Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography

Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography
© 2002 Daniel Handler
213 pages (containing "an overall feeling of doom", according to the index.)

As the official representative of Lemony Snicket in all legal, literary, and social matters, I am often asked difficult questions, even when I am in a hurry. Recently the most common questions have been the following:

1. Will you please get out of my way?
2. Where did Lemony Snicket's Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography come from? (p. ix.)

This is, I think, the oddest book I've ever read. Last summer I enjoyed The Series of Unfortunate Events immensely for its eccentric humor and mystery, so I eagerly dove into this. The Unauthorized Autobiography is a strange collection of documents that pertain to the events and people of the Unfortunate Events series. Snicket apparently passed it on -- heavily edited -- to ensure the safety of the Baudelaire children. The documents contained within -- letters, play transcripts, black and white photographs,  memos, panicked slips of paper, official V.F.D. pamphlets, and the like -- typically connect with the series as a whole, although some portions, photographs particularly, do not. (One photograph is titled "Total Strangers", and another "This is not where the Baudelaire parents are buried".)

The book as a whole is apparently intended to tantalize readers by helping them figure out answers to some questions about the series, but it was published before the fulfillment of the series. I've read the series, and so have already figured out the answers, so that portion of the book was lost on me. I enjoyed the author's eccentric sense of humor and tidbits that revealed more about the Unfortunate Events universe, but I must confess to being a bit disappointed overall. Having read the last four books of the series may have spoiled this mid-series tease for me.

Perhaps the oddest part of the book: one of V.F.D's pass phrases is from the Ramona Quimby books by Beverly Cleary. Cleary was my first "favorite author" as a child, and I adored her Henry Huggins and Romana Quimby books.

Revenge of the Sith

Revenge of the Sith
© 2005: Screenplay, George Lucas; novelization, Matthew Stover.
419 pages

Blade to blade, they were identical. After thousands of hours in lightsaber sparring, they knew each other better than brothers, more intimately than lovers; they were complimentary halves of a single warrior. In every exchange, Obi-Wan gave ground. It was his way. And he knew that to strike Anakin down would be to burn his own heart to ash. (397)

An article on TvTropes convinced me to read the novelization of Revenge of the Sith, primarily because     it mentioned that Stover remedied my primary gripe with the movie, the way it turned Padme Amidala into a two-dimensional prop for Anakin whose only function seemed to be crying and wringing her hands in helplessness. Happily, I was not mislead here, for Revenge may be one of the better Star Wars works I've yet read.

Revenge of the Sith is the last of the prequel movies, depicting the downfall of the Galactic Republic and the fall of Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side. Skywalker is the hero of the hour, a lifetime prodigy whose exploits are known far and wide. He and his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi  have served the Republic tirelessly throughout the Clone Wars, but political stresses tug them apart. The Jedi council has grown concerned over the increasing amount of power invested in the Supreme Chancellor, and doubly wary given the Chancellor’s strong connection to young Anakin, who -- while powerful, brave, and fiercely loyal -- possesses fear and pride in abundance. While the Republic struggles to bring an end to the civil war which has so undermined its foundations, the JedI attempt to defend the integrity of both the Republic and Anakin. In the shadows, the Dark Lord of the Sith pulls the strings and anticipates his greatest triumph: unlimited and unquestioned mastery over the galaxy and its citizens.

What Stover adds to this is not just a few extra scenes that tie up loose ends, but passages that give the players involved in this great tragedy emotional depth, depth that explains and possibly even redeems some of the film’s weaker portions. Stover occasionally breaks from the usual third-person past-tense narration to focus on a character in the second tense, bringing the reader inside a character’s head. This approach handled character exposition well, and proved to be efficient in tackling Order 66.  The added character depth allows Stover to create more believable tension between Anakin and the main characters, particularly Obi-Wan and Amidala, the latter of whom is active throughout the book in an attempt to restore the Constitution to its pre-Palpatine form: Palpatine regards the 2,000 senators who join her cause as traitors, and links them with the alleged attempt on the part of the Jedi to overthrow the republic and place it under their rule. Thus, Anakin’s hostility toward Padme and Obi-Wan arriving on Mustafar together at the end of the movie has greater significance.  Although this a dark book, Stover adds in surprising and sometimes odd amounts of humor: Anakin starts throwing out snaky one-liners as soon as he steps foot on Mustfar and doesn’t quit until the last  of the separatists are dead.  Curiously, he underplays some of the more dramatic moments in the movie, particularly Anakin's wail of unbelief when the Emperor tells him of Padme's death.

Revenge of the Sith  made for a great read even though I’m so familiar with the movie. It added depth and humor to the original screenplay,  maintaining a strong stride until Mustafar. I can easily recommend it to Star Wars readers.

Related:

• Shatterpoint, by the same author -- to my surprise.I struggled through Shatterpoint, but Revenge was a breeze.
• Dark Lord: the Rise of Darth Vader, by James Luceno. I've read this and enjoyed it, although since it's been so long (before I started this blog, even), I can't remember too many details. The novel is set immediately after Revenge of the Sith and focuses on Anakin as he grows accustomed to his new role as Darth Vader.

