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Post by Dante on May 2, 2009 5:35:32 GMT -5
Come one, come all, to the latest and greatest in the Great 667 Re-read of A Series of Unfortunate Events, now in its eighth week and featuring The Hostile Hospital. In this terrifying tome, we will confront the back of a van, a bundle of notes, persimmons (or are they plums?), disguises, non-existent lamps, and alphabet soup. Begin at your leisure.
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Post by cwm on May 2, 2009 9:28:29 GMT -5
Chapter One At the end of The Vile Village, the issue blaming the Baudelaires for Olaf's murder was apparently already in print. Now people seem to be receiving it for the first time.
Usually the authorities are simply referred to as just that - 'the authorities'. Here they're referred to as 'the police' for the only time in memory.
The Daily Punctilio is still believed to be 100% reliable by the general public. Or this shopkeeper at least.
The Last Chance General Store shopkeeper is one of the few characters who doesn't appear in TPP; neither does the newspaper deliveryperson. He could probably have squeezed into Chapters Ten-Thirteen somewhere; then again, he is an incredibly minor character. The entire scene in the General Store serves only to confirm that the general public believes the Baudelaires to be murderers.
The telegram the children send is ignored by Mr. Poe on the instructions of an article he read in the Daily Punctilio. TSS offers an alternative explanation - that the telegraph never arrived - but unless TUA is a forgery in some way this must be invalid. I have a theory or two to float about that but they'll wait until TSS.
Chapter Three The bearded man makes a brief return in TPP. Whether or not he is more minor than the shopkeeper is a matter for debate.
The bearded man specifically uses the name 'Library of Records', but apparently isn't aware of its existence in the hospital where he works. Then again, the singers seem to know nothing except the lyrics to their song.
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Post by Hermes on May 3, 2009 10:39:11 GMT -5
Chapter OneAt the end of The Vile Village, the issue blaming the Baudelaires for Olaf's murder was apparently already in print. Now people seem to be receiving it for the first time. It's not too surprising that it should be published in the city first, and only reach outlying districts later. (I take it Olaf had been to the city to get the copy he produces at the end of TVV). Where in TSS does this come? I guess it's a confusion by the author - he may have got the unanswered telegram mixed up with the cutting of the telephone lines, which was part of the same campaign of letters, but doesn't happen till the next book. (Of course, there's a much more straightforward explanation for Mr Poe not replying immediately - it's the middle of the night. And since the telegram was sent to the bank, it's not surprising he didn't receive it at once.)
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Post by Dante on May 3, 2009 12:32:18 GMT -5
The telegram the children send is ignored by Mr. Poe on the instructions of an article he read in the Daily Punctilio. TSS offers an alternative explanation - that the telegraph never arrived - but unless TUA is a forgery in some way this must be invalid. I have a theory or two to float about that but they'll wait until TSS. Where in TSS does this come? I guess it's a confusion by the author - he may have got the unanswered telegram mixed up with the cutting of the telephone lines, which was part of the same campaign of letters, but doesn't happen till the next book. (Of course, there's a much more straightfoward explanation for Mr Poe not replying immediately - it's the middle of the night. And since the telgram was sent to the bank, it's not suprpring he didn't receive it at once.) It comes from an offhand line of Quigley's, if I recall correctly - and I don't think it's ever been confirmed how he'd even know... something to analyse further when TSS rolls around, I think. I don't have time to do THH, but there are a couple of things I'll be pointing out in Chapters Five and Six, when you're up to that point.
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Post by Hermes on May 3, 2009 13:10:50 GMT -5
It comes from an offhand line of Quigley's, if I recall correctly - and I don't think it's ever been confirmed how he'd even know... something to analyse further when TSS rolls around, I think. So even if in real life it's a confusion by the author, in-story it looks as if we can treat it as a confusion by Quigley.
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Post by Very Funky Disco on May 3, 2009 13:29:42 GMT -5
Of course, there's a much more straightforward explanation for Mr Poe not replying immediately - it's the middle of the night. And since the telegram was sent to the bank, it's not surprising he didn't receive it at once. I was wondering about that, actually - about why exactly the Baudelaires thought that Mr. Poe would be at the bank in the middle of the night.
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Post by Dante on May 3, 2009 13:37:49 GMT -5
I'm checking THH, and the time is unclear. They've been walking all night, and dawn comes several hours after they sent their message, but page 2 says that they arrived at the store "early in the morning." I couldn't tell whether it was meant to be dark or light. There are references after they send the telegram to how "the hour grew later and later" (paraphrase, but the words are very close to that) implying that it's the evening. A whole day could've passed. Is there some really obvious reference to it being the middle of the night that I missed? I admit I skimmed slightly the bits that didn't look likely to have time references.
