Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 11, 2012 16:58:11 GMT -5
Lemony Snicket returns with answers for 'All the Wrong Questions.'
~~~
In advance of a Friday visit to Blue Willow Bookstore, the San Francisco-based Handler, 42, fielded a few questions on behalf of himself and his worthy constituent.
Q: I've seen the dread word "prequel" used with regard to this book. Does it feel that way to you? It feels so separate from the world of "A Series of Unfortunate Events."
A: Oh certainly not. In fact, I imagined that it mocked the idea of a prequel. It goes much further back than anybody who knows the first series ever asked me about. (Laughs.)
Q: I like the lightness of touch in the Snicket books, even though there's a persistent ominous quality.
A: Yes, I was talking about this with someone else about the book. My wife and I have competing outlooks on life. She feels like terrible things could happen, and it's really bad. The way I was raised you thought, "DEFINITELY the worst is going to happen." So there's no point in worrying. And that's kind of liberating. (Laughs.) It's like a shootout in a Cagney movie. "Top of the world, Ma!"
Q: Did it have to be 13 chapters?
A: I think a 13-chapter narrative is now permanently inscribed on my brain. It was for numerological reasons that the first "Series of Unfortunate Events" was 13, and I just got used to that pacing I guess. (Laughs.) I've since outlined and written other books. The Daniel Handler books just happen to have 13 chapters, not by any design. It's actually slightly embarrassing, like being a country and western musician. I'm doing the same Hank Williams songs.
Q: Was the break from Snicket deliberate? Or were you plotting this series during the last?
A: When I was maybe two-thirds of the way through the last series, I began to have an idea that if I did something else with Snicket, it would be in the world of noir. So I piled up a bunch of noir, which is generally how I start a project: pile and read. Then I got to them. But as I mentioned, as someone with a permanent worst-case-scenario perspective, I thought, "Let's not plan this series just yet because I could be run over by a bus tomorrow. If by some miracle I survive, then we can think about this."
Q: When did you decide you wanted to try your hand at noir?
A: It was almost 10 years ago I began to think about noir. It's a genre that keeps popping up in pop culture, but it's not usually done very well. There are different kinds of noir, but I was mostly interested in the blue-lit world of moody people in a lonely town plotting against one another. Other people prefer the rough-and-tumble shootout variety, which is kind of good, too.
Q: The gender roles seem to flip from the old-fashioned noir. The guys are usually on the receiving end of put-downs.
A: Well, I don't know if you've noticed people around the age of 13 talking to one another, but that they say disparaging things goes without saying. I was thinking hard about noir, and one of the things that really struck me was how the relationship between our hero, the detective, and the femme fatale and the gal Friday. That strange triangle reminded me of childhood or adolescent drama. Also, the femme in some ways plays a similar role as the detective. They're people hemmed in by circumstances.
Q: The "Great Unknown" is a tantalizing mystery here. I suspect you wish to keep it mysterious for a while.
A: Good, and yes. I like those kinds of noir novels like "Red Harvest" … something with an emerging back story full of sinister secrets and quasi-unearthly happenings. That's the one place where noir overlaps with gothic.
Q: Both this Snicket book and your last book under your own name were collaborations with graphic-novelist types. Do you know that world well?
A: I guess I know it well for an amateur. But I can't walk around saying I know lots about comics because someone always knows more. But Seth (Canadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant), I've been a fan a long time. As I was finishing the first volume - I subscribe to "Poetry" magazine, and there was a splendid drawing by Seth on the cover. It was this lonely seaside town like the one I'd had in my head. So I went to my first comic convention, Wondercon in San Francisco, and pushed my way through people in Stormtrooper uniforms to find him in a vintage suit looking overwhelmed by these DC Comics juggernauts. I assume it's only because he was in a dazed state that he agreed to work with me.
Q: There's an obvious dark tone to the two Snicket spheres. But there's also an enthusiasm or romanticism that keeps these from being cynical books.
A: I'd like to think so. Really the whole project of literature is to dream up a romantic world instead of the world we're stuck in. And I think that reigns supreme in Snicket's world, with a certain kind of romanticism. I've never understood why people thought "A Series of Unfortunate Events" was cynical just because bad things happen.
Q: Do have a favorite line from a noir novel?
A: I really like the opening of "The Long Goodbye," which is one of my all-time favorite novels. The opening paragraph ends with something like, "He looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other." That's really a novel to get lost in its beauty.
Q: Obviously there's a long way to go with this series before you move on to the next one. Having done gothic and noir, does Snicket go to science fiction? Have you thought that far ahead?
A: Well, obviously I could be run over any day, so I don't take writing any of these books for granted. I do have another pile of books to read and study, I can tell you that. And I'll also say I can't read a pile of science-fiction books, with all due respect to science-fiction writers.
