Post by Christmas Chief on Oct 23, 2012 5:08:31 GMT -5
www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/9599974/Lemony-Snicket-interview.html
Daniel Handler is better known by his pen name Lemony Snicket. The 13-book runaway success story that was A Series Of Unfortunate Events ended in 2006 but Snicket is back.
All The Wrong Questions is Snicket's first 'authorised' autobiographical account of his childhood and book one of the new series, a darkly comic noir thriller, is called Who Could That Be At This Hour?
Ah. How do you ask the author of All The Wrong Questions the right question?
Better to start simply. After the Gothic charm of Unfortunate Events, was it difficult writing noir? Snicket, who is based in San Francisco, says: "It was enjoyable to be back in the Snicket universe. I have been a fan of Gothic all my life and noir only more recently. I have been reading a lot of Charles Willeford [author of Miami Blues], Dashiell Hammett [The Maltese Falcon], Jim Thompson [The Killer Inside Me] and, of course, Raymond Chandler. After completing this book, my esteem for these celebrated writers in the genre just grew. I think Chandler is really at the top echelon of American literature.
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"I really had to think about what makes noir tick. Getting the mechanics right, the details and the ambiguous atmosphere, is very challenging for a writer. Noir needs to be tight and coherent."
Handler laughs as he recalls the tale of Chandler being rung by the director of the film The Big Sleep to ask about a scene which was baffling the crew. "Why the hell are you asking me?" said Chandler " I have no idea!"
Unfortunate Events had Gothic illustrations by Brett Helquist but there is a change of direction with the art for Who Could That Be At This Hour? which features the striking illustrations of Seth (the pen name of Canadian artist and historian Gregory Gallant). How did that partnership come about?
Handler, 42, says: "I basically stalked him until he did the book. I had seen a cartoon of his set in a dreary empty seaside resort and I thought he would be just right for the book. We actually first me up at a comic convention in San Francisco. He was the lonely artist and we were in a giant hanger and surrounded by people dressed as Star Wars characters. They were having re-enactments of battles from the Star Wars films and when I asked someone about this he said: 'It's just the same as the Civil War battle re-enactments.' Except the Civil War actually happened, I said. We had fun doing the book and it was more of an adjustment for Seth because he had never really drawn for children's books before."
The Snicket deadpan wit - the books have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide - is there in an adventure set in Stain'd-by-the-Sea - a town that is no longer near the sea, of course. No place for a holiday, I venture. "Growing up in Northern California we actually did have holidays in dreary seaside towns. I guess I wanted to capture that feeling of a town where they would have had attractions at one stage but all that has fallen away."
Clever wordplay runs throughout the tale of the junior 'detective' Snicket searching for a statue called the Bombinating Beast. At one point, he is asked whether he feels "all a-tingle with excitement". "I did not feel a-tingle. I did not feel a-anything," he says.
It strikes me that Handler must have something of a magpie mind, collecting sayings. Is that fair? "Yes, I'm compulsive about it and always carry a notebook to write down things I see or overhear. I overheard someone saying 'I'm a-tingle' and knew I would use that."
Handler's father was an accountant and his mother taught deaf children. He has one younger sister. Did he grow up in a house bouncing with banter? "Oh, yes. We were a family that traded a lot of verbal barbs. Hardly a day goes by, still, without an insulting email from my sister."
Books were a strong interest for his parents but became "an obsession" for the young Handler, who has also written novels and a recent excellent teen fiction book called Why We Broke Up ("with another unreliable, digressive, emotionally gloomy narrator," he jokes). Handler adds: "Young adult fiction is getting a lot of attention at the moment and it's attracting a lot of people who want to practise doing it."
He and his illustrator wife Lisa Brown have a nine-year-old son called Otto. "Has he read your books?" I ask.
"Otto is terrified of the Unfortunate Events books and yet proud of me for writing them. He's quite a timid boy and has that sort of imaginative, narrative mind that he can go to the worst case scenario pretty quickly."
The anxiety genes that. I ask who is more to blame, dad or mum? Handler laughs. "My wife and I were raised in two different aspects of the Jewish way. She constantly worries because something terrible could happen at any time, whereas I was schooled in the way of terrible things are always happening so why worry because there is nothing you can do."
One way he switches off is by listening and playing music. It's always been a passion for someone who hosted a radio playing blues music.
Handler plays the accordion and sits in with a band most Thursday nights in San Francisco ("If you play the accordion you are normally the best player anyone ever knows," he quips). He starts the day with music, listens while writing and puts on songs late at night, with a taste that ranges from rock, to "strange classical and squawky 20th-century jazz".
But at the heart of his life is the writing. He's still working on All The Wrong Questions and has another series already in mind. If there is a serious point in the humour of the books, it is that Handler shows how children are exploring the corrupt nature of the world and trying to find their way through a moral mazes. And who better than an accordion player to squeeze out rich variety from that?
