L.B.: Vertigo's on First

Left Behind, pp. 461-465

In the seven pages remaining in this book there are six phone conversations, some pager and intercom action, a cab ride, another New York-Chicago flight, and the introduction of a new character who dominates a few pages, turns out not to matter much and goes away without affecting the story.

This last is Det. Sgt. Billy Cenni of New York's finest. He is unnamed when we first meet him, just one of the indeterminate number of police and/or "security" to arrive in the U.N. conference room where Jonathan Stonagal and Global Viceregent and Emperor of Britannia Todd-Cothran are lying dead from a single bullet.

A plainclothesman asked questions. Buck headed him off. "You have enough eyewitnesses here. Let me leave you my card and you can call if you need me, hm?" The cop traded cards with him and Buck was permitted to leave.

To recap: Stonagal and T-C tried to have Buck killed. He was forced to fake his own death, racing across continents incognito to escape with his life. One week later, he encounters these men face to face for the first time. This meeting occurs behind closed doors and it ends with both of his enemies dead. No reason to keep Buck around for questioning then, hm?

So the world's worst police detective is letting people leave the scene of the crime and thus the world's worst reporter is able to flee from a still-unfolding story. The authors then provide a more detailed look at Buck's journalistic M.O.:

Buck grabbed his bag and sprinted for a cab, rushing back to the office. He shut and locked his office door and began furiously banging out every detail of the story.

Based on this scene, here are some of the GIRAT's tips for all you young reporters out there:

1. If you see news happening, run away as fast as possible.

2. Don't talk to anyone.

3. Don't take notes or record anything. It's OK to carry around a big tape recorder, just make sure you never use it.*

4. Write in an otherwise empty, locked room without consulting notes. The whole story should exist only in your head -- that's where news comes from.

It's not clear why Buck is in such a hurry here. He's scurrying around like he works for WGW newsradio and he needs to air this story ASAP as a breaking news bulletin. But he actually works for Global Weekly, a magazine with a languid lead time and no way of publishing a fast-breaking story. In any case, Buck's furious banging is interrupted by a phone call, the account of which begins with what may be the five least plausible words in this book:

He had produced several pages when he received a call from Stanton Bailey. The old man could hardly catch his breath between his demanding questions, not allowing Buck to answer.

"Where have you been? Why weren't you at the press conference? Were you in there when Stonagal offed himself and took the Brit with him? You should have been here. ..."

Statement! Two all. Game point. ...

" ... There's prestige for us having you in there. How are you going to convince anybody you were in there when you didn't show up for the press conference? Cameron, what's the deal?

There's a bit of a sequence-of-events problem here. Bailey is upset and asking about things he doesn't know yet.

By the end of this chapter, Stanton Bailey will have talked to Steve Plank and to several U.N. officials and police/security officers who have all been mind-whammied into believing that Buck wasn't "in there when Stonagal offed himself." So eventually, after talking to those people, Bailey ought to be angrily demanding answers from his star reporter. But as far as he knows at this point, Buck was in the earlier meeting. Instead of asking the kinds of questions that would entail ("Are you alright?" "What did you see?") Bailey seems to have already moved on to the kinds of questions he will want to be asking later, such as "How are you going to convince anybody you were in there?"

It's not that hard to imagine reasons why Buck might have skipped the press conference. He might have been busily interviewing the other people with him in the room when the supposed suicide/murder took place. He might have tracked down an interview with Mrs. Todd-Cothran. There are dozens of different ways he might have been racing to move the story forward while his colleagues were all playing catch up at the press conference, scrambling to get the second-hand version of the story Buck just witnessed first-hand.

Once Bailey learned Buck hadn't been doing any of those things, either, then he might be upset that Buck had missed the press conference, but instead he jumps right in with this "Why weren't you there?" questioning because -- like the authors -- he knows ahead of time where this chapter is headed.

That this press conference has already taken place is also remarkable. The police apparently have already finished their investigation of the crime scene, completing their interviews with more than a dozen eerily repetitive and obviously rehearsed eyewitnesses,** wrapping up everything so tidily and quickly that Nicolae was free to go ahead with his presser on schedule, pronouncing his evidently brief RBO and ordering the newly designed flags of the new One World Government to be flown at half-staff while he takes advantage of the paid bereavement leave outlined in the OWG Personnel Handbook. And all of that took place in the time it took Buck to rush back to the office and type up a few pages.

"I hurried back here to get the story into the system," Buck explains. He didn't have time to finish getting the story because he was too busy already writing it. Bailey doesn't care about the story, as he's already said, he's concerned with "prestige":

"Don't you have an exclusive with Carpathia now?"

