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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 6, 2020 20:08:12 GMT -5
A number of mysteries have long puzzled us Snicket fans: was the Baudelaire Fire started by Count Olaf? If not, what part, if any, did he play in the event? Just who was the potential survivor of the fire mentioned on Page 13 of the Snicket File? Are Gustav the Assistant and Gustav Sebald the same person? I believe that a crucial text has been overlooked due to being an obscure four-part movie tie-in: The Dismal Dinner. It is not so much that people deny this text's canonicity, as that they hardly give it a second look. But I believe it is key in unraveling the mystery of Count Olaf's part in the evenets leading up to, and following immediately from, the fire that destroyed the Baudelaire parents and their home. I — Was Count Olaf at the Baudelaire Mansion? And if so, what was he doing there?
There is persuasive evidence that Count Olaf was present at the Baudelaire Mansion while the children were at Briny Beach. I get no awards for collecting it, as all the legwork was already done by the Snicket Sleuth, although in service of a fairly different theory from mine.
To go over the evidence again: the Rare Edition of TBB established that the Baudelaire parents sent the children away to Briny Beach on that fateful day because they expected a visitor for a tense V.F.D. meeting, during which sensitive information would be discussed. The same notes also mention that “Mr. Baudelaire’s brandy bottle was found on the remains of the dining table, with no coasters nearby”, a fact obviously to be read in the light of the following musing by Lemony:
2 and 2 are, in this case, easily put together, especially when the disappointing weather on the day of the Baudelaire Fire is already well-documented in TBB. But why were the Baudelaire Parents entertaining Count Olaf, a bitter enemy? Consider further: if the “alleged arsonist” slamming down the beverage is directly related to Mr Baudelaire's brandy bottle being found in the ruins, then why did Olaf have the honor of pouring? How very cordial. The Dismal Dinner tells of a dinner party “quite some time” before the Baudelaire Fire. The following happens at a point when, fascinatingly, the Sugar Bowl is being shown off on the dinner table: TDD also contains a “secret message” from Lemony, broken down in four parts, which states: OLAF WAS THERE. The straightforward reading is that Olaf was lurking outside and glimpsed the Sugar Bowl, and that this is the reason he later arranged a meeting with the Baudelaires. However, I see several roadblocks to such a simplistic reading. - Firstly, Sunny's cry of “Funcoot” cannot possibly mean what we think it means. The Baudelaire children do not know about Olaf yet at this point, let alone about his anagram/pen name.
- Secondly, Lemony breaks down the message “OLAF WAS THERE” in four pieces, concealing it separately from his reporting of the fact that Sunny saw an intruder and cried “Funcoot!”. Lemony's literarily-minded V.F.D. comrades-in-arms surely knew all about the “Al Funcoot”/“Count Olaf” anagram. If we, on the same information, are supposed to interpret Sunny's cry as referring to Olaf sneaking outside, it is unclear to me why Lemony would feel the need to include “IT WAS OLAF, GUYS” as a separate hint.
- Thirdly, the intruder was “lurking outside”, whereas Olaf “was there”.
- Fourthly, the Snicket Sleuth appears to believe that Olaf was already a fervent seeker of the Sugar Bowl prior to TBB, but supports this with a quote from TPP about how he'll only use the Mycellium if he gets the Bowl. Thus, before TGG, it is unclear why Olaf would have had an interest in the Bowl, if the information he's working from is that the contents of the Bowl allow one to safely wield the Mycellium.
The third of these points brings me to the conclusion that, much like on the day of the Baudelaire Fire, Olaf was “there” in the sense of being an avowed guest of the Baudelaire Parents' dinner party — not a spy lurking outside. How is that possible when the Baudelaire children obviously didn't know him yet in TBB, albeit under some false name or other? Simple: it is made clear in TDD itself that there were more guests at the party than the children knew:
No two ways about it: Olaf was one of the concealed V.F.D. guests, of whom there were at least three. The prowler was somebody else entirely. This is not necessarily to say that Olaf was there under his own name, of course; it is not impossible to posit that he had taken the place (and disguise) of a different Volunteer, with the Baudelaire Parents none the wiser because a man in a blancmanger costume is a man in a blancmanger costume.
Josephine Anwhistle and Uncle Monty demonstrate that even people who must have known Olaf personally are not immune to the “grown-ups can never recognize a disguised Olaf” syndrome. Therefore, I posit that Olaf was once again attending a V.F.D. party at the Baudelaires' in the guise of some other, likely-deceased Volunteer on the day the children were sent to Briny Beach.
II — Who burned down the Baudelaire Mansion?
Olaf undoubtedly came to the Baudelaire parents' last dinner party (the Dismal Dinner one is mentioned as having been 4th-to-last) with ill intentions. Going back to the Rare Editions evidence, the primary evidence that Olaf was there is his pounding the bottle down in rage over the fact that the weather displeased him. Why would the weather displease this “alleged arsonist”? Because “certain kinds of weather — severe rainstorms, for instance — have a dampening effect on fires, which is displeasing to arsonists,” we are told. Therefore, Olaf was frustrated because he came to the Baudelaire Mansion intending to commit arson, but the weather proved unsuitable.
Well, hang on a minute. Lemony just called Olaf an “alleged arsonist”. This may, of course, just be part and parcel of how the entire sentence is comically coated in “reportedly”-type language, but let's not dismiss it out of hand.
In The End, Klaus indeed alleges that Olaf was the author of the Baudelaire Fire, and Olaf snorts in bitter derision: “Is that what you think?”. He refuses to elaborate, but launches into a tirade about how presumptuous the noble sider of V.F.D. — and Baudelaires in particular — have always been:
“Keen mind, books, meal” sounds like the attributes of Violet, Klaus and Sunny — but if they also correspond to the ways of the late Baudelaire Parents, then “the occasional gourmet meal” cannot help but recall those infamous Baudelaire dinner parties with concealed V.F.D. agents. In light of The Dismal Dinner, it is clear that Olaf is remembering the Baudelaires' repeated attempts to solve all of V.F.D.'s problems by gathering a bunch of people in a dinner and discussing weighty matters in the presence (unwarily flaunted) of the Sugar Bowl. Including the last.
But this tirade also seems to be making a general point about the best-laid plans going awry — and that, perhaps, is the secret of the wry bitterness of the “Is that what you think?”. The Baudelaire Parents set up one more gourmet dinner hoping to solve everything, and Olaf bought into the same way of thinking by planning to sneak into it and commit arson, burning down not only his hated enemies, but all the other Volunteers they'd gathered (there are shades of the Denouement Fire here, of course). And then, the weather derailed Olaf's scheme because it was unsuitable for the kind of fire he had been preparing to set. But then the Baudelaire Parents died anyway. What a bitter, bitter joke.