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Post by Hermes on May 3, 2009 13:50:36 GMT -5
I'm checking THH, and the time is unclear. They've been walking all night, and dawn comes several hours after they sent their message, but page 2 says that they arrived at the store "early in the morning." I couldn't tell whether it was meant to be dark or light. There are references after they send the telegram to how "the hour grew later and later" (paraphrase, but the words are very close to that) implying that it's the evening. A whole day could've passed. Is there some really obvious reference to it being the middle of the night that I missed? I admit I skimmed slightly the bits that didn't look likely to have time references. For once I have my copy with me, so: p. 7 'the real reason they were all by themselves in the middle of the night, standing outside the Last Chance General Store.' So 'early in the morning' I think just has to mean that it was after midnight. 'The hour grew later and later' (that's accurate) is an odd phrase, but I suppose 5 a.m is indeed later than 4 a.m. And in any case, when they arrive the storekeeper is awaiting the deliveryperson, bringing the edition of the Daily Punctilio with news of the murderers, and when they leave the deliveryperson has just arrived with that same edition - it doesn't really make sense if a day has passed.
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Post by Dante on May 3, 2009 13:59:45 GMT -5
For once I have my copy with me, so: p. 7 'the real reason they were all by themselves in the middle of the night, standing outside the Last Chance General Store.' So 'early in the morning' I think just has to mean that it was after midnight. 'The hour grew later and later' (that's accurate) is an odd phrase, but I suppose 5 a.m is indeed later than 4 a.m. And in any case, when they arrive the storekeeper is awaiting the deliveryperson, bringing the edition of the Daily Punctilio with news of the murderers, and when they leave the deliveryperson has just arrived with that same edition - it doesn't really make sense if a day has passed. Okay, perfectly acceptable to me. I didn't really think that a whole day had passed, just that that was a possible if highly improbable interpretation of the text given "the hour grew later and later." There have have been times when the Baudelaires have sat around for hours and hours, sometimes enough for one day to become another. But Handler couldn't exactly say "The hour grew earlier and earlier," so I'm fine to read it as about 3am or so. And so the answer to my question is: Is there some really obvious reference to it being the middle of the night that I missed? Yes.
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Post by liquidladylemony on May 3, 2009 15:06:03 GMT -5
Wow, I dont even remember this book. It's the one I seem to forget...
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Post by cwm on May 4, 2009 8:52:12 GMT -5
Okay, TUA provides two possible explanations - the telephone wires being cut and Mr. Poe ignoring the telegram. TSS provides a third; the fact that Mr. Poe encloses the telegram with his letter suggests that Mr. Poe ignoring the telegram is the right explanation and that Quigley is lying or mistaken. Then again, some people have theorised that TUA is a forgery...
Chapter Four Babs also contacts Hal through letters, as we see in TUA, but apparently is never seen in person. Possibly she lives in the hospital to reinforce this reclusiveness.
At one point one of the doctors refers to watching television.
Nine months, six days and fourteen hours of researching The Hostile Hospital were spent checking if Hal was a spy. Suggesting that Lemony is researching multiple chronicles of the Baudelaires' lives at once, perhaps.
'The file about the Snicket fires' - this and the list of possible titles for the autobiography Lemony dreams up in TUA are by themselves pretty strong evidence for 'Lemony is wanted for starting fires that Count Olaf started'.
Chapter Five only to find their lives wrecked by a greedy man and a lazy newspaper Suggesting that the Punctilio's inaccurate reporting played a major role in the V.F.D. schism. 'A greedy man' could be the person who started the schism - implied in TPP not to be Olaf, since the schism spanned many generations - or Olaf himself.
Sunny makes a spurious fruit salad. I notice this is not listed as her cooking something in the factfile, which is fair enough really.
The piece that just says 'fire' - is this a whole piece of paper or a fragment of a piece of paper? It apparently doesn't connect to the 'volunteer-' piece, since the Baudelaires don't manage to join it up.
Count Olaf makes his first 'appearance' in Chapter Five. If you want to count it an as appearance. If you don't, then strictly speaking the only time Olaf actually appears in this book is in the scene where they're escaping in chapter thirteen, which has to be his briefest appearance in a book.
Chapter Six they discovered something in the Library of Records of Heimlich Hospital that changed their lives forever ...Did it? Was Handler planning the Snicket file to have a completely different direction at the time, since the 'survivor of the fire' plotline goes nowhere following TSS. Perhaps he had to ditch the revelation that Olaf was the survivor of the fire outside of the RE, but even then that's not very life-changing.