Yes, it's another post-press conference "exclusive." Buck is a master at lining up these exclusive interviews right after his interviewees have answered questions from the entire press corps, Nightline and People magazine.

Buck had forgotten that, and Plank hadn't reconfirmed it. What was he supposed to do about that? He prayed but sensed no leading. How he needed to talk to Bruce or Chloe or even Captain Steele! "I'll call Steve and see," he said.

Buck has been a born-again RTC for less than half a day but he's already completely absorbed the native idiom. "He prayed but sensed no leading" conveys a raft of beliefs about the meaning, nature and practice of prayer that Buck shouldn't have any experience with or knowledge of. Yet as soon as the "transaction" occurs, the moment he is saved, he emerges full-grown with all of the cultural tics and learned piety of someone who had lived for decades in a particular kind of evangelical church.

That particular kind of evangelical church no longer exists in the world of Left Behind. It was whisked off the planet along with nearly every person who spoke its lingo and adhered to its forms of piety. Yet whenever anyone in this post-Rapture world converts, they instantly begin talking about "sensing the Lord's leading." The specific shape and form of piety in this one culture seems to be for the authors inextricably and indistinguishably intermixed with the meaning and substance of the gospel. They seem unable to imagine a Christian who does not pray, worship and speak exactly as they do.

There's a reason that Pentecost and the Great Commission are emphatically cross-cultural. If everyone you know who shares your faith also shares your culture then you end up with no way of knowing which is which, no way of knowing where the one stops and the other begins, no way of knowing the ways in which they have or haven't been allowed to influence one another.

Anyway, Buck is understandably not relishing the idea of a one-on-one session with the man he just watched kill two people and then brainwash a dozen others:

Should he allow himself to be in a room alone with Carpathia? And if he did, should he pretend to be under his mind control as everyone else seemed to be? ... Would he always be able to resist the influence with God's help? He didn't know.

So Buck calls Steve (actually, he calls Steve's pager and then Steve calls him back, just to get a little more telephony into the story) and asks whether or not the interview is still on. Here we arrive at the part of the story that Stanton Bailey already seems to have known:

"You heard what happened and you want an exclusive?"

"Heard? I was there, Steve."

"Well, if you were here, then you probably know what happened before the press conference."

"Steve! I saw it with my own eyes."

"You're not following me, Buck. I'm saying if you were here for the press conference, you heard about the Stonagal suicide in the preliminary meeting, the one you were supposed to come to."

Buck didn't know what to say. "You saw me there, Steve."

"I didn't even see you at the press conference."

"I wasn't at the press conference, Steve, but I was in the room when Stonagal and Todd-Cothran died."

"I don't have time for this, Buck. It's not funny. ..."

The problem is that it is funny. Jenkins is shooting for a frightening sense of bewildering disorientation -- something like the prose equivalent of Bernard Hermann's score for Vertigo -- but he ends up with something more along the lines of "Who's on First?"

The authors themselves seem far more disoriented than Buck does. Granted, this section calls for a tricky bit of writing -- conveying that two characters hold such wholly unreconcilable perceptions that they are scarcely able to communicate. But it takes Buck a bit too long to figure out what everyone is telling him, and even then he doesn't offer much in his own defense:

Steve hung up on him. Marge buzzed and said the boss was on the line again. "What's the deal with you not even going to that meeting?" Bailey said.

"I was there! You saw me go in!"

"Yeah, I saw you. You were that close. What did you do, find something more important to do? You got some fast talking to do, Cameron!"

"I'm telling you I was there! I'll show you my credentials."

"I just checked the credential list, and you're not on it."

"Of course I'm on it. I'll show 'em to you."

"Your name's there, I'm saying, but it's not checked off."

"Mr. Bailey, I'm looking at my credentials right now. They're in my hand."

"Your credentials don't mean dirt if you didn't use 'em, Cameron."

This business with the credentials is beside the point. Say you're arguing with a friend who doubts you actually went to a concert or a ballgame. You wouldn't bother showing her the tickets as proof because, as Bailey points out, your having the tickets wouldn't prove you actually used them. So instead you would try to convince your friend by telling her what you saw at the concert or the game -- things you couldn't have seen if you hadn't actually been there. Buck never does this, so Bailey keeps at him:

"I just talked to three, four people who were there, including a U.N. guard and Carpathia's personal assistant, not to mention Plank. None of them saw you, you weren't there."

By this point Buck is so caught up in the Duck-Season/Rabbit-Season back and forth over whether or not he was actually at the meeting that he completely misses the repercussions of what Stanton Bailey is telling him: Everyone else who was in that room has been mind-whammied into believing that Buck was never there.

