Watch Your Mouth

by Daniel Handler

A golem is a creature made of clay that will rise up and do your bidding. The story of the golem is an old one, and nobody knows whether it's true or not. It's like an old family story in this way, or like the best sex of your life--did it happen the way you remember, or is it all just in your dirty mind? The summer Joseph lives with his girlfriend Cynthia and her family is something like an opera, and something like a twelve-step program, and Joseph wants very much to find out what's true and what's not. Does Cyn's father want Joseph to sleep with her, or does he want Cyn all to himself? Does Cyn's brother want to seduce his mother, or is this just one of his experiments? And speaking of experiments, what is Mrs. Glass building out of clay, late at night, in the basement? You can't always find out what's true about a family, but Joseph hopes that he can remember it in time. Because something is rising out of the river, and he really wants to know just whose bidding it's going to do. Tolstoy wrote that happy families are alike and that each unhappy family is unhappy in a different way. With WATCH YOUR MOUTH, Daniel Handler shows us just how different that way can be.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Humor, Romance, Fantasy, Jewish, Literary Fiction

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Daniel Handler is the author of seven novels, including Why We Broke Up, We Are Pirates, All The Dirty Parts and, most recently, Bottle Grove.

As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for numerous books for children, including the thirteen-volume A Series of Unfortunate Events, the four-volume All the Wrong Questions, and The Dark, which won the Charlotte Zolotow Award. 

Mr. Snicket’s first book for readers of all ages, Poison for Breakfast, will be published by Liveright/W.W. Norton on August 31, 2021.

Handler has received commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, Berkeley Repertory Theater and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and has collaborated with artist Maira Kalman on a series of books for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and with musicians Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields), Benjamin Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie), Colin Meloy (of the Decemberists) and Torquil Campbell (of Stars).

His books have sold more than 70 million copies and have been translated into 40 languages, and have been adapted for film, stage and television, including the recent adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events for which he was awarded both the Peabody and the Writers Guild of America awards.

He lives in San Francisco with the illustrator Lisa Brown, to whom he is married and with whom he has collaborated on several books and one son.

Reviews

[Oriana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Daniel Handler SO MUCH. The way he writes is so splendid, I can sometimes hardly stand it. And his plots are so twisted and twisty and bizarre and beautiful and DARK. And funny and clever and smutty and sly and just just just such a joy to read. Here is how I love him:



Anyway so I obviously love this book to bits and pieces, let me count the ways. If you read the blurb you will know that it is: a meta-opera (sort of) about incest (maybe / maybe not) and Jewish mysticism (probably / possibly). It is also drenched in sex, slippery-wet with it, especially in the first half, just replete, completely. You will likely make this face through most of it (I certainly did):



Like, omg, is he going to go th-- yes, yes he is. He did. Oh my.

Okay, are you still with me? Let's get a little deeper (twss) into this brilliant disturbing little gem. Here we have the story of erstwhile Joseph, at the end of his senior year and in the first blush of his very sexually intense relationship with Cyn. For various reasons, Joseph is going to spend the summer in Pittsburgh living with Cyn and her family—dad is a recently disgraced osteopath, mom is a propsmistress for the local theatre where the whole season is antisemitic operas (on purpose! not in a racist way!), and brother is a scientist doing something with molecules and gold.



What Joseph and Cyn are purportedly doing with their time is being camp counselors; what they are actually doing is a tremendous amount of acrobatic and voracious fucking, in that way the youngs do so well. The problems is (maybe) that all this fucking is going to Joseph's head, and he starts to believe that everyone in the family is also doing every bit as much fucking—with one another. (Apologies for the spoiler tag; it's nothing Daniel won't tell you himself very early on, but still, some decorum.) There's a lot more—mother Mimi may or not be bringing home her props, and I don't mean bits of tissue paper; Rabbi Tsouris (sure) has a splendidly disorienting speech about God being both NOWHERE and NOW HERE; a tiny hallway window has an almost mystical ability to cause doors around the house to open on terribly indecent scenes behind; and our hero, of course, loses his mind amid sexual fluids and an excessive spurting forth (twss) of mud.



That's the first half of the book. I won't get much into the second half except to say that although it is set in a different city and follows a radically different structure (it's a 12-step self-help book, not a self-referential meta-opera), it still answers all the questions that you never would have believed the first half would have left panting and open.

Look, all of this is awesome and wild and shockingly original, and all on its own it would have made a really kooky fun read. But the thing about Daniel Handler is that he is so dazzlingly smart, at a stylistic line-level, that everything he does is catapulted into this exotic rarefied territory of evil genius brilliance. He does, for one example, this thing with metaphors where in any given scene, all the things evoked with metaphoric language refer back, perfectly, to the subject at hand. That may sound incomprehensible, but every time it happens you will gasp with delight at how hard he must have worked (twss).