If the Snicket file is so important, why don't the 'official investigators' (the sinister duo?) check that they have all 13 pages?
Chapter Seven Esme makes it pretty clear that the Baudelaires aren't expected to be found - Olaf is specifically looking for the Snicket file at the hospital. This is complicated later, but we'll get to that in a moment.
Is the Library of Records so far away from the rest of the hospital that nobody can hear? A tremendous amount of noise must be being made by the falling file cabinets. Possibly some more of Olaf's henchmen have set up some kind of barricade by the door to prevent anyone else getting in.
Chapter Eight "We have found what we were looking for." One of the complications I noted earlier. They were looking for the Snicket file, which they didn't find, the Baudelaires were simply an added bonus, so this is an incorrect statement.
Olaf refers to the Baudelaires as 'Klyde and Susie'. Apparently the corrections he was going to make at the end of TVV never materialised.
Chapter Nine Cream cheese frosting? Eew.
Let's just run through the anagrams in the list of names just because.
Linda Rhaldeen - Daniel Handler. Also appears in TUA as the author of 'The World Is Quiet Here', so possibly it's a V.F.D. codename of some kind.
Monty Kensicle - Lemony Snicket. Could also be a V.F.D. codename as it shows up in TUA, I believe.
There's a Ned H. Rirger theatre, which could be connected to this Rirger somehow.
Eriq Bluthetts - Brett Helquist
Ruth Dercroump - Rupert Murdoch
The idea that Klaus and Sunny can disguise themselves as two fully-grown women by just throwing on a surgical mask and white coat is prepostorous. It's ridiculous, stupid, idiotic, and a little bit unlikely. The book specifically points out how poor the disguises are, 'hanging a lampshade' on the idea - once a character points out how ludicrous the thing is, it's accepted by the reader.
I know, it doesn't work.
Chapter Ten
This entire plan is almost as idiotic as Klaus and Sunny's disguises. They're planning to kill Violet - then what? Is the plan to lure Klaus and Sunny to the operating theatre somehow? It doesn't seem like that - in fact, according to Esme, this isn't the plan. It's never acknowledged. Why not just snatch Violet and leave Klaus and Sunny to the authorities?
Their plan is to force Mr. Poe to give them the fortune via the orphans, then.
Are the general public really so stupid that they wouldn't realise that a girl being decapitated isn't an accident?
Was he ever referred to as 'O. Lucafont' in TRR, or is this simply a retcon since the anagram isn't quite right there?
"In my medical opinion," Klaus said, "I believe this woman has lost her mind." Great line. Just wanted to put that up there.
Chapter Twelve Pizza and chinese food are mentioned.
Chapter Thirteen Wow, the notes for Chapter Twelve were insightful, eh?
The general public really are idiots. They believe that Mattathias has 'suddenly resigned' in the middle of a fire and that Babs has instantly returned. Olaf has apparently left the hospital by this point, since he doesn't respond to this.
The Baudelaires ponder their own morality here. It'll come back later.
The Encyclopedia of Escaping Arson - a book connected to V.F.D., perhaps?
DOOBY kilometers are mentioned in the editor's letter but never elaborated on.
What is the 'thing that must under no circumstances be repaired'? Was a complete version of this letter ever written? 'Survivor of the Baudel-' indicates not.