And it's not just Steve, Hattie and the others from the room. It's bigger and more widespread than that:

"A cop saw me!" Buck insists to his boss. "We traded cards!"

He decides to track down Det. Sgt. Billy Cenni -- he'll vouch that Buck was really there. That'll show 'em.

So he calls the precinct and asks for Cenni. He tries multiple pronunciations. He spells the name out for them. He has them look in the directory for the entire department. This is recounted in a page and a half of unwelcome detail, finally arriving at this:

"Personnel says there is nobody in the New York Police Department named Cenni, and there never has been."

And that, in turn, leads Buck to this astonishingly dim conclusion:

All Buck could do now was try to convince Stanton Bailey.

Yeah, because that's what's important here -- that he "convince Stanton Bailey" that he was really in the room.

Buck has just learned that the Antichrist has singled him out, brainwashing dozens of others into forgetting that he had ever been there. Why would he have wiped out every trace of Buck's presence unless he had come to suspect that Buck was onto his secret? When Buck left that room, he was sure that Nicolae had believed that he had been successfully reprogrammed, but now that Nicolae has chosen to mind-whammy him right out of the picture it would seem that, somehow, the Antichrist had figured out that Buck hadn't been fooled. And now Nicolae apparently has henchmen posing as police. Who knows where else they may have infiltrated. Nicolae's spies could be anywhere. They could be everywhere.

That all sounds a bit paranoid, of course, but a bit of paranoia would seem to be called for when one is dealing with the Antichrist, a massive conspiracy and mysterious strangers passing themselves off as the cops. Yet, weirdly, Buck never entertains any such thoughts. Nor does he consider their flipside -- that maybe he is just being paranoid, or maybe he really is losing it.

With all that Buck has just seen and heard, it would seem reasonable for him to question whether or not he was still reasonable. He ought to at least consider the possibility that he's losing his mind.

This would be, at this point, a plausible and rational hypothesis. The entire world seems to be bearing witness to a version of events that contradicts what he believes he has just seen and heard. That seems to leave two possibilities: Either everyone else has gone mad and he alone has kept his sanity, or else the other way around. The latter possibility is simpler, and thus likelier,*** so it at least ought to be considered as a possibility.

Yet neither Buck nor the authors give this likely possibility a second thought. And because they never give it serious consideration, they never definitively rule it out. By refusing even the slightest doubts about his own sanity, Buck comes across as insanely confident in his own certainty. This, sadly, is what the authors apparently think it means to have "faith."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Seriously, Buck had his bag with the tape recorder in it right there in the room where Nicolae was working his mojo. The authors had him leave it, unused, in the corner. Thousands of different plot possibilities would arise from having had Buck surreptitiously tape-recording the entire murder and mojo and every one of those possibilities would have been much, much cooler than leaving the @%#$ bag unused and untouched in the corner of the room.

** Between the implausibly similar and practiced accounts of these witnesses and the unlikely description of the crime itself -- with the elderly Stonagal racing around the room faster than the able-bodied T-C could move to safety -- the detectives' BS-meter should be spiking in the red. Nicolae, of course, must have worked his mojo on these investigators, otherwise, by the twelfth rendition of the witnesses' identical account, they'd have to be suspecting some kind of Orient Express conspiracy in which everyone in the room was somehow complicit in the deaths of these two men.

*** It'd be fun to rework the whole book in a Shutter Island/"Normal Again" vein, with Nicolae Carpathia turning out to be Buck/Rayford's psychologist desperately working to save him ...

Comments

[Keith]

Yay for LB Friday.

Does anyone know if Buck ever actually publishes a story in the entire series? It's such a good running gag, it'd be a shame to ruin it. Oh, it's not a gag?

[J Neo Marvin]

Does anyone know if Buck ever actually publishes a story in the entire series? It's such a good running gag, it'd be a shame to ruin it.

The Discreet Charm of The GIRAT.

[Holly Ingraham]

Any high-school journalism student could have given them a better idea of what's important in even weekly publishing (like the school paper)--like get the story. Any YA girl's career novel about journalism ('Ginny Majors, Junior Reporter') could have given them a better handle. Obviously, it is not in the least important that they or their readers understand the world--it might damage them with close contact--only that they stick to the Armaggedon Agenda. Too, it's obvious they expect their readership to =never= be in any of these sophisticated industries like journalism, air service, &c., or their bluff would get called. All those poor dead trees ....

[Jeff]

The authors had him leave it, unused, in the corner.

