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Flin Flon: One Book's Unlikely Survival

2022-08-23 · story · John · 3:58 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: History & curiosities) · mode: Personal essay

John tells how The Sunless City (1905) by J. E. Preston Muddock, a forgotten and misogynistic adventure novel, survives only because a prospector named his copper mine, and so the town of Flin Flon, after its hero; books usually die young, and this one lives on through the town.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Tracy from the Turtles shoot, Flin Flon's name, John's rule on strange out-of-print books, and the book's arrival as COVID hits

  • ★★ During the Turtles All the Way Down movie shoot John befriended second assistant director Tracey, who grew up in the small town of Flin Flon, Manitoba. — 00:00:00
  • ★ As the grandson of someone from Skullbone, Tennessee, John has long been fascinated by unusual place names. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Tracey explained that Flin Flon got its name from a novel, The Sunless City, published in 1905. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John has a long-standing rule that if a friend gives him a strange out-of-print book, he reads it, in case it is long-lost literary treasure. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ The Sunless City arrived in John's mailbox just as COVID was settling upon his house. — 00:00:29 · COVID-19 pandemic
  • ★★ Muddock wrote over 50 books, mostly detective stories about the Glaswegian detective Dick Donovan, for a while as popular as Sherlock Holmes, plus travelogues, literary fiction, true crime and sci-fi. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — Muddock's forgotten career; books, unlike people, die young

  • ★★★ John says forgotten Muddock is more the rule than the exception: books don't last forever, and very few last even an average human lifespan. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ John has never heard of A. S. M. Hutchinson or Gertrude Atherton, though they wrote the best-selling American novels of 1922 and 1923. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ Showing the ten most popular US novels of the year The Great Gatsby came out, John says anyone who knows more than one of their authors is better read than he is. — 00:01:27 · United States

  • ★★★ Books die young: a book is far rarer to live to 100 than a person, so Muddock's being forgotten is unsurprising; what surprises is that he isn't totally forgotten. — 00:01:27

    “books, for lack of a better term, die young”

00:01:56 — The Sunless City's plot and its hero's misogyny

  • ★★ In The Sunless City, snuff-taking man of science Flin Flon sails a fish submarine through a lake into an inner world paved with gold, where tin is precious and a council of women rules people with tails. — 00:01:56
  • ★★★ John says Flin Flon's wildly misogynistic response to the matriarchy can't really be read as satire, since he is presented as the wisest man; there's a reason Muddock isn't read. — 00:02:55 · United States Congress

00:03:25 — Tom Creighton names the Flin Flon Mine; the book survives through the town; sign-off

  • ★★★ Prospector Tom Creighton found a large, deep copper vein and named his mine the Flin Flon Mine after just reading The Sunless City; the town that grew around it took the name. — 00:03:25
  • ★★ Flin Flon is going through a hard time: the biggest mine in the town is closing this year (2022). — 00:03:25
  • ★★★ As long as Flin Flon continues, the best of Muddock's work will also survive, which John finds kind of lovely. — 00:03:25

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Flin Flon · J. E. Preston Muddock · Josiah Flintabatty Floniton · The Sunless City

Also: People: A. S. M. Hutchinson · Gertrude Atherton · Tom Creighton · Tracy (second assistant director)

Works: Hot Tub Time Machine · I, Robot (film) · The Great Gatsby · Turtles All the Way Down (film)

Organizations: United States Congress

Concepts: life expectancy · misogyny

Places: Skullbone, Tennessee

Events: COVID-19 pandemic

Characters: Dick Donovan · Sherlock Holmes (fictional detective)

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