#24 A Series of Unfortunate Events: The End, Book the Last by Lemony Snicket

Every book in this series features a warning by Lemony Snicket to put it down and read something else. For the love of God, please heed the message this time.

Lemony Snicket used to have balls of chrome steel. When I read The Bad Beginning and it got to the scene where Count Olaf smacks Klaus, I felt the danger. He was defying conventions and being clever to a degree previously not seen in Children's Literature, and the impact of those bold and perfectly timed early books in this series is evident throughout the publishing world. There are a hundred knock-offs that fail in their mimicry as prominently as this final chapter in the Baudelaire's adventures fails to deliver anything resembling closure, excitement, suspense, or even story. It is only because I was prepared by the dwindling inventiveness and quality of the last few installments and the mediocrity of Daniel Handler's Adverbs, that I avoid calling the this the most disappointing literary event in the history of mankind.


WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Let's take a look at character arc. Violet, Klaus and Sunny seemed to have been totally unaffected by all of the events around them. Although Sunny has developed a better command of obscure literary references and latin than I have, and she now cooks instead of bites (was this change imposed by a parent's group? It is dreadfully dull) What should have happened was that midway through the series, the orphans should have decided to take action against Olaf. They needed to make a decision to catch or kill him. Whether they actually would have done so in the end, I don't know, but that would have given some appropriateness to the discussion of "moral compass" in the last book. The children were never in need of a moral compass, they always were good and always did the right thing and we, the readers, knew this and were constantly bored by them.

Related to this is the hero's journey. Why oh why did they come back to the city where they lived and briny beach in the 12th book and all and then go away again? And what happened to the Quagmire triplets? swallowed by the question mark? That's retarded. Even within this book there were new characters who failed profoundly to deliver; what up with Friday? She seemed like an interesting character at the beginning and then she just goes away. stupid.

How about Lemony Snicket as a narrator? Could he be any more pedantic? And maybe I'm a big dork for pointing this out, but his two-page lecture on peer pressure is totally egregious: "If you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable." (p.95-96) Lemony's diatribes used to be qualified by some ridiculous anecdote about his mysterious lifestyle, there is nothing to counter the heavy-handed homily presented to young readers here. Not that it makes any differenence, but it is possible never to succumb to peer pressure and be happy. It's called individuality. You should never succumb to peer pressure. You should never do things unless you want to, and it is very easy for kids to want to play dodgeball with everyone else at recess without succumbing to peer pressure, but rather acting of their own free will.

There are many moments of overbearing cleverness. Island characters named Caliban and Ariel. An attempt to pass off two closely related definitions of ferment as different. And a terribly annoying excess of sentences like this one from the back cover: "if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of the end to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope."

SPOILER:
And Count Olaf. The only consistently entertaining character dies in the lamest possible way, with a brief moment of... what, I'm not sure, was it redemption? That's so pussy. Seriously, the Baudelaires thought about pushing him off the boat at the beginning and then they don't kill him at the end. That's the worst misdirection since the absolutely pointless opening airplane crash scene of Garden State, perhaps the most overrated movie of all time.

Mayhaps I am being a little harsh on Mr. Snicket, but he deserves it. There was clearly no plan, no outline, no clear idea of where this series was going and it shows in this clumsy pseudo-narrative whose low-quality frankly makes me sad. It's not the end of the world, but my day was ruined by this book.

posted by brettish @ 11:36 PM