Hey, it's not hanging on the wall, so they don't have to use it!

[Robert]

I don't really get the "banging away several pages" thing. He's writing a news article, not a book...

[Spalanzani]

"Either everyone else has gone mad and he alone has kept his sanity, or else the other way around"

Reminds me of an old Gahan Wilson cartoon: a man is standing on a street corner, surrounded by living teddy bears. The teddy bear next to him, apparently his wife, says "Face it Edward: it's not that we've all turned into teddy bears, it's that you've gone crazy!"

[SchrodingersDuck]

Do we ever find out what this article Buck is supposed to be writing is about? Is he trying to write down the truth of what happened in the room - unlikely, since no-one would believe him. Is the article about the murders committed by Stonagal and TC? Again, unlikely since he's (a) agreed to bury the story and is probably too chicken to renege on the deal and (b) he's the tough Marty-Stu GIRAT; he doesn't want people to know he offered to bury the story in exchange for safety. Is he bringing people the truth behind the Rapture (A BIT LATE ON THAT ONE, BUCK) or is he just going on a long, unhinged rant about how great being an RTC is? I know GW apparently has very low editorial standards, but surely even they'd reject whatever Buck's cooking up here.

Personally, I like to imagine that the several pages he's churned out consist of just a selection of heavily distorted pieces of Christian clip-art he found on Google with the occasional grainy animated GIF of a the American flag thrown in for good measure. Or perhaps just "All play and no work makes Buck a dull boy" repeated over and over.

Also, apropos nothing, but Detective Sergeant Billy Cenni is an anagram of "Lying Detective Enables Cretin".

[jamoche]

And all of that took place in the time it took Buck to rush back to the office and type up a few pages.

Well, given what we've seen of Buck's abilities, it's entirely plausible that it took him a couple of hours for those few pages...

[Karen]

I'm too lazy to look it up, but last week one of us posted a brilliant script of a Lenny Briscoe/ Guy Played By Benjamin Bratt interview with the GIRAT. That should be referenced here, especially the line about "We're cops. We interview everybody, especially people who're in a hurry to leave murder scenes."

Of all the crap in this book, I think the bit about the policeman allowing a witness to leave the scene without giving a statement is the stupidest. Not only does this never happen in real life, but the basic cop-with-notebook-asking-witness scene has been replayed on TV every night since Eisenhower was in office. There is no bleeding excuse for this. Has Buck never seen "Dragnet?"

[Hawk]

First off, let me thank you for doing this. I was tipped off by gamer friends (thanks, EN World!) about slactivist and LB, and have spent the last two months reading through from the beginning (and in the process, getting a four-year trip down memory lane). Much appreciated -- frankly, I wish my high school and college literature courses had been able to impart this level of precise analysis. I'm finding myself looking at thinks I read in a different light ... especially when the characters are journalists who actually ask questions and file stories!

I'm still struggling with the "two muders, one (high velocity, hollow-point) bullet" bit. Unless the two were in close physical contact, the first investigator on the scene would immediately see something fishy. But then, since this is is only mostly improbable (compared to the wildy improbable events in the rest of the book), I should probably stick to shaking my head in disbelief.

What, two pages left?

[Hawk]

Oh, and typing > me. Sigh.

Perhaps the "Who's on First" bit was intended as a comedic interlude? As we all know from Hollywood, every story is better with a comedy sidekick.

[Ian]

If I had any faith in these authors (HA!) I'd say that "All Buck could do now was try to convince Stanton Bailey" was a subtle way of having Buck doubt his own sanity. If your close friends don't believe your theory about a worldwide conspiracy then you're even less likely to convince the men in white coats.

Even someone whose thinking is only a tenuously connected to reality is likely to doubt her sanity when met with universal skepticism, perhaps seeking help, perhaps plunging deeper into delusion as a defense mechanism ("so, they got to you too...").

[SchrodingersDuck]

I don't really get the "banging away several pages" thing. He's writing a news article, not a book...

I like to think of this as an unintended metaphor about Buck's (and LH&J's) masturbatory writing style, especially given the context. What else could a sentence beginning "He shut and locked his office door and began furiously..." be about - bearing in mind it also contains the phrase "banging out"?

[Keith]

Seriously, Buck had his bag with the tape recorder in it right there in the room where Nicolae was working his mojo. The authors had him leave it, unused, in the corner. Thousands of different plot possibilities would arise from having had Buck surreptitiously tape-recording the entire murder and mojo and every one of those possibilities would have been much, much cooler than leaving the @%#$ bag unused and untouched in the corner of the room.

