Interview with Daniel Handler

As I write this, Daniel Handler has two novels on the New York Times best-seller list, one of which has been there for over three years. He’s played accordion on one of the most lavishly praised pop albums of the past decade. And a film based on his work starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, and Jude Law is currently being filmed in Los Angeles. Yet the odds are good that you’ve never heard of the man.

Handler’s first novel, The Basic Eight—a case-study in narrator unreliability that unfolds like a Beverly Hills 90210 episode scripted by Nabokov—rose to the top of my pantheon of The Best Books Ever, where it remained until it was displaced last summer by Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. (And I only I picked up the latter after reading Handler praise it in The Village Voice as “a contribution to the culture up there with Madame Bovary and Guernica and White Light/White Heat.”) His second novel, Watch Your Mouth—another unreliability-fest in the vein of Lolita or Pale Fire—is structured simultaneously as an opera and a self-help book. His third novel, Adverbs, is forthcoming this year.

Still, what pays Handler’s bills—or as he puts it, what allows him “to write full-time, in a house with a view of the sea”—is the success of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Written by Handler under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket, the Series is a set of what will eventually be thirteen gothic novels for children, including the two aforementioned best-sellers The Bad Beginning and The Slippery Slope. Witty, erudite, and entertaining—morally engaged, yet never moralistic—these novels chronicling the misadventures of the Baudelaire orphans are, for my money vastly superior to, say, Harry Potter. But while these books are truly masterpieces of their genre, sure to be read and loved by children many years from now, they are not the focus of this interview. I believe it is a mistake to pigeonhole a writer of Handler’s evident ambition and scope as a children’s author.

Daniel Handler responded to my questions via email in the late summer of 2003 from his home in San Francisco where he lives with his wife, the illustrator and graphic designer Lisa Brown.

KR: Of what does a typical day in the life of Daniel Handler consist?

DH: Waking early, scowling at the newspaper over espresso and grapefruit juice, working until late afternoon with the occasional snack, taking a walk, buying groceries, scowling at what I’ve written that day, reluctantly returning phone calls, reading and sipping a cocktail, cooking and eating dinner, watching increasingly obscure old movies rented from a very patient establishment and more reading—in that order, more or less.

KR: Please describe your educational background, highlighting particularly any specific preparations you may have undertaken to Become A Writer. Did you attend an MFA program, and if so with whom did you study? Did you find anyone especially influential? There seems to be an ongoing national debate about whether or not such programs are, in fact, worth a damn. Do you think they are?

DH: I attended Wesleyan University and studied writing with Kit Reed and the work of Vladimir Nabokov with Priscilla Meyer. All three of them had an enormous influence on me. The way to become a good writer is to write. In the years before publication I managed to find a series of measly part-time jobs which paid enough to allow me to write the rest of the time, so I never went for an advanced degree. In my experience, the most valuable thing an MFA can provide fiction writers is the time to write, if they cannot find it by another method.

KR: You stated in one interview that your first novel, The Basic Eight, was rejected 37 times before being accepted for publication. How did you persevere through those setbacks, and what prompted things to finally end well?

DH: I told myself, over and over, that the depressing tumult in which I was living would be regarded, in the rosy prism of memory, as short-lived, bohemian and even somewhat glamorous, and I was more or less right. Of course, I had the advantages of beginning my career during a recession, so every last one of my peers was also failing and flailing, and of living near a very cheap tacqueria with very strong drinks.

KR: The same interview made mention of a novel which you finished then discarded in the wake of The Basic Eight. What was that novel about and why did you discard it?

DH: The novel was a mock-gothic story entitled “A Series Of Unfortunate Events,” and the sharp-eyed reader will discern that it was not entirely discarded.

KR: “Winnie Moprah” comes in for a pretty good drubbing in The Basic Eight. What do you make of the Oprah Book Club?

DH: There is something to be said for anything that gets more people reading Toni Morrisson.

KR: Your work and interviews tend to showcase an explicit dislike of meanness, as well as an explication of how it sucks. (I especially enjoyed your piece in Slate.com about the mean and lousy ladies who work at the front door of the Aquarium at Coney Island). What can we do to fight against meanness in all its petty and nefarious forms?

DH: Against petty meanness one should strive to be as polite as possible. The recommended text is Judith Martin’s Miss Manners’ Guide To Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, which teaches you all you need to know. For the more nefarious forms of meanness, it is necessary to read up on one’s history, so that what often passes for the unfettered truth can be more properly understood, for instance, as a strategy of the Haliburton corporation.

KR: What’s your assessment of the state of social and political discourse in the United States today, and whose fault is it? Is irony our best defense against injustice and repression?

