In Search of the Cipher in the Foreword

Tags

cipher, Doug Dorst, Ernest Hemingway, Foreword, FXC, JJ Abrams, Kurt Vonnegut, Le Monde, The World, Translator's Note, VMS

Typically, when FXC embeds a cipher in a chapter of Ship of Theseus, she includes a deliberately incorrect fact in a footnote that indicates where to find the enciphered message and what type of cipher it might be. And the chapter title typically is some sort of keyword to help break the cipher.

For example, in Fn1 on p70, FXC says that something happened in five days in Straka’s The Square when in reality it was ten days, as Eric Husch points out in the marginalia. Jennifer Heyward correctly deduces that the error “five” points to the fifth footnote. And FXC uses the word spotted on p70 to indicate that the “spots” in the fifth footnote highlight the message to be deciphered. The chapter title, The Emersion of “S”, indicates that the letter S-es that have spots should emerge and we are to take the two letters on either side of it to produce the message ARP IS BOUCHARD IS HW (see p80).

If we are to trust that FXC is consistent with this pattern, then there are still ciphers to be discovered in the Foreword, the Interlude, and Chapter 9: Birds of Negative Space. It could also be that there are additional ciphers (see Fn6, p84 – where FXC uses an incorrect name).

This blog is meant to stimulate conversation that might lead to the discovery of a cipher in the Translator’s Note and Foreword.

Consider Fn2 on p vi…

The newspaper Le Monde did not exist until December 19, 1944 – well after the so-called interview with Ernest Hemingway appeared in print. Beyond that error, Eric points out that there is no evidence to support anything FXC claims about Hemingway’s admiration, request for a personal audience, or later criticism.

What might we deduce about a possible cipher, its location, or the key to its solution? A few thoughts to get the conversation started…

• December 19, 1944 – the date Le Monde actually did begin its life in print is the same date that author Kurt Vonnegut was captured and became a POW. His experiences would ultimately lead to his masterpiece Slaughterhouse Five. And Vonnegut was influenced heavily by Hemingway. But this may just be an Easter Egg from Doug Dorst since at the time Ship of Theseus was published, Vonnegut was still an unknown literary figure.
• FXC uses the phrase Hemingway’s about-face. Is this a play on the word Foreword? Go forward and then do an about-face somehow?
• Since 1935 is an impossible year for anything to be printed in Le Monde, perhaps 1935 refers to FNs 1, 9, 3, and 5 in the Foreword. Perhaps just 3 and 5. Perhaps 3-5. Or something else?
• Since part of the title of this chapter is Translator’s Note, are we to translate Le Monde (“The World”) and with that phrase make discoveries? For example, in Fn11 on p xiii, FXC twice uses the phrase “mundanely literal.” The word  mundane comes from the same root as Monde and means “world.” And this: the second sentence of the Foreword – the one that starts to answer the question in the first – begins with the two words The world. And this: on p x (X marks the spot?), FXC says “I saw the world through the eyes of his characters; I heard his voice in his letters and in our discussions in the margins of his typescripts.” Eric underlines the entire sentence and points to it as proof that FXC was “a hack.” Does this sentence explain how we are to see “The world?” And this: the first underlined sentence in the Foreword (and thus the entire book) is the world never knew Straka’s face (pp v-vi). The associated marginalia is from Jen, who asks “So why’d. You have to leave the library in such a hurry the other night?” Contrast this with Doug Dorst’s tweet that “the answers you seek may be found in the library” – implying that to see Straka’s face we must be in the library. And this: Straka’s work often contains shadow-world occurrences (vi). And this: Hemingway had room 511 all to himself at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Havana, Cuba between 1932 and 1939 – including 1935, though he was not there much. Ambos Mundos means both worlds, celebratin Cuba as a bridge between the Old World and the New World. And this: our friend Archimedes has the famous quote…

Give me a place to stand and I shall move the world.

Location of PSU Discovered!

Tags

A Farewell to Arms, book cipher, Doug Dorst, Eric Husch, Ernest Hemingway, Jen Heyward, JJ Abrams, Pollard Arkansas, Pollard State University, PSU, V.M. Straka, VM Straka

This postcard, an insert on p192…

…shows the address blacked out with a marker. However, a few simple adjustments to the contrast and some magnification reveal the address that the postcard was sent to…

Here you can clearly see…

Pollard State University c/o Pronghorn Java Pollard, AR 72456 USA

Here is the zip code 72456 on Google Maps.

