667 Dark Avenue interviews Daniel Handler: Read only
Jul 1, 2016 8:16:26 GMT -5
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A comet crashing into Earth, snicket24601, and 1 more like this
Post by B. on Jul 1, 2016 8:16:26 GMT -5
Below are Handler's responses. I hope you will enjoy reading over them and thanks once again to everyone who participated. Go team!
A mysterious photograph was also enclosed with the email:
If the appropriate parties could also now publicise this on 667's facebook and twitter, that would be appreciated.
---
I can now present a final copy of the questions which I have just sent to Daniel Handler's representative. Once again, thank you to all of you who took time to write a submission; I really enjoyed reading through them and was very impressed with the quality of questions submitted. Thanks also to all those who helped this become possible behind the scenes, reviewed drafts or gave opinions on questions- you all know who you are.
You might have some questions about the format of the final interview, and I shall attempt to address some of them here. The interview consists of 21 questions, as a call back to the original interview from 2007.. You'll notice the questions are split into 4 categories (roughly 'general', 'writing', 'All the Wrong Questions and A series of unfortunate events' and netflix). These sections contain respectively 6, 6, 7 and 2 questions as it is 667's 2nd interview conducted with Daniel Handler. Each section has a title that is a play on the title of one or more of Handler's works (something, I should mention, that is Dante's brainchild, not mine).
If you have any more questions about the selection process or about specific questions, then feel free to post and discuss them here. I'll do my best to answer them, though I'm going away in two days and won't be online as much from then until July 8th.
So, without further ado, here is the final cut:
---
Dear Sir,
Permit us to extend our best wishes to you and gratitude at once again being able to get in touch.
Despite becoming established over thirteen years ago - longer than some of our youngest members were even alive - our organisation still finds new points of discussion regarding the minutiae of your lifestyle and works. Every day, our members unearth more and more questions, each burning, like a fire in the mind, with more urgency than the last and each opening up a myriad of new ideas, mysteries and yet more wrong questions.
It is with a mixture of pride, anticipation, excitement and trepidation that I enclose, nine years after our first interview, another 21 questions from the members of 667 Dark Avenue. We can only hope that you may find the time to turn away from the production of a certain television show in order to review them.
With all due respect,
The 667ers.
***
The Basic Six
thedoctororwell: First of all... how dare you?
Handler: With fluctuating trepdiation.
Bee: Knowing what you do now, what advice would you give to your almost 13-year old self? What about Mr. Snicket?
Handler: Being given so much advice is one of the hardships of being 13, and I'm not sure what I do know now. I suppose I could warn myself away from certain individuals, but exploring wickedness is one of the hardships--and the pleasures--of that age as well.
Tryina Denouement: How should you behave at a party where everyone ignores you no matter how much you try to make them notice you?
Handler: Wandering unnoticed is my favorite way to attend a party, but if you prefer to be surrounded, take notes and write a gossip column. At all subsequent gatherings, you will be the center of several interesting orbits.
Groge: If you had to lose a limb which one would it be?
Handler: Someone else's. I could get more specific only in whispers.
Charlie: How does it make you feel to know that you are responsible for creating some of the most meaningful relationships of my life, and the lives of many others on 667? Additionally, how do you feel meeting 667ers?
Handler: All of my most meaningful relationships have been born out of literature, which is why it is a world of which I have always wanted to be a part. If other people have found such engagement and solace, then I have taken steps toward repaying the debt I owe the authors I admire. Furthermore, whenever I've met a 667er--or someone posing as one--they've seemed charming.
Lemona Snicket and BSam: We hope you liked your visit to Australia last year, but being obliged to make it into a question, we shall ask: How did you like Australia?
Handler: Very much, as always. I have a particular fondness for Hobart with its blustery and delicious curiousities.
***
How To Write For Every Occasion
Terry Craig and Tryina Denouement: Which methods can you recommend when it comes to practising writing prose? Do you set deadlines when writing, and how do you motivate yourself to follow them?
