A Year of Unfortunate Events — Part the Fifth: A Dance with Beatrices

Happy 13th of the month, readers (both hypothetical and otherwise)! You know what that means: it's time for me to revisit another entry in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events!

This is the boilerplate intro you were musing about last month?

Whaddya think?

A little underwhelming?

Fair enough. I'm not changing it. Anyway, if you don't know the drill already: here there be SPOILERS!

Book the Fifth – The Austere Academy

So what did you remember about this book before re-reading it?

Okay, so this time the Baudelaires are sent off to boarding school. It isn't called "Austere Academy," but I forget what it is called. The principal plays the violin, badly, and is named . . . Nero? We'll see. Count Olaf disguises himself as the gym teacher and I believe that he is wearing a turban to cover his unibrow. If I'm not wrong, and I may be wrong, this book also introduces the two surviving Quagmire triplets, Isadora and Duncan, and it definitely introduces the spoiled Carmelita Spats. I might have gotten that name wrong. We'll find out!

Well, you've re-read it, what did you get right?

I was right about (almost) everything!

Well, you qualified most of your reminiscences, so don't feel too smug.

Noted. So, you may recall that in The Miserable Mill the Baudelaire orphans (Violet, 14, Klaus, 12, and Sunny, 1) were sent off to boarding school after losing their jobs at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The Austere Academy finds them dropped off at the dreary campus of Prufrock Preparatory Academy—

Hey, that references a poem by the guy who wrote a poem you referenced in a previous entry in this series.

Indeed it does. In any case, the Baudelaires are shoved aside by the rude, violent, and filthy Carmelita Spats, who calls them "cakesniffers," and before they can figure that out, Mr. Poe tells them they'll have to brave the administrative building on their own, since he has important business to conduct at Mulctuary Money Management. So, that's what they do, drawing the ire of Vice Principal Nero for interrupting his very badly needed violin practice. You see, he gives a six hour violin recital nightly, which is mandatory for all students. He also tells our heroes about the school's various draconian regulations, but the only one that will be all that important is that they can't live in the school's tombstone-shaped dormitory without a release signed by their parent or guardian, so they'll have to live in a tin shack.

That doesn't sound very nice.

It is not. There are tiny territorial crabs on the floor and dripping beige fungus on the ceiling. Oh, and one more thing, because Prufrock Prep doesn't have a preschool program, Sunny will have to earn her keep as Nero's administrative assistant.

But how can Sunny do secretarial work if she's an infant?

Poorly.

Oh. What about Count Olaf?

Him? Don't worry about it, the school has an advanced computer system.

What does that have to do with Count Olaf?

It will keep Count Olaf away from campus.

But how will it do that?

Anyway, although their education at Prufrock is woefully substandard (Violet's teacher, Mr. Remora, relates tedious anecdotes, and Klaus's teacher, Ms. Bass, only teaches her students how to measure items with metric rulers). But there is some good news, Violet and Klaus are able to befriend the Quagmire triplets, Duncan and Isadora.

I get that reference.

I'm sure you do.

What happened to the third triplet?

Quigley died in the fire that killed their parents.

I sense a pattern.

This friendship almost makes up for Carmelita's constant bullying and mockery. But, in this series things always have the potential to get worse, and they do with the arrival of—

Count Olaf?

No, Coach Genghis. Who is definitely Count Olaf. But he's wearing a turban wrapped low over his eyebrows and wearing high-tops to cover his ankle tattoo. And when the Baudelaires jokingly suggest he remove these items in Nero's office, he insists that he cannot for religious and stinky-feet reasons respectively. So Nero decides to just take his word on the whole not-being-Count-Olaf thing.  In any case, Olaf insists that orphans have ideal bone structure for running and decides that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny should be pulled from the mandatory violin recitals in order to conduct Special Orphan Running Exercises, or S.O.R.E.

What does S.O.R.E. consist of?

Running laps around a circle of phosphorescent paint until dawn.

How does Sunny run laps if doesn't really walk?

Poorly.

Oh.

Anyway, after several nights of running for seemingly no reason, the Baudelaires figure out Olaf's scheme. See, they can't concentrate in class and so Violet can't remember the details of Mr. Remora's anecdotes, and Klaus falls asleep and can't measure objects, so Nero threatens to expell them if they can't pass a comprehensive exam the next day.

But how will they cram if they have to do S.O.R.E,?

Well, Duncan and Isadora volunteer to disguises themselves as Klaus and Violet and disguise a bag of flour on a string as Sunny.

Are these disguises transparent?