Daniel Handler is better known by his pen name Lemony Snicket. The 13-book runaway success story that was A Series Of Unfortunate Events ended in 2006 but Snicket is back.
All The Wrong Questions is Snicket's first 'authorised' autobiographical account of his childhood and book one of the new series, a darkly comic noir thriller, is called Who Could That Be At This Hour?
Ah. How do you ask the author of All The Wrong Questions the right question?
Better to start simply. After the Gothic charm of Unfortunate Events, was it difficult writing noir? Snicket, who is based in San Francisco, says: "It was enjoyable to be back in the Snicket universe. I have been a fan of Gothic all my life and noir only more recently. I have been reading a lot of Charles Willeford [author of Miami Blues], Dashiell Hammett [The Maltese Falcon], Jim Thompson [The Killer Inside Me] and, of course, Raymond Chandler. After completing this book, my esteem for these celebrated writers in the genre just grew. I think Chandler is really at the top echelon of American literature.
Related Articles
Lemony Snicket's tale of adolescent heartache
23 Aug 2012
"I really had to think about what makes noir tick. Getting the mechanics right, the details and the ambiguous atmosphere, is very challenging for a writer. Noir needs to be tight and coherent."
Handler laughs as he recalls the tale of Chandler being rung by the director of the film The Big Sleep to ask about a scene which was baffling the crew. "Why the hell are you asking me?" said Chandler " I have no idea!"
Unfortunate Events had Gothic illustrations by Brett Helquist but there is a change of direction with the art for Who Could That Be At This Hour? which features the striking illustrations of Seth (the pen name of Canadian artist and historian Gregory Gallant). How did that partnership come about?
Handler, 42, says: "I basically stalked him until he did the book. I had seen a cartoon of his set in a dreary empty seaside resort and I thought he would be just right for the book. We actually first me up at a comic convention in San Francisco. He was the lonely artist and we were in a giant hanger and surrounded by people dressed as Star Wars characters. They were having re-enactments of battles from the Star Wars films and when I asked someone about this he said: 'It's just the same as the Civil War battle re-enactments.' Except the Civil War actually happened, I said. We had fun doing the book and it was more of an adjustment for Seth because he had never really drawn for children's books before."
The Snicket deadpan wit - the books have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide - is there in an adventure set in Stain'd-by-the-Sea - a town that is no longer near the sea, of course. No place for a holiday, I venture. "Growing up in Northern California we actually did have holidays in dreary seaside towns. I guess I wanted to capture that feeling of a town where they would have had attractions at one stage but all that has fallen away."
Clever wordplay runs throughout the tale of the junior 'detective' Snicket searching for a statue called the Bombinating Beast. At one point, he is asked whether he feels "all a-tingle with excitement". "I did not feel a-tingle. I did not feel a-anything," he says.
It strikes me that Handler must have something of a magpie mind, collecting sayings. Is that fair? "Yes, I'm compulsive about it and always carry a notebook to write down things I see or overhear. I overheard someone saying 'I'm a-tingle' and knew I would use that."
Handler's father was an accountant and his mother taught deaf children. He has one younger sister. Did he grow up in a house bouncing with banter? "Oh, yes. We were a family that traded a lot of verbal barbs. Hardly a day goes by, still, without an insulting email from my sister."
Books were a strong interest for his parents but became "an obsession" for the young Handler, who has also written novels and a recent excellent teen fiction book called Why We Broke Up ("with another unreliable, digressive, emotionally gloomy narrator," he jokes). Handler adds: "Young adult fiction is getting a lot of attention at the moment and it's attracting a lot of people who want to practise doing it."
He and his illustrator wife Lisa Brown have a nine-year-old son called Otto. "Has he read your books?" I ask.
"Otto is terrified of the Unfortunate Events books and yet proud of me for writing them. He's quite a timid boy and has that sort of imaginative, narrative mind that he can go to the worst case scenario pretty quickly."
The anxiety genes that. I ask who is more to blame, dad or mum? Handler laughs. "My wife and I were raised in two different aspects of the Jewish way. She constantly worries because something terrible could happen at any time, whereas I was schooled in the way of terrible things are always happening so why worry because there is nothing you can do."
One way he switches off is by listening and playing music. It's always been a passion for someone who hosted a radio playing blues music.
Handler plays the accordion and sits in with a band most Thursday nights in San Francisco ("If you play the accordion you are normally the best player anyone ever knows," he quips). He starts the day with music, listens while writing and puts on songs late at night, with a taste that ranges from rock, to "strange classical and squawky 20th-century jazz".
But at the heart of his life is the writing. He's still working on All The Wrong Questions and has another series already in mind. If there is a serious point in the humour of the books, it is that Handler shows how children are exploring the corrupt nature of the world and trying to find their way through a moral mazes. And who better than an accordion player to squeeze out rich variety from that?
