@mathmom, I think you meant to ask if Arthur’s real love was Clark? I wondered the same thing. I agree with you about Arthur forgetting V was a real person. Writing to her was therapy and a link to his past. He did it for himself not for his friendship with V. He hadn’t heard from her in years.
I agree that the tell-all book forced Arthur to reflect on his past. He had to face how his actions affected other people.
Oh gosh yes, Clark, I knew Mark was wrong and was too lazy to look it up!
Consider V’s book part of the cost of fame. Arthur the person no longer counts as such to one of his oldest friends. Though somewhere along the line he quits seeing V as a person, so maybe he shouldn’t be surprised that she feels the same. He looks at his life in black and white and it’s not a legacy that makes him proud. It makes him take that moment where he wants to get away from it all - the fame … to turn back time in a sense or at least push a restart button.
from SJCM’s post #103:
Remember when The Prophet (Tyler) talks about his mother:
Perhaps the book causes Elizabeth’s “death of the soul.” Tyler would be the right age to notice his mother’s hurt. Then Arthur dies before Tyler sees him the next week (“the fallen slink away without permission”). The flu strikes. Everything jumbles together in the troubled boy’s mind (and undoubtedly that of his mother) and you get the stirrings of the Prophet.
Could there be a sequel? Would you want a sequel?
I would not want a sequel. They rarely live up to the original and they never live up to the (unrealistically) happy futures I’ve already written for the characters in my head. I just couldn’t bring myself, for example, to read beyond Lonesome Dove. I blame it on childhood literary trauma stemming from reading Little Men and Jo’s Boys. 
However, if there were a sequel, I think I would want it to be Jeevan’s story. The author has a fifteen year gap to fill there.
I would not want a sequel. However, I know I’d read it. Unlike Mary I’m finishing the last - for me - in the Lonesome Dove series. I read the sequel and am reading the second of the two prequels. The sequel Streets of Laredo disappointed me, though not the parts with beloved the Lonesome Dove characters. I like the prequels. The second one Comanche Moon comes closest to a good solid “I really like this book” - at least so far. I’m only about a third into it.
When we read Things Fall Apart, I followed it with the other two books in The African Trilogy. I’m glad I did: I liked Arrow of God best.
I pick up Moriarty at the library tomorrow (follows after The House of Silk).
I don’t think the book needs a sequel, though I did think she should have had the 20 year followup to Jeevan not just leave him hanging at five years earlier. I know they seemed to be in a reasonably good place - assuming the prophet was on his way out of town at that point, but it would have been nice to have had one more vignette of him.
I haven’t read any of the sequels to things we’ve read except Ender’s Game - that’s sort of interesting because there are two completely different sets of sequels. The earlier ones which follow Ender are completely different and are a disappointment if you want more of the same, but I actually think in some ways they are better more grown up books. More recently he’s been working on a set of sequels that tells you what happened on earth. They are definitely inferior, but I’ve enjoyed them anyway.
I forgot about Ender’s Game. I’ve followed up with Ender’s Shadow which I really liked and have continued on in the Shadow series with Shadow Puppets and Shadow of the Hegemon. I have Shadow of the Giant here to read at some point.
I also read The Plague of Doves when we read The Round House.
And I read three books of short stories (authors Bender, Dahl, Bausch) after we finished The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
So yeah I’d definitely read a sequel but think this one stands alone oh-so-well.
Perhaps needless to say, I would not read a sequel.
Ignatius, love your post above about Mandel’s quote and how the V letters helped tell Arthur’s inner journey. So Mandel used a variety of written mediums , comic book, published book, newspaper interviews and V diary/ letters to share her characters point of view.
Mathmom’s suggestion about Arthur’s love for Clark, really made me wonder, but I think they were young, alienated, isolated and, therefore, bonded, but totally platonic on Arthur’s end. Not so sure about Clark’s real feelings.
I’m in the camp, that Arthur, like the Crazy Jane reflects about lost love, and growing old. As Mary, and others have said, the " lions tooth" is the dark,painful side of lost love.
I doubt Emily St Mandel, used that phrase in any deeper meaning,
but here are some links if interested to know more about the Crazy Jane poems. Apparently, there are a series of Crazy Jane stanzas and the Dancer looking back is the last.
