The Lemony Snicket Interview
Don't Let Your Kids Know
Who He Really Is
 BY DIXIE M.
JORDAN
© COPYRIGHT 2004 BY PARENTS'
PRESS
Daniel Handler is a happy man - a witty writer, the cheerful
father of a 1-year-old son, a buoyant San Francisco native who
thinks this is a wonderful place to raise a child. He was even
a happy teenager. You just don't expect this much good humor
from the man responsible for the most gloomy, woeful, downright
depressing children's books ever to hit the best-seller list.
Handler is, of course, the alter ego of Lemony Snicket, the
mysterious and eccentric author of A Series of Unfortunate
Events, eleven books (so far) that chronicle the sorry lives
of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire. The misadventures of
the Baudelaires, orphaned in a vaguely Edwardian childhood and
victimized by the abhorrent Count Olaf, have captivated thousands
of young readers and bemused their parents, who sometimes wonder
if their kids shouldn't be reading something more upbeat.
After a series of unfortunate scheduling mishaps, Parents'
Press caught up with Handler by telephone on an appropriately
gloomy day in late September. He was in Atlanta to sign copies
of his newest book, The Grim Grotto. It was raining outside
his hotel, the aftermath of Hurricane Jeanne, now weakened to
a tropical depression. He missed his wife, illustrator Lisa Brown,
and their son, Otto.
"They accompanied me on most of this book trip,"
Handler told Parents' Press. "They just went home a couple
of days ago. This is the longest I've been away from them since
Otto was born."
The book tour itself was made difficult by the logistics of
bringing the baby along: "It all seemed endlessly complicated.
It used to be that we could just throw things in a backpack."
Nonetheless, Handler was - you guessed it - cheerful. So why
does a happy guy like this write books called The Miserable
Mill and The Vile Village?
"All children's authors write the book they wish they'd
had as children themselves," Handler said.
"As a kid, the sadder and grimmer a book was, the better.
I didn't want to read about sports. I loved books about wandering
on the moors, or about a gypsy at the side of the road . . .
.
"I always loved reading Gothic novels. Of course, I didn't
read them as a young child, but I moved toward them as I got
older."
So when a very persistent editor urged Handler to write for
children, he proposed a kind of take-off on Gothic tales.
"My first novel, The Basic Eight, was set in a
high school, although it was written for adults," Handler
said. "Editors at some publishing houses asked if I'd write
for young people instead of about them. I thought it was a terrible
idea. Nobody would want to publish the kind of children's books
I'd write."
One editor just wouldn't give up.
"I met her at a bar I didn't want to take up her
work time, because I thought we would agree that my idea was
terrible," he continued. "But she liked it, and called
the next day and said, "I'm sober now, and I still like
your idea."
The rest, as they say, is children's chapter-book publishing
history. The Bad Beginning showed up on The New York
Times best-seller list soon after its publication by HarperCollins
in 1999, followed by ten sequels. A movie based on the first
three books, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events,
will be released in mid-December; it stars Jim Carrey, Meryl
Streep, and Jude Law.  Lemony
Snicket himself has become a shadowy cult figure, never seen
but "represented" by Handler at book readings and other
public appearances.
Meanwhile, writing under his own name, Handler has published
another novel for adults, Watch Your Mouth. A third, tentatively
titled Adverbs, is coming out next year. "It's a
book in favor of love," he said. "A controversial stance
these days, but I'm strong enough to handle it!" He also
wrote the script for Rick, which debuted at the 2003 Toronto
Film Festival and opened for a limited run before going to video
under the Sundance Channel's auspices. It, too, is for an adult
audience.
He even overcame the major hurdle of persuading his wife,
raised in Connecticut and working as a magazine designer in New
York City, to move to his hometown.
"I did a very aggressive marketing campaign," he
admitted. "I'd take her to the best restaurant I knew and
pretend it was only one of 17,000 restaurants like it in San
Francisco."
It's enough to make almost anyone happy. But Handler pretty
much started out that way, cheerfully attending Commodore Sloat
Elementary, Herbert Hoover Middle School, and Lowell High, all
in San Francisco.
"I loved going to Lowell - I seem to be one of the few
writers who had friends in high school," he said. "I
went to Wesleyan [University in Connecticut] and loved it. But
Lowell is a somewhat peculiar environment, and so is Wesleyan
- they're not right for everyone."
Will the Baudelaire children eventually find happiness as
well? Handler plans only two more books in the Lemony Snicket
series ("Thirteen books seems like a nice number. Each book
has 13 chapters, so 169 chapters total, that's a nice number,
too."), and he will merely hint at the final ending.
"Happiness is a comparative term," he said, "so
the ending you imagine is happier than some [possible endings],
less happy than others."
Dixie M. Jordan is the publisher of
Parents' Press.
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On Raising
Otto
"My wife and I were both
self-employed [when Otto was born Oct. 29, 2003]. We talked to
our bosses - ourselves - and were able to do nothing except be
with Otto for the first three months of his life.
"If being the parents
of a 2-month-old can ever be easy, we had it very easy. It must
be very hard for people working in offices."
It helped, Handler noted, that
Otto was "a good sleeper."
Overall, Handler hopes his
son will have a San Francisco childhood similar to his own.
"My wife and I were raised
in fairly traditional Jewish households," he said, and that's
how they expect to raise their son.
Do the Handlers plan to have
more children?
"We promised ourselves
not to even think about it until Otto was a year old."
On Dining (& Drinking)
Favorite S.F. restaurant
LuLu's, 816 Folsom St.
Favorite Mission District taqueria: Puerto Alegre, 546 Valencia.
Where San Francisco outshines
Manhattan
"You can't get good Mexican
food anywhere except California - and Mexico, of course. In New
York, you have 'Mexican' restaurants run by Puerto Ricans."
On plans for son Otto's
first birthday
"There's a bar near our
house that lets babies in. We'll probably invite everybody to
join us there. Oops, that's the second time I've mentioned bars,
isn't it? I hope people don't picture me the wrong way"
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