Handler, Daniel: And Then? And Then? What Else?

  Amazon  

In his newly released memoir—the title of which is from a poem by Charles Baudelaire (to whom, yes, the author’s Baudelaire orphans are an homage)—Daniel Handler writes about his “canon,” the words and music and art and incidents that have taken up space in his head over the years. He is evidently fascinated by the juxtaposition of things that don't ostensibly fit together, how they bump along beside each other, in his case waiting for their chance to be expressed in his writing. I like this idea a lot. Each of us has a unique collection of such sticky bits—in my case, for example, deep-cut Harry Chapin lyrics alongside an explanation for subliminal messaging (name that Columbo), bouncing next to this line from the novel Hannibal, which for 23 years now has seemed to me a perfect description of the amorphous but pregnant state of one’s mind prior to an aha moment:

“Dr. Lecter was well aware that all the elements of epiphany were present in the policeman's head, bouncing at random with the million other things he knew.”

That bouncing around of bits sounds similar to what Handler writes about, which may be why it’s popped into my head just now.

Handler’s prose in this book feels like it’s replicating the experience of having a head full of flotsam. You’re carried off in each chapter to swirl around in a slurry of unexpectedly juxtaposed ideas and song lyrics and memories. You could almost believe that there's no plan to it—you're floating downriver, just going where it leads, and the author’s just chatting—but of course there's a plan, because ultimately the writing hangs together perfectly, making sense of the slurry.

In his final chapter (the 13th, of course) Handler writes more about this canon and the reason we read, and I find it kind of beautiful:

“The reason we read—the reason you’re reading this book—is because some other book enchanted you, earlier on, and before that another, and before that another. This is the real literary canon, not some hegemonic pantheon, adapted and debated over time. We each have one, a literary canon, and we make it ourselves, not out of what is respectable or prestigious or prominent or lasting or moral or even well-made. We make it out of enthusiasm, out of what we love.”

Maybe that will inspire you to read the book. If not that, then perhaps this bit of wisdom will, which sounds like it might have come from Lemony Snicket rather than his representative: “Every café has a tragic flaw….”

Anyway, it should be clear that I've enjoyed this book. I loved Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events—the origins of which we read about here, and which I read aloud to my older daughter back in the day. And I loved The Basic Eight—which I hadn't realized was Handler’s first novel, and which he initially had trouble publishing, he says. I now also love this memoir.