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LEMONY FRESH LIT
from page 67
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reading, "From the library of Daniel
Handler." Why? What role does
Judaism play in your life now?
DH: Any device which can help - ensure
that loaned books will be returned to
the owner has a treasured place in any
reader's home. Due to an increasing
political conservatism in my childhood
rabbi, I haven't been attending syna-
gogue much. But I consider Judaism a
large jigsaw piece in my life's puzzle.
Off
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JN: You said in an interview that
your books come "from the great
Jewish traditions." Would you elabo-
rate?
DH: Mythmaking, recipes, close tex-
tual analysis, guilt, cautionary tales
without morals, virtue
in action rather than in
thought, well-earned
paranoia concerning
those seeking to destroy
us, the overcoming of
prejudice and false
information with wise
aplomb and an overall
belief in "The Word"
— these are all Jewish
traditions I find evident
in my own work, and
that's just off the top of
my head.
DH: "Ferocious enthusiasm?" That
sounds like the Bush administration.
Perhaps, unlike the Bush administra-
tion, my books offer an admission that
trouble cannot be permanently avoided
or definitively defeated, and that one
must behave thoughtfully in the face of
villainy to avoid becoming villainous
oneself, rather than the empty rhetori-
cal promise that the good guys always
win, which the discerning 6-year-old
knows is simply and sadly not the case.
JN: In The Bad Beginning, the
orphans make Puttanesca Sauce for
Count Olaf and his friends. It has a
slightly saltier meaning than "an
Italian sauce for pasta." Do you slip
in these allusions for
the enjoyment of the
adults who might
read your books?
DH: I did not learn of
the saucier definition of
"puttanesca sauce" until
after the publication of
The Bad Beginning,
when the owner of a
children's bookstore
told me he thought it
was hilarious. More
recently I have used a
French term that has
raised some eyebrows,
but it seems to me that
the eyebrow, like all
body parts, ought to be
exercised from time to
time.
JN: Are the
Baudelaires Jewish?
Not part of the series, "Lemony
DH: The Baudelaires
Snicket: The Unauthorized
seem to have a delicious Autobiography" has been billed
combination of wit,
as "the definitive and only
integrity and resignation book for anyone interested in
I associate, however
JN: Books seem to
learning more about the
unfairly, with Judaism.
hold the key to the
alarmingly elusive author"
Like many Jews of my
orphans' possible,
acquaintance who have
though ever elusive,
experienced atrocities, however, the
salvation. What do books mean to you?
Baudelaires prefer to rely on culture
DH: It would be impossible to be
rather than faith.
anything close to concise in describ-
ing what books mean to me. Suffice
JN: What in your past pointed to
to say that out of all the fictional
your becoming author of such a
aspects of "A Series Of Unfortunate
series? What was your favorite book
Events," the idea that what we read .
when you were 10?
can enable us to rise above if not
DH: My favorite book when I was 10
defeat the cynical, selfish and ill-read
was The Bears' Famous Invasion of
forces that seek everywhere to destroy
Sicily by Dino Buzzati, a book that
us seems the nearest to nonfiction.
my publishers are kindly bringing
back into print. That book, like many JN: Who are these books written for:
others, made me want to be a writer
children, their parents or Daniel
of interesting stories. In retrospect one Handler?
could say that this desire pointed to
DH: Do I have to choose?
my current career, but in the six years
it took me to get published, after 37
To learn more about the Lemony
rejections from publishers, it seemed
Snicket series and pose questions
to be pointing me exactly nowhere.
about it to Snicket representative
Daniel Handler, go to
JN: Why have children taken to your
www.lemonysnicket.com .
books with such ferocious enthusiasm?