This Week at the Library (26/5)

This week at the library....

I read North Korea: Another Country, a work which intended to show how North Korea's history shaped its current path as a militant  and isolationist state. Cumings drew from Korean culture and the state's early experience with its neighbors. While I think he conveyed his essential meaning, the book seems a bit scattered.

I next read The Life of Birds, one of David Attenborough's nature works. Fascinating as always.

Lord Hornblower delighted me: I think it one of the better Hornblower novels. Set during the last months of the Napoleonic wars, we see Hornblower at his best in helping bring down the bloody Corsican.

I also finished George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, an account of his time living in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War when it functioned almost as a commune. He also records his time spent fighting in a local militia, although he saw little action. The book is most valuable to the modern reader for the light it sheds on Spanish politics of the day.

Pick of the Week: Oh...let's say both Hornblower and Catalonia.

Selected Passages:
As we went out he stepped across the room and gripped my hand very hard. Queer, the affection you can feel for a stranger! It was though his spirit and mine had momentarily succeeded in bridging the gulf of language and tradition and meeting in utter intimacy.  (Orwell, describing his first meeting with a fellow International, this one an Italian expatriate. P. 3-4)

When one came straight from England the aspect of Barcelona was something startling and overwhelming. It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.[...] Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to act as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. (Orwell, describing Barcelona in the hands of the workers. P. 4-6)

It seemed dreadful that the defenders of the Republic should be this mob of ragged children carrying worn-out rifles which they did not know how to use. I remember wondering what would happen if a Fascist aeroplane passed our way -- whether the airman would even bother to dive down and give us a burst from his machine-gun. Surely even from the air he could see we were not real soldiers? (Orwell, reflecting on the unpreparedness of Spain for the war. P. 19)

George Kopp, on his periodic tours of inspection, was quite frank with us. "This is not a war," he used to say, "It is a comic opera with an occasional death." (Orwell, p. 32, reflecting on the stagnation of the war on their front.)

Upcoming Reads:

• Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Matthew Stover. I picked this up because it's supposed to be better than the movie itself. Considering that I finished it only hours after cracking it open for the first time, I'd say the reputation is merited...
• Lemony Snicket: the Unauthorized Autobiography, Daniel Handler.  Reading through the series of unfortunate events last summer was a real treat.
• Africa: a Biography of the Continent, John Reader. I'll be trekking through Africa for a good while, I think. It's a right monster of a book. 

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia
© 1952 George Orwell
232 pages

On 17 July 1936, conservative and reactionary forces inside Spain opted to seize power by force, rather than allow the Popular Front government -- an increasingly liberal, democratic, and progressive entity that undermined Spain's vaunted traditions of feudalism  and religious tyranny -- to continue to set the nation's course. The result: civil war. The resulting war seemed to be two wars in once: a defense on the part of Spain's middle-class liberals to maintain their established rights, and a revolution on the part of the working class to assert their own rights. In Catalonia, for instance, workers seized control of various businesses and utilities, establishing communes which they intended to defend with local militias. Remarkably, Spain's liberals, socialists, anarchists, and other progressives did not fight alone: people from western Europe and the United States came to the defense of Spain's republic: entire brigades were formed of these volunteers.

Emma Goldman's account of these communes and of the international brigades enraptured me when I read of them for the first time, and fueled entirely my interest in the Spanish Civil War. As a humanist, nothing inspires me more than the idea of people putting aside their tribalism and breaking bread together in the common cause of civilization. Thus I eagerly anticipated George Orwell's account of his time in the International brigades, specifically in the Workers for Marxist Unification militia. There were many such militias, for each union and political party seemed to have its own.

Readers who pick up Homage expecting a war memoir will be disappointed, for Orwell experienced little in the way of action aside from nighttime patrols and one raid. The first third of the book details how poorly-equipped the Republic and unions were for a conflict: training for the Internationals was nonexistent, and weapons were badly dated. Some were scarcely worth more than clubs, and more dangerous to the user than the target. Orwell's own exit from the war came about when a malfunctioning weapon sent a bullet through his next.

After his one-time raid, Orwell's troops are sent to Barcelona where politics dominates. Through his eyes, we see the increasing marginalization of socialists and anarchists in favor of the Stalin-backed Communists, who gain influence in the government and consolidate power. During Orwell's time in Barcelona, government troops attack union-held sections of town, leading to intermittent street fighting. Orwell addresses the broader implications of the Communist party's role in Spain's future in the next chapter, seeing as little than the hired men of Stalin and Russia. Eventually the Communists achieve primacy, declaring unions and parties associated with the anarcho-socialist revolutionaries illegal. Orwell must subsequently beat a hasty escape from the land he came to fight for.

Homage to Catalonia was certainty worth my while, giving me a firmer handle on this period I'm increasingly interested in. I enjoyed Orwell's voice as a writer: frank, honest, passionate, but ever humane. In spite of the treatment he received at the hands of Government guards, the text bears them no ill will. There is no bitterness here, only a sigh of disappointment that the cherished ideal did not withstand. I recommend it, and plan on reading more in this area as I can.

