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.

 

 

First, They Must Lose Their Parents

Why Kids Love Stories that Make Them Spook and Squirm

 

 Sabrina sees her parents in the mirror: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

 

I have often noticed that there is an uncanny pattern to be traced throughout the course of children's literature: the most popular children's tales are the dark ones. 

  

Even if they do frighten them, it really does seem that children like to read them. There is something about spooky stories that fascinates them. Stories like these are far darker than the fairy tale versions we'd like to imagine. Some adults even go so far as to forbid their children from reading them. Whether or not there is any real danger to stories about monsters and evil is yet to be proven. What is revealed here instead is that adults seem to fear these literary monstrosities more than their children. Evidently, these are not the books they'd have their child read for fear of what lies inside of them. Doubtlessly, in their mind children's books should be far lighter and fluffier than they are in reality. One might say this is a fairy tale version of the truth.

 

The irony in all this is, of course, that fairy tales have always been dark. Some of us have just forgotten.

 

 The Wolf Shows its Face: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

This phenomenon goes back to the wildly popular fairy tales once collected by the Brothers Grimm. Yet modern children's literature continues to follow in these dark footsteps. A Series of Unfortunate Events will not stop reminding us that it is a sinister and unhappy tale; Roald Dahl, the most popular children's author of all time, is full of the macabre and the disconcerting. But it doesn't end there. Stories like Neil Gaiman's Coraline are horrific enough to alarm adults. Gaiman himself claimed that it is the "strangest thing" he had ever written. He wrote that,

"It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares."

 

An adult may puzzle over this. Indeed, a strange change comes over the mind of the practical adult when they find out that most children prefer tales about monsters and evil as opposed to books containing more comfortable and childlike ideas. I myself read these dark tales as a child, and I read them still, for they fascinate me to no end. Though the things that interest me about them now are not the things I liked about them as a child. Indeed, I never realized them then. I loved them because they were about adventure, because they thrilled me, and sometimes made me squirm. 

 

 

 The Jabberwocky: The Problem Child.

 

I believe it was in part these books that inspired in me a desire to free myself of my parents. It seems like a harsh or even humorous thing to say. Yet just how far a child dares go when they run away from home varies (it usually is a matter of blocks, but some are bolder than others). The steps halt and the tears come when a child runs to the extent of their desire to be parent-less and realizes that the big, frightful and altogether unfamiliar world is somewhere outside their door.

But, of course, this never happens to the children in the stories. Red Riding Hood does not turn around when she runs into the wolf, and despite what the rational adult would have her do, none can deny that at least Red Riding Hoods exertion into the deep dark woods and away from her mother made for a good story.

 

 The Deep Dark Wood: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

  Little Red Riding Hood meets the Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

It remains a rather obvious truth that even children's tales without monsters are usually about orphans, and, if they are not orphans, the protagonist's parents have been lost somehow. This tradition began with our first tales about children; classics like David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn all feature children that are somehow parent-less, whether their parents are deceased or simply too incompetent to provide care. 

But, though the villain's face may change from one tale to another, as does the perpetrator that took their parents away, when it comes to children's stories, the adventure almost always begins the same way: First, the child must lose their parents, then the journey begins. 

 

 

Orphans: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

Alone in the World: The Wide Window.

 

By removing the children's guardian, they are cut loose into the world, sent adrift into trial and adversary, sometimes even into horror, all of which they will have to deal with on their own. Thus, Alice's mother does not seek her in the Looking Glass, Red Riding Hood goes into the woods alone, Coraline's parents do not crawl through the little door after her. 

Of course, no child would adamantly wish this fate upon themselves (I hope). Nevertheless, orphan-hood is romanticized, not so much because it is desired, but because it makes for a good story. If the child is parent-less, they must make their own way, find their own place. If there are monsters under their bed, there are no parents to check for them; they must take a peak themselves. If a scoundrel is after their fortune, they must outsmart him alone. If their house is being invaded by monsters, they must fight them off without adult aid. 