And the other thing is that his gimmickry in structures—the opera, the 12-step book; in his other books it's epistolary or like an oral history or whatnot—is do deft, so tightly conceived and stuck to, that it keeps everything perfectly wonderfully contained. There's all these clever little opera bits threaded through: motifs and contraltos and sly stage directions and a malfunctioning fog machine. It's like he knows his creativity is so vast and obstreperous that he has to reign it in by imposing these strictures upon himself, to keep it from bursting out in a great gush all over your face (twss).



There's just so many moments of clever meta winking at the reader, which I only realized while writing this review is one of the reasons I love him so much: he wants you to feel so smart too. Amid all the similes and sex and silliness, he gives you all these fun ways to get it, to be in on it, to play your own readerly part in how absurd and zany and fun it all is. (twss? no? whatever.)

God I love this book.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The premise of this story sounds sounds rather dull (a guy in college moving in with his girlfriend and her dysfunctional family for the summer), but this was easily one of the strangest books I have ever read...including House of Leaves, which says quite a lot. The story is often structured as if it is an Opera with the protagonist Joseph continually telling the reader that this IS FICTION. A fair amount of description goes into lighting, curtains, sound effects etc.

The book is incredibly twisted, and once you hit page 50 and realize just HOW strange this family is, I think a lot of people might not want to continue reading haha. However there is very intelligent lightheartedness and sense of humor throughout the book. If you're in the mood for something sick, fun, and unconventional, I would certainly recommend this.

[Megan Scaison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh G-d, this book.

When I finished it, I turned it over and started again.

Absolutely nothing turned out the way I had expected; with this particular book that probably means that I am not as fucked up as I sometimes think I might be. I suppose that means that Daniel Handler IS that fucked up.

This book affected me every bit as much as American Psycho, and in a very, very similar way.

This book contains two significant plot elements I've been wanting: contemporary American Jewish life, and opera. And finally, someone in my generation understands opera for what it is: chock full of inapropriate sex and villainous violence. Of course, Watch Your Mouth has these things in abundance, including the longest, hottest and creepiest sex scene I've read since Scott Summers' Endless Love. And another thing: I have a few books on my ipod that are read by Daniel Handler. I can read his eye-opening porno portions more or less in his own voice. Priceless.

I should probably say something about the plot, but it's too hard not to just tell the whole story. You must simply experience it yourself. I remember being told something similar by an angel-faced, devil-figured girl in my knitting group. I've got to find that girl and, er, thank her. For the reccomendation.

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The UK paperback edition of this book has the ugliest design and corniest blurb I've ever seen, but the text itself is a marvellous linguistic whirlwind through incest, or imagined incest, golems, or imagined golems, and operas, or maybe novels.

I became aware of Daniel Handler through Stephin Merritt's band The Gothic Archies, and a mean-spirited review (by Lucy Ellmann) of Adverbs. Since I trust Lucy Ellmann implicitly, I read this instead. It is, quite simply, gleefully bonkers.

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

well, we have a dysfunctional family, our MC is dating a girl ( she is the one that have a problematic family).
The story goes like a Opera by a fiction perspective of the MC...i believe that for some readers this could bring some disinterest...

Twisted, taboo, forbidden relations...deaths... For those who like kinky stories!

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

In case you haven't heard, Daniel Handler is the mastermind behind Lemony Snicket, author of the unlucky adventures of the three Baudelaire orphans. His success as Snicket seemed to have happened overnight, but he's been writing for a while it seems, with two adult novels (this one and The Basic Eight to his credit, both written before the Snicket books, I believe). In combination, it is quite clear that Handler is well on his way to becoming the 21st century Roald Dahl, who also wrote books for both adults and children that combined both whimsy and perversion.

And if you want perversion, you can't do much better than a comic novel about incest, which is what this book is. The structure of the book begins as an opera (it ties in to some community opera done by one of the characters), then mutates in Act III to be based on a 12-step program. Like Dahl in My Uncle Oswald, Handler isn't afraid of writing about sex, either. I was reading this on the airplane and I kept holding the book open at 90 degrees rather than the normal 180 just in case the fellow sitting next to me travelling with his young child might glance over and then alert the attendent to the pervert on the plane.

