We Are Pirates
Daniel Handler, 2015
Bloomsbury USA
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781608196883
Summary
A boat has gone missing. Goods have been stolen. There is blood in the water. It is the twenty-first century and a crew of pirates is terrorizing the San Francisco Bay.
Phil is a husband, a father, a struggling radio producer, and the owner of a large condo with a view of the water. But he'd like to be a rebel and a fortune hunter.
Gwen is his daughter. She's fourteen. She's a student, a swimmer, and a best friend. But she'd like to be an adventurer and an outlaw.
Phil teams up with his young, attractive assistant. They head for the open road, attending a conference to seal a deal.
Gwen teams up with a new, fierce friend and some restless souls. They head for the open sea, stealing a boat to hunt for treasure.
We Are Pirates is a novel about our desperate searches for happiness and freedom, about our wild journeys beyond the boundaries of our ordinary lives.
Also, it's about a teenage girl who pulls together a ragtag crew to commit mayhem in the San Francisco Bay, while her hapless father tries to get her home. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—Lemony Snicket
• Birth—February 28, 1970
• Where—San Francisco, California, USA
• Education—B.A., Wesleyan University
• Awards—Michael L. Printz Honor Award
• Currently— lives in San Francisco, California
Daniel Handler is an American writer, best known for his work under the pen name Lemony Snicket, although he also writes under his real name.
Personal life
Handler was born in San Francisco, California, the son of Sandra Handler Day (nee Walpole), an opera singer and retired City College of San Francisco Dean (also distantly related the British writer Hugh Walpole). Daniel's father, Louis Handler, was a Jewish refugee from Germany, who worked as an accountant. Daniel has a younger sister, Rebecca.
Handler attended Commodore Sloat Elementary, Herbert Hoover Middle School and Lowell High School, and is an alumnus of the San Francisco Boys Chorus.
He graduated from Wesleyan University in 1992 and married Lisa Brown, a graphic artist, whom he met in college. They have a son Otto and live in an old Victorian house in San Francisco.
Handler is politically active and helped form LitPAC. In the June 10, 2007 edition of The New York Times Magazine, Handler reveals ambivalence toward his wealth, and the expectations it creates. He has supported the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He also describes himself as a secular humanist, claiming he is "not a believer in predetermined fates...[nor] a believer in karma.
The reason why I try to be a good person is because I think it's the right thing to do. If I commit fewer bad acts there will be fewer bad acts, maybe other people will join in committing fewer bad acts, and in time there will be fewer and fewer of them.
Books
Four of Handler's major works have been published under his own name. The first, The Basic Eight, was, according to Handler, rejected by 37 publishers, who felt the tone was too dark for its subject, the life of a teenage girl. It was finally published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press.
Watch Your Mouth, his second novel, came out in 2002. The narrative uses an operatic structure, complete with stage directions and separate acts. Described by HarperCollins as an "incest opera," it mixes Jewish mythology with modern sexuality. In the second half of the book, however, the opera trope gives way to a 12-step-recovery format, linguistically undergone by the protagonist.
2006, saw the release of Adverbs, Handler's short story collection, which he says is "about love." A third novel Why We Broke Up, released in 2011, received a 2012 Michael L. Printz honor award. His fourth novel We Are Pirates was published in 2015.
Handler also served as a judge for the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship in 2012.
Lemony Snicket
Starting in 1999, Handler published A Series of Unfortunate Events under the Snicket pseudonym, finishing the series seven years later with a total of 13 books. The books, which became international bestsellers, revolve around three orphaned children who experience progressively terrible events after the alleged death of their parents. Snicket poses as narrator and biographer of the fictional orphans.
Handler (as Snicket) read for three consecutive audiobooks in the series, before handing the job back to Tim Curry, the original reader. He said he found it too difficult.
He has also shown up at author appearances as "Lemony Snicket's handler,"and he has appeared as Snicket in other books and media, including the commentary track for the film version of his books. Using his real name, he wrote an introduction to Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography.
HarperCollins published a short interview on its website posing questions regarding Lemony Snicket's "personal life." When asked about some of his hobbies, Snicket answered, "Taxidermy and playing the harpsichord."
The thirteenth (and final) book of the series was released on Friday, October 13, 2006. That morning Handler appeared on the Today show as Lemony Snicket's "representative."
Handler has also written short fiction and picture books under the Lemony Snicket pseudonym. As part of his support of Occupy Wall Street, he wrote "Thirteen Observations made by Lemony Snicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance." The piece was published on the Occupy Writers website.
Currently, Handler is working on a new series of novels, All the Wrong Questions, which serve as prequels to A Series of Unfortunate Events.
Music
Although Handler played accordion in two bands following college, it was 69 Love Songs, a three-album set by The Magnetic Fields, that finally gained notice. In the project's boxed set, he offers a lengthy interview with band leader Stephin Merritt about the project, as well as conversations about each song. Handler also appears in the 2009 documentary Strange Powers, by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara, about Merritt and the Magnetic Fields.