Handler: I don't believe in deadlines but I believe in a regimen. If you want to write you have to read. You have to read far and wide. You have to read across genre and nationality and structure. You have to reread what moves you most, over and over, to see how it works. And then of course you have to write, for as many hours as you can spare. The writing of good prose requires the writing of bad prose, lots of it, and so it is best to get going with the bad prose as early and as often as possible. As far as motivation, my motivation is that I like doing it. If you do not like writing you should not write. The world is full of writers who learned too late that they do not like it, and speaking of avoiding people at parties, those are they.
Zortegus: As a native Spanish speaker who followed A Series of Unfortunate Events since the very beginning, I suffered because the series' translations were incomplete and difficult to find, and I felt that much was lost in the translation. As a Literature student and wannabe translator, my questions are: Are you consulted or involved in the translation of your books? Do you speak another language? Are you conscious of the hardships to translate your books due your particular style, full of elaborate linguistic jokes and excellent use of the English language?
Handler: I am hopelessly monolingual, and it breaks my heart that I must read so much literature in translation, knowing that so much has been lost. I try not to think about it with my own work and its translations. Every so often a translator asks me a question about a book of mine, and I realize that the question has never been asked of me previously, despite previous translations of the work. It is a sad thought. My hat is off to all wannabe translators for tackling what, is, essentially, a hopeless task. But then, so is literature.
ryantrimble457: I know, originally, the publishers only ordered four books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Did you always have thirteen planned out and hoped you'd get the chance to write them, or did your plans for the plot change after the number of books you were to write was increased? I'm very interested in anything you can tell us about the series' early development!
Handler:I immediately had thirteen books in mind, and even a rough structure, although there were many, many details to be filled in later. Then I bided my time, hoping against hope that a miracle would happen. Very soon they asked me for four more. I asked for nine more. They said no, and I bided my time again, and then quite soon they said, it seems we are as crazy as you are.
Hermes: Adverbs includes a story which links it with The Basic Eight, and some of us have seen an allusion in We Are Pirates as well. Why We Broke Up seems in some ways to recall the works of Lemony Snicket - the general form of the story reminds us of the letter Beatrice sent to Lemony, and there is also a scene where Ed and Min steal a dispenser of sugar. Is Why We Broke Up related to Mr Snicket’s books? And are all Daniel Handler's adult works set in the same world?
Handler:I don't mean to be rude or obtuse, but this is the sort of question I never quite understand. Nabokov famously said that "reality" is the only word that is only meaningful when it is surrounded by quotation marks, and I think I agree. I do find it interesting to place in my work items of interest to the careful rereader. What one does with those items is frankly none of my business.
Charlie and Comet: Do you have any regrets regarding A Series of Unfortunate Events, and can you tell us about any ideas for books you’ve had to scrap?
Handler:I have countless regrets about all of my work and would not want to be the sort of writer who does not. The best comfort I can offer myself is that I did the best I could have done at the time. And I've scrapped countless ideas for books, but they are only permanently scrapped if I realize that the book in my head is a book someone else has already written splendidly. The other ideas, no matter how hopeless, sit on bulletin boards and in drawers, waiting for a tap on the shoulder.
E.F.: What, in your mind, makes a piece of writing terribly wonderful or wonderfully terrible?
Handler:The sort of phrase "terribly wonderful or wonderfully terrible"--or any other bit of trickery that makes one's eyes and brain scan backward for a second--is what good literature is made of. If the reader is a passenger on a train, it's not a good voyage unless one has blinked in surprise and turned one's head to see what that was in the passing landscape.
***
A Series of Unfortunately Wrong Questions
Handler:I think I should preface this section by expressing my deep appreciation for such careful and imaginative reads from you. I hope such flattery will forgive my rather evasive answers.
Teleram and thedoctororwell: Did Mr. Snicket ever return to Stain'd by the Sea? Did he ever hear from the town’s inhabitants again, or ask his sister what became of Ms. Feint?
Handler:Mr. Snicket's story is not done being chronicled, but suffice to say that when he stepped into the Clusterous Forest he was not out of the woods.