This right here is a huge Violation of Chekhov's Gun. One of the cardinal rules of storytelling: if you show a gun in act 1, it must be used by Act 3. GIRAT with a tape recorder in his hip pocket at all times? That should play a part in the story.

[schism]

They seem unable to imagine a Christian who does not pray, worship and speak exactly as they do.

Of course they can. They even included their epitomization of such a person: Bruce Barnes.

[J Neo Marvin]

These guys manage to make the end of the world boring. No mean feat.

[Jeff]

This right here is a huge Violation of Chekhov's Gun.

Read my comment -- the tape recorder wasn't hanging on the wall, so it's OK to show it and not use it!

[Jeff]

BTW -- "Violation of Chekhov's Gun": Rock band or porn movie?

[Doctor Science]

I never heard the expression "prayed but sensed no leading" before, in what I thought a wide-ranging (though substantially Catholic/mainline/Jewish) religious education. Indeed, I keep staring at it wondering which meaning and pronounciation of "leading" is meant: he's used to getting printed messages from God?

[Jos]

And now Nicolae apparently has henchmen posing as police.

My first instinct was that Nicky had Cenni... disappeared. Mostly because that would have been a heck of a lot more sinister.

However, dressing some henchman up as a cop does seem more in line with the theatrical wannabe from the last few pages.

[Cowboy Diva]

By refusing even the slightest doubts about his own sanity, Buck comes across as insanely confident in his own certainty. This, sadly, is what the authors apparently think it means to have "faith."

Faith means knowing you're not insane?

Personal story alert: I've got a neighbor who should be on Lithium and zyprexa (in the process of tapering and switching to abilify, I think). While on her medications, she is stable and even creative. Off her medications she becomes incoherent and suffers from auditory hallucinations. The region being what it is, this means that she and Jesus are on speaking terms, and Jesus has definite opinions about the value of her medication regimen, and she has faith that Jesus (as broadcast on TBN) will take care of her.
2 nights ago, the door to her house stood open all night; she has not been seen since, and her sister/long-distance caretaker has no knowledge of her whereabouts.

we worry.

[borealys]

Clearly I'm not the only one whose first reaction to the bit about the tape recorder in the corner was to think, aha, Chekov's tape recorder!

Jeff, my vote is for rock band. Or perhaps album title. I think it'd make a good album title.

[Judith]

Rock band. I can picture it as a porn movie MUCH to clearly to ever allow it to become one.

[Judith]

Last post was a responce to Jeff, by the way. Sorry.

[Jill Smith]

"Mr. Bailey, I'm looking at my credentials right now. They're in my hand."

"Your credentials don't mean dirt if you didn't use 'em, Cameron."

Shades of Kafka and the bicycle license. If only.

[Spalanzani]

I also initially assumed that Nicky had "erased" the police officier, 1984-style, but I guess him just being one of Nicky's henchmen posing as a police officier is much simplier. Is it safe to assume that nothing further is ever revealed about this mystery?

[SchrodingersDuck]

Of course they can. They even included their epitomization of such a person: Bruce Barnes.

I'd dispute that. Barnes acts and speaks exactly as expected - he was, after all, pastor at a very devout fundie church. It's just that he never prayed on his own - at all. He knew the magic words, but never said them. He fully believed in God, but was too weak to overcome temptation.

As Fred said before, Barnes's list of sins reads like it was written by someone with no real idea about the thought process of a sinner. He describes going through the motions of misdeeds - lying, skipping work, looking at porn - but these are stated more or less matter-of-factly. All we know about his actual thoughts during this time is that he considered it "too good to be true", which you could hardly call a reasonable conclusion given the facts about Barnes's life.

Remember, this is a world where everyone who is not an RTC will happily throw away their religion at a moment's notice and join a cult run by the Secretary General of the United Nations. It's not so much that LH&J can't conceive of a Christian not thinking like them - it's that they can't conceive of any believer thinking anything other than RTC doggerel. Anyone who thinks otherwise is secretly a lying godless heathen, jumping blindly onto the most permissive religious bandwagon without any belief in the spiritual framework behind it.

[Narrator 1]

In between running for his meaningless little life and making telephone companies curse his very name, the Buckmeister forgot to keep Chekhov's Gun polished and primed. Now the thing doesn't even fire! Probably got dust in the barrel...

[Judith]

"Is it safe to assume that nothing further is ever revealed about this mystery?" ~Spalanzani

Very. We all know Buck doesn't waste his time actually figuring out what happened when he witnesses something amazing. He'll be much too busy this next month hanging out in Chicago thanking Bruce for his advice about bringing protection to an exclusive with the sexiest man alive, then he'll get a nice job working for the murderer/Antichrist*, marry Chloe, and forget all about it.