I'm not sure I liked this book, but I have to admit it was audacious, quite funny, and always unusual. The ending was disappointing as Handler went in for the more serious ending rather than really ending off as absurd as he began. All in all, this is an adult series of unfortunate events that is recommended for mature minds only.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I am a Handler/Snicket fan, the blurbs on this book, his second novel under his own name, didn't give me any impetus to want to read it;, but after enjoying his first novel, The Basic Eight, I figured I'd give it a try. Unfortunately, my first impression was right. While the writing was fine and kept me reading, the trademark Handler humor was not nearly enough to overcome a story that I didn't find entertaining at all.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't help thinking while reading this that he was trying to make up for all of the adult situations he couldn't write into the Lemony Snicket books. I'm not a prude, by any means, but I kind of got tired of all the sex and other stuff in this book. I liked the aspect of setting it as the description of an opera, but I was glad the whole book didn't follow that formula because then it would've crossed the line into gimmick, I think. it was part Lemony Snicket, part Chuck Palahniuk, part Jonathan Safran Foer. I didn't care much about any of the non-narrator characters, though...they weren't too fleshed out and the whole premise of how messed up the family was just seemed so over the top that it was absolutely unbelievable. but then, so is someone being able to make a golem in their basement, so there you go.

[Allegra S · Rating 1 out of 5]

Do not read this book if you are picking it up because you like Daniel Handler's writing.
DO read this book if you like experimental fiction as well Jewish mythology and the absurd nature of modern opera.

The first half of this book uses the guise of a 'satire of opera' to tell a lengthy absurd-style comedy story that continuously references a couple of major themes/motifs. It's chalk full crazy situations and unbelievable scenarios, because opera.

The second half of the novel is very long and there is only a little payoff and explanation. It was meant to be structured as a 12-step program, but the titles of 'steps' and the appearance of a self-help book are really just chapter titles.

I like to try experimental fiction and I know it has the option of being something amazing that I love or something that I really dislike so this one was a big ol' swing and a miss for me.

1-star for the few moments where Daniel Handler's usual poignant prose triumphed:
1) "As in all American cities, the areas are named after what was destroyed to put the houses there, and most of Pittsburgh is named after Indian things:"
2) "the one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything"
3) "in every house there’s a family of people remembering clearly and obsessively what the other people have said and forgotten. You’ll show a finger- painting to your father, and he’ll say, “That’s nice. Go wash up for dinner,” and your hopes of becoming an artist will join your daily grime in the drain, despite the hundreds of other finger- paintings he’s celebrated in minute detail, magneted to the gal- ley of the refrigerator. Your mother will let something carelessly slide about your sister which will become a Doric column in your mind, the central piece in the Temple of Sibling Opinion. “I hate olives,” your brother will say once, and you’ll never give him any even though he loves them, he just hated that one. “My daughter is attractive,” somebody will say, and they won’t mean it one-tenth as much as you do. There in the dining room behind the fancy-paned glass and those stickers touting an advanced burglar alarm system, families are investigative re- porters. They write down their favorite things and quote them, out of context, all childhood long and through all the dinner parties of adulthood: at college gatherings with cheap red wine and stir-fries, over the exquisite grilled fish of early marriage, then with the carpools all I had time to do was throw together this casserole, hope you like it, and mixed into the pureed peas of the home where you sit on the porch and stare moodily at the shuffleboard courts"
^ Now that's some good writing.

[Sarah Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was sitting on the bus commuting to work when it suddenly hit me: this book was about comedic incest. it wasn't going to be a one-liner, but an actual plot line. the major plot line. I mention this in large part because most descriptions of the book discuss Jewish folklore or opera and leave out the Main Theme.

now, incest isn't a deal breaker for me. neither is changing the color of a book's font midway through the novel. but when font color and telling people that my book is about comedic incest are more entertaining than the actual writing within the book itself, well, that's a bit of an issue.

[Leslie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. Incest and a golem? WTF? Started off almost pornographic and then just lost sight of whatever the story was supposed to be about. Don't bother with this one.

[Paige Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4/5-This is the new high art: low down, dirty mouth Pittsburgh theater run by a candy-sucker who wants to titillate average joes w/ “erotically scarring summer stories.” The MC, fittingly named Joe, is his right-hand man, waxing poetic but semi-accessible and ironic about the city, snooty artist-types, and how no one ever wrote anything about him. So here goes:

Though the prose is too historical, often centered around Jewish lore and stream of consciousness, nobody is as sweetly filthy as Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket not allowed around kids). With girlfriend Cyn, Joe is “falling in love like falling down drunk, like falling down the stairs,” bumping the flower vases he bought her over on his back as they bump other things together. The writing is intentionally repetitive like a string of vignette short stories but it’s frustrating to unspool. The play about Joe’s life is like a raunchy Seinfeld ep where George’s parents are turned up to 11, since he stays with girlfriend Cyn’s fam all summer. The dad is a wannabe incestuous mad scientist who’s been outed by the news for experimental ceramic leg repair? And the grandma screeches at the couple about sex over their first dinner. And the daughter…seems very into it! They all do.