Dante and thedoctororwell: Having instantly recognised the young Mr. Snicket's tattoo, when did Ellington Feint first learn about V.F.D.? Did Armstrong Feint cross paths with V.F.D. before he came to Stain'd-by-the-Sea?
Handler:One should remember that the Baudelaires' experience with V.F.D. occurred when the organization was in a much more fragmentary state than it was at the time of All The Wrong Questions. I prefer to think that Ellington, in her search for her father, brushed up against other young people on desperate searches.
Hermes: In reading All the Wrong Questions, some of us have wondered about how it relates to what we already know of Lemony's youth from The Beatrice Letters. Lemony, though not yet thirteen, says 'My schooldays are over', and later gives up his apprenticeship. Does this mean that everything we know of his education comes before this - in particular the trip to the mountains mentioned in LS to BB #2? And were Lemony and Beatrice already sweethearts at the time of All the Wrong Questions?
Handler:I suppose it depends what you mean by "schooldays." I think of the term as referring to very traditional educational structures during one's early childhood. Similarly, I think that one can't really be sweethearts until one's early childhood has passed by.
Emerald Snicket: Can you reveal anything about Mr. Snicket's 'Kind Editor', or any other kind editors you yourself have known?
Handler:Being an editor is largely a thankless business, but I try to thank Susan Rich as often as I can.
Olivine and lorelai: Did Kit and Olaf break up due to obvious conflicting circumstances, or was it another, less noticeable reason? Did Olaf become a villain and betray V.F.D. before or after the deaths of his parents?
Handler: As with so many villains, isn't the real mystery not why their sweethearts broke up with them, but why they had sweethearts in the first place?
Liam R. Findlay: Your books make some progressive suggestions towards combating misogyny, gender stereotypes and homophobia. I know that LGBT readers find inspiration and confidence in characters like themselves - did you consciously write any LGBT characters into Snicket's world and if so, which ones? In regards to this topic, some perceive the ambiguously-gendered henchperson's gender as frightening and uncomfortable to the Baudelaires; did you consider this reading when writing the series, and what reflections do you have on it now?
Handler:I grew up in an environment of queerness of every stripe, and I'd like to believe my work reflects such a world, even if the romantic and sexual lives and preferences of many of my characters are not explicit, as they aren't in life. (After all, we don't know what Sir and Charles do when we're not around, as we don't know, and thank goodness, with many friends; my new forthcoming YA novel has already ruffled the feathers of both queer and straight readers for scenes portraying certain flexibilities.)
As for Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender, I was always aware of the differences between androgyny and transgenderism, although I can see some readers might think the Baudelaires were frightened of this person because of their ambiguity rather than, say, their violence and evil intentions. In casting the part for Netflix, it was refreshing to see queer and/or trans actors relish the role, and to hear from some of them that they'd found solace in the books' visibilities when they were younger. One never knows where one might find oneself.
Agathological: Please, please, please, let us know: What does the S in 'S. Theodora Markson' stand for?
Handler:Oh, but it's right there in the text. Don't you want to find it for yourself?
***
Hurry Up and Televise
MisterM and Anka: How do you feel about the pressures of the Netflix adaptation, having to meet the expectations of book nerds like us whilst also appealing to the casual viewer?
Handler:The adaptation process has frankly been very difficult, and at various times I was asked to leave various rooms when such decisions were being made, and we're still many miles from the finished product. But just days ago I walked into an enormous lumbermill, constructed solely for the purposes of this production, and it was impossible not to be thrilled. ("Leaking" materials from a production-in-progress is strictly forbidden; incidentally, I have no idea where the enclosed photograph came from.) I have never been good at predicting what will delight whom, but isn't it often as fun to sit and roll one's eyes as it is to be breathlessly rapt?
Antenora and Dante: Will the TV adaptation show us a side of the Baudelaire case which the books didn't? Do any original elements from your draft scripts for the Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events movie return in your scripts for the Netflix series, and could you tell us about any ideas which aren't returning?
