|
Post by Gigi on Oct 13, 2005 20:36:21 GMT -5
While searching my library's catalog under Keywords Lemony Snicket, I found Al Roker's (NBC Today show weatherman) book entitled Big Shoes: In Celebration of Dads and Fatherhood. It's a collection of essays written by famous people about the influence their fathers had on their lives. Daniel Handler is one of the contributors. Has anyone read this book? I'm going to check it out and will report back.
|
|
Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Oct 13, 2005 20:49:26 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure I've heard of that book, but I've never actually seen it. Reading what Handler says about his father's influence on him should be quite interesting. Good luck finding it.
|
|
|
Post by Gigi on Oct 14, 2005 7:44:16 GMT -5
My local library branch has a copy. I'm picking it up today. I should be able to post excerpts, or even the whole thing if it's not too long.
EDIT: Picked up the book this morning. His essay was about his father and the game of bridge. It was only 3 pages long, so I've typed it up. I hope no one minds the double post. I wanted it all to fit in one post.
|
|
|
Post by Gigi on Oct 14, 2005 13:27:54 GMT -5
Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket)
Author of The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and the forthcoming Adverbs, and (allegedly) twelve books under the name Lemony Snicket.
My father, Louis Handler, has a group of friends that he’s been playing bridge with every week since before I was born, and I'm thirty-four. Some of them have recently passed on, so there are some new members, but there was a core club for twenty or twenty-five years. They watched each other become fathers and grandfathers over the bridge table. They would meet at each other’s houses-we lived near the West Portal neighborhood of San Francisco-so about once a month there would be four guys in my living room playing bridge on Tuesday night. When I was little, I would go to sleep to the sound of them arguing over individual hands. They played a penny a point, and on Wednesday morning there might be a small pile of money on the kitchen counter that my father had won; it would often be as high as $2.50. Or there might be nothing, and occasionally I would go into the living room and beg my father in the style of the old melodramas not to spend the children’s insulin money on bridge. (Being a humorist was required of everyone in my family.)
My father is a great talker. He’s good at explaining the world. So when he first tried to teach me how to play bridge, he made the game pretty clear. We sat in the breakfast room, at the table where we ate all our meals except when there was company, and we probably each had a glass of seltzer in front of us. I must have been in second or third grade. I was sort of resistant to it then, but I think after adolescence, many people come back to their fathers and say, “It looks like you were right after all.” I saw that there was quite a bit of worth in leaning to play a game that seemed a form of cultural literacy, universally recognized as a way to sit with one’s friends without spending much money and having a sort of hook to hang conversation on.
Bridge was an example of masculinity that was intelligent and genteel, and that was very appealing to me. I was never somebody to sit in a stadium or go out and play football, and neither was my father. This was something that also seemed a particularly male activity. Not exclusively, or course; whenever we went on a family vacation, my parents would find other people to play with. But it seemed a way, for men especially, to hang out together that wasn’t barbarian. I saw the camaraderie of my dad and his friends, a lot of laughter and conversation as they played this game that is sort of cerebral and certainly not physically taxing, and that’s a model of masculinity you don’t see a lot. It’s certainly a model of masculinity I hope to present to my infant son, Otto. Of course, it’s about the only one I can present to him.
And there are all sorts of life metaphors you can derive from bridge. You require a good partner, and you need to learn to communicate in a way that is clear to some people and obscure to others. You need to know when you’re in a position of power and when you’re in a position of weakness; and there’s an aspect of bridge called the finesse-where you’re sort of tricking the opposition into using their firepower on a less worthy target so that they have no firepower left over, meaning that you’re getting to give things up that they wouldn’t ordinarily; that’s very important in life-and you need a bit of luck.
It’s been a constant in my life. I played bridge with my father before I left home; then when I was in college, I started to play with more seriousness; and I would call him and ask him for strategic tips. Later, I taught my wife, Lisa Brown, to play. We were living in Manhattan, we were broke, and we wanted to socialize without spending one hundred dollars, which is pretty difficult in Manhattan. So we would invite people over. We had a sort of vintage-cocktail dictionary, and each week we would make some odd cocktail and play bridge. I still called my father for strategic advice, and we’d play bridge whenever he visited. Now we all live in San Francisco again, and we all still play. Thanks to my father I’ve never been starved for cheap amusement.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Oct 14, 2005 14:13:26 GMT -5
That's pretty interesting. It's neat to know a little more about one's favourite authors.
|
|
Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Oct 14, 2005 14:26:41 GMT -5
That is very cool. It's appropriate that everyone in Handler's family should be a humorist.
|
|
|
Post by Gigi on Oct 14, 2005 14:33:39 GMT -5
I wish the book had pictures too. I would like to see Handler as a boy with his father.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Oct 14, 2005 14:35:44 GMT -5
I suspect that the pictures of a young child at the end of the meeting transcript in the U.A. are of a young Handler, although I've really only the evidence of the unreliable index to go on for that. But that's not a family picture.
|
|
|
Post by SnicketFires on Oct 14, 2005 20:55:08 GMT -5
Some people have speculated that this is Daniel Handler and his father, but we don't really have any proof. I'll see if there are any other pictures tomorrow; I have to get off now. I enjoyed the essay; thank you Gigi.
|
|
|
Post by Grace on Oct 15, 2005 8:20:15 GMT -5
That's kind of odd. I almost forgot Handler was a dad. You don't really think of him, like that, do you?
|
|
|
Post by Dear Dairy on Oct 15, 2005 8:46:51 GMT -5
Is Otto really his child's name? I love it!
My parents also play bridge, and tried to teach me when I was about the same age Handler was. I had no aptitude for the game at the time, and even less interest. It seemed excessively complicated for a game. On the other hand, my own father is the opposite of Handler's - he's awful at explaining how to do things.
I'm sorry now that I didn't learn, although I don't know anyone my age that plays bridge, so I wouldn't have anyone to play it with if did know how.
Thanks for the story, Gigi.
|
|
Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Oct 15, 2005 9:02:55 GMT -5
Didn't Handler say that he named his child Otto so he(the child) could spell his name both forwards and backwards, or am I confusing that with something different entirely?
|
|
|
Post by Gigi on Oct 15, 2005 9:59:54 GMT -5
Some people have speculated that this is Daniel Handler and his father, but we don't really have any proof. I'll see if there are any other pictures tomorrow; I have to get off now. I've never seen that photo before. I think there is some resemblance in the face. Maybe this photo was taken on DH's wedding day.
|
|