"Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard about too many things to do anything else"
(Lemony Snicket, "The End")
(Lemony Snicket, "The End")
Who is Lemony Snicket? This is a question that has been uttered by many a child since last millennium.
The famous author of the “A Series of Unfortunate Events” books is shrouded in both myth and mystery, and has shunned publicity after a scandal that saw Mr Snicket exiled from his hometown several decades ago.
His tales of the orphaned Baudelaires – Violet, Klaus and Sunny – and their attempts to avoid imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of their evil, distant relative Count Olaf have captivated and chilled hundreds of thousands of children and adults around the world. The series has sold over 60 million copies worldwide – including five million in the UK – and have even been turned into a film starring Jim Carrey, Billy Connolly and Meryl Streep.
But with the 13th and final book in the series now published, many wonder what the mysterious author has next. Fortunately, the many can now quiz him in a live webTV show about what he’s been doing and what they can expect from the new series, which at this stage cannot be named (for fear of jeopardising the final stages of Mr Snicket’s investigations).
Lemony Snicket was born before you were, and is likely to die before you as well. His family has roots in a part of the country which is now underwater, and his childhood was spent in the relative splendour of the Snicket Villa which has since become a factory, a fortress and a pharmacy and is now, alas, someone else's villa. Due to the world-wide web of conspiracy which surrounds him, Mr. Snicket often communicates with the general public through his representative, Daniel Handler. Mr. Handler has had a relatively uneventful life, and is the author of three books for adults, The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and Adverbs, none of which are anywhere near as dreadful as Mr. Snicket's.
