Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the show knows about its hyper-literary nature. About the weaving in of dozens of dead philosophers () and the tons of brilliant literary references (VALIS!, The Invention of Morel!, The Third Policeman! Ulysses!) sprinkled throughout the show. The show is brilliant. Intertextual and one of the most ambitious enterprises to ever appear on network TV. And with thousands of fans reading up on every book cited or pictured in the show, Lost has become a sort of Oprah for the sci-fi hipster literati.

Anyway, to get all giddy excited about next week’s premiere (two hours of pure TV bliss!), tomorrow morning at 9:30, I’ll be talking with Jason Boog and Matt VanHoven about “Literary Lost.” I think you can tune in live via but it’ll also be archived at GalleyCat, and I’ll be sure to link to it from here as well.

(And yes, this was originally scheduled for this morning, but there was a crazy technical difficultly with BlogTalkRadio that caused the delay . . . )

UPDATE: This is some time-skipping shit, but this delay allowed me to receive a bit of info from Lost HQ and I will be able to reveal the title of one book that will be appearing in this upcoming season . . . Not saying a word until tomorrow morning . . .

With the season 5 premiere only a couple of days away, the put together a special article about Gregg Nations, the man who puts together “show bible” for Lost:

Enter Mr. Nations, who has now compiled an archive that, were he ever to print it out, might — as he put it in an interview at the Lost production offices on Disney’s Burbank studio lot — give War and Peace a run for its money.

Just how long the entire document is he does not know; he has never printed it out in full, in part because he and his secretive bosses do not want copies falling into the wrong hands. But he has multiple electronic copies, which he keeps in undisclosed locations.

In addition to charting story arcs and tracking characters, Mr. Nations has noted each character’s sojourns on and off the island, mapped the research stations established by the mysterious Dharma Initiative and recorded the appearances and disappearances of polar bears, Smoke Monsters and an unhealthy array of guns.

After the show is over, it would be awesome if someone published this “bible.” Lost is a bit complicated, and for anyone wanting to analyze or write about the show, something like this would be invaluable. . . .

Somewhat full disclosure: I met Gregg a number of years ago when The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien was on the show. We’ve kept in touch ever since, and for a while, did a special Lost radio segment every week on a Top 40 radio station in Normal, IL. (It was kind of like the international literature bits on our local morning news program. Obviously Lost is much more popular than translation, but the way Gregg talks about the show, and drops cryptic hints, was a cut above the morning show norm.)

Although it’s not specifically mentioned in this article, in writing the “Eggtown” episode for last season, he managed to include both Philip K. Dick’s Valis, and Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel, two perfect “Lost Books.” One of which is a work in translation by one of Argentina’s greatest authors, thus tying this post back into our primary mission. . . . But seriously, it’s cool how pro-literature this show is, and the impact that Lost has had on getting people to read interesting cult (or not-so-cult) books is not to be underestimated. Hell, we sold 15,000 copies of The Third Policeman in the few weeks after it appeared on the show. (And mind you, it was only on screen for like half a second.)