Lost: The article that Jack read

Warning: The following post contains material not suitable for those who have not yet seen the last episode of season 3 of Lost and do not want to be spoiled about season 4 details.

The nice folks over at The Fuselage have posted what is supposed to be the full text of the mysterious article that Jack read at the beginning of the season 3 finale. Here’s what it says:

The body of John Lantham of New York was found shortly after 4 am in the 4300 block of Grand Avenue. Ted Worden, a doorman at the Tower Lofts complex, heard loud noises coming from the victim’s loft. Concerned for tenants’ safety, he entered the loft and found the body hanging from a beam in the living room. According to Jaime Ortiz, a police spokesman, the incident was deemed a suicide after medical tests. Latham (sic) is survived by one teen-aged son. Memorial services will be held at the Hoffs-Drawlar Funeral Home tomorrow evening.

Read the original here. Yes, I realize this could be a hoax, but I miss Lost, and I’m willing to play along.

Note that this seems to be a newspaper article, not an obituary. Anyway, one oddity is that this person’s last name is spelled two different ways in the article – both “Lantham” and “Latham.” The poster at The Fuselage takes that latter spelling to be incorrect, but it could just as easily be the former (or both). At any rate, I don’t recognize either name from previous episodes of Lost. A certain John Latham was, apparently, a conceptual artist who died in 2006. The Guardian has his obit here. Wikipedia has a short write-up on Latham, a relevant part of which appears to be the following:

Perhaps the culmination of Latham’s fusion of art, science and sociology was the concept of Flat Time. In its most basic form, it is represented by a canvas attached at the top to a cylinder which rolls up and unrolls on an electric motor. The back of the canvas faces outwards so that the image is only visible along the cylinder at the point where it unrolls. This represents the present moment in passing time which can only be made sense of when related to what has already gone, the past, represented by the image on the back of the canvas. The ideas contained within the time-base roller, as it is know, are far more complicated. While the vertical represents passing, clock time, scale along the cylinder is the ‘time-base’. This is a concept, developed by Latham, asserting that the period of an event is fundamental to its properties and to how it relates to other events. The cylinder is scaled A-Z with A denoting the shortest possible event, M the period of human activity cycles (roughly 30 years), U the period of the universe and Z a notional period in which other universe could occur. The square of this canvas, time-base against clock time, is the area where all events can be mapped out, as Latham himself puts it, ‘This omnipresent component the painting surface becomes a score which unfolds while being there all the time, via the time base.’ If all events, however large or small, can be represented on the same scale, then psychology and sociology must take an equal foot physics in our understanding of the universe.

Time was, of course, an important sub-theme in season 3, and I’m sure this will fuel the fires of the time theorists.

But at a more practical level, I’d still like to know who is in that coffin. In my last post of this topic, I said it was either Locke, Ben, Jacob, or Sawyer – most probably the latter. If Lantham/Latham is someone we’ve never met, then – of course – I was simply wrong. Another (slightly more interesting) possibility is that Lantham/Latham is a pseudonym. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is. Does the article help us at all?

• Lantham/Latham was staying in the Tower Lofts complex – a place which would (if it really existed) be right off the 110 freeway, near the LA Coliseum. This is a dodgy part of town, but the apartment seems to have had a doorman, making it sound slightly posh.
• Lantham/Latham hanged to death.
• Lantham/Latham appeared to commit suicide (though who makes “loud noises” before doing so?).
• Lantham/Latham “is survived by one teen-aged son.”
• Lantham/Latham is not identified as a survivor of flight 815.

Locke was on the verge of suicide in the finale before he saw Walt. This might be a reference to that fact. However, as far as we know, none of the four characters on my list have teen-age sons. Indeed, Sawyer is probably too young to have one. Moreover, Ben’s close connection with the island and the inability of women to give birth there makes him a bit of a long shot as well. In fact, the only character who has a teen-age son whom we know about is Michael, someone I eliminated in my last post. Back to the drawing board we go!

One final point. The creators of Lost clearly like anagrams. In light of that fact, it worth pointing out that “Lantham” has “Halt John, man!” as one of its anagrams. Unlikely, but what the hell.