So who burned down the Mansion after all, even though, to Olaf's brandy-pounding frustration, the weather seemed to be against it? Well, TSS has something to say about certain parties who like to burn down mansions and have proven capable of somehow burning down even the wettest of locations.
In TSS, the Sinister Duo appear to believe the Snicket File's contents would incriminate them, which is certainly suggestive if you take the view that the Snicket File is all about the Baudelaire Fire and related data. Alright, so what about the figure who spotted the Sugar Bowl, about whom Sunny cried “Funcoot”? Well, it's interesting to note that within TBB, the Baudelaires do not seem to question Olaf's assertion that the play is by “the great playwright Al Funcoot”. This is consistent with TUA's assertion that “Al Funcoot” had been putting out mediocre plays for several years. Within that premise, “Funcoot” can, as far as Sunny is concerned, become one of her astonishingly-knowledgeable, slightly off-kilter literary references, like so many other instances of Sunny-speak. But there may still be an anagram in there somewhere. Also per TUA, after all, the plays of Al Funcoot were performed at the Ned H. Rirger Theater. Therefore, the prowler is not only not Count Olaf, but they are a red herring as far as the mystery of the Fire is concerned. Red Herrings, of course, recall TEE, where the whole point was arguably that any given red herring must be relevant to someone, even if that someone is not you. And to be sure, Lemony seems distressed about the Funcoot incident, as if it genuinely led to something dreadful down the line. This leads me to the perhaps shaky, but alluring, idea that the prowler was none other than Esmé Squalor, and that this is the moment she discovered that Beatrice had stolen “her” Sugar Bowl, a belief which would yield to so much sturm-and-drang at later points in the Baudelaires' misadventures. III — Is Olaf the Survivor?THH famously introduces a plot device which has caused many a head to be scratched by its own, puzzled owner: a survivor to what is strongly implied to be the Baudelaire fire. The fire being discussed is, of course, later speculated by Quigley to have been the fire that destroyed Quagmire Manor, as opposed to the more famous obliteration of the Baudelaire Mansion by a different suspicious fire. However, other and greater ASoUE scholars than I have compiled reasons to believe that Quigley is wrong and the Snicket File was very much concerned with the Baudelaire Fire, so let's go with that. An excellent reason to believe this is that according to TUA, the script to Zombies in the Snow contained the following secret message: Whereas Quigley's account of his survival of the Quagmire Fire, as given in TSS, leaves no room for him to ever have been hidden inside a snowman, nor indeed to have had his survival already commented upon at the time of TRR. However, once again, The Dismal Dinner is illuminating. As mentioned earlier, it tells us that there were several concealed guests at the Baudelaire parents' fourth-to-last V.F.D. dinner party, two of whom were disguised as desserts, and another (who wore a bowtie) as “an ice statue”. Specifically— —a snowman ice sculpture. Lemony mentions in TDD that it is his “discovery of a puddle of water” which allowed him to deduce that Violet had broken off an ear of the ice sculpture at the 4th-to-last Baudelaire dinner party, and used it as part of her teething-machine. How? Judging by the size of the Snowman as depicted in the picture in TUA, it would have melted into something much larger than a puddle that would need “discovering” by careful investigation. No huge pool of molten ice was in evidence in TBB's description of the ruins of the Baudelaire Mansion/ Therefore, the Snowman was not destroyed in the Baudelaire Fire, instead being ferreted away; only the ear remained to melt down, and it is by the existence of this small puddle that Lemony deduced a part of the statue had to have been broken off from the bulk of it long before the Fire. Gustav Sebald built the Snowman (per TUA), and the Snicket File says that it is “expert evidence on Page 9” which suggests there might have been a survivor of the Fire. So my theory is that “the experts” here stands for “Gustav Sebald”, naturally an expert on his own creation. An expert who might explain that the whole purpose of the Snowman was as an experiment in ways to survive a fire; some form of durable, compressed ice, perhaps, which might (and, indeed, proved able to) isolate one from even a raging fire. Conclusion:Thus, the scenario I propose is the following:
On several occasions, Count Olaf spied on the Baudelaire Parents' frequent V.F.D. dinner parties as one of the concealed guests; he posed as another Volunteer (in a disguise which included a bow tie) and usually attended from inside Gustav Sebald's hollow snowman, which adorned the Baudelaire dining room. The day of the Fire was one such occasion. Olaf was unable to burn down the Mansion due to the weather, only for a different party to successfully start the Baudelaire Fire with Olaf still inside the house. Olaf, having taken refuge back inside the Snowman, survived the fire. Thanks to testimony by Gustav Sebald, the Snicket File noted the possibility that someone might have survived the Baudelaire Fire hidden inside the Snowman, even as it reported other data which pointed towards Count Olaf having been one of the guests at the final Baudelaire dinner party. P.S.: Solving Sebald
Another point in favour of my theory is that it neatly solves a long-running chronological hiccup in TRR, namely that Zombies in the Snow appears to contain a message from Gustav Sebald concerning events which took place after Gustav's assassination by Count Olaf. If “the survivor in the snowman” to whom the message refers is in fact Olaf, then we no longer need to posit two Gustavs or any of that confusing stuff. Let's look at the text of the mssage again: What most people think inexplicably-not-dead-Gustav is saying here is, “Hi! Good but sensitive news: Quigley/Beatrice is alive! Come to Mortmain Mountains with the children for a meet-up. But be careful, Stephano is from the fire-starting side of the Schism.” However, that last bit, which is the root of all the timeline trouble, doesn't really check out anyway. “Not one of us” more readily means “not V.F.D.” than “from the wrong side of V.F.D.”; and if the warning is about Monty's new assistant, shouldn't it be “Beware! Your new assistant is not one of us”, rather than the other way around? So consider, in light of all my theorizing above, that he may actually be saying (I've colored in red the “implicit” parts, as it were, those which rely on what Gustav knows Monty knows/expects Monty to think): “Attention! There is a survivor. How did he survive, you ask? Hidden inside the snowman. Come hide out at the mountain Headquarters, and bring the three Baudelaire kids, they're in danger too if that survivor is who I think he is. Incidentally, that new assistant of yours isn't in on V.F.D., so don't bring him to the hideout, even if he's probably in danger too. But seriously, beware!”
In this scenario, the “new assistant” is not Stephano at all, but a different interim assistant, probably hired by Monty while Gustav was busy investigating the disappearance of the snowman from the remains of the Baudelaire home and filming movies about it. Maybe this assistant did indeed prove to be a spy from the Herpetological Society, hence Monty's mistaken assumptions about Stephano. Whoever he is, he's shown the door when Gustav all-too-briefly returns, only to be murdered by Olaf himself.
