If I Only Had the Guts...

Warning! Contains SPOILERS for Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events...and, sort of, for Lord of the Rings...

Questions/Comments for Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), who will be speaking at Fresno State’s University Lecture Series tomorrow night:

1. I’ve noticed that in Book 10: The Slippery Slope, the series begins to take on a bit more of a serious and philosophical—even at times political—tone. Is it a coincidence that this is the first book of the series written after 9/11? Were you planning from the beginning for the series to take this direction, or did the events of 9/11 change the course of the plot in any way?

2. At the beginning of Book 12: The Penultimate Peril, you quote 18th/19th century economist Thomas Robert Malthus, referring to him as “one of our enemies.” What, in your opinion, did Malthus do that earned him the designation of “enemy”? Is it just that he had very different political and social views from your own? Is it your aim to encourage children to think of people who have ideas and viewpoints that differ from their own as “enemies”?

3. The hotel and its mirrored twin in The Penultimate Peril can be seen as an analogy to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Did you actually mean for us to sympathize with the Baudelaires for burning down the hotel, and therefore, by extension, to sympathize with the terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center and killed nearly 3,000 innocent people? Are you saying that the “unfortunate events” in the terrorists’ lives brought them to the point where they felt trapped and they had no choice but to react in this way? Really? Seriously?

4. I like the whole Lord of the Rings thing you’ve got going on at the end of Book 13: The End, where Count Olaf has been spared by the Baudelaires, and so he's miraculously there when he is needed to carry Kit to safety when no one else could save her. It’s really not the same as Lord of the Rings, of course, because Count Olaf is actually the source of the problems in the first place, so Kit would never have needed saving at all if it weren’t for him. But I like your story way better, so I suggest we rewrite the end of Return of the King, and they could find out that it’s actually Sauron who has to destroy the ring, and they’d be all like, “Mighty Sauron, we’re so glad our warmongering has come to an end. Now, because we controlled our powerful urge to seek violent revenge against you, you are in precisely the right place at the right time to destroy the…hey, Sauron, man, come back with that ring…”