Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: You can book it: Like father, like son

Friday, May 26, 2000 | 9:02 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books and magazine column appears Fridays. Reach him at dickens@vegas.com or 990-2446.

I watched the hook set, just as surely as if my 10-year-old son was a fish.

He was reading an intermediate children's book called "The Bad Beginning" (Harper Trophy, $8.95), the first volume in the curiously titled "A Series of Unfortunate Events" by the writer Lemony Snicket (not, it goes without saying, his real name). And the boy was into it. He didn't want to stop reading. Not to eat. Not to watch TV. I knew he was hooked. He was quiet and uncommunicative, just like his old man when he's lost in a book. I had to force the kid to play video games just to regain a semblance of normalcy.

Rewind a day or two. The Shelf Life family was running riot in Borders Books Music & Cafe, as we do once or twice a week (or, on a good week, three times). Greg was trying to decide between "The Bad Beginning" and a collection of Garfield cartoons. I was urging the Lemony Snicket book on him. "Garfield won't make your brain active," I said, which almost sold him on it. Finally, though, he settled on Snicket, in part, I think, because I told him I wouldn't buy Garfield.

In truth, though, I wasn't sure why I was advocating "The Bad Beginning." I hadn't read it or any other volumes in the series, hadn't even heard of them until that week. But I had read, on the Slate website, a weeklong e-diary by the little-known novelist Daniel Handler, who is, in fact, the aforementioned Snicket. It was funny, open-hearted and wise, and, as far as you can know a writer from the character of his writing, I instinctively decided I could trust my son's mind in his hands.

Now, as it happens, when I follow my gut feelings I'm almost always wrong, but not this time. Within two weeks my son had read (no, consumed is the apt word) all four installments in the series -- Lemony Snicket had reeled him in. If you have children, you understand just how seismic a change it is for them to abandon Nintendo paddles in favor of books.

The series concerns the misadventures of the Baudelaire orphans, to whom a series of, well, unfortunate events are always happening. Bad people are forever attempting to trap, trick and hurt them. The tone, insofar as I've read them, is pure Edward Gorey: Volume 2, "The Reptile Room," begins, "Lousy Lane runs through fields that are a sickly gray color, in which a handful of scraggly trees produce apples so sour that one only has to look at them to feel ill. Lousy Lane traverses the Grim River, a body of water that is nine-tenths mud and that contains extremely unnerving fish, and it encircles a horseradish factory, so the entire area smells bitter and strong."

This, clearly, falls within that portion of children's literature that presumes a certain quota of irony in its young readers -- a quasi grown-up sensibility. Not wrongly, I think. Kids these days are far more media-saturated than I was then, and the hip knowingness of "The Simpsons" and "Malcolm in the Middle" -- even of so much programming on Nickelodeon -- has equipped the little fellas for the mock darkness, the subversive and deconstructionist elements of these and similar books.

That's not solely my opinion. The books appear to be selling well. As I type this, "The Bad Beginning" is the 279th best-selling book on Amazon.com, with the other three following right behind (the lowest ranking volume is 1,719).

Meanwhile Handler has written two novels under his own name. "The Basic Eight," a drama of teen angst, ranks 28,135th. "Watch Your Mouth," due out in a few days, is described as "an incest comedy" (will Angelina Jolie option the film rights?); it's 671,491st. The fifth Lemony Snicket book isn't due until August, yet preorders have lifted it to No. 883.

When I was Greg's age the great passion of my life was a shelf of Hardy Boys and Tom Swift novels given us by a neighbor. They hooked me immediately, sending me into a lifetime of reading (or "time wasting" as my dad used to call it when I hated to put down the books and do chores). I hope Lemony Snicket does the same for Greg.

Reading Matters

However, because you can't tell the story of a respected small-circulation intellectual journal in one little old 6-pound book (yep, I measured), Harper's has also dedicated its June issue to the cause. Along with a history of the publication, the presumed highlight is another Grand Pronouncement by Tom Wolfe, "In the Land of the Rococo Marxists," which I'd tell you all about if I could get through the damn thing. It's a bit rococo itself. Tom Wolfe is no Lemony Snicket.