More On The True Identity Of Lemony Snicket

REAL NAME

Daniel Handler, 33.

PERSONAL

Married to graphic artist Lisa Brown. Grew up in San Francisco, where he lives now, after living for a time in New York. Mother, Sandra Handler, was a dean at City College; father, Lou Handler, was a CPA.

EDUCATION

Attended San Francisco's Hoover Middle School in early 1980s, where he was voted class clown, best personality, friendliest and most admired. Graduated from Lowell High School and from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., in 1992.

What he was like as a kid

"I was the sort of kid that was funny enough that I wouldn't get beat up."

OTHER BOOKS

"The Basic Eight" (1999), an adult novel, based on a real event, about a high school student who beats someone to death. Also, "Watch Your Mouth" (2000), definitely not for kids, about a college student and his girlfriend and her family, a parody of an opera and a 12-step program.

WHERE `LEMONY SNICKET' CAME FROM

Handler told National Public Radio's Terry Gross, "I was researching the first of two novels that I've published under my own name, the first novel, "The Basic Eight," and I needed to contact for research purposes some right-wing political organizations and religious groups, and I wanted material mailed to me, but I didn't want to be on their mailing list, for obvious reasons. And so someone asked me, `So what is your name?' And I opened my mouth and out popped the words `Lemony Snicket.' "

Handler told Gross that he had not consciously intended for the name to sound like Jiminy Cricket, whom he called "exactly the kind of overly moralistic, cheerful narrator who I despise."

THOUGHTS, POST-9/11, ON WRITING CHILDREN'S BOOKS WITH UNHAPPY EVENTS

In a piece Handler wrote for The New York Times (reprinted in The Observer on Oct. 31, 2001): "It is natural now to wonder how some people can do terrible things, how we can stay strong when something terrible could happen to us at any moment, whether it is right to inflict horror on other people because it has been inflicted on us. The answers are unlikely to be found in stories that ignore rather than acknowledge these questions.

"Stories can offer a truth -- that real trouble cannot be erased, only endured -- that is more soothing to me than any determinedly cheerful grin."

WRITING HABIT

Uses a laptop computer at a desk that used to be a doctor's examining table, sometimes for inspiration turning on melodramatic cliffhanger music from old radio shows.

OTHER TALENTS

Plays accordion.

QUOTE

"You never love a book the way you love it when you're 10. It's a blessing to be a part of that."

Visit www.DanielHandler.com for more information and pictures of The "Fake" Lemony Snicket.