TheAsh
Formidable Foreman
Posts: 175
Likes: 99
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Post by TheAsh on Aug 20, 2021 10:25:06 GMT -5
I'm also much more excited to read PFB now. As we suspected, PFB took a while to be published exclusively because of its content. What did Daniel Handler put in there that could shock today's worried parents? And I was a little flattered that he said that my question about books for young children... I mean... He hadn't really thought about it yet and started to think. I feel that somehow my question affected the author I admire... And about the question I asked about the asoue effect, even though he didn't answer, I'm also flattered that he read it several times trying to understand... Well , I hope I didn't bug him... Although that would be a poetic revenge. I wish it would be adult content, like murder or something similar, but I suspect that it would be something more mundane (perhaps explicit LGBT references, which many publishers shy away from in children's books.)
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 20, 2021 10:52:29 GMT -5
Maybe... But my bets would be that he might somehow offend religious parents. From the synopsis DH makes it clear that he will say something philosophical, talk about death, and even quote Kabbalistic interpretations. He has personally supported causes involving women's right to decide to abort pregnancies. And this is very much related to issues involving life and death, which would be a subject that can naturally come up with a character on the brink of death in a fiction book that purports to be philosophical. But I better stop here, before I get a strike for discussing this in the wrong place.
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Post by the panopticountolaf on Aug 20, 2021 13:46:20 GMT -5
perhaps explicit LGBT references, which many publishers shy away from in children's books. This seems to be the most likely to me, seeing as DH has written queer characters into ASOUE since its beginnings. I think the fact that he explicitly wrote that it would be a long time before two women could get married in a book aimed directly at children in 2006 is ignored a lot of the time. He really is the anti-JKR, isn't he?
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Post by Christmas Chief on Aug 20, 2021 15:57:35 GMT -5
Thank you for organizing again, Semblance!
I think that by “conservative” he meant financially conservative - i.e., less willing to take risks with things that might not sell - not politically conservative.
Edit: Although they may overlap, come to think of it.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Aug 20, 2021 16:41:39 GMT -5
or maybe he visually represented a bad mood as something that looked like an afro to queasy publishers
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Post by Christmas Chief on Aug 21, 2021 21:13:59 GMT -5
This might have been my favorite answer.
The idea of Snicket holding Handler captive is a funny metaphor.
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Post by the panopticountolaf on Aug 22, 2021 6:39:25 GMT -5
or maybe he visually represented a bad mood as something that looked like an afro to queasy publishers Not to bring up an old controversy, but shouldn't the illustrator be blamed for visually representing a bad mood as something that looked like an afro to queasy publishers?
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Post by Hermes on Aug 22, 2021 7:44:56 GMT -5
Yes he should, but obviously Handler wasn't going to say 'It's not me, it's the artist', so he got the blame.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 22, 2021 10:49:46 GMT -5
Can anyone explain this old controversy to me?
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Post by the panopticountolaf on Aug 22, 2021 11:33:11 GMT -5
Can anyone explain this old controversy to me? Absolutely! (He says, before lazily linking to an old thread.) Here you go.
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Post by R. on Aug 22, 2021 12:25:57 GMT -5
I think the whole controversy is a load of bull myself.
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Post by the panopticountolaf on Aug 22, 2021 12:46:26 GMT -5
I think the whole controversy is a load of bull myself. Respectfully, I disagree. The original illustrations certainly weren't intended to be caricatures of black people, and they don't (ahem) bear much of a resemblance to the "golliwogs" seen throughout lots of artwork of black people in the back half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, but there is a resemblance, a resemblance that (as has been stated before) was much easier to spot when Bad Mood was published — DH's "watermelon" comments were still fresh in the minds of many then. Although I believe that the revised illustrations weren't ideal, I think it's a good thing the originals were changed. (Just making the bad mood more cloud-shaped would have been much, much better, but I digress.)
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Aug 22, 2021 14:13:34 GMT -5
I think whoever is offended by that illustration is because he has not yet been a victim of true racism.
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Post by Mr. Sharpe on Jul 17, 2023 22:25:41 GMT -5
Is there any way to see the answers to this again? I know Semblance sadly left us, but surely somebody saved this great interview?
