A Year of Unfortunate Events — Part the Sixth: The Undiscovered Beatrice

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!

Sticking with that intro?

Yes.

All right.

SPOILERS ahoy!

Book the Sixth – The Ersatz Elevator

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

Well, the Baudelaires are sent back to the city and placed in the care of Esmé Squalor and her husband Jerome. Jerome's a pretty okay guy, but Esmé is pretty not okay. I believe that Carmelita Spats also lives in their building. But when it comes to, say, Count Olaf's transparent disguise . . . I got not clue. But they do live in a high-rise apartment with a broken elevator.

Oh, like in The Big Bang Theory?

Not really.

Got anything else?

Not really.

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

Well, I didn't remember that much, and I definitely got one thing wrong. Carmelita Spats doesn't live at 667 Dark Ave. Anyway, that's where the story begins, with Mr. Poe escorting the Baudelaire Orphans (Violet, 14; Klaus, 12; and Sunny, 1) to their new guardians, Jerome and Esmé Squalor.

I see what they did there.

The good news is that the Squalors live in a penthouse apartment in the city where the Baudelaires used to live with their parents. The bad news is that the residents of 667 Dark Ave are quite concerned with what's in and what's in isn't elevators, meaning that the penthouse is a 48 or 84 floor walk up (the Doorman isn't sure). That said, I was wrong, the elevator is technically functional, it's just been shut down. Jerome is a kind but timid man who was friends with the Baudelaire's mother, and Esmé is the city's sixth most important financial advisor (she's even going to meet the King of Arizona).

What an honor.

However, it turns out that they only adopted the Baudelaires because orphans are in right now. Still at first glance the 71 bedroom apartment is a welcome change from the Orphans' Shack at Prufrock Prep and the dormitory at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. Unfortunately, Esmé's obsession with what's in means that nobody really gets to do or eat what they want, they just have to settle for what's in. But still Jerome is sometimes able to take the children out on errands around the city and they're able to imagine their lives with him. Until, that is, they meet Gunther who is–

Count Olaf in a transparent disguise?

You guessed it. This time around he's wearing knee-high boots to hide his tattoo and a monocle to obscure his unibrow, and a ridiculous accent and verbal tic to disguise his voice, please. Gunther is helping Esmé organize the In Auction, which is being held at Veblen Hall.

I don't get that reference.

I had to Google it, Thorstein Veblen was a 19th Century American Economist and Sociologist who influenced non-Marxist critiques of capitalism and excessive wealth.

Oh, that's fitting.  Wait, if the Baudelaires have spotted Count Olaf why don't they try to contact Mr. Poe?

Aside from the fact that he's hopelessly bumbling and ineffectual?

Aside from that, yes.

It's because he's trying to track down the Quagmire triplets who have allegedly been spotted off in some mountains and he'll be unreachable for weeks. In any case, after Jerome takes the children out to the salmon-themed Cafe Salmonella, the doorman says they can't go up to the apartment until Gunther leaves, but he never does, so Jerome decides to lead them upstairs anyway, where Esmé informs them that Gunther had left hours ago. But where did he go? The next day the Baudelaires listen in at every door of every apartment at 667 Dark Ave and can't hear Gunther anywhere (but they do discover that there are, in fact, 66 floors, so there's that). That's when Klaus realizes that the answer is right under their noses.

Oh?

Yeah, see, even though the elevator is shut down, he realizes that every floor has one elevator door except for the 66th, which has two. Even more suspicious is the fact that even though it's the top floor, there's up button. So, on the night before the auction, our intrepid orphans sneak out of the apartment, push the up button and find an empty elevator shaft. Fortuately, the rope they fashion from an extension cord and Jerome's ties is just long enough to reach the bottom.

What do they find down there?

The Quagmire triplets! That's right, Olaf has secreted them away inside the ersatz elevator shaft and plans to hide them inside one of the lots at the In Auction. Unfortunately, Violet can't pick the lock, but she can figure out a way to fashion a crude welding torch out of the items in the Squalor's apartment. So, they climb back up the rope (just go with it) stick some fire tongs in the oven until they're white hot and climb back down the shaft to find that the Quagmire's are gone, so they climb back up the rope again and Klaus reads through the auction catalog to figure out which lot the Quagmires will be hidden in (definitely not Lot 49, that's a postage stamp).

Trés Pynchonesque!

Anyway, once Klaus is sure that the Quagmires are in Lot 50 (a large box marked VFD!), the children are found by Esmé, who listens to their story about Gunther being Count Olaf and about the ersatz elevator and proceeds to push them into said elevator, which in the text is illustrated by this:

Don't worry, their plunge into this abyss (that's a call-forward) is stopped by a net conveniently stretched across the shaft. Esmé reveals that she and Olaf (her former acting coach) have been in cahoots the whole time to obtain the Quagmire sapphires and the Baudelaire fortune. It seems that all is lost, until Sunny realizes that she can use her four strong, sharp teeth to ascend the elevator shaft and retrieve their rope. They then use the rope to descend to the bottom of the shaft where they follow a tunnel to . . . the charred remains of their mansion. Fortunately, a helpful passerby is able to direct them to Veblen Hall just in time to see a statue of a Red Herring (Lot 48) sold to the doorman (aquatic decor is in). They also run into Jerome and Mr. Poe.

