coincidence, if you like. What do you mean? Any extra details would be awesome. Alright, how can I put this... Well, to start with, TBL is about the search for meaning. Actually, no, I should back up a bit first and point out, just in case anyone's unclear about what I meant about the ambiguity and non-linearity of the anagram, that the hidden message in TBL is a jumble of letters which spell out nothing in either the order presented or in chronological order. They come from a semi-random selection of letters to and from different people, sent decades apart in time. So there is no way, canonically, the hidden message can have been in any way "intended" by any of the characters who unwittingly contributed it; the hidden letters are rarely even actual letters at all but are shapes which we can interpret as letters. The process of identifying the letters and arranging them into a message which makes sense - and let's not forget that there's long been disagreement as to whether there might be more intended answers than just BEATRICE SANK - mirrors the process of interpreting the book. You have this jumble of pieces of correspondence, presented as if forming a single chain between two people, which actually relate to separate individuals with the same initials who were never even alive at the same time. To understand the story that the book is trying to tell us, we have to mentally sort the letters into different orders that make more sense than the order they are presented in, selectively identifying some plot threads as meaningful and others as red herrings. At the same time, the characters in the stories are pursuing each other, asking each other questions, trying to communicate and understand each other. So the idea of solving the anagram is the same as the process of properly reading the story and also similar to the actions of the characters within the story itself (or stories themselves). And when the facts align just right, when a promising order of events appears, then meaning appears from that order. What I'm suggesting is that the fact that you can put these unintended, concealed initials hidden in a set of letters which on a purely technical level have nothing to do with each other into an order which causes a meaningful and accurate message to appear is, on a level of literary construction, a metaphor for the process of reading TBL, and, in-universe, a coincidence which Lemony is drawing attention to through his selection of these letters specifically as an example of an underlying order to the seemingly random and chaotic flow of history.
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Post by lorelai on Sept 23, 2016 12:49:52 GMT -5
I absolutely agree about the metaphor of the anagram letters, which is utterly fitting with Lemony's line "With you away, it is as if all the letters in my life are scrambled into an anagram, and I will not be able to put all the letters in order and make sense of anything until you return." (LS to BB 4, page 42). In order to make sense of one last mystery to fulfill his vow, he must mentally return to Beatrice in a more direct way than he has while writing the series, and another Beatrice must not only return to the city, as her namesake was going to do some years ago when that quote from the letter was penned, but return to a loved one, even if that loved one has not acknowledged her yet. Granted, that's all an exstrapelation, but I like the extra bit of cymitry. Now, to address an earlier question about Lemony mentioning the first Beatrice's letters (since I have my book): the passage involving letters is, "it was quite some time before I received the first of Beatrice Baudelaire's letters that I realized that all of Beaatrice Baudelaire's letters could be found not just in the first Beatrice Baudelaire but in the second Beatrice Baudelair and that perhaps if I gathered the remaining letters of the first Beatrice Baudelair with the first letters of the remaining Beatrice Baudelaire, then the Beatrice letters could explain the Beatrice letters and even the letters of Beatrice, no matter which letters they are, and no matter what order the letters are in." (Editor letter, page 77 and 78). Now, the first thing you have to realize (apart from how loooong it takes Lemony to use commas) is that this sentence is meant to confuse, and letters can ither mean corrispondence, or letters of the alphabet, and Lemony seems to be flipping back and forth between meanings. When he talks about receiving letters, I think he means his niece's writings, but to say her writings could be "found" in both his niece and the woman he loved doesn't make sense. Sure, maybe they used some similar expressions, but as stated above, we're talking about two different time periods, and their only true common link is Lemony. However if we take into the account that Lemony has compiled this book to explain (among other things) that the Beatrice BOAT sank, which would take into consideration the "found" letter-shaped images and emphasized real letters visually present (and presented) in his written letters to Beatrice the first and Beatrice the second's letters to him, that's One piece of this long sentence solved. the section where we have "remaining letters" is now refering to writings of both the late and living Beatrices, and now we enter into the truly confusing part, because the repetitions of "the Baeatrice letters" could not only apply to the definition of the