*Nicolae somehow found out that Buck is like Swiper from “Dora the Explorer”; say it three times quickly, and the GIRAT has to do what you want.

[Panda Rosa]

"Chekov's Tape Recorder" Not a Rock Band (Heavy Metal it goes without saying), not a Porn Film set on the Enterprise, but a --- Race Horse! (owned by a XXX star of course)
There was a feature on a local station (when it was still good) that would run some offbeat name and ask: Metal Band, Porn Film, or Race Horse? You'd be surprised how many phrases fit this.
In the World of Left Behind I'd flee to Metalheads or Playmates, as they'd be the only real islands of sanity.

[Judith]

"I also initially assumed that Nicky had "erased" the police officier, 1984-style, but I guess him just being one of Nicky's henchmen posing as a police officier is much simplier." ~Spalanzani

It makes more sense, too, given that the "police" were not acting anything like police. I could see not finding twelve identical stories odd if you'd been told in advance that that's what you'd be getting.

It doesn't, however, explain why no one who REALLY should have been policing this situation found it odd that they weren't called.

[Mau de Katt]

I never heard the expression "prayed but sensed no leading" before, in what I thought a wide-ranging (though substantially Catholic/mainline/Jewish) religious education. Indeed, I keep staring at it wondering which meaning and pronounciation of "leading" is meant: he's used to getting printed messages from God?

As a former fundagelical myself, I can tell you that "sensing the leading from God" means that you get the usual impulses, hunches, or ideas that anyone gets, but you take them to be messages from God in response to prayer. And if you are very special or "blessed," you hear an actual voice from God, or see visions and have conversations with him (in the form of Jesus, usually) during your prayer sessions.

They are messages from God, that is unless and until heeding them leads you astray... then they were deceptions from Satan or one of his demons. Either to try to lead you Away From The Path because: 1)all Truly Effective Christians are Afflicted This Way, it proves your effectiveness in Combatting his EEEvuhl Schemes or 2) you were too weak in your prayer life or have allowed sin to get a foothold in your life, thus giving Satan and his demons permission to afflict you and lead you astray.

Which of these two outcomes is the applicable one is decided by your fellow Christians, based on their own "leadings from God." (i.e. who likes you and how much, and how much trouble you've caused everyone else with your problems.)

It's a very complicated and schizophrenic way to live.

[Abelardus]

... with Nicolae Carpathia turning out to be Buck/Rayford's psychologist desperately working to save him ...

Beautiful.

OK, now I'll go back and read all previous comments.

[Drake Pope]

Bailey was not in a discussing mood, so Buck let the old man talk, not trying to defend himself. "I don't want any more of this nonsense about your having been there. I know you were in the building and I see your credentials, but you know and I know and everyone who was in there know you weren't. I don't know what you thought was more important, but you were wrong. This is unacceptable and unforgivable, Cameron. I can't have you as my executive editor."

"I'll gladly go back to senior writer," Buck said.

"Can't go along with that either, pal. I want you out of New York. I'm going to put you in the Chicago Bureau."

"I'll be happy to run that for you."

Bailey shook his head. "You don't get it, do you, Cameron? I don't trust you. I should fire you. But I know you'd just wind up with somebody else."

"I don't want to be with anybody else."

"Good, because if you tried to jump to the competition, I'd have to tell them about this stunt. You're going to be a staff writer out of Chicago, working for the woman who was Lucinda's assistant there. [...] It'll mean a whopping cut in pay, especially considering what you would've gotten with the promotion. [...] That was the sorriest excuse for news gathering I've ever seen, and by one of the best in the business."

Mr. Bailey slammed the door. {LB - pp. 466-467)

---------------------

Finally. It took over 400 pages of corruption, laziness, incompetence, and sleazy double-dealing but Bailey finally cottoned on to what we figured out a dozen chapters ago -- that Buck is the "sorriest excuse" For a writer that any of us will ever see. Easily the best snippet of the book, and it propels Stanton Bailey into Number 1 spot for Best Named Character of the Series.

[Ecks]

Why should he doubt his sanity? He's already seen clear evidence of mind controlling magic, this latest puzzle fits very neatly into the idea he already has... I mean, perhaps he hasn't had time to sit down and put it all together, and things are flying at him quite quickly - he doesn't have our reader's ability to stop time ad ponder - so perhaps he's getting disoriented with all these rapid fire dilemmas. He's probably exhausted too after the last few weeks of rushing about, and knows he isn't thinking quite straight. And heck, even miss Marple is allowed to be temporarily befuddled some times. I mean, let's face it, he's probably being held back from the brink of physical collapse by nothing more than the thinest strut of Marty Suedom.

