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Post by Foxy on Aug 6, 2019 9:07:46 GMT -5
‘I paused, not knowing how much of the story I should tell him.’ (p. 194) It is still strange to me that Snicket never anticipated the truth about Qwerty. I am always surprised he doesn't trust Qwerty on the sole basis of his being a librarian. I thought I had read somewhere the answer is "Mr. Snicket," but I don't recall where I read that.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 8, 2019 7:30:45 GMT -5
"Three Suspects"
p.156 - "Mimi and I stayed up very late watching a double feature of scary movies." "Something with zombies in the winter" Cross-reference to the fictitious film "Zombies in the Snow" directed by Dr. Gustav Sebald, which is mentioned in Lemony Snicket's "The Reptile Room" as well as "The Unauthorized Autobiography.
I like this very much because it helped me come up with the theory about zombies in the snow. I support the idea that Zombies in the Snow had a message hidden in the original script, created many years before the Baudelaire siblings. Mimi watched zombies in the snow when Lemony was a teenager. There is a picture of Gustav Sebald building the snowman as a child. At the time of Lemony's marriage cancellation, a play was created that told of Gustav Sebald's childhood, showing that Gustav, by the time Violet was 14, was already an older person, most likely an adult. Also, Daniel Handler evidently thought about details about VFD long after the release of Book 2. Daniel Handler intensively created a Red Haring about Zombies in the Snow, long after publishing Book 2, simply by calling attention to a Sebald code message that Daniel had Lemony find in the movie script. But in order not to disrupt the story he had created, and yet confuse our minds, Daniel Handler made the message actually talk about an old subject that was no longer pertinent to the Baudelaire affair. Daniel Handler even made Lemony himself believe that the message was important in some way for the time of the main events narrated in ASOUE. If the reader believes this too, he will be very confused by the meaning of the message. If the reader believes this too, he faces cornological problems, and coherence problems.
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Post by Foxy on Aug 8, 2019 11:28:39 GMT -5
I think another theory is that the messages coming from the movies can be changed from one showing to another, so you can use the same movie to show varying messages to suit your needs. However, I think this is only plausible with the spy glasses, because you probably couldn't change the scripts.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 8, 2019 12:55:52 GMT -5
spy glasses, because you probably couldn't change the scripts. Foxy, you know how much I admire you ... But every time a fan of the ASOUE books makes reference to those telescope-shaped devices used in the movie or series, I get a chill in my spine. I try to be mature, and say to myself "be glad, because you watched a very good adaptation, even if you weren't completely faithful to the original." But my childish side almost always wins this fight. That's why I will never write a text about the differences between the books and the series ... I don't want to sound ungrateful. I can only say that I respect season one and season two, but I feel annoyed with season three. It's not that I don't like it, I just feel annoyed ... Okay, I vented it here.
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Post by Foxy on Aug 9, 2019 11:17:42 GMT -5
That's fair enough. Sometimes I wonder why if the spy glass was important enough to Daniel Handler for it to be in the movie when there were still a few books to come out why he didn't make it a part of the books.
Do you have a hypothesis what the other movie was the Mitchums saw? I had a guess it was another Sebald film mentioned in TUA.
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Post by Dante on Aug 11, 2019 5:25:16 GMT -5
Miscellaneous to the text of the book, there are a couple of other issues related to File Under that I wanted to discuss: The title, and the cover. Did you know that this book had been retitled? It was originally listed as only File Under: Suspicious Incidents - without the 13. And there was nothing difficult to understand about this title! It played along with the dedication addresses in the main series, which advised filing the text under a number of categories; and for this side-volume, that category was "suspicious incidents". Unfortunately, somebody at the publishers decided that their readers were incompetent, and so the title changed to File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents - destroying the original sense. That V.F.D., or anyone, might have a file category for "suspicious incidents" is as amusingly absurd as anything in Snicket; that they might have a category for "13 suspicious incidents" steps over the line into idiocy, and was obviously a choice made just in case anyone was too dense to understand the short story format - without consideration for the actual meaning of the title. (Indeed, as noted in my link above, it wasn't even originally clear whether it was going to be the title we got, or File Under 13: Suspicious Incidents, which might almost have worked better.) File this incident as another example of the publishers patronising the readers and damaging the series in the process. But when it comes to damaging the series, it's hard to come close to what Egmont did to File Under. This is the only mainline Snicket book in all of ASoUE and ATWQ that they haven't published in print in the U.K., which is bad enough; and as you might expect, it was a source of worry to U.K. fans in the run-up to release that there was no listing for an Egmont edition. So I asked them about it on Twitter: twitter.com/EgmontUK/statuses/423761445969342465"The jacket is amazing". And you can tell that they meant it, because look what children's mystery series in a vaguely historical milieu with a shadowy pseudonymous villain Egmont just happened to publish the next year: Let's make a closer comparison, shall we? What an amazing coincidence, that Egmont should publicly compliment the cover of a book they had the rights to and then not publish that book and then about a year later publish to considerable fanfare a book in the same genre with a very similar cover. Yes, this is definitely a coincidence and there is no relation whatsoever between the two events. Egmont eventually published File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents as an ebook exclusive in 2018, four years after its U.S. publication and three years after ATWQ ended. That "amazing" cover which they so loved had been replaced with this: But it's not as if they were trying to obscure the original cover's resemblance to their own work or anything. It's just another of those funny coincidences.
