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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Feb 20, 2020 22:06:08 GMT -5
The letter can be found in chapter 4 of LSTUA. The introduction of the letter indicates that it is a reply letter from Sally to Lemony. There is a symbol at the top right that indicates that Sally Sebald was chosen as Executrix of the Sebald Estate. Thus, when Sally wrote this letter, Gustav Sebald's death was already public knowledge. I came to think Sally Sebald had assumed the identity of Gustav Sebald after Gustav's death, but this symbol, which was to be used in several correspondences from Sally, indicates that Sally Sebald made no attempt to hide Gustav's death.
When was this letter written? Evidently after Gustav's death. But was it many years after Gustav's death, that is, many years after the main events narrated by Lemony Snicket in ASOUE? At first I thought so, but I was wrong. This letter was evidently written before Lemony published TBB, but after Dr. Owell's death. Looking back, Lemony started writing the first sketches of ASOUE's books during the main events narrated in ASOUE. But Lemony published TBB and TRR after a few years of the main events narrated in ASOUE. Keeping that in mind helps us to understand some of Sally's statements in this letter.
Sally says: "What a relief it was to learn that you are alive and that Dr. Orwell is dead! For years I suspected the opposite, and assumed that one of your siblings was handling your affairs, as I am handling Gustav's."
The fact that Sally believed that Lemony was dead for years, matches the time when Kit believed that Lemony was dead, as she stated in TE. Lemony's death had apparently been widely publicized among VFD members. (Of course, this was not the only time this happened. Nor was this the last time this happened). If when Lemony wrote the letter to Sally in which he told Sally he was alive, he had already published TBB to the general public in his universe, it was highly unlikely that Sally Sebald would still believe that Lemony Snicket was dead for many years.
In the letter Lemony sent to Sally, he told her that he was writing books about the Baudelaires. But that does not mean that he has already published any of them. Sally wrote:
"I hope that the books you are writing about the Baudelaires will make people remember the director of Ghosts in the Desert ... Zombies in the Snow ..."
Sally also points out that she and Gustav had the opportunity to talk about the movie Zombies in the Snow. She said in the letter: "A Crucial Scene in Zombies in the Snow... was meant do deliver a message concerning the survivor mentioned in your letter, but my brother told me no more than this."
Recalling the secret message contained in the letter is as follows: "Attention, hidden in he snowman is a survivor of the fire. Meet us in the town where this film takes place bring the three children. Your new assistant is not one of us. Beware!"
I know that the first impression we have is that it is a message about the Baudelaires about Count Olaf. But a second reading will help us to realize that this interpretation simply would not make sense.
(I think now is the time to talk about the photos and the hypotheses at the same time.)
Of course, it is possible to use non-canonical devices to resolve this, such as stating that there is more than one Gustav. I am not saying that this is not possible, but that it is a non-canonical device that "creates" a character not mentioned in ASOUE. The same is true when defending a remake of Zombies in the Snow. This is a non-canonical device, because it "creates" a film not mentioned by Sally in a list of films. Some also question the credibility of the photos in Sally's letter, and in a way "create" a different photo depicting the real Gustav Sebald building the snowman. Snicket Sleuth hypothesized that the real Gustav Sebald would be at the back of the snowman and the boy portrayed in Sally's photo. In this way he "created" a man in an image. All are hypotheses and all help to solve the mystery, but all use non-canonical tools, although all of these hypotheses use previous examples in which these mechanisms were used. But the difference between the examples and the reality is that in the examples Daniel Handler made it clear that that mechanism was being used, but not here. Please do not misunderstand me. I am not against using non-canonical devices to solve some ASOUE mysteries. I am one of those who use them the most, so I know how to identify them so well. But I know when I am using them, and I am fully aware that these devices are fragile, and must always succumb to canonical explanations. And I also know that a non-canonical explanation must not succumb to another non-canonical explanation. In this case it's just a matter of preference that you want to believe. But in this specific case, I defend the idea that the only canonical hypothesis for the photo of the boy building the snowman that Sally Sebald claims to be Gustav Sebald, is that it really is Gustav Sebald. To believe that it is not necessary to "create" anything. This would make the hidden message referring to an old case, from the time when Gustav was a child. The three brothers of almost the same age are just three people unknown to us. After all, Prufrock Prep is very old, and has long since received orphans.
This solution is simple and combines with the concept that Daniel Handler worked on TPP and TE. In TPP, in the account of the mysterious taxi driver, Lemony talks about people who had no direct relationship with the Baudelaires. Lemony knew about information about children from other cities, because at the time of the main events narrated in ASOUE, several cases other than the Baudelaire case were in progress. In TE Olaf and Ish do monologues that also demonstrate cases that have nothing to do with the Baudelaires. So this concept was very much in Daniel Handler's mind when he wrote LSTUA, and LSTUA itself is proof of that. Realize how little LSTUA brings content about the Baudelaires while it is rich in content about different characters!
