A Series of Fortunate Moments

There's something you need to know about me--I might be the only person in the world who has read all 3 of Daniel Handler's adult novels but has yet to read one of the books he's most famous for, as his nom de plume is Lemony Snicket. Part of me thinks it's silly trying to pick a "grace note" moment from a novel as if that moment is any good it's not mere grace, but: 1) I really want to get some nods in to the written word as well as to music and movies in this summer series of mine, and 2)when was the last time being silly stopped me from doing anything?

So go read Handler's latest Adverbs. For sheer word-to-word wit it's hard to beat, but it's also a fine treatise on modern love, which is ridiculous and indispensible, and leaves you about as giddy as reading the book. Here's one graph that particularly makes me happy:

Boys, like Sinatra they'd had a few. Andrea had a drunk guy named Ben who was an activist after a few beers. He'd call department stores and pretend he was going to stop by for a mink stole that same afternoon, and then suddenly shout "Fur is murder!" and hang up while Andrea and Sam laughed and played the Salad Forks album. The whiskey he took to bringing over didn't last, either. "I always thought alcoholics would be fun," Andrea said wistfully the night she dumped him and went with Sam to the Tish Brothers show to celebrate. Ben had turned out to be the opposite of fun, and smashed a speaker in his rage on the way out. For a while Andrea and Sam listened only to the Phil Spector box set, which was in mono, but finally they relented and spent the money.