The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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jordanlake
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Agent Sam Stanley wrote:
jordanlake wrote: Agreed, The Secret History and My Life, My Tapes, are very pedestrian in comparison
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Yeah, yeah, we get it, you don't like The Secret Diary or Jennifer Lynch! :wink:
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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If memory serves, even Jennifer admitted in interviews that she was an inexperienced writer (probably in the Crew interviews from the Gold box set) but admiited that 2 things from it were things that she actually experienced (the rat dream and something else that she refused to reveal but I personally bet that it is because it involves someone else and so I guess that it is the scene where Laura sees her parents having sex).

But even if it is not the best written novel, I think that it was a more interesting read than MLMT or the Access Guide. (I read TSHOTP with lowered expectations after hearing the many complaints about continuity and I also never read all these history details and X-Files like conspiracies, so that may explain why I like it more than most)
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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How often is a teenager's diary a greatly written novel?
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Soolsma wrote:How often is a teenager's diary a greatly written novel?
Yes, I agree with that and that's why for the most part, it seems very "real" (well as much as a piece of fiction can be real) and I assume that it is why David asked his late-teenager/young adult daughter to write it.

But the events themselves and the exchanges with BOB are not subjected to the prose style of a teenager. When she describes the disgusting events with BOB it works for me, but not when we have a "transcript" of BOB speaking very crudely. In the show his lines were less verbose and fierce for very different reasons thatI can't quite articulate ("I will catch you with my deathbag", things like that). With Jennifer's dialogue, BOB seems to try to make himself more dangerous than he really is, it's almost like making Michael Myers say menaces to his victims instead of being this silent force of nature.

That said, I may be remembering it worse than it actually is and in the upcoming audio, Sheryl Lee's delivery will probably make the lines better than they actually are.
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Ross
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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For me:
Cooper book = most entertaining
Diary = most important
Secret History = most frustrating
"I can see half my life's history in your face... And I'm not sure that I want to."
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Agent Earle wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:
The main thing MLMT has going for it is that Scott Frost is REALLY good at writing in Cooper's voice, and the comedic portions (like Cooper's kooky experiments in endurance) are a lot of fun. I can hear MacLachlan's jaunty yet clinical delivery in my head.
To me, it's the bits of the Black Lodge mythology and especially Windom Earle stuff that make it the most compelling. Never felt it was clunky, cheap and over-wrought but very efficient devices tying it to the show - it helps you to feel the book and the series are parts of the same universe. If anything, I'd welcome it to have even more references of what was going on/will be going on in the second season. And I don't think it can be argued satisfyingly that MLMT doesn't add to the franchise, when you have pretty much the whole of the main protagonist's backstory in there. Moreover, it's even consistent with the series, which is more than we can say for other tie-in materials... That Bob passage now - that seriously gave me the creeps!
Scott Frost - add him to the list of unsung TP creative contributors.
My exact thoughts, couldn't have said it any better.

I agree with Soolsma about Laura's Diary, you can't expect brilliant writing from a teenager's diary, and the fact that Jennifer was very young and unexperienced at the time is one of the few things the book has going in its favor. You can tell Jennifer was trying too much to be deep, poetic and controversial. She tried to do the same to Boxing Helena and it turned to be nothing but a childish and pretentious film. She's a pretty fair director but I'm not a fan of anything she writes.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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CuriousWoman wrote:But don't expect it to have some big secret revelations. I read it knowing who the killer is and I don't think it was damaging to my reading.
Personally, I think it is actually preferable to read it after knowing who the killer is. It makes the lack of a reveal less frustrating, and adds an extra level of ickiness and reality to the abuse. Plus, there are a few Easter eggs hinting at "Bob"'s identity: the weird dream of Leland tearing off his clothes, Laura sensing Sarah's "stare of pure jealousy." There is also a clever hint early on which at first looks like a mistake: in the first entry, 12-year-old Laura implies that she has seen male genitalia before in a sexual context; a few entries later, she says she has only ever seen her father's penis (the night she walked in on Leland and Sarah). This seems like a contradiction, but I assume was actually intended as a manifestation of Laura's subconscious knowledge of Bob's true identity.
CuriousWoman wrote:Yes, I agree with that and that's why for the most part, it seems very "real" (well as much as a piece of fiction can be real) and I assume that it is why David asked his late-teenager/young adult daughter to write it.