You bet, but the hope is that Olaf won't notice this in the dark. The next morning, Violet and Klaus ace their comprehensive exams (oh, and they manage to make a bunch of staples for Sunny to use at work, Nero having used her wasteful stapling as a pretext to threaten her with termination), but at the last minute, Olaf breaks into the shack and tells the story of how he discovered the Quagmire triplets' ruse and sent them to the cafeteria for detention. This is all the proof Nero needs to expel/fire the Baudelaires. For a brief moment, it seems like Mr. Poe will be able to save them, but it turns out that he's just there to pay out the Baudelaire's various demerits. However, Poe is skeptical enough of Olaf's Coach Genghis disguise to force Olaf to flee.

Wait, he just gives up before his disguise is revealed?

No. The orphans use their S.O.R.E. training to catch up and pull off his turban and running shoes, revealing his eyebrow and ankle tattoo. It also allows them to get notes from Isadora and Duncan who are being packed into Olaf's escape vehicle by the school's cafeteria workers.

They're some of Olaf's accomplices?

They're the women with powdered faces. Anyway, the Quagmire's urge the Baudelaires to look deeper into an organization called V.F.D. establishing the sprawling conspiracy that I seem to recall takes up the larger part of the series' back end.

Does Nero let the Baudelaires back into the school after they reveal Olaf?

Does it seem like he would?

It does not.

And he does not. So, let's talk about The Austere Academy.

Well, what did you think of it?

It's a return to form after the off-brand wackiness of The Miserable Mill. Both books struggle with the same problem: how do you keep the entries in a children's book series fresh? I enjoyed both The Reptile Room and The Wide Window, but both suffer in comparison with The Bad Beginning. It's not just because the first book's playful use of language and genuine peril made it both fun and harrowing to read, it's because neither the stakes nor the structure of the story has changed. In each of the first three books the Baudelaires find themselves in the care or a new guardian (or at least with a friendly new neighbor) who ultimately is taken in by Count Olaf and is unable to help them because they simply don't take the children's concerns seriously enough. In the next two books, there is a shift away from simply negligent guardians to guardians who are outright hostile to the children. Both Sir and Nero view our protagonists as more trouble than they're worth and are only taking them in exchange for financial compensation (in the form of free labor and tuition fees, respectively). And while Sir's indifference to the children's suffering is on brand, The Miserable Mill stumbles in ratcheting up the series' more farcical elements by including elements like hypnotism and baby-tooth-swordfights.

Whereas The Austere Academy manifests the children's misery through ludicrous bureaucracy and draconian rules?

Exactly. The stakes are as high as ever, and the threats are more grounded and realistic (within the silly framework of the story). Snicket also grows his world by giving the Baudelaires non-useless allies in the form of the Quagmire triplets, and even establishes stakes that will carry over into future books by having Olaf abduct the Quagmires at the novel's climax. The Baudelaire's also get to grow as characters in this outing, something that is most strongly evidenced by the fact that Sunny starts using real words instead of just gibberish (sure, in previous installments she would say real words, but those were largely linguistic jokes or allusions to other works), you know, like a growing toddler would. In fact, this leads to the funniest joke of the series so far.

Do tell.

Well, when something doesn't go their way, Sunny says, "Merd."

Oh, like "merde?"

Yeah, like "merde." Anyway, that's something that the kids probably won't get unless they've seen this scene from the greatest film ever made (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, obvs). The older kids also have matured a bit, between the possibility of budding romance between the Baudelaires and the Quagmires, and Violet's decision to initially pretend to go along with Count Olaf's disguise, they're savvier and more sophisticated than they have been in previous installments, though they're also more resigned to misery, as well.

That's a bit disheartening.

Well, they're not real. But I know what you mean. It's also one of those things that plays better if you're more used to the world of plucky pre-teen heroes in kids' series. It's part of the parody. In any case, The Austere Academy marks a turning point. This is where the series first seems to really be going somewhere and developing a long-term story arc beyond Count Olaf is evil. So, let's see if Snicket can turn this momentum into a hot streak in The Ersatz Elevator next month.

Links:

This time around the Gothic Archies have provided the appropriately titled "When You Play the Violin." 

How can you link to the Gothic Archies' Series of Unfortunate Events songs and not know that Lemony Snicket is just Daniel Handler's pen name?

What does that have to do with anything?

Daniel Handler plays accordion in the Gothic Archies. Why do you think they provided songs for the audiobooks?

Well, Daniel Handler also plays the accordion on other Stephin Merritt projects, and he's Lemony Snicket's literary representative, so it would make sense for him to bring them together for a collaboration.

You're familiar with Occam's Razor, right?

Nah, I let my whiskers grow.

You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes right now.