This the MC can hardly believe and starts to go mad—or does he? Tragedy after tragedy are bending reality for everybody. Part II is ordered like a 12 step program rather than chapters or play parts, things still quirky but bogged w/ dramatic language so the pace comes out like ants squirming frantic in molasses. Still, I prefer this more ordinary setup with cultish overtones that call to mind the later books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. By the end, it all feels like a vaguely sad fever dream but I’m still so in love with the author.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was very disappointed. I had been told this wasn't as good as The Basic Eight (Handler's first novel, which I read a few years ago and LOVED), but my fiance convinced me to give it a try anyway. Handler's use of gimmicks, which worked so well in Basic Eight, only got in his way here. The first half of the book is written as an opera; a bit belaboured, but it almost works. The second half of the book, written as a 12-step program, was unnecessary--it seemed like the only reason it was there was because his publisher wouldn't accept a 150-page book.

I also found the book really disturbing. Whereas Basic Eight was disturbing in a good, psychological mind-f**k sort of way, this... was a book about incest and golems. And... no. I'm sorry, no. Mr. Handler, you are no Jeffrey Eugenides. I know you're famous for being Lemony Snicket, but you don't need to prove anything by trying to write salacious sex scenes.

The worst thing about this book is that there are some really clever, hilarious lines mixed in. If there were more of that, and less of the tortured sex/angst, the book would have been the better for it.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh gosh I am enamoured of Handler's writing: the subtle absurdity, the occasional nonsense, the intimate style of storytelling.

Joseph is a great narrator, self-absorbed but observant, exciting and bored. The copious amounts of sex that is had in the book is dealt with gorgeously, sweat and heat and sensation all featured. The opera framework is just self-referential enough to make the story a tiny bit tongue in cheek but not invasive enough to detract from the narrative; in fact, I think it is crucial to the telling of this story, and the narrative flowed beautifully because of it.

Flashes of Lemony Snicket shine through occasionally, most especially when Joseph is talking to Stan at the Opera house and in the names of characters (Dr. Zhivago, par instance), and remind me why I am enjoying the story so much.

I loved it, and I may even come back and amend to a five star rating after letting it settle on my mind for a while longer.

[sj · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow. That was strange. Good, but weird.

I feel like I need to re-read to fully appreciate, which leaves me less than charitable.

[Megan Howarth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A smutty Jewish incest-opera that turns into a 12-step program in the second half...quite possibly the strangest thing I have ever read. I finished the book a week ago and still have no idea what to make of it, no clue if the events in the story were meant to have actually happened or have all been in Joseph's head, or if I even liked it or not. One thing is for certain, though; you will never read another book like it.

[Mark Enderle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alternately hilarious, pornographic, and baffling. A solid 3.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh my god, this book was nuts
Absolutely had no idea where it was going at any point in time. What an insane ride

[Amber · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.
This was odd. The first operatic part was interesting if bizarre. The second part dragged and the ending was abrupt.

[Marlon Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

v odd

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book a lot and also it is very uncomfortable, and I don't want to talk about it or read it again.

[Lancakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

VERY WEIRD!

[cass · Rating 1 out of 5]

i really wish i could tell you i finished this book but there’s only so much incest i can read about before i put it in DNF

[Joseph Hamm · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rollercoaster of a novel. I’ve read many horror novels before, but let me tell you I’d rather face a killer clown than social awkwardness from a family any day. The plot goes insane as the tension slowly builds the entire time, and the tone is pretty well balanced between dark comedy and tragedy.

I also want to shout-out the unique style of the novel. I really like how the two parts are structured. The first half is representative of an opera, being split into acts and each character being associated with a respective instrument; conversely, the second half is structured like a twelve-step program to recovery as the protagonist (who happens to share the same name as me) attempts to come to peace with his trauma from the first portion of the novel.