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Post by Foxy on Aug 12, 2019 11:46:50 GMT -5
Did you know that this book had been retitled? It was originally listed as only File Under: Suspicious Incidents - without the 13. And there was nothing difficult to understand about this title! It played along with the dedication addresses in the main series, which advised filing the text under a number of categories; and for this side-volume, that category was "suspicious incidents". Unfortunately, somebody at the publishers decided that their readers were incompetent, and so the title changed to File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents - destroying the original sense. That V.F.D., or anyone, might have a file category for "suspicious incidents" is as amusingly absurd as anything in Snicket; that they might have a category for "13 suspicious incidents" steps over the line into idiocy, and was obviously a choice made just in case anyone was too dense to understand the short story format - without consideration for the actual meaning of the title. (Indeed, as noted in my link above, it wasn't even originally clear whether it was going to be the title we got, or File Under 13: Suspicious Incidents, which might almost have worked better.) File this incident as another example of the publishers patronising the readers and damaging the series in the process. I'm kind of confused after reading your comments. Why is it bad that they called it "13" Suspicious Incidents instead of just Suspicious Incidents? I'm not quite sure how it damages the series. Also, I have to ask... was that other book that completely ripped off the cover art any good? Okay, I quick looked the author up and my library, and she has more books with similar covers! Here's one. And here are what appears to be the entire collection:
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Post by Dante on Aug 12, 2019 14:20:43 GMT -5
Katherine Woodfine's books aren't bad, and I hold no grudge against her as an author, although her attempt at a locked-room mystery in The Painted Dragon was extremely disappointing; in any case, I wouldn't imagine she had responsibility for the cover art.
My objection to the title change is that it's absurd but plausible that you could file something in a "suspicious incidents" drawer, but crosses the line into idiocy when we're forced to imagine a "13 suspicious incidents" drawer.
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Post by Foxy on Aug 13, 2019 10:53:07 GMT -5
Does that mean Daniel Handler didn't have anything to do with the art in any of the ASOUE or ATWQ books?
I understand what you mean now with the title, thank you for the clarification.
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Post by Dante on Aug 17, 2019 7:56:28 GMT -5
Does that mean Daniel Handler didn't have anything to do with the art in any of the ASOUE or ATWQ books? We know that Handler asked Seth personally to illustrate for ATWQ, but I believe he's indicated in the past that he has very little influence over the illustrations in general.
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Post by Dante on Sept 9, 2019 12:05:10 GMT -5
Considering that it's been nearly a month since this thread was posted in, I'll allow another week for veryferociousdrama and then post the next thread in the reread myself, if nobody has any objection. I hope you've all been reading ahead!
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Post by Foxy on Sept 9, 2019 12:13:18 GMT -5
Thank you Dante! I have been hoping the next thread would happen so I can share my notes.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 17, 2019 13:41:19 GMT -5
Considering that it's been nearly a month since this thread was posted in, I'll allow another week for veryferociousdrama and then post the next thread in the reread myself, if nobody has any objection. I hope you've all been reading ahead! Is this still happening? I updated my avatar in anticipation...
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Post by Dante on Sept 17, 2019 15:50:20 GMT -5
It is still happening, but I'm grateful for the reminder. Of course, this thread still remains very much open for any latecomers to File Under.
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Post by Carrie E. Abelabudite on Sept 29, 2019 21:03:08 GMT -5
Finally getting around to this! Hopefully I'll be able to start posting on SYBIS tomorrow.
General Notes
I have never actually read this before, so this should be interesting. I have bought the UK Kindle edition, which may or may not be the full version. Did I read somewhere it was not the full version? Also, the Kindle cover is not by Seth. It's plain blue and looks like it is made out of leather. It's weird because the Kindle covers for the rest of the series are the same as the Egmont ones.
