“Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I’m sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.”
Surprise!
It didn’t seem right to me to finish a series on my Top Ten Books without getting into a series. Individual books, some even parts of series themselves, are all very well and good, but to admit to being a fan of a series is, like the number of books in a series, something more. There were the obvious contenders for someone my age, some tainted by the erstwhile comments of their authors, others faded behind new series that do somethings better than the first time I read them. But I don’t know yet of a series at once as influential, unique, or significant to my reading history as A Series of Unfortunate Events. For everything it is, and isn’t, these books deserve their place as my Top Book Series.
Let us begin, therefore, with what they are not: belittling. As books written for children discussing a wide manner of dark topics, what keeps A Series of Unfortunate Events thriving and unique even on a reread years after having finished the series is the narrator’s unique ability to speak as honestly as one can in a mysterious circumstance, maintain a consistent level of humor and wisdom, and effectively communicate all manner of unfortunate events to the reader without ever once appearing to speak down to them. A lot of this is due to Lemony Snicket’s literary voice which, as frequently memed as it is today, holds up as a narrative tool for explanation through humor that holds firm in its definitions (of which there are plenty) and convictions. It is at its most beautiful in the absurd ways it translates difficult themes or words to the reader, whether they be scenario specific or general guidance for life.
Consider: “’People aren't either wicked or noble,’ the hook-handed man said. ‘They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.’”
Or: “It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that’s the end of it. But when bad news is written down, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the news again and again.”
And finally: “’Tears are curious things, for like earthquakes or puppet shows, they can occur at any time, without any warning and without any good reason.’”
There’s a feeling through most of the books of that kind of absurd humor, like laughing suddenly in the middle of bawling your eyes out, that plays off the progressively darkening (as if it can get darker than parental death (it can)) themes and plots woven through the lives of the Baudelaires. The world they live in is not quite our world, and that plays into the narrative strength of the story as well. As a child reading these books, you read with and empathize with the struggles of trying to convince adults of the things that only children notice or think about (honestly that theme carries through into adulthood as well), you learn that not everyone in authority really has your best interest at heart (or, even if they do, how powerless they themselves can be (“Mr. Poe meant well, but a jar of mustard probably also means well and would do a better job of keeping the Baudelaires out of danger.”)), and therefore how reliant you must be on your own talents and those of your friends.
“Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.”
I’ve mentioned in a few prior of these blog posts the importance of a book giving someone the language to speak about their experiences. Where A Series of Unfortunate Events succeeds, and another area in which it is constantly memed, is just how powerful its use of language is. It is also wonderfully effective at giving a growing person a sense of how to use that language, whether it be in the technically correct way to sign a marriage certificate (as Futurama would remind you: the best kind of correct), to scenario-specific but surprisingly vivid definitions of certain words and terms:
“’…the sauce simmered, a culinary term which means ‘cooked over low heat.’”
“Also, she wanted to do something known in the crime industry as ‘casing the joint.’ ‘Casing the joint’ means observing a particular location in order to formulate a plan. For instance, if you are a bank robber-although I hope you aren’t-you might go to the bank a few days before you planned to rob it. Perhaps wearing a disguise, you would look around the bank and observe security guards, cameras, and other obstacles, so you could plan how to avoid capture or death during your burglary.”
“…ostentatiously—a word which here means ‘really, really’—…”
“Ceviche is an acquired taste, a phrase which here means ‘something you don't like the first few times you eat it,…’”
This is remarkable writing, not just for the constant tongue-and-cheek tone of the definitions and the in-joke style of narration for the reader’s sake, but also for the genuinely useful ways in which language is being used to convey certain key points of the narratives throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events. It also breaks with some assumed literary conventions, from exposition dumping via definitions to breaking the narrative flow to explain things, all seamlessly blended and accomplished via a remarkable consistency in voice.
What all of this is used for, though, is something even more remarkable. As mentioned, there is a sense through A Series of Unfortunate Events of that mood found when you laugh in the middle of crying. The title, and the warnings, do speak to the may dark things that happen to the children over the course of the series, and sometimes the greatest lesson to take away is a brief, not-quite satisfying understanding that bad things happen in life. It’s a bit of a callous message in a book series written for children, but then, it’s important, too, even if it’s hard for the narrator himself to justify: “But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of ‘The Three Bears,’ for instance, is ‘Never break into someone else's house.’ The moral of ‘Snow White’ is ‘Never eat apples.’ The moral of World War One is ‘Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.’”
But there are specks of light littered throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events that, such as in life, give comfort, wealth, and wisdom to the reader. It’s part of equipping someone to deal with life, the art of finding the moments of calm in a storm or the gems in a dark cave. Life, taken in its entirety, can easily be read as a series of unfortunate events. But there are, of course, friends, and good food, and adventures, and ingenuity and passion between the heartbreak, and the loss, and the suffering, and the death. Why there should be a balance, why bad things should happen to the good and good things happen to the bad (if we can think of humanity is such binary terms, and Lemony Snicket would encourage the opposite), is a question perhaps even too large for the series.
“Perhaps it is better not to know precisely what was meant by this word, as some things are better left in the great unknown.”
If I had to remember the greatest lessons from A Series of Unfortunate Events, I think they are all centered around that and similar messages. It’s okay, and it must be endured, and we may never know it’s happening (whatever that ‘it’ is to you). But that shouldn’t stop us from living, from continuing to persevere, to solve problems, and try to make the world at least a little bit better for everyone. The random, absurd cruelty of the world and all the people in it cannot always smother the fires (is that a bad pun) inside of us.
“’I don't really understand, either,’ Fiona admitted. ‘My stepfather said that the amount of treachery in this world is enormous, and that the best we could do was one small noble thing.’”
“’I know that having a good vocabulary doesn't guarantee that I'm a good person,’” the boy said. ‘But it does mean I've read a great deal. And in my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil.’”
“’Are you ready?’ Klaus asked finally.
‘No,’ Sunny answered.
‘Me neither,’ Violet said, ‘but if we wait until we’re ready we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Let’s go.’”
