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Post by Sora on Jun 3, 2009 18:57:23 GMT -5
These titles are getting too long - I can't fit any 'The' in! Today we begin the ninth volume of A Series of Unfortunate Events, most sinisterly titled The Carnivorous Carnival. This is the final volume of the Dilemma Deepens trilogy of our series, and essentially the beginning of the end. In this dreadfully delicious novel we are faced with freaks, false fortunetellers, ferocious feasting. Mauling, maps and malicious mobs. General evil. If you don't get the picture, you haven't been re-reading enough. Devour your next reading, and discuss.
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Post by cwm on Jun 5, 2009 4:47:11 GMT -5
Retrieving this book, I realise that I really need to clean up my ASOUE collection. Half of it isn't on a bookshelf, and there are never more than three books in the same place.
Chapter One Lemony's 'few surviving friends' - so he's still in contact with V.F.D.?
At least one person lives on Rarely Ridden Road, and there are telephone poles on it, as per TUA. It's extremely bumpy and is just off the highway. And that is about a complete a description of Rarely Ridden Road which you will find anywhere.
Clearly Count Olaf's trunk isn't very secure, since it can be opened from the inside, and Violet can break the lock in complete darkness, in an extremely limited space, using what is just about the most spurious lockpick device you will ever see.
We've already discussed (in the THH/TUA threads) about why the operator doesn't respond to Violet. The theory that it was because the telephone poles were chopped down (see TUA) as the call was taking place seems unworkable: "all they could hear was the empty and distant sound of a telephone line" Indicating that at this point the telephone is still working, so the operator chose to stop talking.
Chapter Two The story of how Count Olaf began his acting career is never finished, but part of it is likely to be exaggerated anyway.
Violet describes the veil in the disguise kit as the same one she wore for The Marvellous Marriage, so Olaf did get the bridal costume from his disguise kit. Presumably the theatre didn't have its own.
Olaf wore a fake beard as Stephano. In TRR it's described as being a real beard which he's grown, so apparently it's sufficently realistic.
Klaus appears to be able to see without his glasses a little better than in TMM. Of course, the situation is a little different.
Chapter Three What job Lemony was being interviewed for is never specified.
Esme points out that the shirt is 'very in'. Has she recognised it from the V.F.D. disguise kit?
Hopefully I'll do 4 through 6 before the end of the day.
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Post by Dante on Jun 5, 2009 4:48:09 GMT -5
Watch out for the figurines.
~Chapter One~
Page 11 top: Due to centrifugal force, if the car turns left, shouldn’t the Baudelaires roll to the right?
Some of the troupe’s dialogue suggests to me that they haven’t all been to Caligari before – perhaps between other books they were engaged on other errands for Count Olaf (Fernald working as the 667 Dark Avenue doorman, perhaps?).
I’m not entirely sure how the monocle cord could have been rigid enough to open the latch.
Page 15: The reference to the children hearing nothing but the chirping of crickets and the barking of a dog is a direct reference to the U.A., which of course at this time is just the previous book.
So, were the telephone poles on Rarely Ridden Road chopped down at this very moment, did the operator cut them off, or did the operator try to connect them to somewhere that went through the chopped-down Rarely Ridden Road telephone lines?