In other words, the Zombies message is in fact from the same Gustav who was murdered, and arrives much too late, because its purpose was to warn Monty and the Baudelaire children that Count Olaf had survived the Baudelaire fire. |
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 6, 2020 20:11:16 GMT -5
Dante , the ample quotes from the text are for you. And as concerns our ongoing discussion on theory vs. truth vs. possibolity, I don't think the edifice I described is quite what Handler ever had in mind, but I do think that, especially on the subject of hiding in snowmen and of V.F.D. dinner parties, I've identified shards of authorial intent not previous discussed here, at least to my knowledge.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 7, 2020 10:32:27 GMT -5
I will need time to digest every detail, but I was excited about someone else publishing complex theories around here besides me and TheAsh after so long!
But let's start with the premises ... In this theory it is essential to consider TDD as being canonical. (I may not like this premise, but I will not discuss it, since it is a premise).
TDD's conclusions, from what I observed is that 1- Olaf knew where the Baudelaires' house was before the fire. 2 - Olaf was most likely in disguise when he went to dinner, and this indicates that Baudelaire's parents would be deceived by Olaf's disguises just like most other adults.
I think these conclusions are true in themselves.
With respect to the SB cited in TDD. - I see no reason to believe that this SB is the SB that belonged to Esmé. The way it is written seems to be a very obvious Red Haring.
With respect to the notes regarding the missing coasters - I think it is evident that this evidence is not evidence. Had there been coasters, they would have turned to ashes in the fire. But I think this is evidence of what Lemony had in mind: Lemony was trying to find something to prove that Olaf had set the house on fire.
With respect to Zombies in the Snow - So ... I really suspect that Zombies in the Snow is an old film (although it is not a film from the time of the events of File Under 13). But I can accept this as a hypothetical possibility that it was filmed at the time of the main events narrated in ASOUE in order to analyze the consequences of this. To solve this puzzle, you need to consider the following: According to Lemony's words written in the letter to the cheesemakers, Lemony's goal of getting that script from Dr. Sebald was for Lemony to find out if Uncle Monty could decode any code Sebald. And the answer that Lemony found out was that he couldn't. The right question is, why would Lemony use a film that has just been shot with an important message for current events to find out whether Uncle Monty knew the Sebald code or not? It doesn't seem to make sense to me. I think the most likely sequence of events would be something like this: Lemony asked Dr Sebald for a copy of an old film script in which a message had to be passed on to Uncle Monty. Then Lemony analyzed through old documents or interviews whether Uncle Monty had been at the time, received the message, understood the message, and acted on the message. After making sure that Uncle Monty did not understand the message because he did not behave at the time in harmony with what the message said, Lemony deduced that Uncle Monty had never learned the Sebald Code. So Lemony made an appointment with Dr. Sebald to return the script. But Lemony was unable to meet with him, and deduced that he had been captured or killed. This is the logical sequence of events, and this is confirmed later by the letter Sally sent to Lemony. Lemony asked Sally Sebald, in a letter, about the whereabouts of the survivor inside the snowman. And Sally Sebald sent the information she had about the film. For some unknown reason, Lemony continued to be interested in what had happened at the time of the film ... But Lemony is like that. He looks for details about the history of the Baudelaires that are insignificant in order to increase the accuracy of the story he is narrating. At the time of the letter that Lemony sent to Sally, the Baudelaires had already watched (incidentally) the same film. We know this because Sally Sebald was informed through the letter that Lemony sent to Sally that he himself was alive and that Dr. Orwell was dead. Lemony's renewed interest in that film is probably due solely to the fact that the Baudelaires watched (coincidentally) that film. Even the letter Lemony sent to Sally may have been written a few years after the main events described in ASOUE, since Sally claims that she believed for years that Lemony was dead and that Dr. Orwell was alive (I believe that these "years" were refer to the time that has passed between the main events registered in ASOUE and the publication of TBB in the universe of ASOUE). Sally doesn't seem to know the main content of Snicket's books, nor why Lemony was interested in that survivor. (If Lemony had already published at least TBB by then, it would be hard to believe that he was dead for years).
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 7, 2020 11:01:00 GMT -5
In this theory it is essential to consider TDD as being canonical. (I may not like this premise, but I will not discuss it, since it is a premise). As it is by Daniel Handler, and does not match the events of the movie universe, I thought it fairly uncontroversial to consider as canonical as any other appendix. Though more broadly, I tend to take the view that the existence of almost every bit of officially-published Lemony Snciket prose is canonical, though some accounts are more corrupted, or outright falsified, than others. This could easily support its own thread. 1- Olaf knew where the Baudelaires' house was before the fire. I mean, true, but I didn't think that would have been in question. It's the Baudelaire Mansion, and Olaf grew up with the Snickets and Baudelaires. It would be very odd indeed if he did not know where their big family house is, especially when his own house is located not far away from it at all, per TBB. With respect to the SB cited in TDD. - I see no reason to believe that this SB is the SB that belonged to Esmé. The way it is written seems to be a very obvious Red Haring. That's spelled Red Herring, you know. But yes, it's probably a different Sugar Bowl. Doesn't really change anything if it is — I subscribe to the "there are multiple unrelated SBs and none of the interested parties realize this" theory. Mind you, the whole SB thing is pretty incidental to my theoretical framework, even if it does provide a reason why Lemony thought the intruder was significant even though the intruder is probably not Count Olaf. With respect to Zombies in the Snow - I'm aware of your thoughts on Zombies in the Snow, but I don't fully understand them. What do you think the message is actually referring to? Is it just about a different "survivor of a fire + treacherous assistant" anecdote that happened to Monty years prior to TRR? That seems a bit forced, though it would, to some extent, match the recurring theme of similar but unrelated sets of events in the Averse. With respect to the notes regarding the missing coasters - I think it is evident that this evidence is not evidence. Had there been coasters, they would have turned to ashes in the fire. But I think this is evidence of what Lemony had in mind: Lemony was trying to find something to prove that Olaf had set the house on fire. This is interesting, but I generally take at face value claims from people who analyzed the fire and drew conclusions from what they observed — even if it seems unlikely that they could have deduced what we are meant to assume they deduced. The whole “analyzing a puddle of water to deduce Violet had invented the teething-machine” thing from TDD is every bit as ridiculous as the idea that Lemony could tell for sure whether coasters had been present near the brandy bottle, and if we accept one, we should also accept the other. If Lemony isn't a supernaturally good sleuth, it becomes fairly unlikely that the accounts he gives of the Baudelaires' life are at all reliable, which is why I choose not to question such statements. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 7, 2020 12:50:01 GMT -5
Well ... I think the evidence found by Lemony is confirmation of the facts previously discovered by him through what the Baudelaires left written in the island's book. We could spend a lot of time talking about it ... But let's get back to the heart of the matter. About the film zombies in the snow I really believe that it is an old film whose secret message contained in that film refers to some other survivor of some other fire. This is the most logical conclusion, but it is also the conclusion that most people cannot see because they are engaged in some way with their beliefs. I say this because I am like that, and sometimes I need someone else to open my eyes, or at least to turn my face in the direction that I really should be looking. Many choose to disregard the photos in this account regarding zombies in the snow, just to avoid being forced to recognize that those children are not Quagmires, or to acknowledge that Gustav was a child when he filmed that film, as the photo shows very clearly. But, even if we disregard this evidence, the argument I used is evidence that that film and the secret message took place a long time before the main events recorded in ASOUE. Even Sally Sebald says she believes that Snicket books make people remember the films Gustav shot. Why would it be necessary to remind people of those films? Because they are old films, and most people have already forgotten about the existence of these films. And Zombies in the Snow is among the evidently old films listed by Sally.