DH: The state of national politics seems so dire that there is plenty of blame to go around, although one ought to look to those who benefit most from the current situation, who are responsible for changing the world even if such people feel they’ve done nothing wrong. The best defense against injustice and repression is the truth, which should be spoken often and with aplomb. Irony is one of the most delicious parts of the truth—and of the aplomb with which it ought to be spoken.

KR: Your work to date seems to exhibit a tension between sympathetic moral engagement and an aesthetic fixation with nastiness and evil; how do you manage to encourage basic human decency in your work when faced with the fact that evil is just sexier?

DH: In my experience, evil is only sexy in fiction. A fantasy about a wicked woman throwing one down an elevator shaft may be appealing; actually being thrown down an elevator shaft is not. Much mischief in this world appears to be the result of people forgetting they are not in a gothic novel or an action movie. A public forum, such as an interview, may be a good place to remind such people: you are not in a gothic novel or an action movie.

KR: Your books tend to deal extensively with loneliness, sadness, and despair, and at the same time to be extremely funny; do you regard really serious, high-grade misery as intrinsically humorous? How do you see your association of despair and comedy working as a rhetorical device?

DH: There is something inherently funny about extreme misery, yes, as long as it is not happening to me or to anyone I know personally and like, in which case it is not funny at all, and this discrepancy seems to me one of the basic pillars of narrative thought.

KR: How do you come by your Gothic sensibility? Are you a fan of Gothic and/or decadent novels?

DH: I came by my Gothic sensibility fairly honestly, with childhood viewings of Nosferatu and teenage obsessions with Anne Radcliffe and The Cure, and I enjoy a good Wilkie Collins novel to this day.

KR: You frequently cite Haruki Murakami, Vladimir Nabokov, and Lorrie Moore among your literary influences—could you elaborate on what specifically you have gotten/stolen from their work?

DH: An open confession of my thefts seems foolhardy. One doesn’t have to read very carefully to find evidence.

KR: You’ve compared Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to Moby Dick on at least one occasion, and to Madame Bovary on at least two in terms of its significance as a contribution to the culture. Could you explain what you mean by that? Because in making such statements, you seem to assert not only that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is great and enduring, but also that it is influential and worthy of emulation. Having recently read and enjoyed the living daylights out of it, I’m still not sure what to make of it. Help?

DH: It is clear to me that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a major work of fiction, and I cannot think but that it will endure. Of course, to claim that it has the cultural influence of long-standing works of fiction is sheer foolishness. At the moment, Murakami is more of a writer’s writer—I know many, many writers who hold him in very high regard—so it is likely that his influence will become more evident in the future. As for your own experience with the book, it seems to me that simultaneously “enjoying the living daylights” of something and “not sure what to make of it” is a sign you’re in the presence of greatness. There’s nothing more disheartening than closing a book and feeling as if you’ve closed a book, if you know what I mean.

KR: I can’t help but notice what seems to be an at least mildly Francophile bent in your ouevre and interviews—your naming the Series orphans the Baudelaires, your high opinion of Madame Bovary, your mention of a desire to start a Dive Bar Proust Club, and so on—do you speak/read French? Do you consider any French authors or movements to be particularly interesting or influential?

DH: If an admiration for Madame Bovary and Charles Baudelaire makes one a Francophile I am happy to come clean, but despite additional weaknesses for French Structuralist Thinkers—I just read Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System, which is my idea of a good time—and serving a cheese course when hosting dinner parties, I don’t consider myself to be overly Francophilic. I don’t get rosy at mentions of Provence, for instance.

KR: Still, speaking of French literature, I was struck recently by the similarity of your rhetorical approach in the Series of Unfortunate Events novels—specifically compelling readers to read on by warning them not to—to that of two other works of literature: a) There’s a Monster at the End of this Book, starring Grover of Sesame Street, and b) Les Chants de Maldoror by the so-called ‘Comte de Lautreamont.’ The latter contains all sorts of similarities to A Series of Unfortunate Events, including the fictitious narrator who himself becomes a character in the story. Did you have Maldoror in mind when you began writing Series, or is Maldoror just a coincidental midpoint between the European Gothic novel and Nabokov?

DH: I didn’t read Maldoror—or the work of Grover, come to think of it—until after the first few Snicket books were published, so there was little conscious imitation, I think. The idea of narrator-as-character is about as old as story itself, although the Maldoror book is a particularly intriguing example.

KR: In the past, you’ve made the point, and rightly so, that children’s authors are frequently suspected of varying degrees of perviness. Why do you think that is?

