Lemony Snicket

Lemony Snicket is the fictional author and narrator of the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, actually written by Daniel Handler. Handler has also written two other stories under this pen-name, a children's comic and a holiday short story.

Snicket often writes comments of his own life in the books, mostly relating the fact he is in peril or on the run. He is in love with a mysterious woman Beatrice, of whom there is very little further evidence. Both Beatrice and Snicket served at one time as members of V.F.D. Snicket was once engaged to Beatrice, however she was carried away by a large hawk, since then, he dedicates all the books to her with statements such as "When we were together, I felt breathless. Now you are." This sort of sarcastic humour is his normal writing style throughout the books. He has two siblings, a brother, Jacques Snicket (who dies in The Vile Village) and a sister, Kit Snicket who is last seen taking Violet, Klaus, and Sunny away in a black cab at the end of book the eleventh: The Grim Grotto).

Handler originally came up with "Lemony Snicket" as a pseudonym to use rather than placing his real name on the mailing lists of several right-wing organizations he was researching for one of his novels. It became something of an in-joke with his friends, who were known to order pizzas under the name. When he found himself writing a series of children's books, he decided to use the Snicket name to add an air of mystery to proceedings; Lemony Snicket is an elusive figure. Handler has a considerable amount of fun with the Snicket character in the author biography sections of the books, in a page at the end of every book where Snicket makes complicated arrangements for the delivery of the manuscript of the next book to his publisher, on the Lemony Snicket website and in Snicket's Unauthorized Autobiography (The U.S. hardcover edition of this book has a reversible dust jacket so that it can be "disguised" as The Luckiest Kids in the World Book 1!: The Pony Party by "Loney M. Setnick," which is an anagram of "Lemony Snicket.").

He is described, among other things, as having been born beside the sea and now living underneath it, as a distinguished scholar, and as having been stripped of the Honorable Mention and the Grey Ribbon. Photographs of Snicket are shown, but are always taken from behind, except that in The Unauthorized Autobiography there is a photograph of the crew of a ship (whose names all seem to be those of famous authors), with a caption indicating that Snicket is in the photo, but the face of the sailor said to be Snicket has been mysteriously torn from the photograph. He sometimes claims to be writing the book in various perilous situations, such as an Italian restaurant which is slowly filling with water.

Additionally, about once per book, Snicket provides the reader with a glimpse of his life. We know that he:

• plays the accordion
• has been chased by an angry mob for 16 miles
• had an unhappy love affair with a woman called Beatrice, who even wrote a book (200 pages) explaining why it was impossible for her to marry him
• attended a costume ball dressed as a bullfighter, to gain access to his beloved Beatrice, who was dressed as a dragonfly
• once had a sword-fight with a television repairman
• once had a curse put on him by a fortune-teller after he accidentally broke her crystal ball after being tripped by a policeman
• learned how to make a salad from his sister

To fill time at the end of the first audio book, read by Tim Curry, there is an interview which is supposed to be with "Mr. Snicket" but apparently he is not home, and the interview proceeds with "Mr. Handler," who confuses himself with his "employer" throughout the interview. To avoid answering any tough questions, Handler invokes a psychological device by which the response to a query can be so horrible that it seems to the listener as if it was not given at all.

A commentary track entitled "Brad Silberling and the real Lemony Snicket Commentary" was recorded for the DVD released on 26 April 2005. Brad Silberling is the movie's director, and the "real Lemony Snicket" joke is a jibe aimed at Jude Law, considered the "Imposter Lemony Snicket."

Lemony Snicket has, distinct from Handler, also written two non-Unfortunate-Events-related works. The first was the opening story of It Was a Dark and Silly Night, a volume of Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly's Little Lit series. The story begins "In this case, SILLY stands for Slightly Intelligent, Largely Laconic Yeti..." The second was a short story published in the USA Weekend magazine (a US newspaper supplement), dated December 10-12, 2004. This was a holiday story entitled "The Lump of Coal," and included two full-color illustrations by Brett Helquist (who has also illustrated all of the books in the Series of Unfortunate Events to date).

External links

• Official site