Anyone have an opinion about this?
rumpleteasermom
http://www.ohio.com/bj/editorial_pages/docs_editorial/024453.htm
Once upon a grim reality . . .
BY MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times columnist
NEW YORK: When I was little, I was a Grimms girl. Not a Hans
Christian Andersen girl. I much preferred the more grisly Grimms'
fairy tales, where people got hands chopped off and hearts and
tongues cut out, to the sunnier ones by the Dane.
The nuns made us climb under our desks for air-raid drills, and cried
and sent us home early the day JFK was shot. We knew the world wasn't
a big ice-skating rink.
So I can appreciate the surprise popularity, ballooning since Sept.
11, of Lemony Snicket's epic saga about the wretched Baudelaire
orphans, whose cascading woes make Oliver Twist seem blessed.
After 9-11, the great chatterers predicted that adults would want to
escape with light romantic movies. But instead, rentals of blow-'em-
up and terrorism movies spiked. Just so, many kids seem in the mood
for something a bit darker.
The very first thing that happens to the Baudelaires is that a family
friend, Mr. Poe, comes down to the beach to tell them their parents
have perished in a fire, and their mansion is destroyed. Everything
to come, the narrator cautions, is ``rife with misfortune, misery,
and despair.''
On the New York Times' best-seller list for children on Sept. 30,
reflecting sales the week of the terrorist attacks, the new Lemony
Snicket, The Hostile Hospital, trumped Harry Potter at No. 1, with
four Snickets matching four Potters in the top 10.
The man behind the sour nom de plume, Daniel Handler, has been
popping up in the Times, the Washington Post, NPR and ABC explaining
how the real terrible can be soothed by the pretend terrible.
His eight-book series, dubbed A Series of Unfortunate Events, plays
out in places like Lousy Lane and Grim River and features such
characters as the Quagmires, who also lost their parents in a
terrible fire.
The tone is a combination of mock-Victorian and modern-day mocking.
Consider this observation from The Reptile Room: ``When somebody is a
little bit wrong -- say, when a waiter puts nonfat milk in your
espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk -- it is often quite easy
to explain to them how and why they are wrong.''
``The books are definitely popular,'' says Clarissa Cooke, a
librarian at the 67th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
``They're like Edward Gorey for children.''
Handler was asked by Terry Gross on NPR to list some of the ordeals
that befall the Baudelaire siblings. ``They meet Count Olaf, who is a
distant relative, who is only after the fortune that their parents
have left behind,'' he rattled off. ``They go to stay with their
kindly Uncle Monty who's murdered. They go to stay with their Aunt
Josephine, who throws herself out of a window or at least so it
appears. They're forced to work in a lumber mill. . . . They stay
with rich people and find themselves falling down an elevator shaft.
They're driven out of town by an angry mob, you know, with torches
and barking dogs. And then in the most recent volume, they find
themselves prepared for unnecessary surgery in the hospital.''
Handler wrote in the Times that children had been sending him letters
asking whether Count Olaf was a terrorist or the children had been
near the World Trade Center.
In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim wrote that gruesome
fairy tales helped children develop by teaching them to ``meet
danger, do battle.'' Alison Lurie, the author and Cornell professor
of children's literature, has a similar theory. ``Children know the
world is not an absolutely safe place,'' she said, speaking from her
Ithaca, N.Y., home. ``If they're living in an affluent society and
their parents try to protect them from everything, they sense this
isn't the way the world really is. So books that admit bad things
happen are very restful to them, and seem more real.
``What do we do about Sept. 11? Are we going to pretend it never
happened, tell kids to forget about that, it didn't count? They know
that's a lie. It's better to have books that admit the world has
dangers and at the same time reassure kids, if they stick together
they can survive.''
When last spied, the Baudelaires were locked in the villain's trunk.
``Count Olaf's trunk would have to do,'' the children told
themselves, ``until something better came along.''
The triumph of hope over experience. A valuable lesson at any age.