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Post by Hermes on May 4, 2009 10:03:50 GMT -5
I do hope I get a chance to write my own comments, as this is a really fascinating book, the one where the mystery aspect of the series really gets going. No time right now, though. Thank you, cwm, for keeping us going. For the time being, a few responses. Okay, TUA provides two possible explanations - the telephone wires being cut and Mr. Poe ignoring the telegram. TSS provides a third; the fact that Mr. Poe encloses the telegram with his letter suggests that Mr. Poe ignoring the telegram is the right explanation and that Quigley is lying or mistaken. If I remember, the telephone wires are cut while the Baudelaires are on the phone at the beginning of TCC - the telephone was working when they picked it up. So this can't be the explanation of Mr Poe not answering (which doesn't mean Handler at some point didn't think it was). I think it's very improbable it's a forgery as a whole. But as a collection of documents put together in mysterious circumstances, one can't be sure how reliable each bit of it is. Don't follow this - and as it touches on one of my favourite topics, I'd like to be clear about it. Could you expand? Does it have to relate to the schism? I think it's clear that the events which led to the breakup of Lemony and Beatrice, and the false allegations against Lemony, had to do with Olaf and with the Punctilio. This is true whether or not the schism happened at the same time, as TUA suggests, or much earlier, as TPP suggests. An interesting link, though, between her earlier biting skills and her later cooking skills. Well, I would want to say that the 'survivor of the fire' plotline goes nowhere after TSS because it is resolved there; it seems to me that there is a quite coherent plotline here about false hope and the possibility of self-deception (not coherent in detail, since it's impossible to make sense of Quigley's movements, but in broad outline). I would like to think that this is already being set up in THH, with 'picturing something doesn't make it so'. But I grant that 'changed their lives for ever' doesn't quite fit that. I'll have to think some more. It's unlikely, of course, that Handler knew at this point that the official investigators were the sinister duo; but your point stands. (Actually I guess the answer is 'pages should always be clipped together'; the investigators' mistake is caused by their failure to grasp the principles of archiving. That strikes me as very Snickety.) Yes, as author of The Littlest Elf. It's an anagram of Red Herring, of course. This is sometimes taken to mean that 'Carrie E. Abelabudite' = 'Beatrice Baudelaire' is a red herring. I'm doubtful about this; I suspect it just means that the names on the list are red herrings to distract attention from Violet. I agree it's idiotic - I think, to make sense of it, it's best to suppose Olaf is gradually going mad. (And of course 'forcing Mr Poe to give them the fortune via the orphans' has already failed - that was why the marriage plot was concocted way back in book 1). However, it may be worth bearing in mind that when Esme first discovers the orphans she seems to intend to kill all of them - clearly some motive other than fortune-grabbing (revenge?) is also at work. I think it's a retcon. Well, they accepted Mattathias' story when he took over, so their idiocy was already established, I guess. I wondered that. It seems to be part of the instructions for getting the manuscript, rather than its content, so I don't think we should exepct it to be elaborated on. Accordng to the Urban Dictionary , 'dooby', while its primary meaning is a joint of cannabis, can also mean 'two'. However, 1319.5 miles is certainly not two kilometres. My suspicion is that it is a kind of placeholder - it means 'fill in correct number of ...' but I don't see why it should have that meaning.
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Post by Dante on May 4, 2009 12:10:18 GMT -5
Chapter Fiveonly to find their lives wrecked by a greedy man and a lazy newspaperSuggesting that the Punctilio's inaccurate reporting played a major role in the V.F.D. schism. 'A greedy man' could be the person who started the schism - implied in TPP not to be Olaf, since the schism spanned many generations - or Olaf himself. See my comments below, to Hermes. Actually, I never even thought about it... eh, I'm not going to add it. Sunny's burgeoning cooking skills are made more apparent in TCC, I think, and I consider that the beginning. I'm fairly sure that TSS massively retconned the intended direction of the Snicket file subplot in favour of the sugar bowl. I'll come back to this. The corrections were only going to be in the article about Dupin's supercool capture of the notorious Baudelaires. Since that never happened, the article never happens. You missed a few.Personally, I think this comes under "Rule of Funny." I found it amusing, so I accepted it. One Baudelaire less to worry about, isn't it? They don't get a great rep in the series. Yeah, I'm inclined to think that there isn't a complete version of any of these letters, and that the tantalising fragments are just that, fragments. However, one might connect it to Violet's unfinished motor-powered invention in TCC. I think it's very improbable it's a forgery as a whole. But as a collection of documents put together in mysterious circumstances, one can't be sure how reliable each bit of it is. Well, one part of it is probably a forgery. We're likely to do the U.A. next, so such suspicions can be discussed in details. It seems unlikely that Lemony devotes such a long time solely to investigating whether Hal is a spy, so cwm presumes that he is undertaking multiple investigations at the same time rather than using his time so inefficiently as to potentially lose track of vital evidence. The full quote is, "a long and terrible story about men and women who joined a noble organization only to find their lives wrecked by a greedy man and a lazy newspaper," and this suggests to me that it does indeed relate to the schism as it is apparently presented in the U.A.. Given the allusion in Chapter Five to "a volunteer organization that was swarming with corruption" as something Lemony associates with the name "Beatrice," though, it's possible the two possibilities you put forward are linked - I think TPP set the date of the schism to a significantly earlier time in history to support some of Handler's