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Post by cwm on Jun 5, 2009 8:10:51 GMT -5
So, were the telephone poles on Rarely Ridden Road chopped down at this very moment, did the operator cut them off, or did the operator try to connect them to somewhere that went through the chopped-down Rarely Ridden Road telephone lines? They can still hear a dialtone, as I quoted above, so any solution cannot include the Rarely Ridden Road telephone lines, or any other chopped-down telephone lines for that matter.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 5, 2009 10:18:21 GMT -5
This is a fascinating book. If THH is the one where the mystery element becomes really prominent, this is the one where we begin to get answers - though not as many as we would like. I think things are clearer to us than they are to the Baudelaires, though - partly because we have read TUA, and partly just because we have the benefit of distance. We are clearly much further from the city than we were before, but still within reach of it - a day trip from the the city to the carnival is possible, though not the most natural way of spending a day out. This is one of the things which, to me, gives the series a North American feel - you can be hundreds of miles from the city, but it is still the city, while in Britain, if you go a hundred miles from a city, you have probably reached the next city. By the way, Handler uses 'hinterlands' in Adverbs for the land outside San Francisco. Does anyone know if that's a common expression there? Some of the troupe’s dialogue suggests to me that they haven’t all been to Caligari before – perhaps between other books they were engaged on other errands for Count Olaf I wondered about that - we later find that Fernald, at least, has been there. I'd never have spotted that. Now you mention it, I remember the crickets. Where does a dog come into TUA? Certainly this book has a particularly close relationship with TUA, in many places. Chapter 1. L seems in slightly better circumstances than in the last book - he is conctact with a number of friends, and at least has a pen (earlier he was using a pencil). Later in the book he will even be in a hotel. Just how sawing holes in a canoe helps you conceal it, and how long it will survive if new holes are sawed each evening, remains unclear. 'the sun slowly sank behind the distant and frosty Mortmain mountains'. So the mountains are in the west. Take note of this. Ah, the telephone. Well, yes, 'the empty and distant sound of a telephone line' sounds as if it means a dial tone, so in that case, as cwm says, the lines cannot yet have been cut down; leaving it mysterious both what is happening now, and when they were cut down and what this achieved. Still, this does at least show that they had not been cut down when the Baudelaires sent the telegram to Mr Poe. Later it seems that Handler gets confused about this; the characters certainly do. Chapter 2. 'You said that about Quagmire fortune, my Olaf, and about Snicket fortune'. Is this an indication that the Quagmire fire came first? Ot does it just refer to the attempt to get the Quagmire fortune in TEE and TVV? In any case it's interesting that Olaf at one point tried to get the Snicket fortune - we never hear any details of this. 'you might examine some letters your sister received recently, and learn that she was planning on running away with an archduke'. This sounds like a real incident, not just a random example. One wonders when it happened. (Note that an archduke is not the same as a count. In fact, I believe that only one family, the Habsburgs, uses the title 'archduke'; but there are a lot of them.) Klaus says the long robe looks like something a rabbi might wear. Is this evidence that the Baudelaires are Jewish? There was a discussion of that a while ago. Of course, K is very erudite, but the feeling I get is that he's not commenting on something very specific about the design of the robe, but just associating 'long robe' with 'rabbi', which makes most sense if he's Jewish. The Baudelaires' mother was in a play! This is only a clue if you have read TUA, of course - otherwise you wouldn't know Beatrice was an actress.
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Post by Dante on Jun 5, 2009 10:57:37 GMT -5
I'd never have spotted that. Now you mention it, I remember the crickets. Where does a dog come into TUA? Certainly this book has a particularly close relationship with TUA, in many places. I thought the barking of a dog was one of the signs you were being recruited into V.F.D., but checking U.A. Chapter 12 again, I see I was mistaken. Still, I'm sure the barking of a dog came into it somewhere. It sounds very familiar. Ah, I see what you're getting at. However, it's unspecified where exactly in the Hinterlands this imagining is taking place, and given that Olaf drives for quite a while through the hinterlands, perhaps there's a sort of mountain ridge such that you can go west from some places but east from others to reach the mountains? The exact geography of how the Stricken Stream wends through the Hinterlands may also relate to this. (Unless you already had an answer in mind.) Edit: I think Handler's said that the Baudelaires are symbolically Jewish, or something like that - not necessarily literally Jewish.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 5, 2009 13:21:33 GMT -5
Dante: your point on the geography is very fair, but I think I'll wait until we've had all the evidence before drawing a conclusion.