DH: Sadly, it’s male children’s authors who are assumed to be such. I suppose it’s because that many people’s proper idea of a man’s relation to children should be distant and gruff. Female children’s authors, conversely, are assumed to be fluffy and motherly even though they may be craving a martini at the time.

KR: Does it ever bother you that A Series of Unfortunate Events has blown up so huge that you’ll inevitably be identified as Lemony Snicket first and Daniel Handler second, at least for the foreseeable future?

DH: The success of the Snicket series allows me to write full-time, in a house with a view of the sea. This is no bother at all. Besides, it’s nice to hand over my credit card and attract no notice whatsoever.

KR: What’s up with the movie adaptation anyway? Last I heard it was coming out in December of 2004—is this the case? And will there be multiple movies—one per book, perhaps?—or just one? And how involved were you in the writing of the screenplay?

DH: December 2004 is still the plan, I believe. Filming is supposed to commence this fall, from a screenplay which consists largely though not entirely of my work. As for future movies, I believe that if the first movie is a complete and utter failure, a sequel is unlikely to appear.

KR: I understand that Jim Carrey will be portraying Count Olaf in the movie adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events—can this be stopped?

DH: I believe that Mr. Carrey’s house is sequestered and well-guarded, if that’s what you’re asking me.

KR: For posterity, could you clarify the genesis of the Snicket pseudonym? I’ve read that it originated variously as a cocktail recipe, a name you used in writing letters to the editor of local papers as an undergrad, and a name you gave when requesting literature from far-right groups while researching The Basic Eight—which was first?

DH: All were more or less simultaneous—I used the name while researching The Basic Eight, and immediately it developed a prankish and peevish personality of its own in the form of cranky letters to people who might be annoyed by such things. It cannot surprise people to learn that yes, cocktails were often involved.

KR: Both of your novels for adults parody the genre of confessional memoir—what do you make of memoir as a genre? Do you think it serves a purpose, or is its cultural effect entirely pernicious?

DH: I find pernicious the assumption that a story told by its primary participant is in some way closer to the truth, and I think all of my work examines this pervasive myth. I certainly have nothing against the memoir as a genre per se, although I think it is very difficult to write about oneself, and few people do it well.

KR: You have a book of short stories forthcoming, right? What will that be like? Does it have a title yet? When will it be out? Have any of your stories been published previously?
I haven’t seen them. Can I have one?

DH: The book of stories has turned into a novel, albeit one with a somewhat scattershot structure, entitled Adverbs. A publisher, although not a firm publishing date, has been secured, and I expect that excerpts from it will be published sometime next year.

KR: What kind of measly jobs did you hold before you hit it big?

DH: Bookstore employee, cocktail pianist, cater waiter, bartender, dance accompanist, something roughly approximating a butler, Kafkaesque administrative position, radio script writer, movie reviewer, manuscript summarizer, freelance complainer.

KR: What’s your favorite cocktail?

DH: Oh dear me, this is a difficult question. I adore cocktails and used to have a weekly bridge game in which we replicated vintage cocktails from recipe books we’d picked up in used bookstores, so my opinions on good ones are rather varied. My favorite might be the Delmonico, which is gin, vermouth, brandy and bitters served up, but the H.G. Wells (bourbon, benedictine, ginger ale) and the Old Pal (bourbon, Campari, vermouth) are equally inarguable choices.

KR: Have you ever taught a class? Do you want to teach? Do you like it?

DH: I’ve taught one college course and assorted brief seminars and enjoy it very much. I would like some day to have some sort of teaching position, once the roar of the Snicket books has faded somewhat.

KR: Do you presently or have you ever at any point given any serious effort to writing poetry?

DH: I began my writing life as a poet. In college, I won an Academy of American Poets prize and “toured the circuit” as a Connecticut Student Poet until my poems grew so unwieldly and narrative that one had to admit that they were more properly categorized as “fiction.”

KR: Why have you chosen to live in San Francisco? Why not New York? Or somewhere else for that matter? Is it simply because you’re from there originally?

DH: I live in San Francisco because, as far as I can tell, it is the best place on Earth. Of course, this opinion is naturally colored by growing up there and by a general inability to learn a foreign language.

KR: I understand that you lived in New York for a while because your wife was in grad school there. What was she studying?

DH: Illustration and design, the better to become the illustrator and designer she is today.

KR: Time for the requisite Magnetic Fields question: working with Stephin Merritt—what’s that like? In the past few years, you and he (and, probably unrelatedly, Krispy Kreme Donuts) have risen to tremendous nationwide prominence—do you still have time to collaborate? And if so, how do you manage now that you’re in San Francisco and he’s in New York?