Wait, shouldn't he be in the mountains?

Naw, that was a bust, he now has reliable information that the Quagmires are working in a glue factory.

But they're actually in Lot 50!

Oh, look who's so smart. The Baudelaires (kind of) purchase Lot 50 only to discover a crate filled with Very Fancy Doilies. Turns out that the Quagmires were actually inside the Red Herring statute.

You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes right now. So the doorman was one of Olaf's associates?

Yeah, it was the hookhanded man. Lemony Snicket sort of phoned that reveal in. Anyway, you know how it goes from here, Olaf makes good his escape this time with Esmé and the Quagmires in tow and the Baudelaires reflect on their situation and wonder what will happen to them next.

So what's your angle on this one?

What do you mean?

Well, you've always sort of tackled one specific thing in each book. Like it's sort of a baby's first Lit 101 Lecture.

Oh, well, want to talk about allusion?

Okay, let's. The allusions in this book will all go over the kids' heads.

What, you think the target audience won't be familiar with the works of Thomas Pynchon, J.D. Sallinger or critiques of Capitalism?

Obviously they will not be. Also, you forgot to mention that the black page gag also appears in Tristram Shandy.

You mean Laurence Sterne, Shandy was the title character.

You know what I mean. Anyway, the context was different but visually the pages are identical. But what function does all of this allusion perform? Why are these references there? And please don't just say as bonus jokes for adults or unusually savvy children.

Well, they also serve that function, and sometimes just that function (i'm looking at you Ms. Squalor). But Snicket is getting a little more mileage out of them than that. For example, both The Crying of Lot 49  and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman bear some resemblance to A Series of Unfortunate Events in form. The former being even more densely packed with gags and allusions than Snicket's books and the latter being even more of a meandering Shaggy Dog story. Both of them play with form, language and with reader expectations in ways similar to ASoUE's parody of children's series fiction.

So, it's an ourobouros-like self-reference?

Well, that's one way of putting it. There are also references like the name of Veblen Hall, which point to the (already) obvious fact that the Squalors are meant to criticize ostentatious displays of wealth. Although, I can't help but feel that this is undercut slightly by the fact that the main characters are themselves temporarily embarassed millionaires.  (I couldn't pin down who actually said this so just I linked to the Google results for the quote).

Yeah, but they're kids, and we don't know how their parents made their money.

Pretty sure it's inherited, there doesn't seem to be any indication that either of the Baudelaire parents had a paying job. But that's not the point, the point is that allusions can serve multiple functions: they can be jokes, they can comment on the form or the content of a work, they can be an incitement for kids to look up references they don't understand. Have I mentioned that one yet?

You know you haven't.

I know, but the point is, that the allusions have been a part of the books since The Bad Beginning, and I think it's good for books to challenge young readers a little and to let them know that there's more out there than just what they're reading right now.

You mean like how the Harry Potter books draw from real folklore and mythology in constructing the magical world?

Yeah, like when Hagrid buys a three-headed dog from Greek at a pub.

Or the fact that 667 is just one number of from that Iron Maiden song.

In deed, there is no antecedent for that song. Certainly not one that is recited at the beginning of the track.

I was making a joke in which I was pretended to be ignorant of the only other thing people know from the book of Revelation besides the Four Horsemen.

Okay, I guess I missed out that. Anyway, there is one more thing I'd like to talk about in this book, and that's one particular illustration. See, I usually don't mention them because Brett Helquist's work is usually spot-on. But there's definitely a mistake in one of the illustrations in this book.

Oh? Do tell.

Well, it's just that salmon have distinctively shaped jaws. Like, you know a salmon when you see one.

Yeah, I could spot a salmon.

So, tell me this then, does this look like a picture of a waiter in a salmon costume?

It does not.

That is all.

Are we done?  Did you like the book?

Oh, right! Yes, I think this one continued the positive trend from the previous book. Snicket is still growing his world, this time by introducing another character who knew the Baudelaire's mother, and continually teasing the reader with clues about VFD (well, a clue that turns out to be a red herring, but still). Yeah, I'm still enjoying the books enough to continue this year long project. Fun fact, we've almost hit the halfway point. So, come on back next month for The Vile Village.

Links:

Here's the Gothic Archies' "This Abyss" which accompanied the audiobook.

So, do you still insist on maintaining your farcical insistence that Lemony Snicket isn't Daniel Handler?

Do you insist on maintaining your farcical insistence that he is?

I don't even know how to respond to that.

I mean, have you read any of Handler's novels for adults? They definitely are not kid-friendly.

Okay, so you can look up his work on Wikipedia, but you can't look up the "Lemony Snicket" section on his Wikipedia page?

Anyone can edit Wikipedia, that doesn't prove anything. Also, the stuff under the "Controversy" heading is kind of a bummer.

Oh! It is. Well, do you want to keep doing this little gag at the end of each entry?

I guess we don't have to. I mean, at some point we'll have to address the role that the character of Lemony Snicket (and his relatives) play in the story.  But I think the gag has run it's course. On the one hand, the overall moral of the series (SPOILERS) is that people are more complex than simply being good or bad, but on the other, how did Daniel Handler not realize that book awards shows and book conferences might not be the best forum for the crass and racist comments he's made and been accused of making? Anyway, this is getting weird, isn't it?

A little, yeah.

Let's call it.