The Perilous Preparation: The Miserable Mill

[gliquey]

Dec 21, 2016 20:36:23 GMT -5 Teleram said:

I also find it interesting that this book features some weirdly surreal, borderline-supernatural elements like Sir's head and Doctor Orwell's hypnotism that may make a case for Handler planning for the series to get less (relatively) grounded in realism as they go on; the mishmash-of-history setting aside.

I know you've not exactly said "hypnotism isn't real", but since you've brought up the subject, I'll add my thoughts: I think the way hypnotism is depicted in TMM is pretty close to reality. Of course, the idea that everyone under hypnotism can only be controlled or de-hypnotised by a specific word ("lucky" and "inordinate") is a vast simplification of a bizarre state of mind about which not too much is known, but hypnotism is undoubtedly a real thing and I don't think TMM even comes close to pushing the borders of reality in its depiction of hypnotism.

Sir's head on the other hand, well yes that does defy the laws of physics a bit.

[Hermes]

Bear in mind that the boundaries of reality have already been pushed with some of the animals in TRR. The series, though never fantastic in a narrow sense (as there is nothing magical or supernatural), establishes an air of unreality from the beginning.

[eskaton]

Dec 22, 2016 10:16:32 GMT -5 gliquey said:

Dec 21, 2016 20:36:23 GMT -5 Teleram said:

I also find it interesting that this book features some weirdly surreal, borderline-supernatural elements like Sir's head and Doctor Orwell's hypnotism that may make a case for Handler planning for the series to get less (relatively) grounded in realism as they go on; the mishmash-of-history setting aside.

I know you've not exactly said "hypnotism isn't real", but since you've brought up the subject, I'll add my thoughts: I think the way hypnotism is depicted in TMM is pretty close to reality. Of course, the idea that everyone under hypnotism can only be controlled or de-hypnotised by a specific word ("lucky" and "inordinate") is a vast simplification of a bizarre state of mind about which not too much is known, but hypnotism is undoubtedly a real thing and I don't think TMM even comes close to pushing the borders of reality in its depiction of hypnotism.


Sir's head on the other hand, well yes that does defy the laws of physics a bit.

To add to this, a good example of the real-life, practical use of hypnosis is hypnotherapy; a legitimate area of psychotherapy used by physicians and psychologists to ameliorate stress, anxiety, phobias and the effects of various psychological disorders, among other things. As you suggest, the Western media trope of hypnosis as a sort of mind-control that turns subjects into human puppets, however, is definitely taking some creative liberty, and is probably informed in part by its prevalence in stage entertainment like magic shows and the like.

I agree with Hermes' observation that the series seems firmly established in its own surreal world, not beholden to physics or logic as we understand them, fairly early on. By the time I started reading MM the first time around, the ridiculousness of some of its plot points already seemed par for the course.

[mortinson51]

All ASOUE books have an absurdist element in them. But why I think they stand out so much in TMM is that there are so many. The chewing gum fishing, the teeth sword fight, the hypnotism (which I think is the least absurd.) I still all this element do make a compelling book as well as how he mixes up the standard kids switching roles Olaf not showing up till 2/3 into the book.

I feel like Orwell has to have been a part of VFD since I feel like Hypnotism would be something VFD would have dabbled in. Even though it's not explitely stated she is.

I'm interested how they will represent the hypnotism in the show. It looks a little bit more like brainwashing technique which could add a bit more realism to the story. Since there has been cases of Brainwashing.

[Hermes]

Another piece of evidence for Orwell being in VFD is that there is an 'optometrist disguise' in TUA.

[Dante]

Which is in addition to Sally Sebald apparently having some undisclosed antagonism with Orwell, which she refers to at the beginning of her letter to Snicket in the U.A.; Sally openly discusses V.F.D. activities, and being Gustav's sister, there's no reason to believe she's anything other than a member of V.F.D., and as such I take the otherwise arbitrary reference to Orwell as being a further indication that Orwell was a lapsed volunteer. As if all the eye motifs weren't a big enough clue.

[Hermes]

The eye motifs as they appear in the Netflix series (if the tower is indeed Dr Orwell's office, which seems very probable) are indeed a big enough clue. In the book, though, things are less clear, given that when it was written the eye had not yet become the VFD eye, and it's hard to see how you could build an office in the shape of the VFD eye. So I think additional evidence is helpful there.

