The Secret History of Twin Peaks

[fearltd]

[Panapaok]

Amazing!

[Agent Sam Stanley]

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Your work?

[fearltd]

Beautiful. Thanks for sharing. Your work?

No, I saw it on reddit lol.

[euclid]

Far more than the meta-mysteries and puzzles, what I love most about this book are the moments that give new depth to those characters that we love so much, and were perhaps given short shrift by the later events of Season 2. The love for this world and these characters shine far brighter than any "inaccuracies", intentional or not.

Hawk's journals were amazing (as was hearing it in Michael Horse's voice), and I found his recollection of the Big Ed-Norma-Nadine-Hank love triangle felt much more real than the short version told on the show (and that's one of my all-time favorite scenes). That a "mistake" I'm happy to accept so that all four of those characters can be richer and more alive.

The tribute to Margaret Lanterman was lovely and heartbreaking - the full story of her early years, courtship with her husband and his untimely death struck that perfect, difficult balance between explaining why she is the way she is, and explaining nothing at all. If we never see the Log Lady again, this was a fitting send-off.

It's also nice to have a "definitive" version of the Andrew Packard saga, which became so convoluted in the show that I, for one, stopped caring about the details. One gets the sense that Frost was reclaiming this storyline, giving it a sense of clarity and dignity before sending it off into the sunset. (I'll admit, I was hoping we'd learn more about the fate of Josie and the existence of a certain sister named Judy, but I'll keep a candle burning for Joan Chen in Season 3.)

If I had one wish, it's that Pete Martell received an even fonder farewell (on par with the Log Lady). Sure, the taste of his backstory with Catherine was great, and he did get to heroically sacrifice himself to save Audrey, but the man deserved more and you can never have enough Pete in my book. Considering the relationship between Lynch and Nance, I'm hoping we'll get another memorial in S3, as it just isn't Twin Peaks without Pete.

These moments and so many more brought this long-time fan so much joy, and I'm certain than any secrets yet to be revealed will not change the heart of what we learned in this book. I can't thank Mark Frost and David Lynch enough for taking us back!

PS: I don't think anyone has answered this yet, so I'll keep asking - has anyone been able to decipher the bit of backwards-speak after the credits of the audiobook version?

You summed up my thoughts perfectly! Loved reading the book

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk

[NewShoes]

So on the audiobook, the narrator (sorry, I haven't ID'ed which voices are which) says "classical natuary" where I'm 99% it should be "classical statuary" (page 17 in the book). When I read the book, I assumed this referred to the statue in the Red Room.

This is interesting from a behind-the-scenes standpoint because it seems to indicate that the narrator was reading directly from the cursive writing in the text (I can definitely see how the "st" looked like an "n" to him).

Yep, I noticed the same thing and came here to post it!

[Mr. Reindeer]

But a broader point. Every TP book before this had inconsistencies. The series had multiple inconsistencies and couldn't even decide if it was set in '89 or '90!!

Now people have a problem with the latest book? Heaven help us when the series comes out.

Heh, fair. But I think the hope (speaking for myself, anyway) was that, with far less cooks in the kitchen writing and directing-wise, and with several years' worth of prep time for L&F to revisit the series and make sure the pieces lined up, S3 would be a more cohesive work (in terms of both narrative consistency and continuity) than the fast-paced production of season 2. Only time will tell!

[Rami Airola]

This is great! One of the best parts of the book and I'm amazed to hear it narrated. Very well spoken.



Although... It still irks me that there are "distant star" and "evolution" mentioned. Well, perhaps distant star or planet could still be something interestingly metaphysical, and the planets could have a metaphysical reason for their existence, but what comes to these spirits I really love to think them as something eternal and not bound to evolution. Not being something that has evolved from something. Spirit stuff is always much more interesting when they are eternal, beyond space and time, beyond something that will at some point die and disappear which will eventually happen to everything when the universe dies. This is one of the reasons I'm not that fascinated in typical depictions of aliens.

Now, of course the words used are only the words of the person who are saying them, so it should be seen in the context of his own knowledge of things. But this is just one of my sci-fi pet peeves

[TheArm]

A new, very good, insightful interview with Mark Frost in the Observer: http://observer.com/2016/11/twin-peaks- ... ious-town/

[Mb3]

A new, very good, insightful interview with Mark Frost in the Observer: http://observer.com/2016/11/twin-peaks- ... ious-town/

Thanks a lot, that was indeed very interesting to read.

[_/\_wowbobwow_/\_]

I came up with a theory on the dossier after reading the findings and opinions of a lot of other people on this board:

Cole tells TP we need to "learn and verify" the author(s) of the dossier - when, in the same letter he states it's already been "processed by bureau personel." He already knows who wrote it. Is this a slip up, or a hint to TP to keep her eyes open while reviewing the contents?

I also believe he must be aware of the inconsistencies with the 1 and "I" key's usage, the picture of the typewriter as opposed to the one the author states he uses, as well as the forged documents that were typed with "I"s for 1s. He must also be aware of the date inconsistencies with the stamp and various other events. Is he testing TP to see if she spots these as well?

Finally, the Norma changes. It's my opinion that the dossier has either been tampered with or Norma's background has been intentionally falsified by someone as part of the plot; not by Frost trying to re-write the history or the backstory of these characters. What purpose does this serve? If you eliminate Norma's true history, you eliminate the fact that she has a sister therefore eliminating Annie. As part of the plot, is someone is hiding Norma's true linage?

