Well, it's always hard to try to explain what you get to someone who doesn't, isn't it? *g* And I'm always afraid I come off as aggressively asking people to defend their preferences, but I really was surprised not to care for the Snicket books, and very disappointed. I expect I'll read them all through at some point to see what they're like overall.
I find the comparison to Adams *fascinating*, though. I'd agree, thinking about it, that there's a sense of menace, but it always goes along with a cheerful sense that just as the "heroes" fall into trouble, they'll fall back out again, willy-nilly, seldom through any real plan or effort of their own, and even the trials are funny.
I suspect that my reaction to Snicket is simply that his style doesn't work for me, that what comes across as funny and witty to others somehow just seems arch and unrelentingly awful -- and that's probably the heart of it. Not just that nothing will ever make it all better, but that basically the universe will never allow anything good to last, and when it goes, it will all be worse than it ever was. As with Philip Pullman's Golden Compass and sequels, the underlying sense of the universe is so utterly alien to me, and so deeply, unalterably horrid that it flavors any enjoyment for me.
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Date: 2006-04-28 04:06 pm (UTC)I find the comparison to Adams *fascinating*, though. I'd agree, thinking about it, that there's a sense of menace, but it always goes along with a cheerful sense that just as the "heroes" fall into trouble, they'll fall back out again, willy-nilly, seldom through any real plan or effort of their own, and even the trials are funny.
I suspect that my reaction to Snicket is simply that his style doesn't work for me, that what comes across as funny and witty to others somehow just seems arch and unrelentingly awful -- and that's probably the heart of it. Not just that nothing will ever make it all better, but that basically the universe will never allow anything good to last, and when it goes, it will all be worse than it ever was. As with Philip Pullman's Golden Compass and sequels, the underlying sense of the universe is so utterly alien to me, and so deeply, unalterably horrid that it flavors any enjoyment for me.