Related:

• Emma Goldman's Red Emma Speaks. 

Lord Hornblower

Lord Hornblower
© 1946 C.S. Forester
318 pages

      The year is 1814, and Sir Horatio Hornblower, commodore in his Britannic Majesty’s Royal Navy, has been sent to the coast of France on a secret mission. The crew of the gunship Flame have rebelled against their abusive captain and are offering their ship to Napoleon in return for amnesty and a new start. This cannot be tolerated: mutiny is intolerable even when justified, but treason?  Hornblower must somehow capture a ship of men who know they are damned if they surrender to him, and so before they make good on their threat to humiliate Britain by delivering Flame to France.

One thing leads to another, and a book about mutiny becomes the story of French political intrigue during the last months of the Napoleonic wars: a captured French noble approaches Hornblower and suggests that if the two of them work together to capture one of France’s nearby port city, they may be able to liberate northern France from Napoleon’s rule and do their part to send the naughty Corsican back to the hell that spawned him. This potential rebellion, unlike the similar Anglo-French Royalist effort in “Frogs and Lobsters”, stands a good chance of succeeding: Napoleon’s armies are pressed from all directions by the Austrians, Prussians, and Anglo-Spanish forces in Iberia.

And so Hornblower is thrust into the land war in France, participating in Napoleon’s defeat. While his wife Barbara helps host the Congress of Vienna, he travels to the interior of France to drink with old friends to the honor of other friends who did not survive the great conflict. When Napoleon escapes from Elba and makes France his once more, Hornblower -- who has had a long-standing price on his head by Napoleon’s men -- must flee for his life through the countryside, facing mounting peril.

Lord Hornblower is easily one of Forester’s better Hornblower works for me:  the adventure took me completely, and the many plot twists kept my on my heels, wondering where Forester would take me next -- and what he might do, for the gloves were off in this book.  I half-expected the book to end with Hornblower facing a firing squad. Lord Hornblower would be a fitting end to the series if Forester had written them in chronological order, given that it finally ends the long war with France that began with the Revolution in Midshipman Hornblower and ties up loose ends with various characters. The book was also published in 1946, and I can't help but wonder if the characters' manifest joy at the end of the war -- and their horror when Napoleon escapes to begin it anew -- are the result of Forester's own relief that the destruction during his own day in Europe had finally ended.



Inside cover art: click for full-sized image.

I have two more Hornblower books to enjoy, but I suspect compared to this they're going to feel anticlimactic.

Teaser Tuesday (25/5)

It's Teesday Tuese!

Or...something. From ShouldBeReading.

The sermon was still going on, and  Hornblower feared that when it was finished there would be some more singing, more of those high-pitched noises from the surpliced choir boys which would distress him painfully again, more painfully than the sermon or the oaken stall. This was the price he had to pay for having a ribbon and star to wear, for being a Knight of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath; as he was known to be on sick-leave in England -- and fully convalescent -- he could not possibly evade attendance at this, the most important ceremonial of the Order.

C.S. Forester, Lord Hornblower. (p. 3-4) Poor Hornblower is tone-deaf.

The Life of Birds

The Life of Birds
© 1998 Sir David Attenborough
320 pages

As I drove home from the library last week, I watched a beautiful white bird soar above the highway for several minutes. As it passed close by overhead, I thought to myself that the swan looked fatigued and wondered why it did not stop to rest along side the road.  A few days later, I read in this that swans are such large and ungainly birds that they cannot easily land: if they attempt to taper off their speed, they lose momentum completely and plummet awkwardly to the earth. Their most effective recourse is to crash-land  into water.

 I’ve been enjoying David Attenborough’s series of books based on his nature documentaries, and The Life of Birds continues that pattern. Life of Birds has more substance than the previous works in this series, but retains the same essential approach. After a chapter on the evolution of birds and flight, Attenborough dedicates separate chapters to feeding, communication, mating, nesting, parenting, and adaptation. The last chapter focuses on how birds have adjusted to living inside human cities. Pictures are abundant, if not as ubiquitous as in previous works, and are impressively beautiful and grotesque.

As always, if you are fascinated by the natural world you'll enjoy this book, for it abounds in interesting and often awe-inducing information.

The Quetzal bird, giving new meaning to the significance of Quetzalcoatl. 

Some birds swallow snakes whole, then return to their nest and try to throw them up -- whole. Usually the head or tail of the snake will emerge first, and the chicks will grab hold of it...and tug it out of their parent's stomach. 

And speaking of chicks: this is a cuckoo hatchling, demonstrating why if there is a sentient being that designed the laws of nature, it's a sadistic SOB. Cuckoo females plant their eggs in the nest of other birds. The cuckoo egg hatches first, then casually throws the other eggs out of the nest. The nest-mother, not knowing this chick isn't her own, dedicates her time and energy to feeding the intruder.