Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Alice in Wonderland - by Lewis Carroll



I must admit that I had expectations going into this book that it would be something worthy of having survived its 150 years.  However, most of the time I was wondering just that, "why do people love this book so much and how has it survived so long?"

Because in my opinion it was this book is reflective of that awkward attempt at humor that you sometimes find amidst the British.  I don't mean that to insult, in fact I sympathize with the person who has difficulty relaxing and making with the funny and maybe even the foolish.  Some British humor is fantastic, perhaps for this very fact that they are serious but have learned to make fun of themselves for it.  Some British, and now I would call Lewis Carroll among them, make a haphazard path towards comedy/absurdity/fantasy/experimentation.  I argue this because Alice begins without much substance, life, or purpose.  I suspect that Carroll meant for this to mirror the aimlessness of childhood.  There is a strong desire for the path to reveal itself to you, but you are waiting for a lot of necessary ingredients first (some education, some space from your parents, maturity, a growing circle of experience, etc.)  And that's where Alice is - she is napping under a tree and the scene is full of ennui, sluggishness, sludge, and malaise.

However, and this is less obvious, I think Carroll only could have used a child as a vehicle for writing this story.  This is because he has no idea how he wants to experiment and grow beyond his own limitations, and as such he is very similar to a child. But he hides behind Alice, letting her ignorance and naivete be obvious whereas his is not.  I was annoyed with this approach even though I understood it.  I think it creates a poor relationship between writer and character and hurts the book.

That said, the book's vignettes became better and better as the story wore on.  I thought the last two chapters had a rhythm that really fit the story (sorry, I can't explain it any better than that, ha, because my writing skills are not so excellent!).  And I wonder if Through the Looking Glass isn't an even better book.

So while I don't necessarily believe this book is a classic based on the merit of its story and writing, there are other reasons that books are considered "classic."  One of these reasons is that what it did it did first and I think that's the answer to why Alice has lasted so long.

Children's literature, believe it or not, has not always been the raging business it is today.  Once upon a time, no one worried about what children would read and to write for children was to dumb down ideas and why not wait for the children to grow up into adult, fully-formed ideas instead?  And there might be something to be said for that argument - but that's another story.

This book was apparently one of the first to write to a child audience.  Also, it's fantastical elements were not common to books either at that point in time.  So as with a book like The Interpretation of Dreams - which was written to be a scientific text but has been dismissed by the scientific community and now is read as a relic of its time - you can argue that Alice's content is not worth it's reputation.  But both books were seminal texts - they went first and for that we remember them. 



Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris

A curious little book - my thoughts about it are still percolating....

I can say it consists of short stories whose characters are animals.  But they're clearly not animals - they're actually personality types, characters you might know from life that Sedaris is personifying as animals.  

My favorites stories were: "Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk," "The Vigilant Rabbit," "Vomit-Eating Flies," & "The Judicious Hen." 

Most of the stories are almost like fables, there's a moral to take away from them.  The moral, across all stories, tends to be, "don't be that guy."  These are personalities that have gone wrong somewhere and now are wreaking havoc on themselves and those around them. 

A good example is "Vigilant Rabbit."  There are all these creatures in a forest that are having troubles with their neighbors.  They want to build a fence to keep the unwanted out.  Suddenly, a rabbit assumes the role of protector of the area and takes it to heart, a lot to heart.  He is going to guard this forest at all costs.  And he keep some unwanted things out too.  But then, a unicorn tries to enter - and so yeah okay who believes in unicorns???  but that's kinda the point. This rabbit guards the wall, but he can't exercise his own judgment, simply nothing past. 

The unicorn is so fantastical and absurd a creature that one might expect this "challenge" to the rabbit's authority to make him less adamant, less insistent.  Or, you might say, that the unicorn is considered the ultimate symbol of good luck and fortune and that the rabbit might be so impressed that one is actually standing before him.  But rabbit continues to say "no one shall pass me."

So - this is an example of "don't be that guy."  Vigilance - at times a good quality - in rabbit has gone horribly wrong. 

"Vigilant rabbit" is also a good example of the mixture of somber thought and absurd humor that Sedaris weaves in these stories.  Sometimes it is over the top, sometimes it hits closer to the mark.  Throughout though it is a little hokey. But mostly I didn't mind that.  However, I would say that absurd beats out somber in this book for the most part.  Sedaris doesn't always succeed in creating the very difficult to create: dark humor.