DH: Working with Mr. Merritt is a rare pleasure, all the rarer now that we are 3,000 miles away and people are interested in our work, as opposed to several years ago, when neither of us could get arrested. Nevertheless we’re trying to finish a movie musical provisionally entitled The Song From Venus.

KR: You’ve been involved with quite a few musical groups—the Magnetic Fields, the 6ths, the Edith Head Trio, and the Three Terrors, for instance—do you write songs? And if so, would you characterize them as mostly funny or mostly sad?

DH: I would characterize them as mostly lousy, but the discerning McSweeney’s subscriber may find the recording debut of my new band, Danny & The Kid. As our press release states, “Look for us in record stores—because we both visit them a lot.”

KR: How did you come by your special affinity for the accordion?

DH: In college, I wanted to join a band, but it was in the brief, strange era in the late 80s and early 90s when keyboards were not cool, so I turned in my synthesizer for an accordion and found myself in a very boring band attempting to be the Cowboy Junkies.

KR: Whom do you consider to be your chief musical influences?

DH: My participation in music is so peripheral that I hesitate to name “influences.” When I was in high school, I listened to Eurythmics’ Savage so many times that it must have influenced me, likewise in college with The Clash’s Sandinista! Nowadays I listen to Mr. Merritt’s bands, as well as lots of Saint Etienne, Sun Ra and Morton Feldman, although at this very moment I am listening to Mary Timony’s album The Golden Dove. While writing the Snicket books I often listen to Shostakovich string quartets and a long, dramatic work by Scriabin, over and over, and my new novel has plenty of pop music in it, real and imaginary.

KR: Earlier, you mentioned the importance of reminding readers that they are not actually characters in a gothic novel. All your work seems to accomplish this in part by foregrounding its structure, thereby making us constantly aware that we are in fact reading. Are you a fan of—and is your work greatly influenced by—postmodern and/or experimental literature?

DH: I am a great fan of structure and of reading, so it doesn’t surprise me that there is lots of both in my work. But—not to be cute—I don’t really understand postmodern literature as a category, as some of the authors most identified with postmodernism seem to be working within well-established traditions dating back hundreds if not thousands of years. Indeed, some of the earliest works of fiction—Beowulf, for instance—use many of the tricks cited in current authors as “experiments.” I read all sorts of authors and try to steal from all of the good ones.

KR: In what direction should contemporary fiction be headed?

DH: Off shelves and into readers’ hands.

KR: What advice, if any, do you have for other people trying to be writers?

Get a job with free access to a laser printer and copier.

KR: You write about food so well and with such affection; could you please describe your most recent meal?

DH: This is a fortuitous morning for this interview, because last night I joined some friends for a six-course tasting menu at Masa’s, one of San Francisco’s finest. If memory serves, I had cucumber consomme, tuna tartar with truffle oil and baby greens, poached lobster in some sort of cabbage, venison with foie gras and roasted beets, a cut of beef with pea shoots and vermouth, lime rind sorbet with a melon couli and a small plate of tiny homemade candies. (Just for perspective, my lunch was a slice of wheat toast and a handful of raw carrots.)

KR: Do you like to cook? What’s your most beloved dish? Would you be willing to share a favorite recipe with the readers of Redivider?

I cook constantly and improvisationally, making use of a box of organic vegetables which arrives weekly. I will try to recall something I cooked recently:

BUMBLEBEE TUNA

• Two fresh ahi tuna steaks
• Very, very cheap caviar
• Two yellow peppers
• 1 large bunch of spinach
• 1 cup rice
• 1 lemon
• 2 tsp dry mustard
• olive oil
• a loud, tuneless singing voice

1. Slice the peppers into thin strips and toss them with a very small amount of olive oil. Put them on a cookie sheet and roast them in the oven at 400 for 10 minutes, until tender. Puree them and simmer them in a small saucepan with the dry mustard.

2. Cook the rice, and put a teakettle on to boil. Rinse the spinach and put it in a colander.

3. Heat a large saucepan and throw the two ahi steaks on it. Cook them for maybe one minute, flip them, cook them for another minute.

4. When the water is boiling in teakettle, pour it over the spinach and let it drain in the colander. The spinach should look fresh but taste cooked.

5. Divide the spinach into two plates. Put the rice on top. Put the tuna steaks on top of that, and stripe each steak with the pepper mixture and the caviar, creating black and white stripes.

6. Serve immediately while singing the song from the old Bumblebee Tuna ads (“Yum yum bumblebee, bumblebee tuna”) in a loud, tuneless voice, so your spouse will understand the joke. Your spouse may ask you to shut up. Ignore her. After all, you cooked.