One thing I missed in chapter 2: 'Madam Lulu remembers, please, when you would visit only for the pleasure of my company'. O's response - 'There isn't time for that tonight' suggests that the pleasure in question involved more than just chatting and drinking. I have a nasty feeling he may have been carrying on relationships with L and E at the same time. This is of course the beginning of the jealousy theme which will run through the book.
Chapter 3.
It's not clear how many of the events L refers to here really happened. Was he betrayed by a member of his family? If so, who? (Of course, O is a member of his family on some theories.) But on the next page he refers to something that certainly did not happen - to him, at least - even though the description seems very specific: 'you will spend the rest of your life foraging for food in the wilderness...'
'a telephone... wires that are very easily cut' suggests we are meant to think of the cutting of the telephone wires in this context. I am beginning to feel that the 'empty and distant sound' bit just has to be treated as a mistake, whether by the author or by the narrator.
And talking of mistakes: '...whether you'd rather spend your mornings gazing at a beautiful sunset...'
If Lulu's motto is 'Give people what they want', why does she tell O that one of the Baudelaire parents is still alive? Surely he doesn't want that?
Chapter 4.
I like the picture which accompanies this chapter. The crowd seems very international; the figure in the centre with the upward-pointing nose looks very English; the woman just behind him seems American; the military-looking figure on the right strikes me as German. I'm not sure where the pirate is from.
Where on earth did Handler get the idea of a tagliatelle grande used as a whip?
So, in a modest way, Sunny's cooking career begins (though in a way it began with fruti salad in the previous book, as cwm pointed out).
Where do the lions come from? We know that the original owner trained them to smell smoke, so presumably was on the good side of VFD; did they go directly from him to Olaf, or was there an intermediate owner? Has Olaf just bought then, or has he owned them for some time and been keeping them in reserve?
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Post by Dante on Jun 5, 2009 13:47:42 GMT -5
One thing I missed in chapter 2: 'Madam Lulu remembers, please, when you would visit only for the pleasure of my company'. O's response - 'There isn't time for that tonight' suggests that the pleasure in question involved more than just chatting and drinking. I have a nasty feeling he may have been carrying on relationships with L and E at the same time. This is of course the beginning of the jealousy theme which will run through the book. Olaf's romantic entanglements are not entirely clear-cut. Various sources indicate he's been in a relationship with Esmé for a while; when, then, were he and Kit true loves? Quite how you interpret "the empty and distant sound of a telephone line" strikes me as a way out, too. I wouldn't intuitively leap to it as a dial tone, but then again I wouldn't intuitively leap to it as anything. East is west, sunrise is sunset, Dr. Sebald is adult and childhood! Where does the madness end? Maybe he'd already convinced himself of it, and in that sense she was just "giving him what he wants" - giving him something to aim for rather than leaving him uncertain over whether the volunteers were right or wrong. Arguably, what the customers want is an answer, and only indirectly a positive or negative one. If she was just going to fob people off with false answers, why go to the trouble of assembling her archival library? What people want is an accurate answer, I guess.
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Post by cwm on Jun 5, 2009 16:30:53 GMT -5
He wanted to know if they were alive or not, surely? She gave him the answer to the question, which is what he wanted.
