“…the trick to preparing a boiled egg is to remember that you will die.”
-Poison for Breakfast, Lemony Snicket
What’s that line from Hamilton…? “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory.” It’s true I think about death a lot, in my happiness and in my sadness. Happiness because, to quote one of my favorite books, “[Mortality is] one of the reasons we enjoy celebrating, right? To enjoy the moment because there are only so many of them,” and in sadness, because, well… there are only so many moments, period. I’ve surrounded myself, a little, with people who think the same. My best friend’s a mortician, and another of my friends and I originally bonded over our shared existential dread. The latter has made me two gifts: a cross stitch of “Valar Morghulis,” (“All Men Must Die”), and a skull-themed bookmark given to me recently for Christmas.
The first book it’s been used with fitted it perfectly: Lemony Snicket’s Poison for Breakfast, which early on proclaims:
“I did not want to die, of course. You are probably not looking forward to your own death either… You have probably tried to imagine it before, as I have, closing your eyes and lying still, the way you might imagine a food you’ve never eaten when you see it on a menu. But we do not know what it really tastes like.”
Snicket (he does not like being called by his first name) does not want to die in this specific instance because he discovers a note that informs him that he has eaten poison for breakfast (roll credits). What follows is, paraphrasing his own description, a philosophy book disguised as a murder-mystery, as Snicket begins a crosstown search for the source of the note and the poison while reflecting primarily on death, words, and literature. It is written in his classic style, something which I have already professed great love for: darkly humorous, unfailingly inquisitive, and profoundly touching. It sits already as a contender for one of the most important books early into 2022.
That Snicket loves words is by no means a new observation. From his continuously reflective definitions (“’Eccentric’ is a word which here means ‘so unusual that people in the village thought the woman might be a witch.”), to this analysis of names and their meanings:
“It has never interested me much to learn the names of different birds, because, of course, you are not really learning their names at all, just names we call them. When a person tells you their name, they are telling you what they want to be called, but a goose or a sparrow, for instance, would likely be confused if they learned we were calling them these things. ‘Red-breasted robin?” a red-breasted robin might repeat in astonishment. ‘That’s not my name. And why are you focusing on my breast? That’s inappropriate.’”
I think it’s more than clear. The sense of playfulness with which he engages with words adds to a totally enthralling reading experience. He snips and jabs at established norms of how we use language, noting how often compliments resemble insults, how supermarket promises of being here for you 24/365 are existentially disturbing, how there really are only two kinds of stories, or maybe only one. He also remains exquisitely funny, pointing out how his illustrator marks a point on a diagram with an apple because she was hungry and another with a strange shadowy figure because she is suspicious, obsessing over the letters on the doors to his favorite incomparable (another dangerous word) tea shop, or his frequent numbered lists with such gems as, “1. Egad! 2. There’s no use thinking egad, Snicket. Remain calm.”
All his love of words coalesces around the sheer passion Snicket shows for literature, two of the main focuses of Poison for Breakfast, going so far as to proclaim literature:
“…a word which conveys respect and admiration and hope. The respect is for the words themselves and the power that even a simple word- the word ‘poison’ for example- can carry. The admiration is for how the authors put words together, in books you love the most. And the hope is that these sorts of words and that these sorts of authors will continue to be read as time goes by.”
For all lovers of literature, there is real weight in everything that Snicket has to say on the matter. Through his wanderings and examinations of the characters (not too meta for anyone, I promise), Snicket ponders and pontificates on how books help authors become haunting, happy ghosts, how the variety of books and people leads to constant examinations of values and importance, how the seeds of books are planted in the smallest and most unexpected of places. He comments not only on the nature of stories and their roots, but the impact and the legacy they leave behind. Early on he admires another author’s description of the sea as “all a case of knives,” and how dwelling on that passage, which worked so perfectly he is saddened for not having thought of it before (how we all experience that feeling upon reading something so perfectly written), reminds him, “…why a favorite books feels like an old friend and a new acquaintance at the same time, and the reason a favorite author can be familiar figure and a mysterious stranger all at once.”
But as all books of philosophy must, as Snicket himself admits, Poison for Breakfast turns to death wherever it looks. Maybe that’s because through the book, Snicket is grappling with the suddenly very real mortality brought on by eating, well, poison for breakfast. The stranger who taught him about stories being the same is dead. The authors of some of his favorite books are dead. Death is as he says, something shared amongst most of humanity. Even the way Snicket prepares his eggs relates to death, because what are we all if not eggs boiling in a pot removed by the slotted spoon of death at our selected time? We do not know when our finest hours will be, what impact or legacy we leave behind, or just when and where we may ourselves eat poison for breakfast.
At its heart, Poison for Breakfast is as much about the importance of the depths of experience that come with acknowledging the inevitability of death as it is about death itself. It is a story of perseverance and living as much as it is a murder-mystery and a book of philosophy (the latter inevitably a book about death). It is bewildering and deep without being dense, and I feel it is everything Snicket so idolizes when he expresses a desire for us all to read mysterious, bewildering literature that turns stories into magic. Into literature. In that sense it is a triumph, though not incomparable for I know he would loath that analysis.
I do not care to spoil the mystery here, it would do the book something of a great disservice. But I will offer a moment from Snicket’s realizations, a passage where I think some of the greatest comfort and perseverance can be found (like someone sitting beside you on a bench as you cry), one that makes me think of all my closest friends and favorite books, and the reason so many of us write like we’re running of time:
‘”That is one of the great frustrations of a life spent in literature,” the librarian said ruefully, gesturing to the books which were surrounding us. “Countless writers express countless ideas on so many bits of paper, and at some unknown moment some specific book, even some specific sentence, will be the right one for the right person. We never know when some scrap of literature will have its finest hour.’
“’So what do we do?’” I asked, as countless readers have asked one another.
“’We keep reading,” the librarian said firmly, “and it might just be our turn to triumph.’”