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Post by Marlowe on Jul 1, 2020 0:58:02 GMT -5
Monologues, speeches, ramblings, rants - whatever you want to call it, Snicket's tendency to diverge from his narration and into extended discussions of common phrases, literature, and mysterious anecdotes has been a trademark feature of his writing; I can't imagine ASoUE working as well as it does without it. While usually not strictly relevant to the plot, these digressions elevate tension, layer atmosphere onto the proceedings, deepen our understanding of the characters' emotions, or sometimes simply serve as comic relief. I create this thread to open a discussion of our favorites of these frequent asides throughout the series.
The "anxious vs nervous" discussion at the start of The Ersatz Elevator was the first to come to mind: I refer back to this passage whenever I have trouble remembering the difference myself, which is not infrequent. His warnings about opening sentences in TMM makes me laugh - it also recalls his introduction to the McSweeney's Noisy Outlaws collection, where he gives several very sarcastic/satirical excerpts from "very dull books".
I'm also fond of ones that give away surreal details about the dangerous circumstances he finds himself in as he writes, like the stuff about hiding an orchestra or preparing for a difficult job interview. But one I've carried with me quite often is a passage in THH where LS reflects on how his life has felt like a dismal play by a cruel playwright. I love it when LS bluntly speaks on his past regrets and actions, and he gets so honest and personal talking about this here that it's almost hard to believe it's being written "in character".
But my favorite monologue would have to be the beginning of Chapter Seven in TPP; also a contender for my single favorite passage from from the entire series, one I think about almost daily. Just absolutely beautiful writing, pure Snicket. It feels like Snicket has been a bird following the Baudealires around with a vision narrowly zeroed in on them all this time, and here he's spreading his wings to fly out further into the sky as his perception of everything below him expands and expands.
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Post by Dante on Jul 1, 2020 5:40:22 GMT -5
His introduction to Noisy Outlaws is a tour de force, it's true; and speaking of TEE and phrases borrowed from French, I've always enjoyed his increasingly unhinged "translation" of "cul de sac" in Chapter Eleven. TEE has some incredible passages. It's as if Snicket's writing gets better in negative correlation with his plotting.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 1, 2020 10:31:12 GMT -5
Talking about it will be easy and difficult for me at the same time. First of all, I am a person who changes his mind from time to time on a subject involving ASOUE. Secondly, because I have my favorite passages involving "potential theories", and other passages involving "interesting lessons", and other passages involving "it makes me laugh". So I think I'm going to quote one that is a mixture of the three things at the same time. Chapter 10: "The story's moral, of course, ought to be "Never live somewhere where wolves are running around loose," but whoever read you the story probably told you that the moral was not to lie."
I wouldn't say the moral is exactly that ... But it still made me laugh when I first read it.
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Post by Marlowe on Jul 10, 2020 22:26:40 GMT -5
Only 2 replies, really? Do people just not care about the monologues at all?
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Post by B. on Jul 11, 2020 10:01:36 GMT -5
The one when he talks about the ballerinas in the dark in the park, I think it's in The End
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 11, 2020 13:47:58 GMT -5
Only 2 replies, really? Do people just not care about the monologues at all? Many just like to watch ... Which is a shame, because I can see the child inside them wanting to participate actively. I don't understand ... most of us use codenames so there is no need to be ashamed.
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Post by Marlowe on Jul 11, 2020 13:56:29 GMT -5
You talking about guests who lurk without accounts? I'm talking about the users who were online at various points in the past few days (not naming names) who could've replied to the prompt but didn't.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jul 11, 2020 14:38:10 GMT -5
The one when he talks about the ballerinas in the dark in the park, I think it's in The End I literally read that passage yesterday... I was bored at work and found a pile of UE books lying around and i'd compeltely forgotten about that whole moment
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Gregor Anwhistle
Formidable Foreman
Volatile Fungus Deporter and Ichnologist
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Post by Gregor Anwhistle on Jul 12, 2020 8:41:15 GMT -5
I like the opening of Chapter 2 in TVV where Snicket talks about the advantages/disadvantages of the three sitting options on a bus (window view, middle seat, and aisle). Every time I read it I grin and have an internal debate regarding my preference (I think I'm a window seat person).
Then there's the description of C.M. Kornbluth in Chapter 9 of TSS. I love all of Snicket's anecdotes of V.F.D.'s vanished past, but there's something sadly nostalgic about Mr. Kornbluth. He's this mechanical instructor who lived most of his life in the mountain headquarters, a man so secretive that even his own associates didn't know much about him. Snicket laments the fact that Violet never got to meet him. It reminds me of all the stories my parents told about their college friends and associates in the early 80s. I always wished I could have been there to experience those people and stories. I like how Snicket ends the passage: "So, when I think of Violet Baudelaire standing in the wreckage of the V.F.D. headquarters, carefully taking the strings off the ukulele and bending some forks in half, I can imagine Mr. Kornbluth, even though he and his pistachios are long gone, turning from the window, smiling at the Baudelaire inventor, and saying, "Beatrice, come over here! Look at what this girl is making!"
Thirdly, I like the passage "In the final analysis..." from TGG p. 310. It comes right at the tense moment when the Baudelaires look through the repaired porthole and see the mysterious question mark. I like how it adds further wrinkles to the life of Captain Widdershins.
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Post by twigz on Apr 22, 2024 6:35:40 GMT -5
“The phrase "in the dark," as I'm sure you know, can refer not only to one's shadowy surroundings, but also to the shadowy secrets of which one might be unaware.
Every day, the sun goes down over all these secrets, and so everyone is in the dark in one way or another.
If you are sunbathing in a park, for instance, but you do not know that a locked cabinet is buried fifty feet beneath your blanket, then you are in the dark even though you are not actually in the dark, whereas if you are on a midnight hike, knowing full well that several ballerinas are following close behind you, then you are not in the dark even if you are in fact in the dark.
Of course, it is quite possible to be in the dark in the dark, as well as to be not in the dark not in the dark, but there are so many secrets in the world that it is likely that you are always in the dark about one thing or another, whether you are in the dark in the dark or in the dark not in the dark, although the sun can go down so quickly that you may be in the dark about being in the dark in the dark, only to look around and find yourself no longer in the dark about being in the dark in the dark, but in the dark in the dark nonetheless, not only because of the dark, but because of the ballerinas in the dark, who are not in the dark about the dark, but also not in the dark about the locked cabinet, and you may be in the dark about the ballerinas digging up the locked cabinet in the dark, even though you are no longer in the dark about being in the dark, and so you are in fact in the dark about being in the dark, even though you are not in the dark about being in the dark, and so you may fall into the hole that the ballerinas have dug, which is dark, in the dark, and in the park.”
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Post by Reba on Apr 22, 2024 7:07:24 GMT -5
the best part of that is that helquist illustrated it
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Post by Hego T. Tablespoon on Apr 22, 2024 19:02:00 GMT -5
Well, not quite a Snicket original per se, but such a sentence has stuck with me for quite awhile. I'll always look forward to the day I find a fitting use for it in a conversation.
"Just as one feels more sorry for those in the tertiary stage of syphilis rather than in the primary stage, one feels sorrier for someone whose reading the thirteenth volume than for someone who, say, is reading the first." ~Mr. Snicket's Representative.
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Post by soufflé on Apr 27, 2024 11:37:05 GMT -5
ayoooo what
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Post by HAL 10,000 on May 2, 2024 17:36:21 GMT -5
Mine's probably the one about the difference between nervous and anxious(nervous is if you're given prune ice cream for dessert and anxious is if you're given a live crocodile for dessert).
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