And going back to talking about your theory ... I think there is a difference between a statue made of ice and a statue made of snow. I've heard of wealthy people decorating their parties with ice statues, but I've never heard of anyone decorating the party with a snow statue. Still, due to the somewhat unusual nature of Averse, this would be hypothetically possible. But in addition, Sally Sebald claims that the snowman was left standing for several days after the film was ready, until he realized that the message was not received. It seems to me evident that Gustav Sebald was waiting for Uncle Monty to arrive with the children in the photo, but as Lemony proved, Uncle Monty never learned the Sebald code. So he never arrived. I believe that Sebald wanted to unite the children with the survivor. All three blond children ... Was it their mother or father in the picture? There is no way to know, but I hope so. Beatrice and Bertrand may have died, but I would be glad to know that other children might be pleasantly surprised to find one of the parents they believed had died.
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 7, 2020 13:40:03 GMT -5
And going back to talking about your theory ... I think there is a difference between a statue made of ice and a statue made of snow. I've heard of wealthy people decorating their parties with ice statues, but I've never heard of anyone decorating the party with a snow statue as I showed, tells us explicitly that it was an ice scultpure of a snowman. Which, yes, is pretty odd, but there you have it. But in addition, Sally Sebald claims that the snowman was left standing for several days after the film was ready, until he realized that the message was not received. It seems to me evident that Gustav Sebald was waiting for Uncle Monty to arrive with the children in the photo, but as Lemony proved, Uncle Monty never learned the Sebald code. So he never arrived. Wait. Are you saying the coded message was first sent to Monty on a first screening of the film a long time before TRR, then Monty failed to show up at the meeting point, then Lemony tried to give Monty another shot with the script to make sure he really hadn't gotten the message? That's… pretty convoluted. Surely, if the message originally referred to a different fire and a different set of children, from long before the script was used to ascertain whether Monty had learned the Sebald Code — then there's no particular reason to think the original message was addressed to Monty at all? I'm aware that the "left standing for several days" message is the bit where my interpretation of Olaf as the man in the snowman chafes the most. It is possible the Snowman was found empty by the Fire-Fighting side, and Gustav wanted a second opinion from Monty, as a fellow scientist, on whether any hard evidence of who had been inside the snowman could be gleaned from a closer inspection? I admit it's far-fetched. However, the detail of "a person hiding inside a snowman-shaped ice statue at one of the Baudelaire V.F.D. dinner parties" seems like it can't possibly be a coincidence relative to the "survivor inside the Snowman" thing from TUA. If I'm being completely honest, I think the Person With The Bowtie is probably someone else entirely and the last remnant of a dropped plotline. No one in the Averse as we know it is famous for wearing a bowtie — Kellar Haines does have one in the illustrations of ATWQ, but that's never mentioned in-text. Not, of course, that there's any guarantee the same person was hiding inside the snowman at the fourth-to-last Baudelaire party, and at whichever fire the TUA documents (and/or Snicket File) are talking about it. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 7, 2020 14:06:10 GMT -5
A detail. I don't think Lemony actually tried to send a message to Uncle Monty via Code Sebald. I'm saying that Lemony's goal to borrow the Scripte was to check if Uncle Monty had learned the Sebald code or not. This is written in the letter. It is not a theory. The theory is that Lemony deduced that Uncle Mont did not know the Sebald code through historical research. Lemony borrowed the Scripte to see if Uncle Monty had understood the message in the past or not. He did not understand.
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Post by Dante on Jul 9, 2020 8:18:35 GMT -5
Interesting thread, Uncle Algernon. While it wouldn't be quite accurate to say that The Dismal Dinner is unstudied, the fact is that I don't recall attention being drawn to it for some years now, so it's refreshing to see it pop up again, even if it doesn't come accompanied by any crackers, cheese, and meat on this occasion. Normally I would approach a topic like this via my usual quote-dissection method, but I don't think that would be very useful on this occasion; in any case, you make fewer assertions which need challenging. So I'm going to take a broader approach, studying a couple of questions raised by this piece. I don't really touch on the major conclusion of your theory, actually, but I don't think there's anything actually specifically contradictory about this idea; merely detached from the text, and wildly unlikely. (Not tonally outrageous, though I would bear in mind that the fire is usually treated with complete seriousness.) 1. Is The Dismal Dinner canon?This is interesting. It is certainly signed "Lemony Snicket", and by and large pieces signed in this fashion I take as plausibly authored by him, not least as they usually follow his house style exceptionally well; and this is no exception. Other texts which are of more dubious canonicity tend to make no such claims; 13 Shocking Secrets, for instance, is clearly authorised but not actually authored by Snicket. The counter-argument is that it is, on the surface of things, really out there for Snicket to write a canon spin-off on Lunchables, of all things; but, aside from perhaps the use of "freaking out", the narrative style I think is too credible - and besides, it would be even stranger to suggest that Snicket permitted an official spin-off to be written in his name by a nameless copy writer on, again, Lunchables. So my conclusion is that The Dismal Dinner is probably "canon", in the sense that Snicket wrote it; the bigger question is whether it matters. (The rumoured apocryphal text "The Damsaiel Denner" is another matter.) 2. Who is the prowler?There are two candidates I wish to suggest here. The first is, in contradiction to your own conclusions, Count Olaf. This you might treat as the "author intention" candidate. I'm not especially convinced by your counterarguments; I think I am not being unreasonable if I suggest that the general Lunchables audience are not Snicket scholars and thus might need a little extra help in putting the pieces together; and furthermore, I would suggest that having an available answer to confirm people's suspicions would not be implausible, not least given that some Snicket fans are remarkably incapable of deriving a plausible result from transparent clues anyway. The Lunchables storyline emphasises the three main characters of ASoUE, the Baudelaire siblings, and it is fairly obvious that the next figure to be given emphasis should be the fourth main character of the series, Count Olaf; it would be strange indeed for him to be passively hidden in the dining room while the author's attention is instead focussed on a miscellaneous stalker. My second suggestion, however, hinges on an important connection I believe you have overlooked, and while it's also plausibly author-intended I think it more likely to be a coincidence - but reasonable to propose in the context of a more syncretic theory. Specifically, you overlook the line "The four teeth cutting through baby Sunny's gums were exceptionally large and sharp, much like the nose of the man peering through the window." To put it shortly, the prowler had a remarkably long and sharp nose. Now, this is not a feature I recall Count Olaf ever being described as possessing. To be sure, Helquist illustrates him this way; but the text of ASoUE never acknowledges the content of the illustrations. There is arguably