Lemony Snicket

Hello, hello. I thought I'd better post lest people should think that this blog has been abandoned. No one seems to be posting or commenting lately.

I am currently working my way through Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. I am on book four, and I was going to wait to post about them until after I'd finished all of them, but as I noted above, I think our blog is feeling a bit unloved. If I feel the need, I will do an update when I finish The End.

Anyway, I am doing a Lemony Snicket program at the end of March, so I thought I should do some research. I attempted Lemony Snicket once before, in Anna's Children's Lit class, and I didn't really enjoy it then. But I think I am enjoying it better this time around. In fact, I actually laughed out loud a few times, especially in the first two books. You have to admit, the writing is rather clever. Especially his various literary allusions. For example, in The Reptile Room Uncle Monty warns the kids not to let the Virginian Wolfsnake near a typewriter. And in The Austere Academny the school is called Prufrock Preperatory school, which I can only assume is a reference to T.S. Eliot's "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". I also like the fact that Lemony Snicket has revived the narrator of 19th century literature. You know, the "Dear Reader" type of narrator, like the ones you find in Charles Dickens' novels, that inserts himself (or herself) often into the narrative flow to comment on the action and characters. For example, Lemony Snicket will often use large words to describe a situation, and then say, "Which here means..." and then go on to define the word in a way the younger audience will understand. Sometimes the definitions are really funny, and I believe one of these definitions is what caused me to laugh out loud. He also warns the readers when something dreadful is about to happen (and this happens rather often in these books) and suggests they stop reading immediately to avoid hearing the rest of the unpleasant story. In fact, Lemony Snicket inserts so much of himself into the story, that he becomes almost as important as the story he is telling. The reader lives for the intriguing glimpses we get into Mr. Snicket's life (and let me tell you, he leads an interesting one), not to mention the enigmatic references to his dead love, a woman named Beatrice.

In some ways, this type of hands-on narration is quite refreshing. Most fiction nowadays is very much driven by action and dialogue. However, having said that, I must note that there are 13 volumes in the series. And I have a feeling that by the end of the 13th book, I will find the narrator rather irksome, which here means so annoying that I will want to throw the book out the nearest window, or better yet, I will want Daniel Handler to be there so I can throw the book at him.