The Secret History of Twin Peaks

[Mr. Reindeer]

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.

I agree that the double-blind narrator approach was more trouble than it was worth. I appreciated TP's verification of real-world documents and facts in the early going, as it felt like Frost playing fair with the audience (preventing this from becoming a Dan Brown book, with interesting historical facts being hopelessly intertwined with conjecture). However, once she starts getting chattier, she comes as across as vastly incompetent, and her attempts at humor are both inappropriate in this setting and not particularly funny. She rarely gives the reader any information that we couldn't have gleaned on our own with a quick Google or simply by connecting the dots that the Archivist gave us -- honestly, some of her interjections felt a trifle insulting, as if Frost didn't trust us to figure certain things out.

Plus, Frost at times accidentally had the Archivist referring back to things that *TP* had said a page earlier (I'm sure someone already has some elaborate conspiracy theory on how this wasn't an error, but instead, Doppelcoop, after editing the dossier, got a sex change and rejoined the FBI as TP with the sole purpose of screwing around with the dossier even more! ).

Finally, withholding the identities of both the Archivist AND TP until the end seems silly, especially since TP's name has no significance to us whatsoever.

[sneakydave]

Maybe 'processing' the document just means they've received it, date-stamped it etc?

It still doesn't wash with me though that she doesn't just turn to the end in the first instance. If your task is to work out who wrote it then the first thing I'd personally do would be to go to the end to see if it had been signed off by someone. I'm likely just being a pedant but it just seems silly.

[mujubuju]

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?

I just took it to mean that it had been formally submitted into their records for investigation. Hence "processed" does not equal "reviewed".

[mujubuju]

Maybe 'processing' the document just means they've received it, date-stamped it etc?

It still doesn't wash with me though that she doesn't just turn to the end in the first instance. If your task is to work out who wrote it then the first thing I'd personally do would be to go to the end to see if it had been signed off by someone. I'm likely just being a pedant but it just seems silly.

That doesn't make for a very suspenseful novel though, does it?

[sneakydave]

It certainly doesn't. But it's a big issue to have to overlook.

Still. It is what it is and I love the book nevertheless.

[laughingpinecone]

I still don't have the physical book to check, but iirc Garland doesn't sign at the very end, it's a few page earlier than that. So it makes sense that even if she checked at the end, she didn't find anything and went back to reading it from the beginning.

[Mr. Reindeer]

Maybe 'processing' the document just means they've received it, date-stamped it etc?

It still doesn't wash with me though that she doesn't just turn to the end in the first instance. If your task is to work out who wrote it then the first thing I'd personally do would be to go to the end to see if it had been signed off by someone. I'm likely just being a pedant but it just seems silly.

That doesn't make for a very suspenseful novel though, does it?

True, but a mystery where the "detective" is literally told the answer to the mystery is also pretty unsatisfying.

[Mace]

Cole may already know that Major Briggs is not the true author or (or he may already know that the documents have been tampered with) and he wants to see if TP is willing to dig deeper. Maybe she needs to keep her "eye on the doughnut and not on the hole."

[Ross]

Maybe 'processing' the document just means they've received it, date-stamped it etc?

It still doesn't wash with me though that she doesn't just turn to the end in the first instance. If your task is to work out who wrote it then the first thing I'd personally do would be to go to the end to see if it had been signed off by someone. I'm likely just being a pedant but it just seems silly.

That doesn't make for a very suspenseful novel though, does it?

True, but a mystery where the "detective" is literally told the answer to the mystery is also pretty unsatisfying.

Exactly.

And thanks, Mr. Reindeer, for your many thoughtful musings on the book. My thoughts on it are almost exactly like yours.

[cowwithfivelegs]

.

[Rudagger]

Am I the only one who thinks that any inconsistencies are just errors (or oversights/retcons?). It's a big ass book, from all accounts he wrote it fairly quickly (as he seemed to indicate that he did the bulk of it while on set), and just generally I've found these really intense fan theories for various shows/movies/video games tend to add up to nothing.

I mean, it'd be cool if it's somehow addressed in the series, or in a later novel, that inconsistencies were written in .. but, I'm not holding my breath. And also, you have the issue of 'well, if they tampered with this information for whatever reason, what about all this other stuff that you wouldn't want BOB, or protagonists, to know about?'

As for the absence of someone like Annie, it's probably just because Frost didn't want to spoil any revelation about that before Season 3. Easier to just write around it by not having her on Briggs radar and avoid it all together. (Just meaning, there would be a logic gap if her name comes up in the book, and her relationship with Coop, for there to explicitly not be any mention of what happened to her). The writing felt very intentional in how it framed certain characters specifically to avoid having to give too much clarification on their fate. Annie was left in a very precarious cliffhanger, and the moment you write about it you're kind of forced into a box to answer it (same thing with the bank explosion; if you bring it up, you're kind of forced to answer who lived/died, and since some of those characters clearly weren't coming back anyway ..)

Also, as for people questioning TP's purpose. I agree. Personally, I think they should have actually had her be the one to discover the identity of the Archivist, and give her a few pages at the end of the dossier in order to make revelations about his connection to the main tale. It would paint her as competent, and also give a purpose to her annotating the entire thing. As it is, when she says she'll hand in her findings .. well, we don't *see* her finding. Annotations, yes, but we don't get exactly a large picture into what she would've been telling Gordon. There needed to be more than just a one page memo after the dossier ended to really justify giving her role any personality to it (insomuch as her character should've solely been the plot function of fact checking, rather than any question of *who* she is). But, again, maybe this character is in the new series, and it puts Frost in a weird position where he can't give too much information as to the status quo going forward.

[dugpa]

I'm guessing it is 50/50. 50% intentional and 50% unintentional. Mark is only human.

Easier to just enjoy it for what it is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[wAtChLaR]

I'm guessing it is 50/50. 50% intentional and 50% unintentional. Mark is only human.

Easier to just enjoy it for what it is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

AMEN

[mujubuju]

I'm guessing it is 50/50. 50% intentional and 50% unintentional. Mark is only human.

Easier to just enjoy it for what it is.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is my feeling as well. Some of it is clearly meant to obfuscate and confound, but there are no doubt inconsistencies that only the most ardent fan is going to find. I feel that those on here that are so off-put are in for one helluva letdown when the series airs. When have all the puzzle pieces fit nice and neatly into a Lynch film? Also, remember that Mark's book is Mark's endeavor alone, and Lynch had no hand in it. Remember what happens when a script put to paper collides with Lynch's artistic intuitions and happy accidents? If you're looking for a cohesive, all-encompassing narrative that simultaneously provides quality storytelling while at the same time remaining completely faithful to all the abhorrent plotlines that surfaced in mid-S2, I think you're going to be disappointed.

[Ross]

So Frost says that Lynch had nothing to do with the book. And that the idea to do it was his own. And that he came up with the dossier idea as the best way to do the book. So how much of the book do you think will even come up in S3? Will the dossier even be mentioned? Will it indeed be part of the plot?