another instance of this right here in The Dismal Dinner with Klaus's practice of wearing a bowtie, again as depicted by Helquist; but this is not indicated as Klaus's normal practice and it may simply be that he is wearing formal dinner attire - which can include a bowtie. But there is one character in canon who is described, repeatedly, as having a long nose; and who is intimately associated with Count Olaf: The bald man. Indeed, he is introduced in TBB as "a bald man with a very long nose" (p. 47) - a description repeated at the book's end, "the bald man with the long nose", as he escapes with the rest of the troupe (p. 158). TRR also calls him "a bald man with a long nose" (p. 54), and TMM makes special note of the nose, when Foreman Flacutono "grabbed his surgical mask from his face and removed that, too. A long nose uncurled itself from where it had been pressed down to his face" (p. 186); "It's the bald man!" "With the long nose!" the Baudelaires cry (p. 187). He is again "the bald man with the long nose" in THH (p. 178); and the U.A. directly quotes and underlines the aforementioned TBB description (p. 161), but emphasises it in its list of Olaf's associates, which "bald man w/ long nose" heads (p. 175). So here we have a figure in ASoUE who is repeatedly, emphatically, and plot-relevantly described as having an unusually long nose; who is evil and terrifying; and who is a member of Count Olaf's acting troupe and thus might well be bracketed under the specifically theatrical implications of "Funcoot". The bald man is a perfect fit - but for one tiny little consideration: Olaf's presence on the scene is confirmed, so the bald man's presence seems redundant. But isn't it possible that, as you suggest, Olaf was inside the room, but not necessarily in a position to look around the room - for which he needed outside backup? 3. What was happening at the Baudelaire mansion on the day of the fire?This is where your theory, while not necessarily concerned with canonical plausibility, here also stretches my credulity. I don't see it as believable that the Baudelaires were hosting a dinner party while their children were at Briny Beach. Actually, first and foremost I don't recognise your presentation of "the Baudelaires' repeated attempts to solve all of V.F.D.'s problems by gathering a bunch of people in a dinner and discussing weighty matters"; not with their children and Mr. Poe present, they weren't, and TBB specifically states that he was someone whom "the children had met many times at dinner parties" and the Baudelaire parents "didn't send their children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation" (p. 6). Covert V.F.D. activity may, indeed did (per TDD), take place at such parties; but not overt. So such a dinner party as you propose would have been highly unusual for the Baudelaires (and moreover wouldn't have even been at dinnertime); and furthermore, calling it a "dinner party" implies that many guests would have been present, making it unlikely that only the Baudelaire parents would have been left behind, or indeed that a whole flood of people hanging around the Baudelaire mansion on the day of the fire would never have been mentioned! So while I agree that what is being implied is quite plainly that the Baudelaire parents invited Olaf (or some such individual) over for a meeting on the day of the fire, I wouldn't characterise this as an occasion resembling that of TDD, and indeed it seems highly unlikely that more than these three individuals were involved. I have nothing further to add on this subject; these notes from the BBRE are fascinating but much-discussed without anything revelatory having been gleaned from them. They're hints; Handler once characterised them as " groundwork" (see question 10). I wonder increasingly if the ideas presented in the BBRE Author's Notes are actually scrapped ideas more generally; ideas he had in mind about the start of the series but never got around to using. The weather contradiction is interesting, I agree, and I think it's plausible that the fire was an accident, even one which anticipated long-laid plans along similar lines. I've even mooted Olaf as the survivor myself before now. 4. Is the sugar bowl important?That is, in the context of TDD. I'm inclined to agree with your later suggestion that this is one of the "multiple sugar bowls" otherwise implied only in the U.A.; the way it is being so casually passed around in comparative public seems to accord with the idea that sugar bowls had a common secret function in V.F.D., whether it was to covertly pass important items around a dinner table or to conceal recording devices. Of course, the counterpoint to that statement would be that the U.A. came along very early in the sugar bowl's career, and the main series never validates the idea of multiple sugar bowls, and indeed around the time TDD would have been written the series very much in the phase of emphasising the singular importance of a singular sugar bowl. But even so, TDD doesn't quite fit that interpretation in how it deploys the sugar bowl. I'm not too concerned about it here. This being the sugar bowl would be a bit too major a plot element to be thrown away in a throwaway lunchbox tie-in. 5. How many Gustavs are there?I looked over the Gustav Sebald material in the U.A. again in preparation for this thread, and what struck me is how Snicket's letter from Swarthy Swamp, despite being heavily themed around Gustav's death in TRR, actually seems a better fit for a much later period of time. Dr. Sebald is specifically late for the meeting, which implies that Snicket is aware of nobody having entered the vicinity entirely, rather than Sebald having been there and been murdered by Olaf; and Snicket's first thought is indeed not that he has been murdered, but captured. (U. A. p. 56) Snicket's investigation concerns, as Jean Lucio said, whether Dr. Montgomery learned the Sebald Code (p. 57); and the meeting is also relevant to telling the Baudelaire orphans' story (p. 58). All this makes it seem far more likely that this meeting takes place long after TRR, in which case one would have thought that Snicket would have been long aware that Gustav was dead. Sally Sebald's letter clearly takes place later, at a time when Dr. Sebald's death is public knowledge; but forces us to ask whether "one of the most important filmmakers of all time" (p. 66) would really have been moonlighting as a herpetologist's assistant, whether or not for a secret purpose. The two-Gustavs theory has always seemed highly unlikely from a perspective of author intent; and yet, rereading this material, I find it more compelling than ever, and moreover it seems difficult to say how Handler could have failed to notice the contradiction. This, of course, makes it even more likely that the Zombies in the Snow message means exactly what it appears to mean; though I think the theories mooted that it is in fact an old message have some merit in light of Jean Lucio's reinterpretation of Snicket's statement of the purpose of his meeting with Dr. Sebald. It also may not be irrelevant that the snowy theme to the whole enterprise anticipates the setting of TSS, the context of Quigley's arrival; which would not have been written at the time and which the author may have envisaged very differently. |
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 9, 2020 11:44:50 GMT -5
