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March 18, 2006

The Pleasure of Your Favourite

There is something innately pleasing as to have a selection of favourite writers whom you keep to yourself. A small list of names to which you hold so dear you wish to stunt there potential book sales by not telling anyone about them. It is, perhaps, a childlike instinct. A sort of "I found it first" line of thinking. If everyone else were to be reading you’re favourite books willy-nilly it would, you think, detract from them. And you’d be right. I have never read a book by Jack Kerouac, George Orwell or Yann Martel. Nor any books by Joseph O’Connor, Jane Austen or Frank McCourt. Sufficed to say I have never read any books by Dan Brown either. The chances are very slim of me ever reading them. I can say that in total sincerity none of these authors have taken my interest. Much in the same way you might be holidaying with you’re wife in Austria, where she wishes to spend the day climbing a mountain, while you feel the time given over to this activity would be better spent having blueberry ice-cream on the veranda of a local café.

My favourite writers manage, with the utmost concern for their readers, to stay out of the best-seller lists. At least they do in Ireland anyway and for that I am grateful. Contrary to what you might think one might write at this point, I’m going to tell you the names of my favourite writers. Not all of them of course. One must keep some things to themselves and considering the writer I admire the most passed away some years ago, they won’t be losing out in publicity sales of their books. In fact, even the writers I’m about to supply you with the names of, won’t benefit greatly from being mentioned. This is because I’m certain that only a very small number of people (one probably, two at a stretch) will actually go and seek out these books that I have yet to mention. I know from experience that recommendations from strangers in newspapers are very hard to believe. Then again I’m not recommending these books to you. If anything I recommend that you don’t purchase these books.

The first of my beloved authors is Daniel Handler. Handler is an interesting choice for one of my favourite writers as he is known by a great number of people - only they know him as a one Lemony Snicket, the writer of A Series of Unfortunate Events. While Lemony Snicket’s books regularly appear on the children’s best-seller lists, Daniel Handler’s two published adult novels remain largely unknown to the greater pool of readers. The Basic Eight is a terrific satire on American culture, dealing with teenagers in particular. The other is Watch You’re Mouth which the blurb rightly describes as "the best incest comedy you’ll read all year." Handler has a wonderful style complemented by his creative story structures. For instance, while the first half of Watch You’re Mouth is told as though it were an opera, the second half swivels radically to continue the story through a self-help book.

At an onstage interview with McSweeney’s editor and writer Dave Eggers, Handler once told the audience of how much his writing has been influenced by Lorrie Moore, especially by her novel Anagrams from which he read an extract for them. "The most embarrassing thing about re-reading Anagrams for this evening was realizing that I’d stolen from her again," he said. "I stole from her in The Basic Eight and I stole from her in Watch Your Mouth. It’s a short book," he continued. "There’s only, like, five words left that I could steal. And I’ve written a new novel, which will be out next year, that is stolen completely from Anagrams." "And what is the name of the new novel?" Eggers asked. Handler, after a brief pause, replies "Adverbs." And that particular book is to be released in April.

The thing about discovering a writer who is largely at the beginning of his career is that they don’t have many books, and so the wait for each new book, to be completely melodramatic, is excruciating. Furthermore, if that particular writer isn’t swimming in the mainstream or even dipping his toe in the little stream you’ll find yourself obsessively trying to hunt down a copy of the book as soon as possible. It goes without saying that my copy of Adverbs is already ordered and waiting to cross the Atlantic. The other thing about Handler is not just his writing but his persona. In all interviews he’s so incredibly sharp and amusing that you can’t help but fall in love with him.

For instance, when asked did he have any favourite questions that kids have asked him, Handler answered, "This kid at a reading the other day asked if I had a hot tub, and I said no. So he said that neither did Christopher Paolini - Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon, a popular children’s series. I said, well, that’s why Christopher Paolini and I had never been in a hot tub together, because every time we were together we’d say your hot tub or mine, and we’d both have to say we didn’t have one, which is why Christopher Paolini and I have remained total strangers rather than hot tub partners." If his literary works and sparkling wit wasn’t enough for me to love Daniel Handler he also occasional plays accordion with one of my favourite bands, The Magnetic Fields. In fact in writing all this this I realise that I still want to keep him and the rest of my favourite writers to myself but it’s late, I’m tired and I’ve a dentists appointment in the morning, and so I don’t have the energy to delete what I’ve just written and write something else in its place. I’m just going to have to trust you. Don’t buy any of his books.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at March 18, 2006 11:47 PM