One recent afternoon in south Minneapolis, we looked on in horror as a torch-wielding mob chased a pale, fedora-clad man down an alley past the grease-clogged kitchen vents of a Chinese restaurant. Rounding a corner ahead of the mob, the fugitive ducked through an oddly small lavender-colored door in a nearby storefront. As the mob continued their search in the wrong direction, we ducked through the diminutive door and found none other than Lemony Snicket catching his breath in a shabby wingback chair, surrounded by cats, a banty hen pecking about his feet. The reclusive author recently completed The Slippery Slope, the tenth in his Series of Unfortunate Events books documenting the tragic affairs of the Baudelaire orphans. As the clamor of the mob receded in the distance, Mr. Snicket agreed to tell The Rake what he would bring along if stranded on a desert island. Though in Snicket’s case, the question may be when, not if.
1. “An up-to-date atlas.”
2. “A sturdy, easily steerable raft, preferably designed by Thor Heyerdahl.”
3. “Alice Waters. Founder of the famed Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, known for concocting delicious dishes out of local materials. I should hasten to add that Ms. Waters would be along in a purely professional context, in a non-romantic way.”
4. “Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. It’s a thousand-page long philosophical treatise-long thought to have been destroyed-on window shopping in France. I’ve always wanted to read it, and a desert island might provide me ample time for cracking its spine without cracking my own.”
5. “Sun Ra’s collected singles. A magnificent collection of music that spans nearly every emotional flight of fancy so that regardless of my mood it could be interesting to listen to. If there were no stereo system available on the raft, I think the closest thing to musical entertainment would be a very large bottle of Germaine-Robin, preferably taken from the musty basement of a trusted friend or manservant.”
If no one stops him, Lemony Snicket will appear at the Mall of America Barnes and Noble October 4.
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