time. paradoxes. OW. I thought this was library science not physics...
haha, Lemony Snicket! You and your ability to exist as a narrator on more than one level of quasi-linear time! So far I ahve been able to discern what I am calling the Quasi-omnicient narrative time and the emerrsed character time.
I am not sure which one of those my current problem belongs to though. In the atuobiography the illustrator writes LS a letter. He encloses a drawing he made of a fire site, and explains that he could only see it after the Offical Fire Department had been there and that the smoke overcame him and he had to draw from across the street. He then says that he never believed the punctilio articles about Snicket including that he was involved in the Quagmire case.
The problem is this: the drawing is the one that appears in the second chapter of the first book. Now, the illustrator was overcome by smoke so he was on the scene fairly early even if he was kept away for a bit by the fire department, I mean it wasn't like years later, it was while the place was still smoky. Ok. Now then, the Quagmire case should be reference to a fire that happened AFTER the Baudelaire fire. Also, the picture in the autobiogrpahy of the drawing is LITERALY the one from chapter 2, complete with the C for Chapter on it. If all of these things are true, which, I will address if they are not in a moment, then
1. There is more than one Quagmire case. One before the Baudelaire fire that LS was implicated in, and one afterwards.
2. the drawing in the file is not the original sent with the letter, but one torn from a copy of the first book.
3. These things hinge on the fact that the illustrator really was at the Baudelaire home right after the fire was put out but while the place was still smoking.
Now, for one thing, the sources in this book are not all authentic within the cannon. For instance, the first thing is an obituary from the punctilio that says LS is dead, though as he comments on it, he is NOT. Secondly, there is some possibility that the letter from R., Duchess of Winnipeg is a forgary. So, the letter from the illustrator may not be part of the time line at all, expect as evidence of someone impersonating him. Secondly, he mentions that he will go to the Diary, which on the next page is revealed to burned down. The officer who investigated the fire said that a drawing he found was likely done by someone in that fire while it was happening, which is silly, but means that the drawing was there when the fire happened and since the illustrator lived through the whole series and to do the Lump of Coal, I'm going to guess he was not killed in that fire though he may have been present when it happened. The picture printed in the article about the Diary fire does NOT have the C for chapter on it and is probably copied from the actual original drawing. What happened to that drawing afterward, I can't say, but presumably the illustrated reclaimed it at some point to have it published in the first book...if the letter really comes from before the first book was published. If the drawing does NOT date to before the Quagmire fire, than I guess all burning mansions look the same and it was actually some other mansion burning down. Maybe R.'s house.
The further complicating factor is the suspicious cow that was wandering around looking for Uncle Monty's reptiles. The cow is implied by a post card to have been a henchman of Olaf's, though nothing in the cows account really says that. The cow says it avoided the Diary for fear of being milked, but the Punctilio article mentions the officals dismissing rumors of a suspicious cow lurking around the Diary before hand, and the Punctilio is usually WRONG which means the rumors may have been true. Perhaps the cow was ordered back. Perhaps not. I can't tell.
It makes it hard to date the burning of Diary and figure out when LS might have met the illustrator and what LS was implicated in by the Punctilio involving the Quagmires when I cannot determine whether there is one or two, or maybe more, cases about the Quagmires. Duncan, Isadora, and Quiggly's parents are never named nor, to my knowledge, discussed as members of the V.F.D. I mean they were members, and they knew members, but there's nothing about anything they did. So for all I know they have a long and distressing history just as complicated as the Baudelaire history with as many events that would warrent investigation and thus be cases.
Of course, it is also possible that simple mistake has been made and that what is supposed to be portrayed is an easy, tied off sequence that got knotted up accidently and the answer to resolving the time line is not to worry about it, the letter means both that the illustrator visited the Baudelaire home just after the fire AND LS was implicated in the only Quagmire case we knew about. The Diary would have burned then, sometime after the Quagmire fire and the escape of reptiles but fairly early on.
I guess the only important facts that really need to be gotten from this temporal mess are:
1.the Diary where LS was born and still visited burned down under dubious circumstances
2. The illustrator has been directly involved in, and possibly threatened by, (or, forgive for saying, a suspect in) the whole story
3. One of the things that the Punctilio mistakenly credited to LS was involvement in a Quagmire case, which may or not be the fire that oprhaned the Quagmire triplets.