Thank you! 1. Is The Dismal Dinner canon? As I believe I mentioned upthread, I don't generally hold anything to be non-canonical; certainly nothing printed. But I'd agree with the idea that TDD was likely written by Handler, yes. If nothing else, the snowman detaclearly echoes the Zombies in the Snow message — whether one acknowledges an in-universe connection or not; it could simply be one of those counterintuitive coincidences Handler is fond of springling in, akin to the three children Kit ferries to Prufrock yet who cannot be the Quagmires. My second suggestion, however, hinges on an important connection I believe you have overlooked, and while it's also plausibly author-intended I think it more likely to be a coincidence - but reasonable to propose in the context of a more syncretic theory. Specifically, you overlook the line "The four teeth cutting through baby Sunny's gums were exceptionally large and sharp, much like the nose of the man peering through the window." (…) But there is one character in canon who is described, repeatedly, as having a long nose; and who is intimately associated with Count Olaf: The bald man. Oh. Oh. You're completely right. I feel very foolish. And knowing him from some (one imagines, fairly memorable) promotional picture as an actor in an Al Funcoot play would perfectly account for Sunny's “Funcoot!” in-universe. Thank you. I'm definitely updating my headcanons to have the prowler be the Bald Man. Actually, first and foremost I don't recognise your presentation of "the Baudelaires' repeated attempts to solve all of V.F.D.'s problems by gathering a bunch of people in a dinner and discussing weighty matters"; not with their children and Mr. Poe present, they weren't, and TBB specifically states that he was someone whom "the children had met many times at dinner parties" and the Baudelaire parents "didn't send their children away when they had company over, but allowed them to join the adults at the dinner table and participate in the conversation" (p. 6). Covert V.F.D. activity may, indeed did (per TDD), take place at such parties; Well, I didn't imagine that until the day of the Baudelaire Fire, the dinners were anything but covert. However, clearly if there are at least three people who attended this particular Baudelaire dinner party — with the children present but clueless. I did recall those lines from TBB, and take them as the very lines which TDD recontextualises — we are being told that when the Baudelaires have someone soul-crushingly boring like Mr Poe over for dinner, it's actually an alibi and the real guests of honour are hidden inside the pudding, or inside the ice sculpture of a snowman. We see in TWW a small-scale recreation of such a ploy: Larry the Waiter slips into conversation sentences which (should) allow him to strategize with the Volunteers at the table, with (supposedly) clueless third parties like Captain Sham none the wiser. As I said, Olaf's dialogue in TE implies (though it could just be unfortunate phrasing) that just like Sunny seems to be shaping up to do, the Baudelaire Parents were notorious for trying to solve the world's problems with "expensive gourmet meals". I believe TDD tells us how. I take your point about the oddity of the Baudelaire Parents sending the children away to Briny Beach for one particular dinner, though. Several possible reasons why could be constructed, of course (perhaps they had realized Olaf was fraudulously attending in disguise, and were planning to out him in the middle of the meal?), but I think I'll retreat and instead correct my theory of events to the following: for one reason or another (such as confronting him for having spied on past V.F.D., coded-phrase-laden dinners), the Baudelaire Parents invited Count Olaf, as Count Olaf, to the mansion, hence sending the children away. After the fire started, Olaf took refuge inside the (empty) snowman, as he knew very well that it was hollow from the previous dinners.
An even more conservative variation might be that the Bald Man's job in TDD was to report on the presence of the Snowman, though you may argue it's not very characteristic of Olaf to have gone to such lengths to plan an escape route in advance. 5. How many Gustavs are there?(…) Dr. Sebald is specifically late for the meeting, which implies that Snicket is aware of nobody having entered the vicinity entirely, rather than Sebald having been there and been murdered by Olaf; and Snicket's first thought is indeed not that he has been murdered, but captured. (U. A. p. 56) My first instinct here is to make a pun about the various meanings of Gustav being "late". To be more exact, I believe Lemony's irritated "what is he doing?!"-type reaction is clearly meant to come across as dramatic irony; to misquote TBBRE, “Gustav had to adjourn the meeting indefinitely due to death”. Only, Lemony doesn't know that yet. (This is, after all, nearly the same grisly joke made by the 2003 movie regarding Gustav's assassination — Stephano: "He'd give anything not to be here right now" cutting to him being tied to the front of a train engine. Incidentally, I note, having rewatched the clips to get the exact quotation, that Movie!Monty refers to Gustav as having been his head assistant, not his sole assistant, which I take as weak support of my idea that the "new assistant who is not one of us" in the Zombies in the Snow message is neither Gustav nor Stephano.) Sally Sebald's letter clearly takes place later, at a time when Dr. Sebald's death is public knowledge; but forces us to ask whether "one of the most important filmmakers of all time" (p. 66) would really have been moonlighting as a herpetologist's assistant, whether or not for a secret purpose. That, too, I think has a double meaning. If I may again call up the adaptations, if not as canonical evidence, then as “character witnesses”, I'd liken this epithet to Monty gushing about what an important and interesting movie the Netflixverse Zombies in the Snow is, even though on a cinematic level it is abominable shlock that makes Ed Wood look like René Clair. Gustav Sebald is “one of the most important filmmakers of all time” because he sneakes useful, sometimes life-saving V.F.D. messages in his films, not because his films are any good, nor indeed (one imagines) particularly successful. |
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Post by Dante on Jul 9, 2020 13:15:56 GMT -5
A supplement to the Gustav question. It is a curious thing that one can think about a certain question over and over for many years, and yet somehow, revisiting it after one has forgotten the details is enough to spur an entirely fresh response within a period of hours. To wit: I have a new theory on the Gustav problem. I can't imagine why I never thought of it before. It's a canon-compatible theory which doesn't require any single statement to be ignored, it explains why Gustav would have been able to insert a message about Monty's new assistant into Zombies in the Snow, it explains why Sally Sebald doesn't dwell on the tragic nature of her brother's passing, and it doesn't require a second Gustav. It's an elegant theory, too, as all the best theories are; so elegant, in fact, that I can summarise it in only two words:
Gustav survived.
It's so simple. Olaf attempted to murder Gustav, and believed he had succeeded, but he was wrong. Note that the method of murder Olaf employed was specifically drowning (TRR p. 177), a means which produces somewhat ambiguous results, as opposed to shooting somebody with a harpoon, cutting off their head, or dropping them out of a high window while making sure you see them hit the ground. With this taken into account, it is unnecessary to worry about the dating of Snicket's meeting with Dr. Sebald in Swarthy Swamp, because if it takes place after TRR then Gustav is still around, and if it takes place during or shortly before, Gustav has simply done what all noble people do and arrived early, and there been waylaid, while the fugitive Snicket had less freedom and missed the whole thing.
A longer narration of the sequence of events might appear thus:
For whatever reason, movie director and V.F.D. agent Gustav Sebald is masquerading as the assistant to Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, possibly for some Baudelaire-related purpose or possibly on a separate errand of which we know nothing. Count Olaf, with the aim of infiltrating Dr. Montgomery's home in order to control the Baudelaires, follows Gustav to the vicinity of Swarthy Swamp one day and confronts him. He boasts about his plan to replace Gustav as Monty's assistant, and then proceeds to drown him. However, Gustav survives, either because Olaf doesn't hold him under for long enough or just because Gustav is good at holding his breath and playing dead. Olaf walks away, convinced that Gustav is dead and he can put his plan into action.