Handler:Some liberties have been taken and some little subplots added, and my scripts, as for the movie, have been tinkered with by other hired hands. As one says while falling down an elevator shaft, we will see where we land.
A mysterious photograph was also enclosed with the email:
If the appropriate parties could also now publicise this on 667's facebook and twitter, that would be appreciated.
---
I can now present a final copy of the questions which I have just sent to Daniel Handler's representative. Once again, thank you to all of you who took time to write a submission; I really enjoyed reading through them and was very impressed with the quality of questions submitted. Thanks also to all those who helped this become possible behind the scenes, reviewed drafts or gave opinions on questions- you all know who you are.
You might have some questions about the format of the final interview, and I shall attempt to address some of them here. The interview consists of 21 questions, as a call back to the original interview from 2007.. You'll notice the questions are split into 4 categories (roughly 'general', 'writing', 'All the Wrong Questions and A series of unfortunate events' and netflix). These sections contain respectively 6, 6, 7 and 2 questions as it is 667's 2nd interview conducted with Daniel Handler. Each section has a title that is a play on the title of one or more of Handler's works (something, I should mention, that is Dante's brainchild, not mine).
If you have any more questions about the selection process or about specific questions, then feel free to post and discuss them here. I'll do my best to answer them, though I'm going away in two days and won't be online as much from then until July 8th.
So, without further ado, here is the final cut:
---
Dear Sir,
Permit us to extend our best wishes to you and gratitude at once again being able to get in touch.
Despite becoming established over thirteen years ago - longer than some of our youngest members were even alive - our organisation still finds new points of discussion regarding the minutiae of your lifestyle and works. Every day, our members unearth more and more questions, each burning, like a fire in the mind, with more urgency than the last and each opening up a myriad of new ideas, mysteries and yet more wrong questions.
It is with a mixture of pride, anticipation, excitement and trepidation that I enclose, nine years after our first interview, another 21 questions from the members of 667 Dark Avenue. We can only hope that you may find the time to turn away from the production of a certain television show in order to review them.
With all due respect,
The 667ers.
***
The Basic Six
thedoctororwell: First of all... how dare you?
Handler: With fluctuating trepdiation.
Bee: Knowing what you do now, what advice would you give to your almost 13-year old self? What about Mr. Snicket?
Handler: Being given so much advice is one of the hardships of being 13, and I'm not sure what I do know now. I suppose I could warn myself away from certain individuals, but exploring wickedness is one of the hardships--and the pleasures--of that age as well.
Tryina Denouement: How should you behave at a party where everyone ignores you no matter how much you try to make them notice you?
Handler: Wandering unnoticed is my favorite way to attend a party, but if you prefer to be surrounded, take notes and write a gossip column. At all subsequent gatherings, you will be the center of several interesting orbits.
Groge: If you had to lose a limb which one would it be?
Handler: Someone else's. I could get more specific only in whispers.
Charlie: How does it make you feel to know that you are responsible for creating some of the most meaningful relationships of my life, and the lives of many others on 667? Additionally, how do you feel meeting 667ers?
Handler: All of my most meaningful relationships have been born out of literature, which is why it is a world of which I have always wanted to be a part. If other people have found such engagement and solace, then I have taken steps toward repaying the debt I owe the authors I admire. Furthermore, whenever I've met a 667er--or someone posing as one--they've seemed charming.
Lemona Snicket and BSam: We hope you liked your visit to Australia last year, but being obliged to make it into a question, we shall ask: How did you like Australia?
Handler: Very much, as always. I have a particular fondness for Hobart with its blustery and delicious curiousities.
***
How To Write For Every Occasion
Terry Craig and Tryina Denouement: Which methods can you recommend when it comes to practising writing prose? Do you set deadlines when writing, and how do you motivate yourself to follow them?