[Dante]

I just meant any old eye, though, from the eye which Orwell's office is shaped into (whatever form that actually is) to her very profession. Whether it's in the early series where it means association with Count Olaf to the later books where it's linked to V.F.D., there was never any chance of Orwell being linked to eyes and that being a coincidence.

[Esmé's meme is meh]

Well, the books literally say that "the town in which they were to live had a building that looked just like the tattoo of Count Olaf."

Even though it's not a clear reference to VFD, in a certain way it is.

(I'll do my proper reread post after Christmas)

[lorelai]

Finished my reread, and two things that stand out to me are that the show could actually show us what happened to Klaus, given how much time has past, (which is where we could also learn Orwell's backstory) and that Olaf seems to be the one who issued the terms of Klaus's hypnosis. Or so his saying "Yes sir." implies.
to add to Dante and Hermes' comments about eyes, we do have the text refer to the image on the book cover as "the mark of Count Olaf" (62), and Klaus shouts, "That building has the mark of Count Olaf!" (76), so whether either Orwell eye looks like the VFD symbol is rather bootless. Also, Lemony does say in SYBIS that "There may be a time when this symbol means something treacherous and terrible..." (209), which is exactly the situation we have for most of ASOUE.
Some minor things:
I like the acknowledgment that Sunny, for all her usefulness, can be unhelpful because of her age. If this had been the last book, it would have been a nice callback to how little she did in TBB, but a subtle reminder that Sunny had been effected by the series, and that she had more growing up to do as well. It's nice as the series stands too.
To the person who imagined a happy life for Charles post TPP fire, I'm with you!!! Sir does not deserve him, or to be the boss of anything.
I love that Charles tels Klaus to take his arm before taking him to Orwell because THAT is how you guide a blind person--letting them hold onto your arm, as opposed to you holding onto them, and I can count on one hand how many strangers have offered their arm instead of grabbing me and pushing/dragging. It's a blink and you miss it moment, but thanks, Handler!!!

[gliquey]

So I've finished my re-read. I must have said this before but I'll say it again: thanks, Zortegus, for coming up with this idea because I've really enjoyed re-reading the first four books, making notes on them and reading everyone else's thoughts. Hopefully we can continue the re-read in the run-up to season two of the Netflix series.

Here are my thoughts:

What does the audiobook do in regards to Sir's name? Does it have Mr. Poe making his attempts to pronounce the name, such as "Mr. Wuz" and "Mr. Qui", like the book does? How exactly are they pronounced?

For all the discussion we've had about TWW being transphobic, TMM is exactly the opposite: Olaf is dressed as a woman, but he is never criticised for this by any of the characters or the narrator. His Shirley disguise is not portrayed as any more ridiculous than his Stephano disguise, and no-one really thinks it's odd that he's dressing as someone of the opposite gender.

Violet has a weirdly stroppy moment early on - "I don't want to live between the storage shed and the lumbermill itself" (p.18) - and Klaus is the one to cheer her up; it goes to show that Klaus isn't always the most immature and emotional Baudelaire.

"We split everything fifty-fifty, which is a good deal" (p.52) - unlike the other things Sir considers a good deal (trying to keep Olaf away if the Baudelaires work in the mill; paying his employees with a place to live, a stick of gum, one hot meal a day and coupons), this actually does seem fair. But then just a couple of pages later, Charles says "Sir wouldn't give me any money to buy books" (p.59), so maybe there's actually more to it than this - are they in some sort of civil partnership where they have a shared bank account, so giving Charles 50% of the profits is only a token gesture and Sir controls all their money anyway? Or perhaps the lumbermill isn't making much of a profit so Charles can't afford books himself. Or maybe Charles just isn't actually willing to use any of his own money to finance the library.

"I'd like to build an inventing studio for myself, perhaps over Lake Lachrymose, where Aunt Josephine's house used to be, so we can always remember her" (p.70) - really, Violet? I understand that you think Josephine was well-intentioned and don't resent her, but during TWW Snicket describes you disliking day-to-day life with her, and that woman abandoned you, nearly got you killed and tried to trade you to Olaf to save herself, so do you really want to go back to the town by Lake Lachrymose to be reminded of her every day of your life?