Gustav, though, while alive, is absolutely terrified. Whether or not he recognised or knew who Olaf was, whether or not he knew exactly when Olaf planned to enter the household, it is immediately clear that the area around Monty's house is no longer safe for him and he cannot risk contacting Monty directly. Instead, he legs it; he flees as far away from the area as he can, back to his movie production facilities, at which point he immediately puts into production a movie to transmit a coded warning to Monty regarding his new assistant (in lieu of a letter or phone call which might be intercepted). We don't know enough about the snowman and survivor business to speculate about its relevance, but for whatever reason, that is included too. Dr. Gustav Sebald then proceeds to stay out of trouble and live a long and artistically contented life before dying at some point prior to the publication of ASoUE. Fin.
...Is it what the author intended? I doubt it. But it's nice, after all these years, to be able to add another possibility to the host of Gustav theories.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 9, 2020 13:37:02 GMT -5
I agree that the new assistant is neither Gustav nor Stephano, but some old assistant who was also not one of us. And since the Threads are similar, I want to take advantage of and highlight the need to add one more variable to the question about what happened on the day of the fire: the fact that Lemony, during the fire, already knew he was being accused of being the arsonist , according to LSTUA. I want to point out that I try Kit as Jacques were investigating matters related to Lemony during the main events narrated in ASOUE. We see this because Olivia T claims that Jacques was there wanting to know if Lemony was alive. And LSTUA claims that Kit was looking for evidence that could clear Lemony if he was alive. And in Lemony's letter to cheesemakers about the movie zombies in the snow, we see that Lemony claims he is being accused of being an arsonist. So, I think Lemony is the one named in the Snicket File. Not that he's an arsonist ... I think he was there when the fire started. The Snicket File, which contains information about the Snicket Fires, serves both to prove Snicket's innocence and to prove that he survived the fire. (And it should do a lot of other things too). How does the "Lemony Snicket" variable fit into the theory? About zombies in the snow, I am very happy that at least something I wrote is actually serving to increase understanding of what happened in the ASOUE universe. I can say that I did not like to duplicate Gustavs, but now I have nothing against it. After all, I was the one who coined the phrase: "Daniel Handler duplicates events to confuse you". If we duplicate Gustav and put the writing of that letter for some time after the main events narrated in ASOUE, we can take advantage of and make a simpler reading than Lemony wrote about at least one of the three Snicket's was dead. Lemony knew that at least Jacques Snicket was dead. (Sorry, I can't stop now). This is also evidence that Lemony did not know that Kit was already dead, so he wrote that at least one of the Snickts was dead, and not two of them. (Although the expression "at least" indicates that Lemony had not had personal contact with Kit in a long time, leading him to even think about the possibility that she had indeed died). In other words, Gustav Sebald died at the time when Lemony was researching the main events recorded in ASOUE. By this time, Uncle Monty had also died. Lemony was interested in whether Uncle Monty knew the Sebald code or not. Because Lemony found out that Uncle Monty had watched zombies in the snow while the kids were under his protection, Lemony became interested in the film (similar to how he was interested in the refrigerator in TSS). I still wonder why Lemony would be interested in the survivor mentioned in that film ... Did Lemony believe that the film had any important message for Uncle Monty at that time? Didn't Lemony know that zombies in the snow was such an old movie? Was it the letter from Sally Sebald that clarified to Lemomy that the film was not directed at Uncle Monty, at least not at the time when he went to the cinema with the Baudelaires? A supplement to the Gustav question. It is a curious thing that one can think about a certain question over and over for many years, and yet somehow, revisiting it after one has forgotten the details is enough to spur an entirely fresh response within a period of hours. To wit: I have a new theory on the Gustav problem. I can't imagine why I never thought of it before. It's a canon-compatible theory which doesn't require any single statement to be ignored, it explains why Gustav would have been able to insert a message about Monty's new assistant into Zombies in the Snow, it explains why Sally Sebald doesn't dwell on the tragic nature of her brother's passing, and it doesn't require a second Gustav. It's an elegant theory, too, as all the best theories are; so elegant, in fact, that I can summarise it in only two words: Gustav survived. It's so simple. Olaf attempted to murder Gustav, and believed he had succeeded, but he was wrong. Note that the method of murder Olaf employed was specifically drowning (TRR p. 177), a means which produces somewhat ambiguous results, as opposed to shooting somebody with a harpoon, cutting off their head, or dropping them out of a high window while making sure you see them hit the ground. With this taken into account, it is unnecessary to worry about the dating of Snicket's meeting with Dr. Sebald in Swarthy Swamp, because if it takes place after TRR then Gustav is still around, and if it takes place during or shortly before, Gustav has simply done what all noble people do and arrived early, and there been waylaid, while the fugitive Snicket had less freedom and missed the whole thing. A longer narration of the sequence of events might appear thus: For whatever reason, movie director and V.F.D. agent Gustav Sebald is masquerading as the assistant to Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, possibly for some Baudelaire-related purpose or possibly on a separate errand of which we know nothing. Count Olaf, with the aim of infiltrating Dr. Montgomery's home in order to control the Baudelaires, follows Gustav to the vicinity of Swarthy Swamp one day and confronts him. He boasts about his plan to replace Gustav as Monty's assistant, and then proceeds to drown him. However, Gustav survives, either because Olaf doesn't hold him under for long enough or just because Gustav is good at holding his breath and playing dead. Olaf walks away, convinced that Gustav is dead and he can put his plan into action. Gustav, though, while alive, is absolutely terrified. Whether or not he recognised or knew who Olaf was, whether or not he knew exactly when Olaf planned to enter the household, it is immediately clear that the area around Monty's house is no longer safe for him and he cannot risk contacting Monty directly. Instead, he legs it; he flees as far away from the area as he can, back to his movie production facilities, at which point he immediately puts into production a movie to transmit a coded warning to Monty regarding his new assistant (in lieu of a letter or phone call which might be intercepted). We don't know enough about the snowman and survivor business to speculate about its relevance, but for whatever reason, that is included too. Dr. Gustav Sebald then proceeds to stay out of trouble and live a long and artistically contented life before dying at some point prior to the publication of ASoUE. Fin....Is it what the author intended? I doubt it. But it's nice, after all these years, to be able to add another possibility to the host of Gustav theories. I want to declare my love ... For that theory, not for you Dante. (I like you, but not at that level.) It is simple, it is magnificent ... Gustav may have survived. That simple. This is independent of whether the film zombies in the snow refers to the Baudelaires or not. Lemony could have contacted him after the main events of ASOUE and requested the script. And even if the film was not recorded for the Baudelaires, evidently the message contained in it could apply to current events, and if Uncle Monty was smart enough he would understand what Gustav meant. I knew you could still make theories! I'm glad I saw that. |
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Post by FileneNGottlin on Jul 10, 2020 9:52:14 GMT -5
On the subject of the Sebald Code: Is it possible that Gustav shot multiple takes/versions for his films, with the intention that they could be spliced together and edited to make altered versions with different messages? Lena Pukalie’s review suggests that they don’t make very much sense(although that could just be the film itself).
