The Basic Eight is the debut novel by author Daniel Handler published in 1998. The book is full of sarcastic plot devices that poke fun at high school English classes, standardized testing, satanic panic and talk-show analysts. For example, Handler labels foreshadowing explicitly as such. In addition to creating a farce on high school English, he includes vocabulary words and study questions at the end of some of Culp's diary entries. During the school year in which the book takes place, Flan appears in the high school production Othello, and compares her life to that of the characters in the play.