And 'distant sound of a telephone line' indicates that there was some sound coming over the telephone. If the wires had been cut, then there would be silence.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 7, 2009 11:41:32 GMT -5
Olaf's romantic entanglements are not entirely clear-cut. Various sources indicate he's been in a relationship with Esmé for a while; when, then, were he and Kit true loves? When they were teenagers, I suspect - if not earlier: I sometimes wonder if this should be connected with 'one day when I was seven' in TPP. In general they want an accurate answer, so when she can, that's what she gives them. But when she's just guessing, as in this case, you might think her philosophy would lead her to give them the answer that would make them most comfortable. Still, perhaps for some reason she thinks it's most likely one of the Baudelaires is alive. Chapter 5. p. 113 - it's perhaps worth noticing that all the things Violet here says she doesn't know are revealed, either in this book or in the next - indeed in some cases we already have an idea through having read TUA. Lemony goes out walking on Briny Beach - it seems he is back in the city. 'I have only to reach for the sugar bowl....' - I think this is the only mention of sugar bowls in this book. Why is L reaching for the sugar bowl, given that volunteers take their tea as bitter as wormwood? Does he think there may be secret messages in it? Violet suggests that their parent can't find them 'because we've been hiding and disguising ourselves for so long'. Actually they've only been doing so for a few days. The next line, though - 'Why doesn't our mother or father contact Mr Poe?' suggests that the reference is not to the literal hiding and disguising, but just to the fact that they've been moving around in a way which makes them hard to trace - Jacques clearly found it hard, and Olaf wouldn't have managed it without Lulu's help. L stayed at the carnival with his brother many years ago! One wonders just when. (TBL suggests that Olivia worked at the Daily Punctilio at the same time as L, so presumably later than that.) 'There are so few living experts on such subjects...' - so it appears that VFD is now very fragmented and depleted, even more so than it was at the time of the actual events. One also wonders to what terrible circumstances L is travelling. (I can see that this could be read as meaning that L is just behind the Baudelaires and is trying to rescue them; but the general feel of this passage, I think, suggests that he is writing some time after the events.) 'as far as they knew they were not members of an organisation of any kind'. The idea that one can be a member of an organisation without knowing it may be significant. Edit: Chapter 6. The message to Kit is problematic if L is writing some time after the events; K should be dead. At this point we can just say L doesn't know she is dead: later it will get more complicated. 'I am still alive' perhaps relates to the announcement of his death in TUA, though he seems to have been rumoured to be dead at various times before that. The letter to the Duchess, as I mentioned earlier, is different from the one found in TUA, and may suggest that that one is fake (and, by the way, 'My Dear Duchess' is a much more plausible greeting than 'Your Royal Duchessness'). The Damocles Dock picture: in saying 'who took this?' Klaus echoes a question from TUA. We don't know the answer, though; it might be either R or K. It will later emerge that Jacques at one time had this picture - presumably R or K sent it to him; how it got from him to Olivia remains a mystery. Indeed, it's something of a mystery just how Olivia gets all her material - she says it comes from 'libraries. mostly', but how can she, out in the hinterlands, collect stuff from libraries? Does she have a team of researchers? Presumably the Baudelaires saw the vampire movie on TV - yet more evidence against my theory that TV does not exist in the ASOUE universe. Could it have been Vampires in the Retirement Community?
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Post by Dante on Jun 8, 2009 6:20:44 GMT -5
I'm having difficulty motivating myself to actually reread TCC, for some reason; perhaps I enjoyed it too much, and don't feel any of it's new to me any more. Still, let me point out the Caligari Carnival figurines, which are called back to in TSS. Page 74: "...and the gift caravan is almost out of figurines." Page 265: "I even asked the woman who runs the gift caravan to join us, but she was too worried about her precious figurines..." Why is L reaching for the sugar bowl, given that volunteers take their tea as bitter as wormwood? I think that's just Jacques. In TPP, asking for sugar with your tea is, if anything, a sign that you are a volunteer - that you're searching for the sugar bowl. I think Kit seems a little more likely to have taken it - assuming we're dealing with the Duchess or Kit, who are in any case friends - since Kit is always roaming about, whereas the Duchess presumably spends her time at high society balls. Mail order, perhaps? I like to think so.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 8, 2009 10:38:15 GMT -5