Sooooo Why? Why keep the existence of Annie a secret? Maybe because she was the last one seen with the ring? Maybe because she and Coop had a child, and whomever altered the dossier wanted to hide Annie's existence, maybe to protect someone? Could TP even somehow be the daughter of Coop and Annie?

[Rudagger]

Just finished the novel. Have so many thoughts and feelings that I want to express, though it's difficult and will probably need to sit with me a lot more.

For the most part, I like how the novel fleshed out the world. Large elements of the original television series had world-building, but, it was very heavy-handed (which, to be fair, mythology in television series wasn't really a thing at this time). This did well enough with tying Twin Peaks to a larger world of seemingly connected events, without feeling entirely too hackneyed. As a result though, it doesn't really add up to a whole lot (otherwise you risk turning it into "Twin Peaks is the key to everything in the entire damn universe). So, beyond thematic threads and this kind of overarching conspiracy between two rivalling ideologies, it obviously doesn't really conclude in any firm manner. So, it really is essentially a big history book culled to points of interest (ala dotted strings on a map).

Some UFO elements at parts got to be a bit too literal for me. I didn't need to have a character see an actual alien (obviously, we can chose whether or not to accept that story, but, it didn't feel like there was a lot of ambiguity).

I do think that Frost did a great job though considering the sort of weird place he had to write this in; i.e., not spoiling *anything* from the upcoming series.

I also think he gave just a couple interesting tidbits to make you salivate for the new season (the ending gave me chills despite only giving us the tiniest bit more information that the Missing Pieces did as to what happened to Coop). Similarly, the list is made note of with all the FBI agents names, with TP making note than only Cole/Rosenfield didn't suffer some form of tragic fate.

It was nice getting a few characters properly sent-off, as they won't be around in the series (Pete, Hank, Andrew, apparently Catherine being essentially out of the game permanently post-Pete's death), even if it was fairly perfunctory.

Also, at times the nature of book sort of internally clashed for me. The Book House portions felt weirdly invasive; I can't picture Hawk or Coop or anyone writing stuff so personal for anyone to find, particularly given how cutting Hawk's Norma/Ed/Nadine story was.

The TP notes on the side were for the most part good, and I get not wanting to just have them as pure fact-checks, but, it sometimes felt weird having humour injected into those side bars.

Occasional lines were written in a way that would work as dialogue/action, but not in text (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the writing on the wall trails off)

Really hoping that Frost gets to do the book that fills in the 25 year gap. It's clear from those press releases that it was the originally intent (I'm not sure if anyone asked about it in interviews), but, I imagine they must've changed it when they discovered just how much that would unveil about the status quo.

Also, one other thing that bugged me a bit, and maybe someone can clarify if this was the case on the series; did Harry ever mention a brother, did Jacoby ever mention a brother? A real brotherly-motif going on there. It made the world almost feel a bit too small, finding out that Jacoby's brother ran the paper, and Harry's brother was sheriff .. stopped being sheriff for Truman to take over, etc.

I also really need to be refreshed on how the Owl Cave ring played into FWWM/The Missing Pieces, because I can't remember the implication (that they were getting wed, and somehow marked for death, or corrupted .. but then the Ring sets Laura free? But then Coop tells Laura not to take it .. IIRC)

Sorry for the long post. Just wanted to collect my own thoughts.

*Edit* One other thing; having the Archivist explicitly state their own name was a bit cheap. It would've been nice to have TP figure it out for themselves, and for a bit of a larger post-script by the agent (given that they're supposed to be analyzing it).

Overall I did really like the book though, definitely got my money's worth (it was *dense*)

[sneakydave]

Cole tells TP we need to "learn and verify" the author(s) of the dossier - when, in the same letter he states it's already been "processed by bureau personel." He already knows who wrote it. Is this a slip up, or a hint to TP to keep her eyes open while reviewing the contents?

Yeah, that one caught my eye. It made no sense to me when I read it the first time. If it has already been processed then surely the persons processing it would have reached the end of the document and found out who the Archivist was?

[AgentCoop]

I've sort of been wondering why TP is in the book at all. I'm not being flippant. What I mean is: What function does this character perform in the story? What's Frost using her to accomplish? At first I thought she was an authority figure for the audience to trust (i.e. "TP verifies this document, so I can trust that it's authentic"), but then she signs off on things that we KNOW are wrong. So I don't quite get where Frost was going with TP.

[laughingpinecone]

I've sort of been wondering why TP is in the book at all. I'm not being flippant. What I mean is: What function does this character perform in the story? What's Frost using her to accomplish? At first I thought she was an authority figure for the audience to trust (i.e. "TP verifies this document, so I can trust that it's authentic"), but then she signs off on things that we KNOW are wrong. So I don't quite get where Frost was going with TP.

Well for one I think that anyone who gave us the line "sometimes an owl is just an owl" has their presence in canon justified already
But seriously, I think that's the point. She's telling us that these things are true and verifiable in her reality, which may not be the one we knew. Without her constant "verified", we'd be a lot more likely to take the whole thing for a forgery. As is, I'd LOVE it if there were some level of manipulation going on (possibly with DoppelBOB as the culprit) on top of everything else, changing details that slipped through the cracks of TP's verifications, but the main deal, imho, is quite obviously that this dossier chronicles a reality where Lana won Miss Twin Peaks 1989.

I've been wondering about the "processed by bureau personnel" thing too - maybe it means something other than "sat down and read the thing"?