Alice

I'm at a loss, how could you find Lewis Carroll boring?

Craven--

You are probably too old to glory in the preposterous--particularly the preposterous as laid out by Victorian mind.

Speak roughly to your little boy
And beat him when he sneezes.
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes.
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases.


You have my sympathy.

I just read that poem. It was interesting. But like I said, the story is boring, so far the annotations have been the more interesting read.

His parodies have been pretty boring and I preferred to read about what he was riffing off of.

I confess, I also have never really "got" Alice.

It terrified me as a very tiny girl, though I am very fond of the Cheshire Cat, and I do enjoy some of the odd logic and pithy sayings, and enjoy quoting from it.

The annotations are, as Craven says, interesting.

Clearly, though, one HAS to read it, or not get so many jokes and allusions.

Eat some blue mushrooms first.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbabes and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings.

Ponder.

Okay, try the blue mushrooms and ponder some more.

Won't help. It's not trippy either.

But I'm in the very beginning, let's see how it goes.

Alice is a delight!

I think Noddy is on to something -- I got it for my 6th birthday, and read it/ had it read to me many times thereafter. MANY times.

I love the nonsensicality. Looking for it to make sense won't get you anywhere.

I have a book that is a reprint of the original Mother Goose, and that has upped my understanding various notches, in terms of specific parodies of what most children of that time would have been reading. It's like a parody of "Dick and Jane" in the 50's, or of I dunno "Barney" now.

But beyond parody, I just love the wordplay and silliness. Twas brillig and the slithy toves...

It's definitely NOT something to read with high expectations. It was written haphazardly, quickly, without an eye to publication. It's just a romp through a silly and intelligent and allusive mind.

I suggest reading the non-annotated version first, quickly, without thinking about it too much. Then read the annotatedversion if you're still curious.

Knowing that mome raths are badger-like creatures (or whatever his "explanation" was, itself parodic) didn't incease my appreciation of "Jabberwocky".

I read "Alice" a few years ago for the first time. I enjoyed it, but partly, I suppose, because it's been a source of so much literature since it was written, in the sense that phrases and themes have been used by other writers. And I love what he does with language...

Brrrrrrrrrrrr - still skeers me.....I am still 3, and trying to block my ears under the bedclothes, while my mother reads it to my sister...

I keep a paperback copy of Alice in the basket of my exercycle along with The Rubaiyat and archy and mehitabel. They are "emergency" reading for when I finish my magazine or paperback and still have miles to go....

"Emergency reading" means I have no excuse for dismounting early.

I've been known to use all three of these books in the way that superstitious folks in a more credulous age consulted the Holy Bible as a fortune telling guide.

Of course Bartlett's Quotations provides a more comprehensive look at the future....

Alice is a childrens book but the underlying ideas are anything but childish. Dodson (Lewis Carrolls real nome) was a mathematician and Oxford Don. Much of the supposedly fractured logic that would seem nonsensical in a Newtonian universe is in fact the early thinking that will lead to Einstein and Relativity. Dodson simply plays these ideas out to their logical (or seemingly illogical) conclusion for the entertainment of children. There is also a good deal of social commentary on mid 19th century English society that is anything but flattering to many of the classes and is some cases individuals portrayed. The Griffin and the Mock Turtle for example are old 'public" school alumni. The problem with this is that much of what seemed obvious at the time it was written now requires an explanation.

Thanks to the annotations I know the background and allusions. But can you cite what you mean by: "Much of the supposedly fractured logic that would seem nonsensical in a Newtonian universe is in fact the early thinking that will lead to Einstein and Relativity."

A lot of that is in Through the Looking Glass, for example Alice must run as fast as possible to stay in place and twice as fast to get any where. Speed is relative and if you are going as fast as everyone (or thing) else you are, in effect, standing still. Wonderland is more social commentary but these ideas do appear there also. For example the Mad Hatter's tea party is a discussion of the relativity of time and it is often used as a metaphor for how modern physicists think of time.

Hmm, I've got a long way to go before I reach that part. I just finished reading the part noddy quoted.

So - how's it going?

I had an Abuzz thread which turned into a rather heated exchange on "Alice" - sort of in the middle.

interesting li'l fight....

[Putting up dukes]

It's one of my favorite books ever, I think.

I like having read it a zillion times and getting more/ different thing out of it each time. Reading it for the first time in an annotated version doesn't seem right, somehow. Without knowing a lick of the "deeper meanings", I loved the story and wordplay as a kid, and then later got more of the social commentary et al. It was only a couple of years ago that I got the original Mother Goose connection. (If anyone's interested, I can try to find the specifics of what I'm talking about -- it was striking.)

I saw the original manuscript in England, thrilling. One notable thing is that Carroll's illustrations of Alice are like the girl he took photos of and wrote the story for, Alice Liddell? (and yes, that adds another, rather unsavory layer to the whole thing). At any rate, short brown hair, unremarkable clothes. Carroll could not STAND Tenniel's representation of Alice, with her long blonde hair and starchy little pinafore. She's meant to be much less precious.

I suspect Craven might prefer Lewis Carroll's mathematical and logic publications, which are quite fascinating.