Inside Job
Does Theodora think the Far East Suite is bugged? There's no evidence of this anywhere else in the series.
The 'minor' joke made me laugh. Though this is a new low for bad child labour laws in the Snicketverse.
It feels like there is a lot more wordplay here than the rest of the series - I mean, it just seems a lot more frequent. It kind of jumps straight from one to the next.
Interesting that this story opens with Lemony thinking about good breakfasts versus bad breakfasts. It makes me think of the Museum of Bad Breakfast, and the Hemlock Tearoom and Stationery Shop. It seems like there must be a connection between all these things, but what? (Other than bad food)
Interesting reference to Finnish poets. Doesn't Klaus say, in one of the ASOUE books, that he got a book of Finnish poetry for one of his birthdays? And then, of course, there are the female Finnish pirates.
So, the end of this story says its conclusion is filed in a different chapter. It would be very ASOUE-ish to just straight-up not solve the mystery, but maybe not very ATWQ-ish.
Pinched Creature
'"It's been too long since we've done this," Moxie said. "Done what?" "Had an uneventful time like this."' Have Lemony and Moxie ever had an uneventful time together?
It's interesting that both Oliver's parents are vets. It seems like there are a lot of couples who have the same profession as each other in Stain'd-by-the-Sea.
Sounds like Oliver has something in common with Monty, although they can't be the same person. Also, the newt reminds me of the tadpoles that are actually baby Beasts.
'"The closest eye doctor is way over in Paltryville, but she doesn't have a very good reputation."' This could be helpful for figuring out where Paltryville is in relation to Stain'd. Also, this is clearly meant to make us think of Dr Orwell. Although she should only be a teenager, given the Snicketverse's lax outlook on children working (I mean, Oliver seems to be a de facto vet already), she could already be an optometrist at this age.
Ransom Note
Interesting that there's another character called Hal. Probably not related to ASOUE Hal, but there's always a chance that he is the same person, I guess.
Don't Pip and Squeak often say 'much obliged'? Is it possible that Jackie is related to them?
Walkie-Talkie
It's weird to think of Stew spending time at Hungry's.
How old is Stew? I always thought he was about the same age as Lemony, but if he's only four and a half feet tall, that suggests he's younger.
When and why would Lemony have had to have a radio in his shoe? I mean, what specifically was that supposed to teach him?
Bad Gang
Is there some significance to Lemony putting the teacup on the floor?
Silver Spoon
What book is Lemony reading here?
The phrase 'the bearded man' makes me think of the man with the beard but no hair, although this guy's demeanour seems different. Now that I think of it, the phrase 'the bearded man' is used to describe the Volunteer Fighting Disease with the guitar.
The description of SmogfaceWiley definitely brings Sir to mind. Though one wonders why anyone would find the name 'Wiley' difficult to pronounce. His being from a wealthy family also seems to go against the idea that he had a terrible childhood, although it doesn't contradict it, as we see with the Baudelaires.
The dinner parties make me think of Madame DiLustro.
Violent Butcher
'But as soon as I hit the corner of Caravan and Parfait, I knew I'd walked into a different story altogether.' This feels very reminiscent of The End.
(I didn't have any notes about Twelve or Thirteen)
Midnight Demon
This feels a lot more obviously funny than the other stories. The bit about insomniacs made me laugh out loud.
Three Suspects
The Mitchums' argument about not being a baby also made me laugh.
Vanished Message
Ooh, a reference to a Very Fancy Doily. I wonder if they have some actual significance within VFD?
Intersting reference to the history of Stain'd. Shame we never find out more about it.
Troublesome Ghost
I honestly can't think of what the fog around the streetlights would remind Lemony of. Am I missing something really obvious here?
Figure in Fog
Is the figure Ellington? I guess it could be Hangfire. Not sure there's any other solution that makes sense.
Sub-file B: Conclusions
I guess you could say that this book, like TE, has a Chapter Fourteen. I'm sure this chapter full of conclusions is exactly what a lot of ASOUE fans would have wanted.
Most of the conclusions feel like things I should have picked up on, but didn't.
Oh, I see that we don't have all the stories in this book now. It's a shame the full thing hasn't been published for Kindle/in the UK.
Is Smogface Wiley trying to invite the Duchess of Winnipeg to dinner?
Overall, I don't feel like this book really gave me important extra info the way TUA and TBL do, though I still enjoyed it a lot.
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