Big-ass continuity error?

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.

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...)

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.

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.

Carl did not read the culling song to his wife or kid..That morning, the book says.."I peeled back the smooth pink edges of her and licked deeper. THE TIDE OF AIR GOING IN AND OUT OF ME. AT THE TOP OF EACH BREATH, I DROVE MY MOUTH INTO HER." sorry about the caps, but thats the important stuff, if you could'nt tell. Earlier in the book, i dont know where, it says that if you blow into a girl while going down on her, it will put air into her heart and she will die..That is what happened to his wife, and as far as the kid is concerned SIDS. he didnt even know the song at that time.

It says in Chapter 3, where Carl is stiitin on the toilet putting the model house together, that "The truth is, even if you read to your wife and child some night. You read the a lullaby. And the next mornming, you wake up but your family doesn't. You lie in bed, still curled against your wife. She's warm but not breathing."

That to me says that he read the culling song to them the night before they died, and the night before he made love to his dead wife.

That's livor mortis. When you die, the blood pools to the lowest parts of your body.

yea i dont know if that really counts as a mark..
i see why you guys say that he did kill them, but i was just always under the impression that the culling song was something he only found out about when he was assigned to the SIDS story..i dont know, i think its really just up to the reader..

[QUOTE=umop ap!sdn]

i think this is just an error on chucks part, every time there is an error in one of his books people flip out trying to find a way to make it right, chuck is no god, and the truth of the matter is books in general, are full of mistakes like this one, i think its funny[/QUOTE]

True, there are mistakes in a lot of books, and i dont think anyone called him god, atleast not in this thread..but i dont think this was a mistake..i think this question, if you will, was put in the book to start convorsations, or debates. much like this one.

the book mentions at least once that the book "poems and rymes from around the world was pooled from many other sources and compiled by this basil frankie, and passed off as his own hard work

yeah that's right she found the book in his house after she bought it, and then used it as a daily planner. Yes that was how he found the song.

But I still don't believe that he killed his family with the song.....or maybe (this is just the rambling of an idiot here, don't take me seriously) Chuck put that error in there to give us something to talk about and disscuss. I dunno, just thought of that, Sorry. Forget it I'm sorry.

[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.