Can the coupons be stacked additively - i.e. can you use more than one at once to get something for free? The book doesn't seem consistent with this. Violet seems to think the answer is no, because when Charles says "last week they got a coupon for thirty percent off beef jerky" she thinks "there was no way any of the workers could afford beef jerky". But then the answer is yes when Phil is injured, as a worker says "two of us will chip in" with their coupons for "fifty percent off a cast at the Ahab Memorial Hospital". This has bugged me for years, really, but I suppose maybe it varies from coupon to coupon - each business could have their own terms and conditions on how many you can use. There are some coupons, though, that are useless whatever the case, such as the two-for-one banjos deal.

Violet tries to ask Charles: "You know the [book] with the eye on the cover? Where did you–" (p.72) What question could she possibly be asking? Charles says in the previous chapter that the book was "donated by Dr. Orwell, a doctor who lives in town" (p.60). So she should already know the answer to the question "Where did you get that book?"

Snicket mentions a policeman tripping him up while he was carrying a "crystal ball belonging to a Gypsy fortune-teller who never forgave [him] for tumbling to the ground and shattering her ball into hundreds of pieces" (p.73). For anyone who hasn't made the connection, Snicket could be talking about Madame Lulu - "'I have a spare crystal ball,' Olivia answered. 'That isn't the first one that's been broken.'" (TCC, p.162)

I've always liked the parallelism of Snicket describing an optimist with the example of one losing an arm and reflecting on handedness rather than shouting "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!", and Phil injuring his leg and being relieved he is right-legged, rather than shouting "Aaaaah! My leg! My leg!" like one employee expected. I also think it suits ASOUE to describe an optimism as some sort of rare and bewildering form of behaviour, almost like optimists are members of a cult - in such a bleak series, this makes sense.

Flacutono says "The string machine! Those cost an inordinate amount of money!" (p.98) - this must be a mistake of some sort. Should it be "string machines" in plural or "It cost" rather than "Those cost"?

Why does Flacutono unhypnotise Klaus by saying "inordinate" only to immediately trip him up again and send him away to be re-hypnotised? Why not just leave Klaus in a trance?

"My beloved Beatrice, before her untimely death, asked ["where is Count Olaf?"], although she asked it too late" (p.109) - does this add to the evidence that Olaf burned down the Baudelaire mansion? Based on this it seems he must have been at least somewhat responsible for her death.

Although in chapter 8 Snicket is alluding to the fact that Olaf doesn't appear until relatively late in the book, the bald man appears earlier than any assistant in the series - he actually arrives the week before the children arrive. Either Lulu or the judges on the High Court got some pretty good inside information on the Baudelaires' guardianship this time.

Violet's question to Orwell, "Will Klaus be hypnotized?" (p.111), is incredibly naïve - does she expect Orwell to reply "Oh yes well I was planning to hypnotize him in order to steal your fortune"?

"Their instincts had told them that the building was trouble, but the children had not listened to their instincts. They had listened to Mr. Poe." (p.126) - What? Mr. Poe wasn't even with them when they first saw the building. How does he come into it?

Let me try to translate the first sentence of Advanced Ocular Science:

This tome will endeavor to scrutinize, in quasi-inclusive breadth, the epistemology of ophthalmologically contrived appraisals of ocular systems and the subsequent and requisite exertions imperative for expugnation of injurious states.

"This book will try to look at, covering a wide subject area, the study of eye-based assessments of eye systems and the necessary hmmm that follow"
But I can't quite make anything meaningful out of "exertions imperative for expugnation of injurious states".

The contents page of Advanced Ocular Science is one of the highlights of the book - Orwell spends 38 pages on "Blinking Problems" and 133 pages on "Winking Problems", not to mention the one page chapter on sunglasses or the 73 pages on "Hypnosis and Mind Control", apparently an important area for optometrists to study.

It's interesting that Handler chooses "Gack", the first word we ever hear Sunny say, as the "expression" Orwell shouts out on page 167.

At the very end of the book, Snicket's description says "Lemony Snicket grew up near the sea". Although it can't have been an intentional reference at the time, it has to make you think of Stain'd-by-the-Sea.

[eskaton]

Jan 6, 2017 12:03:37 GMT -5 gliquey said:

So I've finished my re-read. I must have said this before but I'll say it again: thanks, Zortegus, for coming up with this idea because I've really enjoyed re-reading the first four books, making notes on them and reading everyone else's thoughts. Hopefully we can continue the re-read in the run-up to season two of the Netflix series.

Here are my thoughts:

For all the discussion we've had about TWW being transphobic, TMM is exactly the opposite: Olaf is dressed as a woman, but he is never criticised for this by any of the characters or the narrator. His Shirley disguise is not portrayed as any more ridiculous than his Stephano disguise, and no-one really thinks it's odd that he's dressing as someone of the opposite gender.

