On Tuesday night, the literary television show Lost featured a loving cameo appearance of The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition–W. W. Norton’s special edition of the Lewis Carroll classic. Since then, the book has rocketed up the Amazon charts, currently ranked 314th in Books and first in History & Criticism.
Over at Entertainment Weekly, journalist Jeff Jensen writes long, speculative essays about Lost, one of the more literary readings of the series you can find on the web. So far, Jensen has spotted two other books in the final season of Lost.
They are: Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (“Its famous line? ‘What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?'”) and the famous Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard (“which challenges true believers to embrace the absurdity of faith. Combined, both books send this message to us: This absurd sideways thing has a purpose. It is ‘useful.'”)
Have you spotted more literary references in season six? Add any books we missed in the comments section–we’ll put them on the list in a future post. If you want to read more of our literary Lost coverage, follow these links:
GalleyCat Reviews looked at critical reception of the books of Lost.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll talked about time travel on Lost.
Chad Post revealed another book from the sixth season
Nikki Stafford talked about writing her unofficial guides to Lost.