Even when Daniel Handler wrote File Under 13, he put Mimi to watch a movie with Zombies in the winter when Lemony was still a teenager. The idea of wanting Zombies in the Snow to be a remake of this old film instead of the old film itself stems from a desire for everything to be connected. I also understand this desire very well, but it is dangerous and blinds us to the simplest truths. Zombies in the Snow already existed when Lemony was a teenager. Zombies in the snow was recorded when Gustav was a child, this is what Daniel Handler wants to tell us with the photo of Gustav building the snowman. The survivor is the unknown child, whose whereabouts are unknown. Guatav was killed by Count Olaf before the events narrated in TRR.
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Post by Dante on Feb 22, 2020 17:44:23 GMT -5
So, Jean Lucio, I take it a new and major theme in your work is to embrace the intertextual, metafictional themes of the later books and seek to explain problems by reference to a wider universe which had nothing to do with the Baudelaires? I can't criticise that position, as it is, in a sense, the position Daniel Handler most wants you to take; to see the seeds of other stories, and nurture them, let them grow. Though I don't think that's the position he necessarily held when he was writing this piece; more like a Jacob's Ladder rescuing him from a later tight corner.
My own feeling, regarding the overall thrust of this letter, is more complicated. I increasingly suspect that Daniel Handler, around this period in the series (the U.A. was published between THH and TCC), wasn't entirely sure of his future direction, and so was seeding potential plot points whilst also doing his best to keep his options open. Hence the heavy obscurity and ambiguity, the questionable authenticity of almost the entire U.A., the way clues writhe like snakes and point first one way and then another before finally slipping from your grasp. The photographs in particular I think are more or less jokes; would that I could dig up the ancient interview that confirms they're simply dug out of a stock photography archive! (Though to be honest this is more or less self-evident, and only more so when you realise that Handler would do only more work in that vein in his collaborations with Maira Kalman and MoMA.) But the interpretation of the fact that they are jokes still leaves doors open; still gives us the option to take them seriously as evidence or not.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Feb 22, 2020 19:46:39 GMT -5
My own feeling, regarding the overall thrust of this letter, is more complicated. I increasingly suspect that Daniel Handler, around this period in the series (the U.A. was published between THH and TCC), wasn't entirely sure of his future direction, and so was seeding potential plot points whilst also doing his best to keep his options open. Hence the heavy obscurity and ambiguity, the questionable authenticity of almost the entire U.A., the way clues writhe like snakes and point first one way and then another before finally slipping from your grasp. The photographs in particular I think are more or less jokes; would that I could dig up the ancient interview that confirms they're simply dug out of a stock photography archive! But the interpretation of the fact that they are jokes still leaves doors open; still gives us the option to take them seriously as evidence or not. I can say that the comedy is evident in all of Lemony Snicket's work. But the comedy in ASOUE works well because the logic of the comedy is as follows: the ASOUE universe is relatively similar to ours, but then something absurdly surreal happens and the people in that universe do not find it ridiculous or impossible. Think for example of Sunny and all of her exploits. The fight between her and Dr. Orwell is absurdly surreal and the cogent effect is present. (That fight left me fascinated when I first read it.) Something even more surreal is that a lepidopterologist swallows butterflies, and they are kept alive for a long time in his stomach, so that they can be regurgitated while still alive. (And yet there are people who criticize me for thinking about the possibility that TGU in TE is an animal that kept Quaquimires alive in its mouth).