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Post by Resemblance on Jan 3, 2024 18:18:07 GMT -5
Here is the interview we conducted 2 years ago. Thank you again to everyone who joined us.
Roxy222: Were any of the kids in All The Wrong Questions inspired by real kids you knew when you were younger, and can you tell me a bit more about them?
>I spent much of my childhood looking for companions who were thoughtful and inquisitive, the better to investigate and survive the bewildering and often sinister world around us. We ate together, we read together, we compared notes.
Sherry Ann: What bitter truth do you most prefer to avoid?
>The pandemic of hypocrisy, I suppose.
What is the most beautiful book you have read in the past year?
>Peter Cameron's novel What Happens At Night. It cannot leave my head.
How can a beginner increase her/his interest in poetry?
>Subscribing to Poetry Magazine, if you can afford such a thing and/or can berate a loved one to purchase you a subscription, is a lovely way to have new poetry come your way. There are also various entities that will bring you a poem on your phone daily. Just dive in. You will read many things you don't like. But the things you do like are wondrous. Lately I have been especially enjoying Caroline Bird, Dorothea Lasky, Gwendolyn Brooks and Charles Simic.
Akasharpie321: Was it your decision to have Patrick Warburton return as Lemony Snicket for the "Poison for Breakfast" audiobook?
>Yes, and I asked him during a global pandemic during which most actors did not have things to do, so he was trapped.
Jacobm: What is your favorite flavor of Pop-Tart?
>I don't think I've ever had a Pop-Tart. They frigthen me.
Brunch: Before you were a full-time writer what job(s) did you do, and how did you handle others telling you a writer wasn't a realistic career (assuming they did)?
>I had various jobs of the office-drudgery sort, and I told myself that in retrospect this period of my life would seem charming and bohemian, and that all of my catty, doubting friends would be stuck in office drudgery forever. Astonishingly, this turned out to be true.
Baudelaiire: Do you ever listen to the Gothic Archies?
>I listen to The New Despair quite often, but it is difficult for me to listen to any recording of which I am a part.
The Snicket books are set in an unspecified time period and context. Do you think that the timelessness augments ASOUE and ATWQ’s place inliterature to one day become canonical?
>The only canon that means anything is one's own, so I don't concern myself with categories into which imaginary future readers might put my work. But I do like the idea that literature is one kind of timeless, and the Snicket books are another.
Ryantrimble457: What are some plot ideas or elements that you considered for the series but ultimately discarded? And how far along into writing did any of these make it?
>Oh, there have been so many and I'm not sure I've completely abandoned them. They are in various states of construction, ranging from single phrases on index cards to entire chapters.
Terry Craig: What role has secondary literature (i.e. literary criticism) played in your development as a reader and enthusiast of prose and poetry?
>I like reading what writers may have to say about other writers, as long as they aren't me.
Theash: JK Rowling famously said after being asked a question on Harry Potter that she is terrible with maths. Is there anything that you are terrible at that may have affected ASOUE or ATWQ?
>I am terrible at nearly everything.
Lemony Snicket is something of a foodie, with Pasta puttanesca in the Bad Beginning all the way to Banana Waffles with caramelized bananas in File Under: 13 Suspicious incidents. Any chance we'll ever see an official Lemony Snicket cookbook?
>I think about such a project but have not yet figured out how it might be interesting.
Carmelita0cheryl: Did you enjoy writing ASOUE or ATWQ more?
>Oh, that's so difficult to say. They both had their pleasures and pains.
Gothicarchiesfan: What are the main differences you've found when it comes to writing for books, television, and the theatre?
>Television and theater are much more collaborative, and much more expensive. It is expensive to, or instance, build a lake, so many people have to sit around worrying about the expense.
Has anyone ever approached you about adapting the A Series of Unfortunate Events books into a non-film/tv related format, like a musical, graphic novel, or radio play?
>All of these things and more have been proposed. I have to think about them.
You've said before in interviews that you were hired to write the script for the 2004 film's aborted sequel, and that it went through several very different iterations including as potential animated film at some point. Would you mind giving us some idea of their various plots?
