Big-ass continuity error?

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Spike [/i]
[B]So, how does this account for Carl having read the poem to his wife and child some 20 years earlier? [/B][/QUOTE]

Was it as much as 20 years?

Basil Frankie didn't author the poem. He found it and compiled it along with other poems.

I strongly doubt that his wife and child were killed twenty years earlier. He's not [i]nearly[/i] that old. It was much more recently.

[b]Minor spoilers[/b]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Vendetta [/i]
[B]Was it as much as 20 years? [/B][/QUOTE]

About. It's mentioned several times in the book.

The last chapter of the book states that Carl married when he was 20 and had his daughter one year later.

Carl mentions a couple times that the last person he'd had sex with was his wife, 20 years earlier.

Carl notices his daughter would be about Mona's age if she were alive.

And I put "author" in quotations since Frankie found the poem and translated it for [i]Poems and Rhymes[/i]. I'm aware of the poem's prior existance - this doesn't change the fact that Helen's child died when read the poem, and her neighbor's child died when read the poem. Both of these are outside the original "11 years ago" figure mentioned by Helen.

I think I assumed at the time that the culling song (and other lullabies in [i]Poems and Rhymes from Around the World[/i]) had been collected from other printed sources rather than from In-The-Field work...

Now that I think about it Frankie couldn't have gone to Africa and found the song written down somewhere, he would have had to heard it sung. Meaning he wouldn't have lived to write it down. How was this ancient song passed from one person to another before finally being written down? (I haven't read Lullaby but for the once when it first came out, so I could be misremembering things...)

i don't recall anywhere in the book stating that the book he had read the culling song out of to his wife and daughter was the same book that they're trying to hunt down. i could be wrong though.

The book doesn't [i]specifically[/i] state that Carl read his wife and daughter the culling song, although it does state that he read them a lullaby to put them to sleep.

The book is pretty clear in pointing out that Helen received a copy of [i]Poems and Rhymes[/i] as a baby gift.

And about Frankie getting hold of the culling song, I always assumed he got it from the Book of Shadows which he probably came across in his search for "public domain" stories/poems he could plagarize.

is it possible that certain versions have a publishing date of 11 years ago, yet there were earlier versions that would have an earlier publishing date?
it's either a good catch on a pretty unimportant yet obvious error, or just something that could be reasoned out and still is unimportant.

To Tuffy:

In order for the culling song to make someone 'fall asleep' the person saying the culling song has to want that person to 'fall asleep,' correct?

Therefore if Frankie had heard it but the person saying it did not want him to fall asleep that's how he could have written it down.

There does seem to be a bit of a continuity error here. I agree. I just finished the book. Car mentioned to Helen that it had been about 18 years since his last sexual encounter. He is supposed to be 40 years at the time the story is taking place. In defense of Chuck, he never states if Carl actually read the poem out of that book. It never sates either if he actually read that particular culling song. Its all implied, and I took it as such.

[QUOTE=Spike]Early on in the book Helen and Carl are talking about Basil Frankie, the "author" of [i]Poems and Rhymes from Around the World[/i]. Helen says [i]Poems and Rhymes[/i] was published 11 years ago. (page 64 in the hardcover edition, I believe)

So, how does this account for Carl having read the poem to his wife and child some 20 years earlier? I know the culling song is an ancient Zulu spell and has existed in the Book of Shadows for who knows how long, but how was anyone supposed to read the book before it was printed?

Right now I'm re-reading Lullaby, I originally read it about a year ago and I didn't notice this. The "11 years ago" figure is only mentioned once, as far as I can tell - could this be a simple typo?[/QUOTE]
Yes, there's a consistency problem because:

He's a fact checker, and he's thorough and accurate as far as we know.
He's gone into county records and Helen's kid and husband died 20 years ago.
His imaginary family mentions that Mona is the age his daughter would be. Since she lives on her own, buys her own wine and has a full time job, she's got to be 18+.
Helen indirectly admits to killing the guy responsible for the book Carl finds, but both she and Carl had their catastrophes way before it was published.

So, are Helen and Karl out of sync with the calendar by that much? I don't see it. Twice through, and I still don't see it. Either the ones they're hunting down are a second edition (which means they have even more to hunt down) or the culling spell occurred in other children's lit, which means they have more books to hunt.

So is there a consistency problem? Yeah. Is it a big deal in terms of the themes in the book, no. I can't imagine Carl missing a 9 year gap, but he only indirectly refers to his own role as a God who destroys his own creation every time his foot is healed enough. So I'd rule insanity if Helen's experience wasn't a reinforcement.

A simple fix. The book wasn't published 11 years ago, it was 21 years ago. Just change that and the whole thing works.

Another minor point I'd like to see addressed: does he stomp his models as soon as they're finished? Or does he build a big, vast, perfect city of models and then snap and stomp them to death when he gets assigned the 'crib death' assignment?

The latter makes more sense to me, because the model seller knows his foot isn't getting any better. Anyone who has been a customer for years and has always limped, the owner wouldn't be as insensitive as to comment. But if they were a healthy (to appearances) customer who recently developed a limp, then a comment might fit.

I think these things may be a case of 'minimalism' gone a beat too far. Chuck's great at shedding the unessential, but maybe every once in a while he drops something (maybe with the egging-on of an editor) that really would help us fit it together.

Then again, Amy Hempel is one of his heroes, and a lot of her stories leave you to scratch all the dandruff off your head and read them again. Sometimes with her, I just have to shrug and say, "I'll never get it, not with this for clues..."

 I think it  means he read the poem alone, before it was in the book.

but the 11 years was when the poem was more universally read.

I know this is 6 years after the original post.

In the 2002 paperback edition on page 84 (Chapter 15) Carl tells Helen the Poems and Rhymes was published 20 years ago. So, Maybe the Editors fixed the problem, if there was one.

I got on here to see if Carl Streator was Basil Frankie. And to see if Helen had in fact bought Carl's (Frankie's) estate when he fled.

I now know I had Frankie and Wagner mixed up.

However, I wish Streator had in fact been Frankie and had cast a spell on himself to forget the culling and the grimore. I believe this would have better tied the external events to the psychology of Streator. i.e imagining Mona, Oyster, Helen as his family, why the grimore was so close to home, his desire to destroy the grimore and other books, his uncanny ability to notice the source of the deaths, his concepts of whose thoughts are whose? etc.

Not only would it be another twist, it would give me a reason to read the book a second time. Still, a very good book.