Handler has gone on to play accordion in several other Merritt projects, including music by The Magnetic Fields, The 6ths and The Gothic Archies, the last of which provided songs for the audiobooks for the Lemony Snicket book series. In 2006, Gothic Archies released an album contained with all thirteen songs from the thirteen audiobooks.
Film
Handler has also had some scattered success in film work. He produced the screenplay for Rick, based on the Verdi opera Rigoletto, and also wrote the screenplay for Kill the Poor, based on the novel by Joel Rose.
He was involved in the screenwriting process for the film version of A Series of Unfortunate Events. He was ultimately removed from the project, having completed eight separate drafts of the film before giving up. (Robert Gordon, screenwriter of Galaxy Quest, replaced Handler, eventually receiving credit for the film's screenplay, under Handler's request.)
Handler, however, submitted commentary for the DVD version, alongside director Brad Silberling. In character as Lemony Snicket, he derides the Lemony Snicket of the film—played by Jude Law—as an impostor. At numerous times during the track he expresses sympathy for the Baudelaire children and implies that he is being held captive by the director in order to do the commentary.
Controversy
At the 2014 National Book Awards ceremony, Handler made a racist joke while announcing author Jacqueline Woodson as winner of the Young People's Literature Award. Woodson is African-American, as well as a friend of Handler. Handler attempted a joke about watermelon that backfired and caused a firestorm of criticism. He issued multiple apologies and donated $10,000 to We Need Diverse Books, promising to match donations up to $100,000.
In a New York Times op-ed article, Woodson explained that in "making light of that deep and troubled history" Handler had come from a place of ignorance. His misguided joke underscored the continued need to "give people a sense of this country's brilliant and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."
Handler referred to the incident as "a disaster of my own making.... [T]he story did not go out well and many, many people were very upset by it, and rightfully so." (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
A witty adult novel by Lemony Snicket author Daniel Handler.... Lemony Snicket's gothic humor lingers over this tale of upper-middle-class despair.... [A] dark and whimsical novel.... Yes, we are pirates, but we're chained on barren land. Has that theme ever been explored in such a weird mixture of impish wit and tender sympathy?
Washington Post
Exuberant.... Handler's a master with language, crafting showstopping sentences that are fresh and funny.... [He gives] everything the feel of legend, a story burnished with each retelling, and gleaming with rich moral lessons.... Although the novel is a raucously funny adventure, it's also a tragic exploration of the restlessness in all of us, of the ways we want to claim our happiness like buried treasure that might change everything. We Are Pirates is about how we try to forge our own destinies, and if we're lucky, become heroes of our own stories.
Caroline Leavitt - San Francisco Chronicle
Full of whimsy, adventure and intrigue. There are dastardly grown-ups and children in peril, moments of high camp and utter despair.... Beneath all the trappings of make-believe and fancy dress, there is a poignant, serious story about a girl's need to find her true self, shackled to her desire to escape from the world-and the irreconcilable, sometimes bloody conflict between those two yearnings.... The exhilarating sections dealing with this caper are the book's highlights, the prose full of high-blown pirate speak that does little to hide the sincerity of all those on deck.
Daily Telegraph (UK)
This, his fifth novel for adults, retains the whimsy, intrigue and high camp of his children's fiction. Silly but poignant.
Sunday Telegraph (UK)
[D]ark and light, YA yarn and midlife doldrums—while making readers root for his 20th-century privateers. The book never quite decides how serious it wants to be..., but it does offer a jaunty and occasionally jolting, and honest take on the discomforts of youth, midlife, and old age, and how ineffective we are at dealing with them.
Publishers Weekly
As the Huffington Post says, "If it's possible to be criminally underrated yet also be a millions-selling author, then Handler is it." He's world famous as Lemony Snicket, but not everyone remembers that his last adult book, Adverbs (2006), won considerable praise for being both formally experimental and emotionally arresting. Here, conscientious-to-a-fault 14-year-old Gwen follows her dreams, rounding up a motley crew and becoming a pirate who spreads terror on San Francisco Bay.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Handler (aka children’s author Lemony Snicket) has never been known for writing precisely happy novels, and his latest certainly doesn’t deviate. What could easily have been a slightly silly, fantastical romp becomes, instead, in Handler’s capable hands, a macabre, darkly human portrayal of family dynamics and growing up in a world running low on adventure...peppered with black humor.
Booklist
Handler is a master at depicting the existential chaos all his major characters are living through, and with warmth, sympathy and considerable humor at that. The reader will delight in Gwen and old Errol's escapade.... Affecting, lively and expertly told. Just the sort of thing to make grown-ups and teenagers alike want to unfurl the black flag.
Kirkus Reviews
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