Thanks for replying, Dante - I was beginning to fear 667 had burnt down, and I was the only survivor. Still, let me point out the Caligari Carnival figurines, which are called back to in TSS. Page 74: "...and the gift caravan is almost out of figurines." Page 265: "I even asked the woman who runs the gift caravan to join us, but she was too worried about her precious figurines..." This, of course, raises the whole 'plot threads that go nowhere' issue - unless you think it does go somewhere. Yes, but the point is it's just a sign - you don't actually intend to sweeten the tea. And I think Ishmael also says he prefers tea as bitter as wormwood. Chapter 7. Olivia says that in the Mortmain Mountains is one of the last surviving VFD headquarters. This doesn't quite seem to fit in with the building committee meeting in TUA, which makes it sound as if there was just one headquarters. My guess is that the meeting was really about the regional headquarters, for the area around the city, while the Mortmain Mountains HQ was of more global significance - though later we'll get more puzzles about the HQ which are harder to answer. The first two phases of disguise are of course from TUA: Voice Fakery Disguises is something new. Olivia is surprised that the Baudelaires have VFD skills without being VFD members; this may become significant. (They have displayed such skills before - as when they decoded Josephine's and Isadora's messages.) The way Olivia describes the schism here makes it seem much more complex than good guys against bad guys. It seems that some members of VFD have indeed become villains, but others are just confused. Olivia's own position, in a way, supports the idea that there is a laissez-faire faction; but while she is laissez-faire in one way (help everyone), Ishmael is laissez-faire in another way (help no one, stay away from the conflict). As TGG will reveal, there are also conflicts among people who are officially on the good side, with some turning out to be volatile. When the Baudelaires reflect back on morally ambiguous things they have done, they now include the swordfight in TMM - later they will also mention the stealing of the sailboat in TWW. It seems to me that there has been a change of outlook, with things treated as problematic when they weren't earlier; in the early books it wa assumed necessity could justify what were normally bad actions; now it seems to be felt that even if there is no choice you are tainted by doing bad things. Chapter 8. 'I had this dress made especially to show how much I love them [freaks].' One might wonder when. Is there a dressmaker at the carnival? 'Count Olaf is heading north to the Mortmain Mountains'. So the mountains are in the north.
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Post by Dante on Jun 8, 2009 13:45:05 GMT -5
This, of course, raises the whole 'plot threads that go nowhere' issue - unless you think it does go somewhere. It's a shame that nobody submitted figurines to the trial in TPP. Oh well. No sign that a preference for bitter tea is a V.F.D. trend, either. While I accept that they're nutty enough to have their picnics delivered in secret, I draw the line at diktat on how they take their tea. I was thinking that it was problematic given that there's only the Hotel Denouement left by TPP, but that would also be included in the plural count, of course... although it's not much of a headquarters. Nor are several of their apparent headquarters, for that matter - the floor above 667's penthouse or other rooms in the Veritable French Diner don't strike me as being much of a match for the sprawling mountain headquarters. I used to think that the Baudelaires would be accepted as volunteers at the end of the series, since they'd picked up quite on their own many volunteer skills. I suppose I wasn't too far off, although Kit's more interested in their travails and bravery than the talents they've picked up. Which is why the schism must be great fun to write fanfiction about, if treated with sufficient complexity. Although at other times it seems that the fire-starting side of the schism is just plain evil, while the fire-extinguishing side is just plain rubbish. Didn't we comment on this in TWW? How, if they stole a boat in one of the later books, they'd spend quite some time angsting about it? I don't think the swordfighting was their fault, though. They weren't the ones pulling a sword on a baby. It's attributable to a general change of focus; the early books were more interested in the process of things than in sitting around thinking about how you feel about them. Magical time-distorting powers. Or: She already had the materials in the car trunk and made the white-faced women stitch it together. Olaf's troupe are quite creatively handy - we know that they built Fowl Fountain. Maybe they're also put to work as Esmé's dress-makers. And Esmé's flame-imitating dress in TSS, well, uh... well this is the TCC discussion thread, no place for that here! Argh! But on the plus side, the word "south" never appears in the book. I'm inclined to think the sun setting behind the Mortmain Mountains is just a mistake, unless they actually enclose the Hinterlands on three sides. Looking around, I see there are several references to the Mortmain Mountains being in the north, so it's quite plausible that the Stricken Stream is just east and then they follow it north to the mountains.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 8, 2009 15:17:05 GMT -5