ideas in that book, and that at the time of THH and the U.A., the schism occurred within the adult lives of characters like the Snickets. In other words, the timing of the schism was retconned. This was pretty well-accepted when TPP came out. Take note: In THH, the sentence is written above the photograph. In TCC, it's written below. TSS, above. TGG, below. Not only is the placement of the sentence never the same in any two consecutive books, but its placement doesn't even make sense. If it's below the picture, one would call it a caption, and there is the suggestion therefore that the sentence is linked to the contents of the photograph. If the sentence is above the photograph, the photograph is a sort of coda that's not necessarily linked at all. Trouble is, it's inconsistent in the wrong places for this to mean anything. But I certainly don't believe that Quigley was always intended as the survivor referred to. The evidence in the U.A., Sally Sebald's letter, muddies the waters further, as that can't refer to Quigley either - or Olaf, which is my pet theory which actually makes some sense out of all this mess. It might've referred to a Baudelaire parent, but I'm not sure if a Baudelaire parent would have been intended to survive, as it seems too positive an eventuality, unless Handler had some massive change in fortunes planned... which would honestly have excited me more than Quigley, who appears in one book, acts the Marty-Stu, and then vanishes never to be useful again. Or rather, was, when there was still dispute about the identity of the Baudelaire mother; TBL changed all that. Now? I think that "red herring" is the red herring. Although, as I've noted before, I don't think it's impossible that Handler actually changed his mind on who Beatrice was - her being the Baudelaire mother was always the obvious and most popular option, maybe too much so for Handler once the series began to become more complex... he once appeared to pour cold water on the theory himself ("some truth, but not total truth"). Oh come now, it's not like he was even trying back then. It would have gotten him in trouble with the authorities, whereas the whole point of the marriage plot was to stay - just - within the law. --- A couple of points I wish to add: The TVV "Kind Editor" letter mentions "lamps mistakenly sent to Hal." These never appear in THH, making this one of the first dropped ideas - or at least, the first we can pretty much prove. Chapter Five: "This scrap says 'apartment'... and has what looks like half of a map. That might have to do with the apartment where we lived with Jerome and Esmé Squalor." One might suggest that this was drawn in response to learning of the secret passageway that the Baudelaires found the Quagmires in, since even they didn't know where they were. Alternatively, they always knew about the secret passageway (and the secret "floor above the penthouse," perhaps?), but that didn't stop them from not knowing where they were. "This page isn't ripped at all, but all it has on it is a long list of dates. It looks like something was going on every twelve weeks or so." I've never heard an explanation for this. There isn't one in the series. The most obvious one would be the dates of V.F.D. meetings, though. What else would it be? Something we don't know enough about to guess, I guess.
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Post by Hermes on May 4, 2009 13:07:23 GMT -5
I'm doubtful this is taking any less time than writing my own comments, but anyway: It seems unlikely that Lemony devotes such a long time solely to investigating whether Hal is a spy, so cwm presumes that he is undertaking multiple investigations at the same time rather than using his time so inefficiently as to potentially lose track of vital evidence. Well, you never can tell with Lemony. Sounds fair, though. Oh, I accept the retcon. I just think this passage doesn't have to be linked with the schism, and so is consistent with the TPP dating. You're taking it, I suppose, that 'men and women' refers to all the members of VFD - but it could refer to a particular group, including the Snickets and Beatrice. Certainly, I don't think the natural reading links it especially with the Baudelaire fire, but then it doesn't link it with the Quagmire fire either - if anything, it would relate it to a much earlier fire, which the Baudelaires and Snickets investigated in their youth. That would still fit the 'false hope' theme, of course. I disagree totally. (It can't refer to Quigley given his story as told in TSS, but once it's clear that Handler changes his mind as he goes along, I'm not sure that matters. We'll come to this, no doubt.) Agreed. I think he was intended to come back, at some point. I'm rather glad he didn't, though; if he had, Handler really would have been writing fanfic. I like the romantic themes, but I prefer them unfulfilled; it fits the general tone of the books better. I thought this for a while, but the more I think about it the harder I find it to sustain; the indications that she is run through the series, and if there was a change it's hard to see where it happened. It seems to me that there are numerous, subtle but clear-once-you-see-them, indications that she is, and just two indications that she is not - one of which I think is a deliberate distraction, and can be explained, and the other is a complete mystery to me. (Unless it's a forgery.) Doesn't the fact that there's a second Beatrice explain that? (Not terribly well, of course, since it remains true that the Beatrice who is referred to throughout the series and to whom all the books are dedicated is the Baudelaires' mother. But still.) But doesn't the 'forcing Mr Poe' plan imply some kind of legality anyway? If he's just going to put a gun to Mr Poe's head and say 'give me the money', he can do this with or without an orphan. Could be - I had supposed that they were dates of fires.
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Post by cwm on May 4, 2009 13:30:32 GMT -5
Awfully consistent fires. You'd think the villainous side wouldn't really care *when* they set the fire.
V.F.D. meetings also seem like they should take place less than 12 weeks apart somehow.
Do you know, I'd never actually thought of that?
Then again, wouldn't they be quite near to Rarely Ridden Road at the time? Something like a series of telephone poles being knocked down is hardly going to go unnoticed.
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