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Post by Hermes on Jul 10, 2020 10:42:32 GMT -5
A supplement to the Gustav question. It is a curious thing that one can think about a certain question over and over for many years, and yet somehow, revisiting it after one has forgotten the details is enough to spur an entirely fresh response within a period of hours. To wit: I have a new theory on the Gustav problem. I can't imagine why I never thought of it before. It's a canon-compatible theory which doesn't require any single statement to be ignored, it explains why Gustav would have been able to insert a message about Monty's new assistant into Zombies in the Snow, it explains why Sally Sebald doesn't dwell on the tragic nature of her brother's passing, and it doesn't require a second Gustav. It's an elegant theory, too, as all the best theories are; so elegant, in fact, that I can summarise it in only two words: Gustav survived. It's so simple. Olaf attempted to murder Gustav, and believed he had succeeded, but he was wrong. Note that the method of murder Olaf employed was specifically drowning (TRR p. 177), a means which produces somewhat ambiguous results, as opposed to shooting somebody with a harpoon, cutting off their head, or dropping them out of a high window while making sure you see them hit the ground. With this taken into account, it is unnecessary to worry about the dating of Snicket's meeting with Dr. Sebald in Swarthy Swamp, because if it takes place after TRR then Gustav is still around, and if it takes place during or shortly before, Gustav has simply done what all noble people do and arrived early, and there been waylaid, while the fugitive Snicket had less freedom and missed the whole thing. On the one hand.... This is certainly a coherent narrative, which makes sense of a lot of things. But I'm not sure about its motivation. If we are being Watsonian, much the simplest answer is that there are two Gustavs. There is nothing inherently improbable about there being two people caled Gustav, especially given VFD naming conventions; and what we are told of them does not make them sound very similar. The thing that makes us doubt this is that if it were true, we would have to suppose both Gustavs met an untimely fate in Swarthy Swamp. That makes it very much look as if the author intended them to be the same; that the event Lemony is recording here is the same which Olaf describes at the end of TRR. But then, if fidelity to the author's intention requires us to believe in one Gustav, I think it also requires us to believe in one Swarth Swamp incident. By the way, if we trust other things we read in TUA, TRR was already on the shelves while the unfortunate events were still happening (I know Jean Lucio has worked out a way round this, but I've already explained why I'm not convinced by it), so if L was meeting Sebald in the course of researching TRR, this cannot come too long after the events. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Jul 10, 2020 11:51:09 GMT -5
Well, I said many things Hermes, and then I corrected myself, and I said different things, which later turned out to be false, and I am currently confused about the reasons that still lead you to disagree with the idea that the books were published in the ASOUE universe some years after the main events, with a gap of many years between TWW and TAA.
For everyone's convenience, I will summarize my current thoughts on the subject.
I believe that Lemony Snicket started writing TBB during the events as indicated by the observations that were delivered to Babs and Hal. However, as indicated in Lemony's letter to the Cheesemakers about the Zombie in the Snow script, Lemony was unable to publish the books immediately. He tried various means, and the penultimate of these means was using the cheesemakers themselves. In addition, the notes in TBBRE indicate that there were "first draft notes about the case".
I believe that Lemony is an extremely reliable narrator (this was a significant change in my point of view). He claims to have simply written down the story and not made up part of it. Thus, Lemony Snicket has privileged information about the Baudelaires' thoughts, and the conversations in private rooms, and the conversations they had in vehicles in which they ended up being destroyed and there was no one else there to listen to what they were talking about. This is a strong indication that Lemony Snicket read the writings left by the Baudelaires themselves on the island. This "superpower" of Lemony to know what goes on in the minds of some characters, is only used with the three Baudelaires and with himself. Lemony lost this "superpower" with Klaus when he was hypnotized, because Klaus himself does not remember what happened while he was hypnotized. Daniel Handler thought of something like that especially in the early books. In TWW, Lemony says she is at home writing about the Baudelaires. Daniel Handler had the idea in mind that Lemony didn't even have to go to the city where the events had happened to find out what had happened to the Baudelaires. Since that time, Daniel Handler had the mental image that Lemony Snicket was writing about the Baudelaires based on what he had found that was written by the Baudelaires themselves. Then Daniel Handler decided to give Lemony a more exciting life, and we follow excerpts of that life from TAA, and a lot of that in LSTUA.
I still strongly believe that in LSTUA Daniel Handler decided to create a hiatus of ASOUE publications in the ASOUE universe. I no longer believe that this gap has lasted 15 years. At the moment, I believe that the woman Lemony met at the Ball was an imposter, based on the deduction I made from R's letter to Lemony regarding the Ball. Apparently R wanted to say (subtly) to Lemony that Beatrice had in fact burned to death on the day of her house fire. Still, Lemony had gone to the Ball to deliver a message to Count Olaf, which I believe was "Count Olaf is dead". That's because Olaf had died on a remote island with few witnesses. The hypothetical justification Beatrice must have given Lemony that she had gone into hiding probably had to do with Count Olaf, perhaps something like "I'm afraid he'll kill all my children if he knows I'm still alive, since he doesn't will have more of the inheritance ". Again this only works well because Daiel Handler thought about the ending a long time ago. An ending in which Olaf would die and the children would leave their own record of events.
Regarding the 15 years, I believe that Lemony tried to pass the information on Olaf's death during the night of the opera, but he did not report it because Olaf did not die.
About the secret letter in TSS. I believe it was addressed to Kit. But Lemony did not know that Kit was already dead. Just as Lemony did not know that Beatrice Jr had that name. This is evidence that the children hid information about the baby's name and her mother's name in the island's book, probably to protect the baby from the dangers of the world. After all, an enemy could one day find that book.
The TSS letter contains elements that strongly indicate that Lemony wrote that when he was about to go to the secret VFD base. He hadn't gotten there yet and was already writing about what had happened there. This is strong evidence that that letter was written at the time of publication of the books, and not at the time of the main events narrated by Lemony. Even the item that could contain the proof that could innocent Lemony not the SB that belonged to Esmé. At the time of publication of the books, Lemony was trying to get rid of the charge of being an arsonist. When Lemony published TSS he was no longer in a "comfortable" situation in which the authorities believed he had died.
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Post by Uncle Algernon on Jul 31, 2020 10:28:05 GMT -5
Important update (a phrase which, through the literary device of irony, here means a tangentially-related piece of trivia, on which the author of the present message has nevertheless elected to place undue emphasis): state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (A.I.) concludes that the Baudelaire Mansion was burned down by someone called Quicksilver as a way to get back at Esmé (?) because Esmé had been lovers with the (female) love of Quicksilver's live (??). |
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