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Post by jazzberry76 on Jun 14, 2014 14:14:08 GMT -5
It is clear that in the ASoUE universe, Snicket's books are published and read by the public, to "raise awareness of the Baudelaire case." My question is this: was Snicket researching all this after it all happened, or were the books being researched and written in media res, a phrase which here means, "while it was all occurring"?
I'm writing my University Honors thesis on the series, and this question will help me out a lot. Thank you!
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Post by Hermes on Jun 14, 2014 15:08:31 GMT -5
Oh, gosh. You have raised a much-disputed question.
Briefly: on the one hand, there are lots of passages throughout the work which imply that Snicket is recording the events long after they happened - accounts of the long time it took him to research certain things, the description of the hospital as long-abandoned, etc. Dante might be better than me at providing the details.
On the other hand, there are also passages which imply he is writing the events as they happen. The clearest are in The Unauthorised Autobiography, where ASOUE is among the books which Kit sets to her students at Prufrock Prep, and where Olaf's cow-henchman gets a copy of TRR at the library. But there are also indications of this in TSS, which contains a secret message to Kit, proposing that they meet at the Hotel Denouement (when of course by the end of the series Kit is dead and the Hotel has been destroyed), and in TGG, where Lemony is, as he writes, trying to save Kit's life. (Also, though this is more complex, some of the stuff to do with the secret message in the fridge suggests that Lemony left the message, and this is recent as he is writing.) Paradoxically, TSS also contains some of the passages suggesting that Lemony's work comes long after the events.
Solutions have been proposed, but you may have your own ideas. (Though if you are looking at it from a literary point of view, rather than an in-story problem-solving one, the answer may just be that Handler's intentions fluctuated.)
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Post by Dante on Jun 14, 2014 16:16:51 GMT -5
If you want the clearest evidence of contradiction, I think it's TRR which specifically refers to Klaus looking back on the events of the book years later, in non-hypothetical terms. Yes, I've looked it up - it's TRR, page 44 in most English language editions. "For years after this moment in the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, Klaus thought of the time he and his siblings realized that Stephano was actually Count Olaf, and was filled with regret that he didn't call out to the driver of the taxicab who was beginning to drive back down the driveway." That would be best contrasted with the aforementioned notes by Lemony Snicket to his sister which appear in TCC and TSS. It is fluctuating author intention, really, though of course academically that's interesting in itself. I guess if I wanted to account in-universe for that moment in TRR specifically - I think there's another similar moment in one of the earlier books, but I forget where - then I'd say that Snicket was projecting his beliefs about the depth of Klaus's future regret onto Klaus as he wrote about it, but doesn't necessarily have privileged insight into what Klaus thought years later, for as we discover at the end of The End, Snicket ultimately doesn't know what happened to the Baudelaire orphans. My favourite solution proposed, though, is that early and unpolished versions of Snicket's research were rushed into print at the time the series was occurring, and years later were polished into the versions we have read.
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Post by jazzberry76 on Jun 14, 2014 17:20:53 GMT -5
Wow, thanks for all the help!
I very much like the idea that the early versions were rushed and then later were polished into what we've read. That makes considerable amounts of sense.
This was giving me a headache just thinking about it, but you've both helped enormously.
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