~~~
~~~
In advance of a Friday visit to Blue Willow Bookstore, the San Francisco-based Handler, 42, fielded a few questions on behalf of himself and his worthy constituent.
Q: I've seen the dread word "prequel" used with regard to this book. Does it feel that way to you? It feels so separate from the world of "A Series of Unfortunate Events."
A: Oh certainly not. In fact, I imagined that it mocked the idea of a prequel. It goes much further back than anybody who knows the first series ever asked me about. (Laughs.)
Q: I like the lightness of touch in the Snicket books, even though there's a persistent ominous quality.
A: Yes, I was talking about this with someone else about the book. My wife and I have competing outlooks on life. She feels like terrible things could happen, and it's really bad. The way I was raised you thought, "DEFINITELY the worst is going to happen." So there's no point in worrying. And that's kind of liberating. (Laughs.) It's like a shootout in a Cagney movie. "Top of the world, Ma!"
Q: Did it have to be 13 chapters?
A: I think a 13-chapter narrative is now permanently inscribed on my brain. It was for numerological reasons that the first "Series of Unfortunate Events" was 13, and I just got used to that pacing I guess. (Laughs.) I've since outlined and written other books. The Daniel Handler books just happen to have 13 chapters, not by any design. It's actually slightly embarrassing, like being a country and western musician. I'm doing the same Hank Williams songs.
Q: Was the break from Snicket deliberate? Or were you plotting this series during the last?
A: When I was maybe two-thirds of the way through the last series, I began to have an idea that if I did something else with Snicket, it would be in the world of noir. So I piled up a bunch of noir, which is generally how I start a project: pile and read. Then I got to them. But as I mentioned, as someone with a permanent worst-case-scenario perspective, I thought, "Let's not plan this series just yet because I could be run over by a bus tomorrow. If by some miracle I survive, then we can think about this."
Q: When did you decide you wanted to try your hand at noir?
A: It was almost 10 years ago I began to think about noir. It's a genre that keeps popping up in pop culture, but it's not usually done very well. There are different kinds of noir, but I was mostly interested in the blue-lit world of moody people in a lonely town plotting against one another. Other people prefer the rough-and-tumble shootout variety, which is kind of good, too.
Q: The gender roles seem to flip from the old-fashioned noir. The guys are usually on the receiving end of put-downs.
A: Well, I don't know if you've noticed people around the age of 13 talking to one another, but that they say disparaging things goes without saying. I was thinking hard about noir, and one of the things that really struck me was how the relationship between our hero, the detective, and the femme fatale and the gal Friday. That strange triangle reminded me of childhood or adolescent drama. Also, the femme in some ways plays a similar role as the detective. They're people hemmed in by circumstances.
Q: The "Great Unknown" is a tantalizing mystery here. I suspect you wish to keep it mysterious for a while.
A: Good, and yes. I like those kinds of noir novels like "Red Harvest" … something with an emerging back story full of sinister secrets and quasi-unearthly happenings. That's the one place where noir overlaps with gothic.
Q: Both this Snicket book and your last book under your own name were collaborations with graphic-novelist types. Do you know that world well?
A: I guess I know it well for an amateur. But I can't walk around saying I know lots about comics because someone always knows more. But Seth (Canadian cartoonist Gregory Gallant), I've been a fan a long time. As I was finishing the first volume - I subscribe to "Poetry" magazine, and there was a splendid drawing by Seth on the cover. It was this lonely seaside town like the one I'd had in my head. So I went to my first comic convention, Wondercon in San Francisco, and pushed my way through people in Stormtrooper uniforms to find him in a vintage suit looking overwhelmed by these DC Comics juggernauts. I assume it's only because he was in a dazed state that he agreed to work with me.
Q: There's an obvious dark tone to the two Snicket spheres. But there's also an enthusiasm or romanticism that keeps these from being cynical books.
A: I'd like to think so. Really the whole project of literature is to dream up a romantic world instead of the world we're stuck in. And I think that reigns supreme in Snicket's world, with a certain kind of romanticism. I've never understood why people thought "A Series of Unfortunate Events" was cynical just because bad things happen.
Q: Do have a favorite line from a noir novel?
A: I really like the opening of "The Long Goodbye," which is one of my all-time favorite novels. The opening paragraph ends with something like, "He looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for that purpose and for no other." That's really a novel to get lost in its beauty.
Q: Obviously there's a long way to go with this series before you move on to the next one. Having done gothic and noir, does Snicket go to science fiction? Have you thought that far ahead?
A: Well, obviously I could be run over any day, so I don't take writing any of these books for granted. I do have another pile of books to read and study, I can tell you that. And I'll also say I can't read a pile of science-fiction books, with all due respect to science-fiction writers.
~~~
