"Let’s start by saying I have a lot of money. I’ve acquired it by writing children’s books about terrible things happening to orphans, and this seems like such a crazy and possibly monstrous way of acquiring money that I give a lot of it away." - Daniel Handler in a June 10, 2007 New York Times article.
He's right. There is something monstrous about the success of The Series of Unfortunate Events, which Handler writes under his pseudonymn of Lemony Snicket, just like there is something monstrous about The Basic Eight (Handler's first novel, the tale of a psychotic teen who goes on a killing spree with a croquette mallet - which is, not surprisingly and unmistakably, for adults, or more specifically adults with a taste for snarky, funny, and graphically violent prose).
I'll happily admit that I find that snarkiness to be delightfully entertaining, in both his adult and children's book, but I am aware that this is a guilty pleasure. One can't truely delight in these books without having a slightly queasy feeling about the nastiness of his characters' peril.
Ah... how unfortunate...
*** Another quandry... should one read the books for Brett Helquists pictures? Or listen to Tim Curry's recorded book narration?
He's right. There is something monstrous about the success of The Series of Unfortunate Events, which Handler writes under his pseudonymn of Lemony Snicket, just like there is something monstrous about The Basic Eight (Handler's first novel, the tale of a psychotic teen who goes on a killing spree with a croquette mallet - which is, not surprisingly and unmistakably, for adults, or more specifically adults with a taste for snarky, funny, and graphically violent prose).
I'll happily admit that I find that snarkiness to be delightfully entertaining, in both his adult and children's book, but I am aware that this is a guilty pleasure. One can't truely delight in these books without having a slightly queasy feeling about the nastiness of his characters' peril.
Ah... how unfortunate...
*** Another quandry... should one read the books for Brett Helquists pictures? Or listen to Tim Curry's recorded book narration?
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