word letters, but also makes us think of the book's title. I think this bit can be individually interpretted, especially when it comes to whether any of the mentions of "the B letters" are referencing the title, but he does seem to be using both definitions of letter, since no matter what order you read the written letters in you receive the anagram, and no matter what order you read the written letters infor their content, you get more pieces of the life of B the first, and the life of B the second explained--which would "even explain the letters of Beatrice" because it works no matter what definition of letters you're using. Also, if Beatrice and Lemony did return their letters to each other after the breaking off of the engagement, I can see her kkeeping her replies in either of the two wooden boxes that protected the little box with the R ring, which would have meant they burned in the fire.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 25, 2016 14:35:19 GMT -5
What I'm suggesting is that the fact that you can put these unintended, concealed initials hidden in a set of letters which on a purely technical level have nothing to do with each other into an order which causes a meaningful and accurate message to appear is, on a level of literary construction, a metaphor for the process of reading TBL, and, in-universe, a coincidence which Lemony is drawing attention to through his selection of these letters specifically as an example of an underlying order to the seemingly random and chaotic flow of history. It strikes me that this is very reminiscent of Nabokov, an author we know DH admires: 'topsy-turvical coincidence, Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense. Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind Of correlated pattern in the game'. Regarding the anagram: I think there is a second anagram, as Lemony's words in the letter to the editor strongly suggest (though this is a clue for us, which no one in the book can see). The main possibilities seem to be A BRAE SNICKET, A SNICKET BRAE and (my favourite) CASKET IN BRAE. (It may also be that the characters in the book are sending secret messages we can't see, not having enough information - this would explain some of the misprints, which look like clues, but have never produced anything that would be a satisfactory message.)
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Post by Teleram on Sept 25, 2016 14:43:53 GMT -5
Title of this thread is absolutely classic. My threads, or do you mean other threads just like this one? I'm not Trouble, but I think it's safe to assume she just found the title of this specific thread (that being "The Beatrice Letters...why are they all from the young one?" to be amusing. She was likely just being facetious and I wouldn't be to concerned about it if I were you You know what, I'm not quite sure if I understand your post, isandthebooks. What on earth do you mean by "other threads just like this one"? Trouble actually said the words "this thread" in her post. She never referred to "isandthebooks's threads" or "threads similar to this one". She just said the words "this thread". I don't know why you are so confused about this.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 25, 2016 18:09:27 GMT -5
I'm not Trouble, but I think it's safe to assume she just found the title of this specific thread (that being "The Beatrice Letters...why are they all from the young one?" to be amusing. She was likely just being facetious and I wouldn't be to concerned about it if I were you You know what, I'm not quite sure if I understand your post, isandthebooks. What on earth do you mean by "other threads just like this one"? Trouble actually said the words "this thread" in her post. She never referred to "isandthebooks's threads" or "threads similar to this one". She just said the words "this thread". I don't know why you are so confused about this. ...I wanted more clues...and my username starts with an L, lowercase lol I think you responding that way is strange though. Which reminds me that in one thread, someone pointed out how the I in the Beatrice Letters, could be seen as an L, if you counted the shadow in the pic! But what anagram could that be? It's repeated over and over in that book, that one letter can change everything.
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Post by Dante on Sept 26, 2016 5:14:08 GMT -5
Well, if you take "I" out of the anagram, that eliminates Beatrice, Snicket, and Kit in any arrangement you could produce. It also means that you're starting to run low on vowels - especially if you want one of your leftover words to be BRAE or BEAR. BRAE LACKS NET, perhaps? I'm not certain that it's a productive theory; if the shadow had been inclined in the opposite direction, perhaps, but the way it is makes it harder to read as an L. All the clue letters, I think, are oriented in the correct direction - and furthermore would be eventually identifiable as the correct clue even if you just had the letters and objects outside of their original photographic context, whereas the hairpin can only become an L under quite precise conditions. I think the emphasis on what one letter can change may simply be another way of drawing our attention to the hidden anagram - not that it was very hidden, the way the book was eventually produced, though conceivably it might have been too hidden otherwise.
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