>The plots generally followed the arc of the series, but there were many different ideas as to format and casting and such.
Limeny: What was the process of deciding where the Baudelaire children would go in each book like? Did you choose locations based on how manyreferences you could make, or their general eeriness factor?
>I would just comb literature and life for unpleasantness.
Was there a book in ASOUE that you found particularly easy orenjoyable to write?Conversely, was there a book in ASOUE that youfound difficult to write?
>The most difficult was The Grim Grotto, but that was mostly because I was exhausted from new fatherhood. I enjoy writing. I am inspired by blank paper.
Misterm: Would Esme Squalor wear a mask, or we should have done herown "research"?
>I think she would wear a mask but pretend it was for other reasons.
If Black Ink is so good, then why are you bothering with Poison for Breakfast?
>The impossible things can be X'd but not erased.
Jeanlucio10: 13 Shocking Secrets You'll Wish You Never Knew About Lemony Snicket isn't much talked about among fans. I want to know: is the text of this booklet your work, or did someone else write it? Did you provide ideas or actually write something contained there?
>If I had provided the secrets they likely would not have been publishable.
A recent article written by a fan described the so-called "ASOUEEffect". Among other things he wrote: "The ASOUE effect has becomesomething that no one can replicate perfectly because of theimperfections, coincidences, inconsistencies, lack of discernment,drawings, photographs, poetry, and Daniel Handler's somewhat aimlesscreativity together have come in an incredible way to form a set ofactually much more impressive work than Daniel Handler himself couldhave done by his own willpower." Do you agree with that or is theresomething else you hold responsible for ASOUE being so good?
>I have read this quoted sentence several times and have no idea what it means.
What really happened to Poison For Breakfast that took so long for itto get published? Did other publishers refused to publish this particular work?
>It is a conservative time in children's publishing, at least in the USA. Everything is trying to operate under a great cloud of trepidation.
Something that has always fascinated me is Lemony Snicket's fictional target audience as he writes ASOUE. He seems to have written with thepeople of his universe in mind. But I've always wondered about Lemony Snicket books for young children. Would you say these books arewritten by Lemony for the children of his universe? Are these fictional stories from the Lemony universe?
>What a fascinating question. I must think on it further. In the meantime, as a placeholder, please accept the notion proposed by Nabokov: that "reality" is one of the few words that means nothing without quotation marks around it.
The poem My Silence Knot is something beautiful and intriguing, and the entire book The Beatrice Letters seems to be a prelude to thatpoem. We know that both Daniel Handler and Lemony Snicket are fond of poetry. My Silence Knot proves they both write it very well. Can we ever hope for a book of poetry produced by one of them?(Something not aimed at small children, I mean.)
>I have sworn off poetry, but in the past I have sworn off theater, Hollywood, memoir and books without quotation marks in them. I should probably swear off swearing.
Have you written or sketched a coherent biography of Lemony Snicketthat you drew upon to create Lemony Snicket The UnauthorizedAutobiography?
>"Sketched" is probably the best word for it, yes.
In order to make The Grim Grotto book more believable, did you need todo real-world research on the workings of ancient radars and theaction of some poisonous fungi?
>I did a great deal of research that I forgot, altered or otherwise transformed. Research leads me to digression. Thank goodness I am not a journalist.
Semblance: Upstream is a very unique idea, and it'samazing how you always want to help indie bookstores. How did yourlove for them start?
>When I was young, that was the only kind of bookstore I knew. I bought the cheapest used paperbacks with my small allowance. It was the dearest freedom I had.
Mr. Snicket is a mysterious man, how did you become hisrepresentative? Do you always Volunteer For Dreadful jobs?
>It's not quite volunteering.
On Behalf of the Whole 667 Dark Avenue Community: As "667 Dark Avenue:Answering All the Wrong Questions" reaches its 20th anniversary, which is much longer than some thought it would, and with no knowledge on how much longer it'll be around. What do you plan to write for its arbitrary?
>I think that you mean "obituary," but the substitution of "arbitrary" is more elegant than anything I could have composed for people to whom I am profoundly grateful.
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