Lemony Snicket Risked His Life So We Could Read

A few weeks ago I read Lemony Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography. I read it from the safety of my home, and other than announcing it on my goodreads account, no one knew I was reading it. Till now. 

 

Those of you familiar with the book will know that he urges you to read it in secret. "The book you are holding in your hands is extremely dangerous," he warns. "If the wrong people see you with this objectionable autobiography, the results could be disastrous." Lemony Snicket dedicated his life to the Baudelaire Case; and, although fate has not been kind to him, anyone at all invested to his work knows that it was far less kind to Mr. Snicket's brother and sister, Kit and Jacques. 

 

I do not believe this to be a case of luck, for there is almost as little of that in the life of Mr. Snicket as there is in the unfortunate lives of the Baudelaire siblings. Indeed, good fortune has nothing at all to do with it. For if Mr. Snicket is one thing, it's sneaky. 

 

He is evasive like no other, but never so much so as when standing in front of a camera, then he is slick as a shadow.  

 

To demonstrate I thought I would share a story here, a story which, I believe, will show just how sneaky and dedicated Mr. Snicket can be. 

 

 

It was well known among my colleagues that I never missed the annual used book sale event that took place in the town nearest the one where I once lived. 

Anyone that had spotted me there would also have known that I am a very thorough browser, owed in part to the help of my brothers, who are fellow readers and used book sale buyers. 

 

The strange occurrence that took place at this book sale in the year of interest was made all the stranger due to the fact that I had just been reading The Series of Unfortunate Events a few weeks prior. 

 

I do not know how Mr. Snicket knew this. But he must have heard of my own dedication to the case, not to mention my frustration at the lack of answers at the end of the 13th book, fittingly titled The End. You can imagine how pleased I was when I heard rumors that this was not really the end of the story. Other works existed, though they were rare and thus extremely hard to find.  

 

By this point I had given up all hope that I would ever learn more of the shadow of a man that lies behind the series. Even so, the dedications at the beginning of each of the novels still haunted me. They were, for me, the most heartbreaking and arresting part of the series as book by book a piece of the tragic story of Lemony Snicket's past was cast onto the grey page with poetic parlance. 

 

I desperately wanted to know more.

 

I believe it was my brother who came to me, holding up a book depicting three children on the back of a spotted horse, two girls and one boy. The sun itself smiled down at them, and the boy, a bespectacled, cheering looking lad, somehow managed to balance a frosted cake on his hand mid gallop. The book was titled something along the lines of The Luckiest Kids in the World!.

He might not have shown it to me at all, for it certainly was a trite little title, were it not for one interest aspect. I believe he put it something like this: 

 

"Look at this! Isn't this a rip-off of A Series of Unfortunate Events!" 

 

 

I told him to toss it in his bag with little more than a second thought other than that I would inspect it closer later. This book sale was so good, after all, the book was basically free.

 

You can imagine my surprise when later that same day the dust jacket was flipped and a new cover was revealed. 

I believe it was the familiar signature that gave it away in the end, for all one had to do was flip the book open and the letters LS were revealed.  

 

 

To this day I wonder what lengths Mr. Snicket had to go through to sneak the book into the sale. When I remember that day at the book sale now I see his shadow everywhere: the grey suit, the hat, his back always turned. How can I ever know for certain whether he was there? 

 

You might think me delusional. Perhaps you think I've made all this up.

Yet that is perhaps the strangest part. It's all true. Just ask my brother. 

 

It's all very perplexing, a word which here means something complicated or unaccountable, causing one to feel completely baffled, which, I believe, is just another word to describe the eternally sharp and ever sneaky Lemony Snicket. 

 

 

What ever else can be said about the occurrence, every well read child eventually learns that Lemony Snicket is a pen name, and thus only a character in the creation that bares his name. Evidently there's no way he could really have been there that day at the sale. Of course he didn't risk his life to share the story of the Baudelaire's with the public, much less did he in his fictional limits manage to smuggle his Unauthorized Autobiography into a used book sale for my brother to find.

 

It's simply more thrilling to imagine it that way. And so, no matter how often the World's Luckiest Children grin at me from that tacky cover, I know despite the irony of it all that luck had nothing at all to do with it.

 

 

Bullfrog in Love

Their song rang through the meadow all night long that first night they played. It was the meadow's serenade. The strings sang sweetly. The guitar hummed neatly, and the trumpet stole the show completely. 

And all the while, their froggy legs were atapping. Their froggy hips swayed. And between each song they played you would hear the meadower's softly clapping, their shimmering wings flapping with glee.

Had you been there that night, I'm sure you'd agree, that so lovely was their music, it made the fireflies bob in their flight. It made the owl nod to the rhythm, and the dragon flies danced as they dipped over the water.

So sweet was their chorus, and so enthusiastic their tune, that, if you had looked up into the sky, you'd have seen a smile even on the face of the moon.