Overall, while I enjoyed this I could easily see how someone would have difficulty engaging with it. I would however recommend this to any fans of Daniel Handler’s other works.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I went to get an autograph from the author at Live Wire! Radio, having just finished the Series of Unfortunate Events series earlier that day. He had just talked about his new book (which was a Printz Honor book) about a box of memorabilia left over from a breakup of a relationship. They were out of the new book, so I grabbed the next best thing: this book.
So, I'm reluctant to even write this review, because the first half is a Jewish incest-comedy porn opera novel. And the parts that are funny involve incest and antisemitism. And I don't expect anyone to believe that last sentence. The main character has the same dilemma in that he witnesses his girlfriend's family's dysfunction and he thinks the best way to get through it is to not tell anyone. So, the only person who can identify with my experience as a reader was the main character.
I liked the second half a lot better because it's a horror movie. A bastardized version of the Scream rules apply. It also gives me the chance to use the word Kafkaesque correctly in a sentence.
I don't think I'm going to give this book to anyone, for fear of judgment. I think I could probably sell it at Powell's, though, because the book buyers are paid not to judge.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars. An operatic Jewish themed comedy novel about incest? Ok then. Possibly one of the oddest books I've read but frankly I love the odd, taboo and unashamedly smutty so in that sense I liked this book for the experience, and I'm glad I read it because it certainly was, erm, unique haha. The prose was also amazing and hilarious; "pearls hanging round women's necks like drops of semen" has got to be a new favourite line of mine.

Unlike some people I had no problem with the subject matter, the absurdity, or the at times extremely graphic details in this book. The reason this didn't get a higher rating from me is in part due to the fact that I just wasn't as engaged or as invested in the story as I wanted to be.. The strange change in structure halfway through might have had something to do with it and by the end of the book I didn't know what to make of it. (I'm not sure if that's an inherently good or bad thing mind)

But I know I will definitely be picking up more of Daniel Handler's books in the future, I really enjoyed his writing and I think I would love this book if it were a little more concise.

(Oh and I honestly can't believe this is written by the same guy who penned "A Series of Unfortunate Events" aka Lemony Snicket. That to me is just beyond hilarious.)

[Charles · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I almost put this book down for good several times. Incest, really? And what's with Handler's obsession with semen - its seems that every page contains a reference thereto (though he did seem to be using water/liquids as a theme, though I'm not sure to what end). It makes me want to read the Lemony Snicket books my daughter loves to see exactly what's in them. Frankly, this book struck me as edgy (incest, really?) for the sake of edgy, shtick-y (the opera motif, the twelve-step program structure, an avenging golem) for the sake of shtick. And I really didn't come out of the reading experience with anything. I can't figure out what the author is trying to say with this story; apparently, something about families and the unhappiness often therein. Obviously, I finished the book, so it has just enough going for it to have kept me reading until the end (hence two stars instead of one). Indeed, I re-engaged briefly in the early second half when it is implied that the events of first half didn't really happen (unfortunately, that is not the case). All in all, a very juvenile effort. I won't be reading any other "adult" fare from Mr. Handler again.

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

2/5

Yikes. I didn't really like this, which is unfortunate considering how much I have fallen for Handler's writing lately. The writing itself is well done: expansive and poetic with a good handle on that tongue-in-cheek humor he does so well. The plot though? I just could not get into it. It is very strange, which in itself is not always a bad thing, but strange bordering experimental, like the black box productions in the state college's basement theater. The first half, the half which honed in on this comedy-incest-operatic-absurdist amalgamation, was just too absurd. It was so absurd I was positive it wasn't really happening, that it was some lofty allegory. Wrong.

Overall, it's overly ambitious and just trying too hard to be shocking and original. The shame is I don't think for one second that he needs to try so hard; he's a wonderful writer with a fantastic imagination and voice. Although this earned a 2 from me, I will continue to read his writing, though I may need a bit of a break from it.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

When Dan bought this book at the Northern Arizona Book Festival, he met the other Dan who signed the book and told him (with a smarmy leer--at least the way I imagine it)that it was about sex. This was only a half-truth, though, because while the first half was oozing with late adolescent sex, the second half was about revenge. Handler uses operatic flourishes to deliver the narrative about a golem avenging incest, and the reader is left to decide if the golem is "real" or if the golem is simply the rejected adolscent lover going on a murderous rampage. In the end, I didn't really care. The Big Questions raised by Handler are lost in the grotesqueness of the plotline and the nearly pornographic passages detailing the sex lives of two college freshmen. The whole thing seemed more like a farce than a tragedy, which may have been his intention, but Handler's beserker golem got away from him, crushing whatever literary merit could have been salvaged from this overwrought work.

[Julie]

Oh, Daniel Handler. I love your turn as Lemony Snicket, and "Adverbs" was amazing -- but I ended up not being able to finish "Watch Your Mouth", as much as I was in ridiculous love with the premise. (I mean, what? An opera/12-step-program about incest and a golem and murder?)

But this prose style really, really did not jive with me, and it was a toil to get through. Blerg. This will teach me to squeal too much over books before reading them.