Books like the Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, or The Princess Bride, S. Morganstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, by William Goldman?
The above books are related in my mind because they both feature an absurd world where organizations like VFD exist, where there can be a zoo of death, where a baby’s teeth are impossibly strong, where there are rodents of unusual size, where the author loves to insert a version of themself.
I feel when reading these that I am reading a story and yet in some parallel universe the story has the slim possibility of being true. I know these are dissimilar but I categorize them together anyways and think that Handler was probably influenced in some way by Goldman and others.
by MattMurdock30