Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
General Musings: A busy day at work today but I managed to finish today's book during my commute. I'm sorry but my library questions still loom large with no answers--I will get to the bottom of them and report in soon. Today I realized an attribution error in a 501 Must Read Books entry--more about it below. A new feature listing our growing completed reads is on the blog today (way below)--tell me (bdmcasey@calgary.ca) where you want it (and don't take advantage of me teeing up a perfect insult).
Running Page Count: 2,607
Today's Book (Children's Fiction): Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in WonderlandPreface: The 501 Must Read Books lists this 1865 entry of Lewis's iconic classic with an accompanying illustration of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. But the identical twin enantiomorphs are in fact from the 1871 sequel Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Not surprising since I myself attributed many of the characters and scenes from the sequel to the original. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has no chess match, no Humpty Dumpty, no Jaberwocky, and no Red Queen.
At 110 pages the book is a quick if slightly challenging (for non-adults) read due to the word play, poems, and crazy dialogue. Word games and logic tricks were the bread and butter of Lewis Carroll, who's real name was Charles Dodgson. He was a mathematician, logician, and prodigious photographer--with a penchant for nude female children [yuck]. It seems Mr. Dodgson was a pedophile--here is a slightly disturbing picture of the real life inspiration for Alice (Alice Liddell)taken by the Anglican deacon in 1858:
The Book: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is a classic story of an adventurous girl who winds up in a world ruled by child logic, inhabited by animals, ruled by playing cards, and written in nonsense verse. It starts on a riverbank with a girl chasing a rabbit and ends with a Kafkaesque trial. It is written as a child's dream that seems closer to a psychedelic trip and is a delight for readers, although I suspect it would be more popular with adults than kids. John Tenniel's original illustrations are a necessity not only because of their quality but because of the many references in the text to the details of the pictures.
Grade: B
Observations: Over a third of the book is about Alice's struggle to enter Wonderland--it seems overly long. Also, there are many inside jokes about Dodgson's contemporaries, friends and family in the text and although you get the impression there is a joke they are easy to miss (like Bill the Lizard as Benjamin Disraeli). Read The Annotated Alice to appreciate all the riddles, jokes, and allusions. The denouement is stale for today's audience and a last minute change in point of view seems strange and unnecessary. As a whole the book is impressive and unprecedented--the nonsense style is amazing in style and execution. I believe the book is at its best with the wild characters and the subtler humour. One of the most alluded to books in the history of children's fiction.
Segues: There have been 22 film adaptations the most famous being the 1951 Disney animated version that takes the entire Alice literary franchise and condenses it down to 75 safe homogenized minutes of animated fun--which oddly synchronizes perfectly with Pink Floyd's The Wall.
There is also the Tim Burton feature with adult leads (it too produced by Disney), starring Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska released in 2010
Tomorrow's Book (Memoirs): Jeannette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (11/501)