I have no IDEA.
I am not sure which one of those my current problem belongs to though. In the atuobiography the illustrator writes LS a letter. He encloses a drawing he made of a fire site, and explains that he could only see it after the Offical Fire Department had been there and that the smoke overcame him and he had to draw from across the street. He then says that he never believed the punctilio articles about Snicket including that he was involved in the Quagmire case.
The problem is this: the drawing is the one that appears in the second chapter of the first book. Now, the illustrator was overcome by smoke so he was on the scene fairly early even if he was kept away for a bit by the fire department, I mean it wasn't like years later, it was while the place was still smoky. Ok. Now then, the Quagmire case should be reference to a fire that happened AFTER the Baudelaire fire. Also, the picture in the autobiogrpahy of the drawing is LITERALY the one from chapter 2, complete with the C for Chapter on it. If all of these things are true, which, I will address if they are not in a moment, then
1. There is more than one Quagmire case. One before the Baudelaire fire that LS was implicated in, and one afterwards.
2. the drawing in the file is not the original sent with the letter, but one torn from a copy of the first book.
3. These things hinge on the fact that the illustrator really was at the Baudelaire home right after the fire was put out but while the place was still smoking.
Now, for one thing, the sources in this book are not all authentic within the cannon. For instance, the first thing is an obituary from the punctilio that says LS is dead, though as he comments on it, he is NOT. Secondly, there is some possibility that the letter from R., Duchess of Winnipeg is a forgary. So, the letter from the illustrator may not be part of the time line at all, expect as evidence of someone impersonating him. Secondly, he mentions that he will go to the Diary, which on the next page is revealed to burned down. The officer who investigated the fire said that a drawing he found was likely done by someone in that fire while it was happening, which is silly, but means that the drawing was there when the fire happened and since the illustrator lived through the whole series and to do the Lump of Coal, I'm going to guess he was not killed in that fire though he may have been present when it happened. The picture printed in the article about the Diary fire does NOT have the C for chapter on it and is probably copied from the actual original drawing. What happened to that drawing afterward, I can't say, but presumably the illustrated reclaimed it at some point to have it published in the first book...if the letter really comes from before the first book was published. If the drawing does NOT date to before the Quagmire fire, than I guess all burning mansions look the same and it was actually some other mansion burning down. Maybe R.'s house.
The further complicating factor is the suspicious cow that was wandering around looking for Uncle Monty's reptiles. The cow is implied by a post card to have been a henchman of Olaf's, though nothing in the cows account really says that. The cow says it avoided the Diary for fear of being milked, but the Punctilio article mentions the officals dismissing rumors of a suspicious cow lurking around the Diary before hand, and the Punctilio is usually WRONG which means the rumors may have been true. Perhaps the cow was ordered back. Perhaps not. I can't tell.
It makes it hard to date the burning of Diary and figure out when LS might have met the illustrator and what LS was implicated in by the Punctilio involving the Quagmires when I cannot determine whether there is one or two, or maybe more, cases about the Quagmires. Duncan, Isadora, and Quiggly's parents are never named nor, to my knowledge, discussed as members of the V.F.D. I mean they were members, and they knew members, but there's nothing about anything they did. So for all I know they have a long and distressing history just as complicated as the Baudelaire history with as many events that would warrent investigation and thus be cases.
Of course, it is also possible that simple mistake has been made and that what is supposed to be portrayed is an easy, tied off sequence that got knotted up accidently and the answer to resolving the time line is not to worry about it, the letter means both that the illustrator visited the Baudelaire home just after the fire AND LS was implicated in the only Quagmire case we knew about. The Diary would have burned then, sometime after the Quagmire fire and the escape of reptiles but fairly early on.
I guess the only important facts that really need to be gotten from this temporal mess are:
1.the Diary where LS was born and still visited burned down under dubious circumstances
2. The illustrator has been directly involved in, and possibly threatened by, (or, forgive for saying, a suspect in) the whole story
3. One of the things that the Punctilio mistakenly credited to LS was involvement in a Quagmire case, which may or not be the fire that oprhaned the Quagmire triplets.
I have no IDEA.