But the events themselves and the exchanges with BOB are not subjected to the prose style of a teenager.
I don't think that's unequivocally true. While they are presented as a "dialogue," all of the Laura/Bob exchanges occur in Laura's mind and are filtered through Laura's pen. We all have our own interpretations of Bob's relationship to his victims (and all of those interpretations will no doubt be completely reshaped by S3). My feeling has always been that Bob and his victims have a symbiotic relationship: since Bob feeds on human suffering, he enables his victim to enact his/her darkest desires -- in Leland's case, having sex with his daughter. In essence, Bob becomes whomever his victim's subconscious needs/wants him to be in order for Bob to gain access. In Laura's case, her predominant emotion seems to be intense self-loathing after years of abuse, and it makes sense to me that Laura's version of Bob spends most of his time slut-shaming her. I believe the voice of Bob in the book is essentially Bob by way of Laura's subconscious, and that the actual words on the page are more Laura's than Bob's. Bob isn't necessarily "speaking" those exact words; he is simply present in Laura's head, pushing the buttons that need to be pushed to tear down whatever remains of her self-respect.

I'll admit that, to some extent, I'm trying to rationalize what are certainly the weakest sections of the book. But I do think those dialogues are more palatable when read this way. For me, anyway.
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

Post by Madeleine Ferguson »

Was there not also a note from Ronette to Laura in the book? Maybe this will be read by Phoebe Augustine?
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Ross wrote:For me:
Cooper book = most entertaining
Diary = most important
Secret History = most frustrating
I can't agree more.
I stuck on page 137 of Secret Story... I hope I'll finish it befre season starts...
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Tony Franciosa
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

Post by Tony Franciosa »

Wonder if they are going to pitch shift Sheryl's voice so she sounds more like the younger version of herself.
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Mr. Reindeer
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Btw -- hope this isn't too off-topic -- I noticed for the first time while watching FWWM yesterday that a couple of pages from The Secret Diary appear onscreen! I'm sure other people have freeze-framed this before, but I don't recall seeing it discussed. When Laura notices that pages have been ripped from her diary, two of the pages shown when she flips through the diary are word-for-word from the beginning and end of the second-to-last undated entry in Jen Lynch's book (in which Laura talks about a session with Jacoby). The other entries shown (the torn page, and a full page where she discusses the rainy weather in Seattle and says she is afraid of catching a cold because she would miss work) are not from the book.

I wonder if Sheryl hand-transcribed those pages, since she has said she carried the book around with her on set. What a great prop that notebook would be to own!
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Tony Franciosa wrote:Wonder if they are going to pitch shift Sheryl's voice so she sounds more like the younger version of herself.
I doubt it. I think she'll sound like she does in the "Between Two Worlds" segment.
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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Mr. Reindeer wrote:Btw -- hope this isn't too off-topic -- I noticed for the first time while watching FWWM yesterday that a couple of pages from The Secret Diary appear onscreen! I'm sure other people have freeze-framed this before, but I don't recall seeing it discussed. When Laura notices that pages have been ripped from her diary, two of the pages shown when she flips through the diary are word-for-word from the beginning and end of the second-to-last undated entry in Jen Lynch's book (in which Laura talks about a session with Jacoby). The other entries shown (the torn page, and a full page where she discusses the rainy weather in Seattle and says she is afraid of catching a cold because she would miss work) are not from the book.

I wonder if Sheryl hand-transcribed those pages, since she has said she carried the book around with her on set. What a great prop that notebook would be to own!
Now would also be a great opportunity for Jennifer Lynch to finally release some of the 'pages torn out,' which Lynch says she was asked to remove by her Dad and Frost, as they implicated Leland too heavily (before the reveal in the series).

She said that if she had been involved in the re-release of the diary in 2011 that she would have loved to have had those pages included as bonus material.
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

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jordanlake wrote:
Mr. Reindeer wrote:Btw -- hope this isn't too off-topic -- I noticed for the first time while watching FWWM yesterday that a couple of pages from The Secret Diary appear onscreen! I'm sure other people have freeze-framed this before, but I don't recall seeing it discussed. When Laura notices that pages have been ripped from her diary, two of the pages shown when she flips through the diary are word-for-word from the beginning and end of the second-to-last undated entry in Jen Lynch's book (in which Laura talks about a session with Jacoby). The other entries shown (the torn page, and a full page where she discusses the rainy weather in Seattle and says she is afraid of catching a cold because she would miss work) are not from the book.

I wonder if Sheryl hand-transcribed those pages, since she has said she carried the book around with her on set. What a great prop that notebook would be to own!
Now would also be a great opportunity for Jennifer Lynch to finally release some of the 'pages torn out,' which Lynch says she was asked to remove by her Dad and Frost, as they implicated Leland too heavily (before the reveal in the series).

She said that if she had been involved in the re-release of the diary in 2011 that she would have loved to have had those pages included as bonus material.
And last entry from Harold's letter.
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Re: The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (Audiobook)

Post by Gabriel »

Tony Franciosa wrote:Wonder if they are going to pitch shift Sheryl's voice so she sounds more like the younger version of herself.
I get the impression they might even have done that a bit in the TV show for the Jacoby tapes.
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