This study examines the deterritorialization of contemporary children’s literature by analyzing the (inter)textuality of A Series of Unfortunate Events (1999-2006) by Lemony Snicket, a metafictional series that is gaining popularity comparable to that of Harry Potter books. In the Series, published under the pen name of the Gen-X bard Daniel Handler, Lemony Snicket is simultaneously the author, the narrator, and the character of the text. In the Netflix original series, which was partly scripted by Handler himself and released from 2017 to 2019, Lemony Snicket also appears both in and out of the story, recounting the misadventures of the three Baudelaire orphans. After their parents perished in a suspicious fire, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are put in the custody of Count Olaf, who viciously and persistently comes after the children’s inheritance. Throughout the thirteen books, the Baudelaires have to confront child abuse, violence, plot, murder, and hopelessness—there are no adults who can protect them or they can rely on. Lemony Snicket urges readers and viewers NOT to read the book or “look away” from the story with no happily ever after, repeatedly intervening in the plot. “Dark humor, sarcastic storytelling, and frequent cultural and literary allusions” unexpectedly interfere with the Baudelaire children’s passage to turbulent maturity. As a result, the narrative always exists in medias res—in the midst of things—and rejects the conventional binary opposition between good and evil, children and adults, and fiction and reality. As a subversive metafiction, it not only shares (inter)textuality with other classic stories, movies, and TV series but also exposes the “unfortunate events” of recent cross-border children’s literature.