Thus, adventure becomes inevitable. 

Herein lies, I believe, the true appeal to the mind of a child. It lies between the motherless child and the monster, for it is here that the book reveals in full the idea that resonates so with the young mind that reads it: it reveals that the child can be capable, courageous, even heroic.

Inevitably, it was in books like these that I myself met many villains and faced many monsters. Yet, though I admit I was not always a particularly brave child, they never frightened me. Indeed, the only time these books kept me up at night was when I was busy reading them. 

Thinking back now, the only time the dark of my childhood bedroom ever scared me was when the book lay on my nightstand, still unfinished. It was then that the dark felt like the unknown pages of a still unread book, a book left stagnant amidst trial, still without an ending. It was questions like will May Bird ever make it back to the world of the living that kept me awake at night. 

 The Dark Unknown Pond: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

Ironically, my parents didn't let me finish that book, and I regret it still. I wonder sometimes how that book ends, for I never finished it. My parents forbidding was more frightening than the book itself, for it had not yet occurred to me that the ideas within a book could be dangerous, and the unknown sources of that danger scared me more than any book ever could.

At the end of the day, the truth is that any fear I might have felt was conquered when the children I was reading about conquered their monsters, be it the Other Mother, or the boogeyman.

 The Other Mother's Face: Coraline.

 

Much could be said about how adults and children experience horror differently. Even more could be written about how adults and children experience books differently. (I myself have written a great deal on this topic here on this blog.)

Yet perhaps the most fundamental question is this: What makes these creepy children's books so popular with kids? Why do kiddies like to squirm?

 

I believe, at its core, this question has a simple explanation.

 

Kids like books that are frightful because the world to them is frightful. Not only this, books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Coraline put its child characters in the face of the frightful and yet they still feature them as heroes. Even when misfortune strikes or the monsters come knocking, these books suggest that the children stand a fighting chance. 

 

 Snatched: The Inside Story.

I have seen the following quotation attributed to many writers. But I know Gaiman was at least paraphrasing one of them (probably Chesterton) when he wrote that:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

 

The same is true for monsters, for Other-Mothers, and for sinister and selfish adults.

Every child will at one point face the real adversaries and true horrors around them (hopefully not to the same dramatic extent as these fictional children). 

But be it Gaiman, Chesterton, or Lewis to whom we attribute this idea, at one point or another, they all may have spoken truly when they said that there is a fundamental truth to fairy tales; not just because they teach that monsters (or dragons) can be beaten, but because they teach that the world is dark and full of evil. Brace yourself child, there are monsters out there, these tales say.

 

 The Tyrannical Editor: The Inside Story.

Yet, at the end of the day, that is not why I believe children read them. As much as monsters fascinate and entice the minds of children, the idea that truly captures their imagination is the image these books give them of themselves. This is their most important message: that, though the world is evil, they don't have to be. Thus, our child-heroes face cruelty and trial with courage, kindness, and a good heart.

As to why this scares the adult mind more than the child's... Well, the simple answer is this: The world is big and frightful, and there are monsters in it.

But perhaps it takes a child's imagination to believe and know that they could have what it takes to conquer it, or, at the least, not to let it conquer them.

      Into the Unknown World: The Bad Beginning.

If the world has you feeling anxious or even a bit frightened, I dare you to read a children's book. Revisit Narnia or Wonderland, crawl through the little door, run from the man with a uni-brow, unravel the conspiracy of the Scarlet Hand, rescue your kidnapped parents. If you're like me and you've read these books before, you already know what you'll find there. The unknown can no longer frighten you. 

Indeed, you will find that these books have something new to tell you, something that you probably never fully realized when you were a child: Nothing inspires bravery in such a fundamentally simple way as a book written for children.

As C.S. Lewis said,

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” 

~C.S. Lewis