The bishop , representing the church and morality, and Crazy Jane , speaking about the joys of the flesh the earthly delights. the Yale professor suggest Crazy Jane attempts to resolve the duality of flesh/ and spirit.
Like Yeats, Arthur enjoyed a string of relationships.
Interesting that Yeats, became a politician and is known for his political view about Divorce, something Arthur knows about.
[quote]
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._B._Yeats#Old_age_and_death
"
Here is Yale open course - the Yeats section starts at 9:20 counting down into the clip. This doesn’t shed any light on the book, and I doubt Emily St Mandel intended to go this deep with symbols and meaning.
Old cranky woman, compared to the " fool" in Shakespearean plays, meets the bishop. The sacred and profane. looking back on love- shifting points of view within the poem.
She talks about the reconconciliation of the opposites-
The Bishop is cranky and curmudgeon, in previous stanzas.
http://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-310/lecture-6
Here is a much easier, more direct analysis
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/analyse-fair-foul-2-crazy-jane-poems-by-yeats-239387
Thanks, SJCM. Like you, I don’t think Mandel was intending the reader to dig deep into Yeats. And I think it was kind of a throwaway line for Arthur, who is remembering the words taped to Victoria’s bedroom wall. Still, the analysis you posted makes sense in the context of Arthur’s life: “…the sense is that good cannot exist without the bad, no pleasure without the pain. And for Crazy Jane, she seems resigned to the fact that to enjoy the one, a person must be prepared to suffer the other.”
Something else I’ve been wondering about: Because of decimation by the flu and their subsequent nomadic way of life, the characters’ lives are pared down to the bare essentials. I found it interesting that after losing so much from their past, many of them then choose to lose–to discard–what is arguably the most important “artifact”: their names.
It’s not just Viola–many of the members of the Traveling Symphony are known only by their instrument names. Why do you think people chose to do that? (The prophet, too, has abandoned his name–“No one knew his real name” [p. 128]–but his motives are more understandable. The name “Tyler” doesn’t exactly evoke Fear and Trembling.)
It’s sort of cute. I saves Mandel from having to make up a bunch of names and maybe fill the characters out little more fully.
I didn’t like it, personally.
I liked it. But I like NJTheatreMOM being cranky too. 
I think people stripped themselves to their bare essentials. I read a lot of books where there’s a big distinction between the name one is called and one’s real name. I thought it was interesting that they chose to toss their old names when they embraced their new life.
That makes sense when viewing the post-collapse world as one of re-birth rather than slow death. At the same time, there is something sort of eerie about the lack of names. Another reminder of things lost.
It doesn’t work in Station Eleven to have the chief protagonists nameless—there are too many of them, and besides, we meet them before the collapse, when they are living normal lives with normal names.
But the concept made me think of other novels and stories where the main characters have no names. There is frequently a dark undercurrent to such works. I found the following online. I’m not tying these works to Station Eleven in any way. I just thought the list was fun to peruse: http://flavorwire.com/442853/10-compelling-unnamed-protagonists-in-literature
Interesting. I noticed but didn’t note this. I just took a quick look through the book: in the Traveling Symphony it seems the “instruments” choose this. Actors in the Traveling Symphony we know by name; I guess because actors switch identities. The airport community starts out without names. As time passes though, Clark addresses everyone by name: he knows his community. We know Jeevan and his wife Daria. Jeevan asks the name of the man who brings in his injured wife and then calls him by name (Edward) as he works on his wife. Jeevan names his son Frank after his brother. I guess maybe the symphony members identify strongly with their instruments but it seems to be unique to the symphony … and The Prophet. I liked it.
The first piece of writing in Mary’s link that lists works with nameless protagonists,The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is an iconic story that you won’t forget if you read it.
It’s available online, if anyone who hasn’t read it wants to read it. It’s not very long.
^ My kids had to read The Yellow Wallpaper in English class. Great story—very disturbing.
You’re right! That puts a slightly different spin on it, i.e.:
(The Prophet falls into another category—Prophets, Unabombers, Sons of Sam and such general eschew real names.)
Speaking about character’s names.
When Buenavista posted Arthur and Clark’s list of things lost
It reminded me
Of Arthur Clark-
and, I wondered if perhaps this was Mandel’s nod to the prolific writer and genius.
http://www.clarkefoundation.org/sample-page/bibliography/