Agreed. On top of that, Handler also manages to slip in some subtle commentary on archaic gender norms by having Olaf use socially proscribed ideas about gender to his advantage. (e.g. Sir not checking Shirley for Olaf's ankle tattoo because "it's not polite to look at a woman's legs.")

"We split everything fifty-fifty, which is a good deal" (p.52) - unlike the other things Sir considers a good deal (trying to keep Olaf away if the Baudelaires work in the mill; paying his employees with a place to live, a stick of gum, one hot meal a day and coupons), this actually does seem fair. But then just a couple of pages later, Charles says "Sir wouldn't give me any money to buy books" (p.59), so maybe there's actually more to it than this - are they in some sort of civil partnership where they have a shared bank account, so giving Charles 50% of the profits is only a token gesture and Sir controls all their money anyway? Or perhaps the lumbermill isn't making much of a profit so Charles can't afford books himself. Or maybe Charles just isn't actually willing to use any of his own money to finance the library.

I take the "50/50" detail to be a one of several subtextual indicators that theirs is not simply a business partnership. Charles apparently has no executive power whatsoever when it comes to the mill (he doesn't even appear to have authority over the foreman) which would definitely contradict Sir's claim if he meant it strictly in a business sense. Furthermore, as you pointed out, Charles seems to be financially beholden to Sir, which wouldn't make sense for someone who has an equal stake in a lumber mill, even if business isn't booming. The only thing that Charles does in the context of his partnership with Sir that is made explicitly clear is handling the domestic duties (more commentary on gender roles?) which would make it a 50/50 partnership of a different sort. One handles the business, one handles the house. It would also comport with the ridiculous imbalance of power at play, essentially making Charles a kept man.

Of course, because Charles is completely spineless and unable to assert himself in any meaningful way, there's always the possibility that he does have an equal share in the business with Sir but is too timid or easily intimidated to actually act on it. He does seem a little more invested on the business front in TPP, but maybe that's just because he's more obviously involved with VFD at that point.

[Dante]

Jan 6, 2017 12:03:37 GMT -5 gliquey said:

Flacutono says "The string machine! Those cost an inordinate amount of money!" (p.98) - this must be a mistake of some sort. Should it be "string machines" in plural or "It cost" rather than "Those cost"?

Consider if he had formulated it as "It would cost an inordinate amount of money to buy another one of those!" I think it's grammatical. Although just one has been broken, he's talking about the whole field of them; there are no string machines which do not cost an inordinate amount of money.

Why does Flacutono unhypnotise Klaus by saying "inordinate" only to immediately trip him up again and send him away to be re-hypnotised? Why not just leave Klaus in a trance?

Foreman Flacutono perhaps wanted Klaus to be back in his right mind, at least briefly, to convince anyone present that he hadn't been replaced by any kind of duplicate or just generally wasn't in his right mind. Conceivably also hypnotic trances wear off in time, so it might have been a good idea to go and renew it.

But I can't quite make anything meaningful out of "exertions imperative for expugnation of injurious states".

Efforts necessary to remove harmful states, I'd have thought.

[lorelai]

[quote author="gliquey" source="/post/907738/thread" timestamp="1483722217"»
What does the audiobook do in regards to Sir's name? Does it have Mr. Poe making his attempts to pronounce the name, such as "Mr. Wuz" and "Mr. Qui", like the book does? How exactly are they pronounced?


The first try at the name is pronounced the way it's written, "Mr. Was-", the second is said like "Qwooee".
Why does Flacutono unhypnotise Klaus by saying "inordinate" only to immediately trip him up again and send him away to be re-hypnotised? Why not just leave Klaus in a trance?

I always thought that was a mistake on his part, so then it became a matter of having to redo it after accidentally undoing it--that's the trouble with using rarely used words as your "wake up" word.

"My beloved Beatrice, before her untimely death, asked ["where is Count Olaf?"], although she asked it too late" (p.109) - does this add to the evidence that Olaf burned down the Baudelaire mansion? Based on this it seems he must have been at least somewhat responsible for her death.


I always thought this was the case in regards to this line. It's also why I think Olaf could not have been the person she was meeting, if she were meeting anyone, as TBB Rare implies. Olaf could have been expected at this meeting though, or he could have been brought up very specifically.