Written by Ben Elhav, Image sourced from HarperCollins
There’s something to be said for the idea that adults have no idea what goes on in the minds of children. After all, we keep on saying it; there’s a bottomless bank of stories about clueless adults and brilliant kids.
Growing up in the UK, books from “Peter Pan” to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” taught me that most people older than 30 were dull authoritarian automatons. It seemed like a very British literary tradition. It’s perhaps for this reason that, when I first read it, I assumed “A Series of Unfortunate Events” was set in some vague version of London. I guess the gothic illustrations by Brett Helquist, helped too. Yet, even when I moved to Toronto — and aged into a boring old man — I continued to find the novels relevant. It may have had something to do with their author: a certain “Lemony Snicket.”
Who is Lemony Snicket? The question, on the lips of police investigators and readers alike, has a fairly unassuming answer. A quick Google search identifies it as the alias of Daniel Handler, a Jewish-American (gasp!) author who writes books on death, latkes and misery. To me, however, Snicket always meant much more. Snicket’s stories were everything a kid could want, featuring a collection of curious and plucky protagonists, grim and grisly mysteries and a healthy helping of humor. They are also endlessly quotable. “Do the scary thing first and get scared later,” I still tell myself before starting a screenplay.
Above all, they were a crash course in good fiction: even as he crafted somber settings worthy of Lord Byron, Snicket named characters after Charles Baudelaire and wrote with the self-referential cynicism of Kurt Vonnegut. Only years later, when I finally read those authors, did I realize how much Snicket owed them, and how much they owed him. Snicket giddily appropriates techniques from a vast bookshelf of prior writers, acting as a sort of literary Quentin Tarantino, and simultaneously introduces them to new generations of readers. In doing so, he laid the foundation for my appreciation of literature.
Snicket writes tragedy that makes readers laugh. I’ve written comedy so bad it could make people cry. I often find Snicket and I are kindred spirits in ambiguity. Last year, I wrote a screenplay in which the climax occurred behind a curtain, the action imperceptible to the audience. Snicket concluded a novel with a building full of his best characters on fire, letting readers guess which ones survived. Two summers ago, I shot an existential short film that ended with a clip of myself behind the camera, calling into question my reliability as an impartial narrator. Snicket regularly writes himself into the story, (he makes one memorable appearance disguised as a cab driver), discretely pawing at the threads of his yarn.
More valuable to me than an inspiration, Snicket was a push in the right direction. Like any good children’s author, he talks back to terrible teachers and scolds asinine adults. Yet, his is a rebellion with purpose: Snicket seeks to shake our foundations at an early age and put cracks in the fourth walls of our stories. “All the secrets of the world are contained in books,” Snicket wrote, “Read at your own risk.”
