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Chris's Reviews > Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid
by
by
How could I not give this a positive review with such obvious panders as:
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
and
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.
Because even though those examples aren't what give Snicket's collection their depth,
One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.
And, of course, that one isn't either. I'm glad I waited a few years before reading this collection of "truths," because time had faded my memory of what I love so much about Snicket's storytelling. This, after all, is the man who repeatedly through his Series of Unfortunate Events books extolled the virtues of drinking tea strong and black, because sometimes it's good to sip on life's bitterness. With wit and sarcasm and profound respect for intellect, but always with the undercurrent of bitter. The aphorisms are collected into short chapters with titles like, "Home," "Work," "Travel," and the like, but it's the title of the climactic twelfth (of thirteen, of course) chapter that captures what he's all about: "An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape No Matter What One Does." So, with that in mind, a few more representative samples (saving the best for last):
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby--awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
-----
Everybody will die, of course, sooner or later. Circus performers will die, and clarinet experts will die, and you and I will die, and there might be a person who lives on your block, right now, who is looking both ways before he crosses the street and who will die in just a few seconds, all because of a bus. Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.
-----
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. The truth is that you can never be sure if you have decided on the right thing until the party is over, and by then it is too late to go back and change your mind, which is why the world is filled with people doing terrible things and wearing ugly clothing.
-----
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night’s sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake someone else up, so that they can feel this way, too.
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.
and
A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them.
Because even though those examples aren't what give Snicket's collection their depth,
One of the remarkable things about love is that, despite very irritating people writing poems and songs about how pleasant it is, it really is quite pleasant.
And, of course, that one isn't either. I'm glad I waited a few years before reading this collection of "truths," because time had faded my memory of what I love so much about Snicket's storytelling. This, after all, is the man who repeatedly through his Series of Unfortunate Events books extolled the virtues of drinking tea strong and black, because sometimes it's good to sip on life's bitterness. With wit and sarcasm and profound respect for intellect, but always with the undercurrent of bitter. The aphorisms are collected into short chapters with titles like, "Home," "Work," "Travel," and the like, but it's the title of the climactic twelfth (of thirteen, of course) chapter that captures what he's all about: "An Overall Feeling of Doom that One Cannot Ever Escape No Matter What One Does." So, with that in mind, a few more representative samples (saving the best for last):
Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby--awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.
-----
Everybody will die, of course, sooner or later. Circus performers will die, and clarinet experts will die, and you and I will die, and there might be a person who lives on your block, right now, who is looking both ways before he crosses the street and who will die in just a few seconds, all because of a bus. Everybody will die, but very few people want to be reminded of that fact.
-----
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. The truth is that you can never be sure if you have decided on the right thing until the party is over, and by then it is too late to go back and change your mind, which is why the world is filled with people doing terrible things and wearing ugly clothing.
-----
Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night’s sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake someone else up, so that they can feel this way, too.
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