Your idea reminds me of how Isaac Asimov, towards the end of his career, integrated the Galactic Empire, Foundation series and the Robot novels into one over-arching story thread.
There was a really interesting article in the UK SFX magazine a couple of months ago about Stephen King and how a lot of his work forms a kind of multi-verse sharing characters and places (in particular the location of Derry).
Which is exactly why everyone who is even remotely a fan of King should read The Dark Tower series!
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From King's website:
QUOTE
Just as the Dark Tower is the nexus point of the time/space continuum within the context of the Dark Tower novels, so the Dark Tower novels are the linchpin of Stephen King’s creative multiverse. Father Callahan, the damned priest of ‘Salem’s Lot, finds his way to Mid-World, as does Patrick Danville, the little boy in Insomnia who lives in Derry, Maine. The world-hopping Randall Flagg is able to travel from the superflu-ravaged world of The Stand to the Kingdom of Delain, found in Eyes of the Dragon, and then back to Roland’s childhood home of Gilead. As Stephen King says, there is a place for all of his characters in Mid-World, from Randall Flagg and Ralph Roberts to Ted Brautigan and Dinky Earnshaw. Even if some creatures morph when they move from one world to another—as do the can-toi and the Regulators—there is still a place for them in Roland’s universe.
END QUOTE
OK, that's my shameless plug for the day! 😉
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Let's not forget that David Lynch did not write Twin Peaks on his own. It was co-written by Mark Frost. It is not all his own work in the same way that Stephen King is responsible for his universe.
If I recall correctly, I've seen you speak up for Frost like this before. Good on you! 🙂
Just out of curiosity, if you had to guess a percentage for their contributions to the Return for Lynch/Frost, what would it be? 90/10, 75/25, 50/50? Something else? I realize none of us know for sure.
😉
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I couldn't agree more that Lynch has explored a common set of themes--each time, in a new way-- throughout his career. But I do think there's a case to be made that The Return reflects a new turn toward auto-quotation (or an extension of the Inland Empire credit-reel sequence) that could be a a productive point of departure for an analysis of what The Return is doing thematically. I suspect that "meta"-level analysis and textual analysis could be fruitfully intertwined here... but I think we're a ways off, as yet, from articulating how or why the themes Lynch explores in The Return seem to so readily spill over from the textual container he's situated them in ...
Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the Return, per se. Maybe Lynch is just getting old. =:-O
Both of the fictional world-creators mentioned in this thread - King and Asimov - developed the unified field theories of their work in later years. King is 70, and Asimov died at 72. Lynch is 71. Perhaps the motives for each are different, but I think towards the end of one's creative career there is an understandable desire to make your life's work seem even bigger, even more important than it already has been.
Unifying the oeuvre is one way of accomplishing that.
😉
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Hi Bad Fan,I couldn't agree more that Lynch has explored a common set of themes--each time, in a new way-- throughout his career. But I do think there's a case to be made that The Return reflects a new turn toward auto-quotation (or an extension of the Inland Empire credit-reel sequence) that could be a a productive point of departure for an analysis of what The Return is doing thematically. I suspect that "meta"-level analysis and textual analysis could be fruitfully intertwined here... but I think we're a ways off, as yet, from articulating how or why the themes Lynch explores in The Return seem to so readily spill over from the textual container he's situated them in ...
Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the Return, per se. Maybe Lynch is just getting old. =:-O
Both of the fictional world-creators mentioned in this thread - King and Asimov - developed the unified field theories of their work in later years. King is 70, and Asimov died at 72. Lynch is 71. Perhaps the motives for each are different, but I think towards the end of one's creative career there is an understandable desire to make your life's work seem even bigger, even more important than it already has been.
Unifying the oeuvre is one way of accomplishing that.
😉
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[A caveat: I'm focused on Lynch here, with all due respect to Mark Frost. ]
Interesting theory, Ric! Strikes me as the inverse of the "late style" anxiety that was a preoccupation, iirc, of critics like Theodor Adorno, Edward Said, Harold Bloom et al. (each discussed in a fine essay by John Updike, here)
That is to say, a self-referential effort to unify one's oeuvre is something apart from an older preoccupation with transcending it from one's deathbed. It's strikes me as perhaps ironic in Lynch's case: the unification hypothesis could be interpreted as a move toward a monumental, arch-romantic "mega-work for posterity," yet the retrospective orientation of the self-quotation amounts to an end run around the telos of romantic "late style" whereby the artist realizes their own apotheosis/dies "on the summit," as it were.
I'm admittedly out of my depth here.... but I think it makes sense to plug the retrospective self-quotation into the "in memoriam" for the fallen collaborators theme that otherwise permeates the series.... Death haunts The Return , as it does all of Lynch's work, but it is made more immediate and personal in its intertextual/paratextual, reflexive resonances...
Consider:
- The audience/fandom loses the characters of Cooper, Laura (and Audrey) in an absolute sense-- one tantamount to death.
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his audience/fandom?
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his fallen collaborators
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his oeuvre.
Everyone involved--viewer, artist, cast, characters-- is projected into a somewhat frozen state of loss/grief/mourning ...
Does this make sense? Maybe I'm taking liberties or getting ahead of myself in my own-- perhaps inappropriate-- attempt to thematically unify The Return...
But I would say, in sum, that this line of interpretation suggests that even the title of The Return could be understood as a "red herring" of sorts.
The Farewell might be more apt.
Interesting theory, Ric! Strikes me as the inverse of the "late style" anxiety that was a preoccupation, iirc, of critics like Theodor Adorno, Edward Said, Harold Bloom et al. (each discussed in a fine essay by John Updike, here)
That is to say, a self-referential effort to unify one's oeuvre is something apart from an older preoccupation with transcending it from one's deathbed. It's strikes me as perhaps ironic in Lynch's case: the unification hypothesis could be interpreted as a move toward a monumental, arch-romantic "mega-work for posterity," yet the retrospective orientation of the self-quotation amounts to an end run around the telos of romantic "late style" whereby the artist realizes their own apotheosis/dies "on the summit," as it were.
I'm admittedly out of my depth here.... but I think it makes sense to plug the retrospective self-quotation into the "in memoriam" for the fallen collaborators theme that otherwise permeates the series.... Death haunts The Return , as it does all of Lynch's work, but it is made more immediate and personal in its intertextual/paratextual, reflexive resonances...
Consider:
- The audience/fandom loses the characters of Cooper, Laura (and Audrey) in an absolute sense-- one tantamount to death.
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his audience/fandom?
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his fallen collaborators
- The filmmaker says goodbye to his oeuvre.
Everyone involved--viewer, artist, cast, characters-- is projected into a somewhat frozen state of loss/grief/mourning ...
Does this make sense? Maybe I'm taking liberties or getting ahead of myself in my own-- perhaps inappropriate-- attempt to thematically unify The Return...
But I would say, in sum, that this line of interpretation suggests that even the title of The Return could be understood as a "red herring" of sorts.
The Farewell might be more apt.
I think The Return is quite appropriate. Especially in light of the idea of a grand unification. Even before the question of unification came up, it always brought to mind this quote:
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust. From whence we came, we shall Return.
It is particularly relevant with, as you mention, all the "In Memoria" Lynch had to suffer through to complete his film-making valediction. (And I do believe that The Return was a Lynchian leave-taking.) 🙁
The "New Yorker" link was very interesting. I thought Updike quoting Shakespeare's Prospero was apropos of The Return:
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous
palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
And Lynch, with a twitch of his mustache and a twirl of his cane, simply shuffles off to Buffalo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMdEqB-TB8g
😉
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Fire walk with