Dowd is a New York Times columnist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bridget
Once upon a grim reality . . .
BY MAUREEN DOWD
New York Times columnist
NEW YORK: When I was little, I was a Grimms girl. Not a Hans
Christian Andersen girl. I much preferred the more grisly Grimms'
fairy tales, where people got hands chopped off and hearts and
tongues cut out, to the sunnier ones by the Dane.
The nuns made us climb under our desks for air-raid drills, and cried
and sent us home early the day JFK was shot. We knew the world wasn't
a big ice-skating rink.
So I can appreciate the surprise popularity, ballooning since Sept.
11, of Lemony Snicket's epic saga about the wretched Baudelaire
orphans, whose cascading woes make Oliver Twist seem blessed.
After 9-11, the great chatterers predicted that adults would want to
escape with light romantic movies. But instead, rentals of blow-'em-
up and terrorism movies spiked. Just so, many kids seem in the mood
for something a bit darker.
The very first thing that happens to the Baudelaires is that a family
friend, Mr. Poe, comes down to the beach to tell them their parents
have perished in a fire, and their mansion is destroyed. Everything
to come, the narrator cautions, is ``rife with misfortune, misery,
and despair.''
On the New York Times' best-seller list for children on Sept. 30,
reflecting sales the week of the terrorist attacks, the new Lemony
Snicket, The Hostile Hospital, trumped Harry Potter at No. 1, with
four Snickets matching four Potters in the top 10.
The man behind the sour nom de plume, Daniel Handler, has been
popping up in the Times, the Washington Post, NPR and ABC explaining
how the real terrible can be soothed by the pretend terrible.
His eight-book series, dubbed A Series of Unfortunate Events, plays
out in places like Lousy Lane and Grim River and features such
characters as the Quagmires, who also lost their parents in a
terrible fire.
The tone is a combination of mock-Victorian and modern-day mocking.
Consider this observation from The Reptile Room: ``When somebody is a
little bit wrong -- say, when a waiter puts nonfat milk in your
espresso macchiato, instead of lowfat milk -- it is often quite easy
to explain to them how and why they are wrong.''
``The books are definitely popular,'' says Clarissa Cooke, a
librarian at the 67th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
``They're like Edward Gorey for children.''
Handler was asked by Terry Gross on NPR to list some of the ordeals
that befall the Baudelaire siblings. ``They meet Count Olaf, who is a
distant relative, who is only after the fortune that their parents
have left behind,'' he rattled off. ``They go to stay with their
kindly Uncle Monty who's murdered. They go to stay with their Aunt
Josephine, who throws herself out of a window or at least so it
appears. They're forced to work in a lumber mill. . . . They stay
with rich people and find themselves falling down an elevator shaft.
They're driven out of town by an angry mob, you know, with torches
and barking dogs. And then in the most recent volume, they find
themselves prepared for unnecessary surgery in the hospital.''
Handler wrote in the Times that children had been sending him letters
asking whether Count Olaf was a terrorist or the children had been
near the World Trade Center.
In The Uses of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim wrote that gruesome
fairy tales helped children develop by teaching them to ``meet
danger, do battle.'' Alison Lurie, the author and Cornell professor
of children's literature, has a similar theory. ``Children know the
world is not an absolutely safe place,'' she said, speaking from her
Ithaca, N.Y., home. ``If they're living in an affluent society and
their parents try to protect them from everything, they sense this
isn't the way the world really is. So books that admit bad things
happen are very restful to them, and seem more real.
``What do we do about Sept. 11? Are we going to pretend it never
happened, tell kids to forget about that, it didn't count? They know
that's a lie. It's better to have books that admit the world has
dangers and at the same time reassure kids, if they stick together
they can survive.''
When last spied, the Baudelaires were locked in the villain's trunk.
``Count Olaf's trunk would have to do,'' the children told
themselves, ``until something better came along.''
The triumph of hope over experience. A valuable lesson at any age.
Dowd is a New York Times columnist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bridget