No sign that a preference for bitter tea is a V.F.D. trend, either. While I accept that they're nutty enough to have their picnics delivered in secret, I draw the line at diktat on how they take their tea. Hm. I'll have to check the precise line from TPP. I think the redated schism may help here. You can say that for a while after the original schism, the good guys were effectively preventing fires, but then something else went wrong - presumably further quarrels within the good camp - and they became less effective. That's right. (And I've seen people get quite upset about Quigley stealing a helicopter.) But the way it's written in THH, one might think it's just a matter of the Baudelaires falling away from their original innocence; whereas here, Handler is recognising that their innocence was lost a while ago; they're just becoming more aware of it. I agree, but Sunny seems to think otherwise. Fair enough. Chapter 9. It's interesting that the bald man is treated as someone potentially freakish, who might be a target of laughter - I suppose because of his nose (described at one point as 'enormous'). The idea that Olaf recruits people by not laughing at them is a good one - it would work for the person of indeterminate gender as well. The train station story is brilliant in many ways. They were of course going to the Vineyard of Fragrant Grapes/Drapes, which we know from the UA. In case we haven't read the UA, we are given another clue - 'vineyard's famous donkeys' - which I completely missed when I first read it. The strange way that the series stands outside history is emphasised by having a blacksmith next door to a computer technician. (This suggests that there are rather more computers in the ASOUE world than we have heard of so far - but presumably most of them aren't advanced; they probably don't have screens, and are operated with punched cards.) L had lunch with the shoemaker's son a few weeks ago - which shows that his research for this book has taken some weeks at least. The fact that it was the shoemaker's son he interviewed might suggest a much longer gap between the events and his writing about them, but we can't be sure of that. L has a typewriter once more! To celebrate this, he makes a typo ('worf'). I did wonder if this might have a coded meaning, but I don't see how. I find the timing of this chapter rather puzzling. The Baudelaires start work on the carts at dawn. By the time they have finished, it is time for the show to start; and we are told repeatedly that the show happens in the afternoon. Now, it's not surprising that the work on the carts would take all morning, but we are given an account of their conversation, and it cannot have taken that long - how long could telling Sunny the train station story take? Chapter 10. So, Count Omar is dead, and presumably it is Count Omar who was wanted for murder, kidnapping and arson; Count Olaf is alive, and innocent. This will only work, as I mentioned earlier, if the police get their information from the Daily Punctilio; but I'm afraid it's not improbable that they do. The deja vu theme is very effective; if it were not for this, people might accuse Handler of writing the same thing over and over again; but he can say 'Look! The same thing is happening over and over again!', and this actually becomes an advantage. I do think that Violet's suggestion that they persuade the lions not to eat anyone is particularly sweet - but, as Klaus says, unlikely to work.
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Post by Dante on Jun 8, 2009 15:41:16 GMT -5
That's right. (And I've seen people get quite upset about Quigley stealing a helicopter.) Oh, I remember that. But a matter for another time, quite. I look forward to it. This is actually one of my favourite parts of TCC - the acknowledgement that maybe Olaf's troupe aren't all bad, or at least didn't start out that way, but being as unusual in appearance as they all are, they became outcasts from society. Count Olaf was the only one who would accept them - indeed, in their first appearance in TBB, they seem quite his equals, friends rather than servants. Although I suppose it's more circumstance that effectively demoted them all to his henchpeople - when they were just putting on plays and committing crimes without being on the run from the law, things were simpler. If I recall correctly, there are quite a few situations, especially in TVV through TPP, that are like this - because whole days need to be filled for plot purposes, they get padded out in similar implausible fashion. I really like the "big motifs" that tie whole books together, particularly, I think, the later books. Handler uses them in all sorts of different ways; as a technique of writing it's very exciting.
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