Similarly, a villain disguising himself as a cow in a way as realistic as depicted in the photograph is surreal and very funny, just as he forgets that it would be inappropriate talk to other people while he was so realistically disguised. These things are comical, but they are literally canonical. This is a fairy tale universe where impossible things are possible. But Daniel Handler purposely puts "impossible" things in the story only occasionally, to give us the false feeling that we are dealing with a universe very similar to ours, and we are suddenly surprised by these surreal things. And the comic effect of that is incredible. In other words, I wouldn't say that Gustav Sebald's photo is just a joke. It is a joke and at the same time it is canonical, in a similar way that the photo of the cow is a joke and at the same time it is canonical. Regarding the moment when Daniel Handler wrote LSTUA. The impression I have is that Danie Handler sat down one day and said to himself, "Let me clean up this mess, and make a story behind the story, so I can make ASOUE with more substance". Then, while he was thinking and writing, he had the idea: "How interesting it would be if I published this story behind the story in a fragmented way, with several documents produced by characters from the ASOUE universe over the years". That's why LSTUA came up and then TBL came up. The fact that Daniel Handler thought of a big conspiracy involving Beatrice while he was writing LSTUA is evident in the LSTUA index. The fact that Daniel Handler wanted to cause confusion in readers is evident in the introduction to LSTUA. The fact that Daniel Handler wanted to use a confusing chronology to confuse the reader is evident in the two events of Lemony's escape abroad described through documents in LSTUA. Some elements are identical with the clear aim of confusing the reader: The ship is the same and the departure time is the same, and the departure place of the ship is the same. But Lemony's trips abroad are different. Why insert so many similarities? Just to confuse the reader. But there are enough elements to realize that they are different outwards, showing that, although confused, these small mysteries are solvable. Regarding the source of the photos in our universe: it doesn't matter. From the moment that Daniel Handler chose to use pictures in the book instead of using drawn pictures, it is evident that he would use pictures of our universe to portray events from the fictional universe. It doesn't matter at all whether they were pictures taken with the book in mind or not. Whether he adapted the text to pre-existing photos or whether he had specific photos taken to be published in the book, it makes no difference about the canonicality of the photos or not. In short: the photos are canonines because they were chosen by Daniel Handler (the author) to be among the fictional documents produced by characters from the universe of Lemony Snicket. Think of the introductory photo in chapter 1, the photo of a baby. The question chosen by Lemony Snicket to be the title of the chapter was: "Who took this photo?" What would be the most appropriate answer? The name of a person from our universe, or the name of a character from the universe of Lemony Snicket? In order to answer the question asked by Lemony Snicket (who is a character) the answer needs to be the name of a character from the universe of Lemony Snicket (although this character's name is unknown to us, it is still a character). So the photos may be funny, but they are still canonical. And a child producing a film may seem impossible in our universe, and the very idea of that is funny. But in Lemony's universe, this is very likely to happen.
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Post by Dante on Feb 24, 2020 9:52:52 GMT -5
Regarding the source of the photos in our universe: it doesn't matter. From the moment that Daniel Handler chose to use pictures in the book instead of using drawn pictures, it is evident that he would use pictures of our universe to portray events from the fictional universe. It doesn't matter at all whether they were pictures taken with the book in mind or not. Whether he adapted the text to pre-existing photos or whether he had specific photos taken to be published in the book, it makes no difference about the canonicality of the photos or not. In short: the photos are canonines because they were chosen by Daniel Handler (the author) to be among the fictional documents produced by characters from the universe of Lemony Snicket. Think of the introductory photo in chapter 1, the photo of a baby. The question chosen by Lemony Snicket to be the title of the chapter was: "Who took this photo?" What would be the most appropriate answer? The name of a person from our universe, or the name of a character from the universe of Lemony Snicket? In order to answer the question asked by Lemony Snicket (who is a character) the answer needs to be the name of a character from the universe of Lemony Snicket (although this character's name is unknown to us, it is still a character). So the photos may be funny, but they are still canonical. And a child producing a film may seem impossible in our universe, and the very idea of that is funny. But in Lemony's universe, this is very likely to happen. You're missing an important point, Jean Lucio: If any of the photographs used in the U.A. come from a stock photography archive, Daniel Handler is necessarily limited by the constraints of the photographs in question. If he can't get his hands on any appropriate photographs of a person with real deer, but he has a picture of some children with false ceramic deer - voila, he uses the silly photograph because the contrast between the serious film-making being described and the childish scene photographed is amusing. Whether or not the photograph constitutes canonical evidence is, I would argue, the moot point; not the source of the photos. Ironically, the answer to your question "Who took this photo?" is, in at least some of the instances of the photographs in the U.A., the name of a person from our universe - canonically. Consult the U.A. p. xxi (it's unnumbered, but it's the right-hand page immediately preceding page 1): Julie Blattberg is a real photographer who acknowledges her work in the U.A. here.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Feb 24, 2020 13:53:26 GMT -5
One of the most striking characteristics of LSTUA is that we realize that some people from Lemony's universe also exist in our universe. This is the case of Daniel Handler, Mr. Brett Helquist. In addition, Lemony Snicket is keen to point out that Julie Blattberg did not take some of the photos in LSTUA. He left the doors open for other characters to take pictures in a fictional way. This is the case with the baby photo. It is evident that the baby photo, in the universe of Lemony Snicket, was taken by someone who belongs to VFD, although in our universe Julie Blattberg (who does not belong to VFD) took this photo. With respect to the other photos used in LSTUA, it is evident to me that Daniel Handler sometimes adapted the text to match the photo, making the text and the image coherent with each other.
Note: Why is it so difficult to accept that zombies in the snow were produced only once in the distant past?
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