@anabrams fan just pointed out the following: Just a few minutes away is Piggot, AR. Highpoints include the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum & Education Center. It includes a barn studio and the home of Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer. Here is an interesting timeline.

In this barn studio, Hemingway wrote portions of A Farewell to Arms. If I were Jen and Eric, and I wanted to utilize a book cipher like the one FXC uses on p184, this is the book I would use.

The fact that the postcards were sent “C/O Pronghorn Java” means that Vanessa, who worked there, was the recipient and guardian of the postcards – which corresponds to the marginalia at the bottom of p231. And since we know that FXC received an unwelcome visit from someone after Eric (based on Arturo’s letter), then we can infer that Vanessa was not trustworthy. She likely disclosed the postcard information to Moody and/or Ilsa, along with the fact that Eric and Jen would meet there in the private room in the back.

Is this the clue in Fn2 of the Foreword?

Tags

Ash Wednesday, December 19, Doug Dorst, dresden, Ernest Hemingway, Filomena Caldeira, JJ Abrams, Kurt Vonnegut, Le Monde, Slaughterhouse Five, University of Iowa, V.M. Straka, VM Straka, Writer's Workshop

Fn2 in the Foreword mentions a 1935 interview in Le Monde where Hemingway praises Straka. But Le Monde did not begin until its birth on December 19, 1944. That same day, Kurt Vonnegut was captured and became a POW. His experiences there are a wellspring for his writings.

Perhaps we are being pointed toward clues in the relationship and/or writings of Hemingway and Vonnegut.

Hemingway provided frequent fodder for Vonnegut, inspiring a cadre of characters who celebrate war and death. In his sardonic response to this vision of a Hemingwayesque world, Vonnegut espoused kindness and restraint as moral imperatives against the more violent yearnings of human nature, which Hemingway in turn embraced as stoic, virile, and heroic. Though their paths were radically different, Broer finds in both an overarching obsession with the scars of war as chief adversary in a personal quest for understanding and wholeness. He locates in each writer’s canon moments of spiritual awaking leading to literary evolution—if not outright reinvention. In their later works Broer detects an increasing recognition of redemptive feminine aspects in themselves and their protagonists, pulling against the destructively tragic fatalism that otherwise dominates their worldviews.

Notice the spiritual awakening, literary evolution, and the “increasing recognition of redemptive feminine aspects in themselves and their protagonists.” This is symbolized in “S.” by S’s longing to connect with Sola – how he doesn’t even know she exists until the beginning of the book and by the end, he is side by side with her.

Another interesting Vonnegut connection is in the introduction to Slaughterhouse Five where he states…

Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.

The entirety of V.M. Straka’s life is impacted by the massacre at Calais in 1912, and his book is filled with the names of the victims of evil (including himself) who have the names of birds: Straka, Corbeau, Stenfalk, Ostrero, Osfour, Pfeifer, etc. Vonnegut’s quote could easily serve is an epigraph for Ship of Theseus in its entirety.

Gerhart_Hauptmann

V.M. Straka “died” (or did he?) at approximately midnight, June 6, 1946. On this same day, Gerhart Hauptmann died. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912. Like Kurt Vonnegut, he was in Dresden on the day it was firebombed and survived. Dresden was bombed for three days straight (February 13-15, 1945). By early morning February 14, Ash Wednesday, the center of the city was engulfed in a firestorm, which temperatures reaching 1500C.

Also, as Clare points out in the comments below…

Both Dorst and Vonnegut have a connection to Iowa via the U of I Writer’s Workshop. They were there at different times. Kurt Vonnegut taught there and Doug Dorst was a student.

Keep in mind this cannot be an in-book solution to any clues from FXC to VMS, because Vonnegut had not yet written anything. This would be more of an easter egg from JJ Abrams and/or Doug Dorst to us to note one of the points of the book.

For LOST Fans

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five had heavy influences on the time-traveling character Desmond Hume. Additionally, December 19 is the date of antihero Benjamin Linus’ birth, his mother’s death, and his father’s death years later.  This is a nod to the birth of the antihero character in general, especially through Emily Bronte – who gave birth to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and died young on December 19, 1848. Benjamin Linus’s mother’s name was Emily.