Handler: I don't believe in deadlines but I believe in a regimen. If you want to write you have to read. You have to read far and wide. You have to read across genre and nationality and structure. You have to reread what moves you most, over and over, to see how it works. And then of course you have to write, for as many hours as you can spare. The writing of good prose requires the writing of bad prose, lots of it, and so it is best to get going with the bad prose as early and as often as possible. As far as motivation, my motivation is that I like doing it. If you do not like writing you should not write. The world is full of writers who learned too late that they do not like it, and speaking of avoiding people at parties, those are they.
Zortegus: As a native Spanish speaker who followed A Series of Unfortunate Events since the very beginning, I suffered because the series' translations were incomplete and difficult to find, and I felt that much was lost in the translation. As a Literature student and wannabe translator, my questions are: Are you consulted or involved in the translation of your books? Do you speak another language? Are you conscious of the hardships to translate your books due your particular style, full of elaborate linguistic jokes and excellent use of the English language?
Handler: I am hopelessly monolingual, and it breaks my heart that I must read so much literature in translation, knowing that so much has been lost. I try not to think about it with my own work and its translations. Every so often a translator asks me a question about a book of mine, and I realize that the question has never been asked of me previously, despite previous translations of the work. It is a sad thought. My hat is off to all wannabe translators for tackling what, is, essentially, a hopeless task. But then, so is literature.
ryantrimble457: I know, originally, the publishers only ordered four books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Did you always have thirteen planned out and hoped you'd get the chance to write them, or did your plans for the plot change after the number of books you were to write was increased? I'm very interested in anything you can tell us about the series' early development!
Handler:I immediately had thirteen books in mind, and even a rough structure, although there were many, many details to be filled in later. Then I bided my time, hoping against hope that a miracle would happen. Very soon they asked me for four more. I asked for nine more. They said no, and I bided my time again, and then quite soon they said, it seems we are as crazy as you are.
Hermes: Adverbs includes a story which links it with The Basic Eight, and some of us have seen an allusion in We Are Pirates as well. Why We Broke Up seems in some ways to recall the works of Lemony Snicket - the general form of the story reminds us of the letter Beatrice sent to Lemony, and there is also a scene where Ed and Min steal a dispenser of sugar. Is Why We Broke Up related to Mr Snicket’s books? And are all Daniel Handler's adult works set in the same world?
Handler:I don't mean to be rude or obtuse, but this is the sort of question I never quite understand. Nabokov famously said that "reality" is the only word that is only meaningful when it is surrounded by quotation marks, and I think I agree. I do find it interesting to place in my work items of interest to the careful rereader. What one does with those items is frankly none of my business.
Charlie and Comet: Do you have any regrets regarding A Series of Unfortunate Events, and can you tell us about any ideas for books you’ve had to scrap?
Handler:I have countless regrets about all of my work and would not want to be the sort of writer who does not. The best comfort I can offer myself is that I did the best I could have done at the time. And I've scrapped countless ideas for books, but they are only permanently scrapped if I realize that the book in my head is a book someone else has already written splendidly. The other ideas, no matter how hopeless, sit on bulletin boards and in drawers, waiting for a tap on the shoulder.
E.F.: What, in your mind, makes a piece of writing terribly wonderful or wonderfully terrible?
Handler:The sort of phrase "terribly wonderful or wonderfully terrible"--or any other bit of trickery that makes one's eyes and brain scan backward for a second--is what good literature is made of. If the reader is a passenger on a train, it's not a good voyage unless one has blinked in surprise and turned one's head to see what that was in the passing landscape.
***
A Series of Unfortunately Wrong Questions
Handler:I think I should preface this section by expressing my deep appreciation for such careful and imaginative reads from you. I hope such flattery will forgive my rather evasive answers.
Teleram and thedoctororwell: Did Mr. Snicket ever return to Stain'd by the Sea? Did he ever hear from the town’s inhabitants again, or ask his sister what became of Ms. Feint?
Handler:Mr. Snicket's story is not done being chronicled, but suffice to say that when he stepped into the Clusterous Forest he was not out of the woods.
Dante and thedoctororwell: Having instantly recognised the young Mr. Snicket's tattoo, when did Ellington Feint first learn about V.F.D.? Did Armstrong Feint cross paths with V.F.D. before he came to Stain'd-by-the-Sea?
