Literary taste as moral arbiter

"People aren't either wicked or noble," the hook-handed man said.  "They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigerette of confusion and conflict."  He turned to the two elder Baudelaires and pointed at them with his hooks.  "Look at yourselves, Baudelaires.  Do you really think we're so different?  When those eagles carried me away from the mountains in that net, I saw the ruins of that fire in the hinterlands---a fire we started together.  You've burned things down, and so have I.  You joined the crew of the Queequeg, and I joined the crew of the Carmelita.  Our captains are both volatile people, and we're both trying to get to the Hotel Denouement before Thursday.  The only difference between us is the portrait on our uniforms."

"We're wearing Herman Melville," Klaus said.  "He was a writer of enormous talent who dramatized the plight of overlooked people, such as poor sailors or exploited youngsters, through his strange, often experimental philosophical prose.  I'm proud to display his portrait.  But you're wearing Edgar Guest.  He was a writer of limited skill, who wrote awkward, tedious poetry on hopelessly sentimental topics.  You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

                                                   ---from The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket

Comments

[Danielle]

Tim Curry? Rocks. What they were doing not casting HIM as Olaf is beyond me. Jim Carrey is not evil enough. You really can't understand why the kids are mortally afraid of him when he's running around going "I'M SO CRAZY! LOOK AT ME! I'M CRAZY JIM CARREY!!!"
Anyway, what I meant to ask you was, what does he do for the two pages of black in Book the Sixth? Is there just a big pause, or what?
With all due respect,
Danielle