Daniel Handler is an American author, screenwriter and accordionist. He was born on 28th February 1970 in San Francisco. His father is accountant and his mother is retiree. Daniel has also a younger sister Rebecca. He is married to Lisa Brown and they have a son Otto, who was born on 2003.
His first novel, The Basic Eight, was rejected by many publishers for „its subject m
atter and tone“ (a dark view of a teenage girl’s life). Handler says that the novel was rejected thirty-seven times before finally being published. After that he wrote some other books, for example Watch Your Mouth and Adverbs.
As a screenwriter he produced the screenplay for movies Rick and Kill the Poor.
Although the list of his works isn’t short, he is best-known for his other works under the pen name – Lemony Snicket.
Lemony Snicket came from family of three children. His sister was called Kit and his brother was Jacques. He was born on a little cattle farm (or a milk farm) and he was kidnapped by a secret organisation called V.F.D. in childhood. He attended a V.F.D. boarding school and became full member of the organisation. After that he was employed by a newspaper called The Daily Punctilio as a theater critic. After one ultracritical critic he was fired from the newspaper and he started the search information about destiny of three miserable orphans. It was a very dangerous work and after few months he was presumed dead. This message was published in The Daily Punctilio in this way:
Lemony Snicket, author of A Series of Unfortunate Events,
the purportedly true chronicles of the Baudelaire children,
was reported dead today by anonymous and possibly unreliable sources.
His age was given as "tall, with brown eyes." He leaves-no known survivors.
Mr. Snicket himself comments this message hereby:
This obituary is filled with errors - most importantly -
I AM NOT DEAD! L.S.
In Snicket’s works, Daniel Handler is introduced as his handler (in a preamble). Snicket wrote many books, the most known is the set of stories called A Series of Unfortunate Events.
A Series of Unfortunate Events is a children’s book series of thirteen novels about the Baudelaire orphans, whose parents died in a fire. Their names are: Violet, Klaus and Sunny. I’d like to use description of the Baudelaire children written by Snicket himself:
Violet Baudelaire, the eldest, was one of the finest 14-year-old inventors in the world. Anyone who knew Violet well could tell she was invented something when her long hair was tied up in a ribbon. Klaus, the middle child, loved books, or rather, things he learned from the books. And everything he read, he remembered. Sunny, the youngest, had a different interest. She liked to bite things and had four sharp teeth. There was very little that Sunny didn’t enjoy biting.
Children are lonely and have to go to their new custodian. His name is Count Olaf and his real and only intent is to get in possesion of Baudelaire’s money. He is able to do anything to get their inheritance, even to kill. The orphans are trying to get away from his manor, and they are assigned to some other custodians. But Count Olaf doesn’t give up, he chases them wherever they go. One by one, the Baudelaire’s custodians are killed in a mysterious situations, and children find out that is all Olaf’s work. On their way they discover some information about a secret organisation whose members are part of their life, including their parents. They start to search for remaining members of the organisation and their adventure becomes more and more dangerous.
All of the thirteen books are full of mysteries, secrets and terrible realities. They seem to be set in an alternate „timeless“ version of Earth, because there are many time contradictions in the story. The world has stylistic similarities to both the 19th century and the 1930s, but you can sometimes read about using fax, the Morse code, fiber-optic cable or advanced computer. It might be the reason why the books are so interesting.
There is one more interesting thing. Lemony Snicket dedicated all of A Series of Unfortunate Events to his fianceé Beatrice, who is actually Baudelaire’s mother (but Snicket isn’t their father). Every book starts with a dedication.
Here you can see some of them.
V.F.D. is a secret organization whose members are highly trained in the use of coded messages, disguises, cartography (the study of maps), library sciences, knots, etc. The V.F.D. acronym has many meanings, but official name of the secret organisation is „volunteer fire department“. Members of the V.F.D. are spread all across the world. They are determined to keeping the world quiet and extinguished.
Baudelaire’s parents were members of the organisation as well as Lemony Snicket and Count Olaf. At the end of the story, the Baudelaire orphans also become part of the V.F.D.
Here you can see some of the other meanings of the acronym.
Because the books were really succesful, the movie was made very early. Here you can see the poster. The movie is based on the first three books of the series and starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, Emily Browning and others. Although the movie is set mainly as a comedy, the books are more grim.
To se jednou banda kamarádů rozhodla, že vyrazí na výlet. A protože to byly lamy (ale nemohli si tak říkat kvůli označení členů Torchwoodu), začali se označovat jako MULY.
Navštívili jsme zámky jako Konopiště a Jemniště, vojenské muzeum s růžovým tankem, Švejkovskou restauraci a další.