Handler:One should remember that the Baudelaires' experience with V.F.D. occurred when the organization was in a much more fragmentary state than it was at the time of All The Wrong Questions. I prefer to think that Ellington, in her search for her father, brushed up against other young people on desperate searches.
Hermes: In reading All the Wrong Questions, some of us have wondered about how it relates to what we already know of Lemony's youth from The Beatrice Letters. Lemony, though not yet thirteen, says 'My schooldays are over', and later gives up his apprenticeship. Does this mean that everything we know of his education comes before this - in particular the trip to the mountains mentioned in LS to BB #2? And were Lemony and Beatrice already sweethearts at the time of All the Wrong Questions?
Handler:I suppose it depends what you mean by "schooldays." I think of the term as referring to very traditional educational structures during one's early childhood. Similarly, I think that one can't really be sweethearts until one's early childhood has passed by.
Emerald Snicket: Can you reveal anything about Mr. Snicket's 'Kind Editor', or any other kind editors you yourself have known?
Handler:Being an editor is largely a thankless business, but I try to thank Susan Rich as often as I can.
Olivine and lorelai: Did Kit and Olaf break up due to obvious conflicting circumstances, or was it another, less noticeable reason? Did Olaf become a villain and betray V.F.D. before or after the deaths of his parents?
Handler: As with so many villains, isn't the real mystery not why their sweethearts broke up with them, but why they had sweethearts in the first place?
Liam R. Findlay: Your books make some progressive suggestions towards combating misogyny, gender stereotypes and homophobia. I know that LGBT readers find inspiration and confidence in characters like themselves - did you consciously write any LGBT characters into Snicket's world and if so, which ones? In regards to this topic, some perceive the ambiguously-gendered henchperson's gender as frightening and uncomfortable to the Baudelaires; did you consider this reading when writing the series, and what reflections do you have on it now?
Handler:I grew up in an environment of queerness of every stripe, and I'd like to believe my work reflects such a world, even if the romantic and sexual lives and preferences of many of my characters are not explicit, as they aren't in life. (After all, we don't know what Sir and Charles do when we're not around, as we don't know, and thank goodness, with many friends; my new forthcoming YA novel has already ruffled the feathers of both queer and straight readers for scenes portraying certain flexibilities.)
As for Henchperson of Indeterminate Gender, I was always aware of the differences between androgyny and transgenderism, although I can see some readers might think the Baudelaires were frightened of this person because of their ambiguity rather than, say, their violence and evil intentions. In casting the part for Netflix, it was refreshing to see queer and/or trans actors relish the role, and to hear from some of them that they'd found solace in the books' visibilities when they were younger. One never knows where one might find oneself.
Agathological: Please, please, please, let us know: What does the S in 'S. Theodora Markson' stand for?
Handler:Oh, but it's right there in the text. Don't you want to find it for yourself?
***
Hurry Up and Televise
MisterM and Anka: How do you feel about the pressures of the Netflix adaptation, having to meet the expectations of book nerds like us whilst also appealing to the casual viewer?
Handler:The adaptation process has frankly been very difficult, and at various times I was asked to leave various rooms when such decisions were being made, and we're still many miles from the finished product. But just days ago I walked into an enormous lumbermill, constructed solely for the purposes of this production, and it was impossible not to be thrilled. ("Leaking" materials from a production-in-progress is strictly forbidden; incidentally, I have no idea where the enclosed photograph came from.) I have never been good at predicting what will delight whom, but isn't it often as fun to sit and roll one's eyes as it is to be breathlessly rapt?
Antenora and Dante: Will the TV adaptation show us a side of the Baudelaire case which the books didn't? Do any original elements from your draft scripts for the Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events movie return in your scripts for the Netflix series, and could you tell us about any ideas which aren't returning?
Handler:Some liberties have been taken and some little subplots added, and my scripts, as for the movie, have been tinkered with by other hired hands. As one says while falling down an elevator shaft, we will see where we land.