--

End of book upcomming... But no new developments on date of meetups? Are we going to have to have emails between people in the same catchement areas?

At one point I looked into setting up a google map that we could all stick anonymous pins into so that sensible middle locations could be worked out, but I couldn't make it work with sensible amounts of privacy.

--

Actually I'm thinking "Chekov's Tape Recorder" sounds like an in joke from the set of the original star trek series.

--

I've never been religious, but 'leading' made intuitive sense to me. One of the latest theories is that we have these associative semantic networks in our minds, which form concepts (LB, good, bad, phone calls, Fred, steaming produce, Bulbul, Slovakia, etc) that are wired up with arrays of links, and that 'activation' automatically spreads from one to another, in complex flows (context can reinforce different associations to the same objects differently at different times)... And the upshot is that we become aware of ideas welling up inside us, just popping into our minds. Normally we attribute this fully to ourselves, although some of us can be convinced it's coming from an external source (hypnotism really messes with this process, for example, and when we're dreaming we don't fact check it very well, so our associations run pretty wild on us)... Anyway, we have to be pretty nuts to believe that these ideas are literally coming from outside our head, but believing in God as an omni omni type of entity who talks to us would make it pretty easy to experience some of these thoughts as suggestions from a benevolent helper.

There's even some data to suggest that with a certain amount of learning under our belt, these 'gut' type reactions can actually lead us to make better and more nuanced decisions than following the more conscious 'logical' parts of our mind (that part can only evaluate such concepts as it is currenly being fed by the associative network, which is how framing issues works - the 'logical' answer you give depends a lot on the ideas you feed in to it). So perhaps, at least in contexts you know well, "listening to God's leadings" would actually be a reasonably good guide to smart decision making.

/wild theoretical speculation

(oh, just saw Mau de Katt's post - nice, sounds like I'm at least starting from the right sort of page. Thanks Mau, interesting!)

[animus]

Nicolae Carpathia turning out to be Buck/Rayford's psychologist desperately working to save him

The Cabinet of Dr Carpathia?

[SueW]

...that Buck is the "sorriest excuse" For a writer that any of us will ever see.

But he didn't say that - he called him "one of the best in the business". As if this latest failure to get a story were out of character.

[SueW]

By the way, I really hope Fred will take on the next book in the series. I took a peek at the first chapter, and it starts right off with Buck buying a condo. Its main selling point is, you guessed it, built-in phones! :-D

[The Amazing Kim]

I'm liking Schrodinger's Duck's take on the "banging", but would also suggest that the waste of all that kinetic energy is symptomatic of another side of Buck - the impotent and self-defeating one. I mean, the computer keys aren't going to type any better with more pressure - all Buck's banging is going into making sound and heat, really - and just making him slower and sore afterwards.

In the end it's just another case of sound and fury signifying nothing. Sort of the book as a whole.

[The Amazing Kim]

SueW- Fred will be tackling the first movie after this book. Though I'm sure we wouldn't begrudge him a few months' holiday - it's been 5 years of intensive analysis! I do hope LB Fridays get picked up by a publisher or academia or somesuch, to be kept on the public record, once it's finished.

[The Amazing Kim]

The Cabinet of Dr Carpathia?

Silence in the press room/Who turned off the phones?

[hapax]

"Buck prayed but sensed no leading"

Y'know, I had EXACTLY the same experience in junior high, the first time I tried to waltz.

[Fraser]

Why would Nickie Mt. Shasta bother to either have a phony policeman or erase one? Isn't the whole point of this scene that he can murder two people and nobody will be able to prove it? So why would he need a stooge? Or to eliminate the guy (which would be pointless--like they won't send a replacement?)?

For that matter, why erase Buck's presence from the memories of everyone else?

I suppose that's part of the Mary Sue-ness--Nicky showing his mighty powers then making everyone makes sense because what matters is that the GIRAT be impressed, since he's the central character (of course, Nicky has no reason to think he'd remember either ...)

[Vermic]

We began the book with Rayford and his fully loaded 747 on autopilot, and we end it with a solitary Buck furiously banging behind closed doors. The symmetry would be almost artistic, were it not so damn icky.

The only thing I've been able to glean from these confusing last few chapters of mind-whammies and strategic bucket placement is "Buck is saved, and Nicolae is a bad man with strange powers." Everything else is a verbal blur. Can someone explain why Nicolae just doesn't have Buck killed?

[Drake Pope]

Everything else is a verbal blur. Can someone explain why Nicolae just doesn't have Buck killed?

Because Buck is a main character, and thus immune to the feeble spells and weapons of the Antichrist. He is not as protected as Rayford Steele (SPOILERS!!!) but he has more than enough authorial intervention mojo to shield him for at least another nine (?) books.

[Dash]

You're going to be a staff writer out of Chicago, working for the woman who was Lucinda's assistant there.

There really are only a half dozen people in this book! Who would refer to the Chicago national desk editor (or whatever position the woman--she of the sensible shoes, I think--holds) that way? "Welcome to the White House press secretary's staff! You'll be working for the woman who used to be Scott McClellan's assistant."

[Dash]

"Buck prayed but sensed no leading"

hapax: Y'know, I had EXACTLY the same experience in junior high, the first time I tried to waltz.

Dang, you're good! Waiter, another replacement keyboard over here, please!

[Judith]

"Because Buck is a main character, and thus immune to the feeble spells and weapons of the Antichrist. He is not as protected as Rayford Steele (SPOILERS!!!) but he has more than enough authorial intervention mojo to shield him for at least another nine (?) books." ~Drake Pope

SPOILERS. Does anyone really care? Anyone at all?

I'm pretty sure Buck makes it to late in book 11 or early in book 12, unless you were talking about something other than death.(..?) He marries Chloe in book 2, which must have been something like death for both of them. It's Chloe who dies somewhere in book 10 or so.

*looks it up* Ah, yes, according to my copy of The Authorized Left Behind Handbook* Buck dies late in book 11, Chloe dies early in book 11, and Rayford is fatally injured but manages to hide behind something until Jesus shows up.**

*Do not ask. Just don't.

**I forget where they ditched Buck and Chloe's 4.5 year old son during all of this, but I'm sure he was in the very capable hands of some fugatives in the desert somewhere.

[Abelardus]

Because Buck is a main character, and thus immune to the feeble spells and weapons of the Antichrist.

He's got that rare combination of expendable and invulnerable.

[Reynard]

Buck has been a born-again RTC for less than half a day but he's already completely absorbed the native idiom. "He prayed but sensed no leading" conveys a raft of beliefs about the meaning, nature and practice of prayer that Buck shouldn't have any experience with or knowledge of. Yet as soon as the "transaction" occurs, the moment he is saved, he emerges full-grown with all of the cultural tics and learned piety of someone who had lived for decades in a particular kind of evangelical church.

I know the type. I used to hang out on a religion-themed chat room, and there was this Born Again-type who liked to brag (especially if anyone who dared disagree with her on pretty much *anything* having to do with the Bible and Christianity) that simply by being "saved", she had been given "the gift of discernment" -- i.e. the ability to understand and interpret the Bible and all teachings within -- on a level with anyone who'd spent years in a Seminary and held a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity.) Not surprisingly, anytime anyone caught her in an error -- whether in fact or doctrine -- she'd simply brush it off and insist that, if we simply *read* our Bibles like any good Real True Christian should and be Born Again in the Blood of... (etc., etc.) we would all also instantaneously receive this "gift" and be as smart and Bible-wise as she was. Needles to say, I thought she was full of it (as did quite a few of my fellow hangers-out) and I eventually left the site when it began to get overrun by the wackos, wingnuts, fanatics and loonies. (Guess which greener pastures I headed to...)

That particular kind of evangelical church no longer exists in the world of Left Behind. It was whisked off the planet along with nearly every person who spoke its lingo and adhered to its forms of piety. Yet whenever anyone in this post-Rapture world converts, they instantly begin talking about "sensing the Lord's leading." The specific shape and form of piety in this one culture seems to be for the authors inextricably and indistinguishably intermixed with the meaning and substance of the gospel. They seem unable to imagine a Christian who does not pray, worship and speak exactly as they do.

What about that surprises you? LaH&J live in their own little world -- where God is Actually Really Real; Men are Godly, Manly Men (if they're not working for Nick of the Mountain), Women are Whores (or at absolute best; subservient, sexless emo chattel), phone service is apparently free, and the U.N. rules us all. Not a nice place to visit, and I *definitely* don't want to live there...

Posted by Karen: Of all the crap in this book, I think the bit about the policeman allowing a witness to leave the scene without giving a statement is the stupidest. Not only does this never happen in real life, but the basic cop-with-notebook-asking-witness scene has been replayed on TV every night since Eisenhower was in office. There is no bleeding excuse for this. Has Buck never seen "Dragnet?"

No, the question is, "Haven't *LaH&J* ever seen 'Dragnet'?!"