Whistler? Yes, and He's Brought His Cat!

[Primula Baggins]

Well, that's a film to avoid.

Tim Burton seems like a great choice. He understands how to present the fantastic without making any aspect of it cute.

[Whistler]

People who haven't read the books often assume that they're just a lot of cute, goggle-eyed characters saying and doing silly things. But they are deeply strange and vaguely disturbing––not overly so, but enough to remind the reader continually that the whole thing might blow up in his face at any moment.

Burton can be funny, bizarre and unpleasant all at the same time; I hope very much that he will not take too many liberties and will try to make a "definitive" version, because he's one of the few directors who could manage it. To date, there is no movie version that really feels like the book.

If the books were something marked DRINK ME, you would find that they taste like...lemonade, I think. Sweet and bitter.

[Primula Baggins]

That's what's rare and wonderful about them. And all the bizarre events and characters are presented so matter-of-factly.

[Whistler]

Yes. And in movies, the characters always seem to be saying: "Look at me! I'm being crazy and weird!"

And of course they stop being crazy and weird, as soon as they say that. They just become irritating.

Interestingly, the Cheshire Cat really does know he's crazy and weird, and he knows thing the same about everybody else. So he's actually the only semi-sensible creature present. He's what passes for the voice of reason, and he serves as Alice's guide amidst the madness.

[Holbytla]

Congratulations. Quite the nice "heirloom". And a very thoughtful gift for those girls.

from Wiki;

Dodgson's tale was published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by "Lewis Carroll" with illustrations by John Tenniel. The first print run of 2,000 was destroyed because Tenniel had objections over the print quality. (Only 23 copies are known to have survived; 18 are owned by major archives or libraries, such as the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, while the other five are held in private hands.)

Wikipedia also has the audio book on the site.

Somewhere out there is an old (50's maybe?) BBC tv adaptation. I've seen it a few times. Far better than the Disney one. Although I must admit liking some of the music in the Disney version.

[vison]

Jeez. I have lived in the wilderness all my life. I've never seen the Disney film. Bits of it, here and there. And liked none of it.

So, a further awful confession: I confess that the bits of the Disney movie that I've seen have given me an only-just-this-minute-realized distaste for Alice.

Evidently Alice deserves better. So I shall see if I have a copy - and oddly enough, I think I do. The Vancouver Sun had a series of inexpensive children's books available a year or so ago and my s-i-l bought them for my grandsons. They have never opened even one. When I think of that, I could weep. If someone had given me a fairly long shelf of books when I was 8 or 9, I would have thought I'd died and gone to Heaven. I'm pretty sure Alice is in there with Gulliver (some kids' book, eh?) and Robin Hood.

If I don't have a copy, I'll get one.

I like Tim Burton OK, but I believe that Society as a Whole has had enough Tim Burton, myself. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Whistler]

Hello, Holby!

Yes, I've read that Wikipedia article also. But I've read contradictory articles as well, and I don't quite know who to believe. I love Wikipedia, but the idea that anybody can write it strikes me as very...strange.

Vison, huge numbers of people think they dislike Alice because they dislike somebody else's interpretation of it. Apart from a good actor reading the book aloud, there is nothing like the experience of reading Alice except...well, except the experience of reading Alice.

Even Walt Disney publicly declared that his Alice hadn't worked. I have a copy and I think it's fun to watch, but Disney humor and Carroll humor are miles apart, and there's no bridging them.

If you plan to buy a copy, you might want The Annotated Alice, by Martin Gardner. It explains the jokes and references that any modern reader would probably miss. For example...

Did you know (of course you didn't) that the Mad Hatter was probably based on a furniture dealer named Theophilus Carter? He was actually called the Mad Hatter, owing to his ever-present top hat, and he was a very eccentric inventor. His greatest invention was the "alarm clock bed," which would actually toss a person onto the floor when it was time to get up!

[Inanna]

That sounds really interesting Whistler - that might just be the edition for me. Except that I would need to have a real edition to go ahead with it. So I look at the annotated one, only when I want to.

Ponders her growing books-to-buy list. Sighs.

[vison]

I think I heard about Theophilus Carter somewhere else, but not in Alice, obviously.

Thinking about it: Anthony Trollope. Trollope paid his servant extra to wake him early every day. One Trollope biographer I read - was it the earliest one? - said something like "It's too bad he didn't have an alarm clock bed." Now, was Carter's name mentioned? That I don't swear to, but I guess I could dig the book out and check. Maybe not - Trollope was from a bit earlier era. I suppose the mad inventor and his bed were well known in the day, though. The first biography of Trollope was written quite soon after he died.

I always assumed that the Mad Hatter was based on the fact that many hatters did go mad, working with mercury as they did.

Though I've never read Alice, I've always been a little interested in Carroll. He was an oddity, to be sure.

[Whistler]

But not as odd as Marilyn Manson will make him, I assure you.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Here's a quote from Hammond and Scull's J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide in their entry on "Reading":

In addition to these retelling of old stories Tolkien also read some of the more recent books written for childrend. He was amused by Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1872); later in life he was also fond of Carroll's Silvie and Bruno (1889) and Silvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), and occasionally recited verses from them.

There is a number of references to comparisons between Tolkien and Carroll in Hammond and Scull's work. For instance, on 7 January 1937, C.A. Furth, Allen and Unwin's production manager wrote to him to say "although Mr. Bliss was in a class with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, its delicate illustrations, drawn with coloured pencils and inks, could be reproduced (given the technology of that time) only at a prohibative cost, relative to the need to sell the book at a reasonable price."

Regarding The Hobbit, I like C.S. Lewis comments about the comparisons that were made with Alice (which were encouraged by a blurb in the original jacket of The Hobbit). He said that the both "belong to a very small class of books which have nothing in common sach admits us to a world of its own - a world that seems to have been have been going on before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensible to him."

Tolkien's own reaction to the publisher's use of the comparison to [/i]Alice in Wonderland on the jacket is the most telling: "If you think it good, and fair (the compliment to The Hobbit is rather high) to maintain the comparison -- Looking-glass[/i] ought to be mentioned. It is much closer in every way . . . . ."

[vison]

But not as odd as Marilyn Manson will make him, I assure you.

Well, I am trying to be open minded . . .

I am always - um - bothered by knowing "too much" about an author. I know a little about Charles Dodgson - but not too much. And having learned the hard way that it's a bad idea, I won't learn more until after I've read Alice. I will look for the annotated edition.

It shouldn't matter, of course, what a person knows about an author. But it sometimes does. The few things that I regard as a discredit to Tolkien don't spoil LOTR for me, whereas everything I know about Tolstoy makes it impossible for me to admire his work. Even if I wanted to, and I confess the Russians are not my cup of tea.

My dear old Anthony Trollope was as transparent as glass, and told all his own secrets. Dickens lived such a public life there isn't much he didn't show to the world. Thackeray? Who cares about him, anyway. Not me, not much.

The illustrations are interesting and I guess appropriate in a children's book. I was reading something the other day, an argument in favour of novels being illustrated in this day and age - and I felt instantly it would be a mistake. Reading Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, etc., I have many very old illustrated editions. I often find the pictures annoying - mostly because I seldom understand why any particular incident was chosen for the illustration when another much more dramatic one wasn't. Millais was a classic example: some of those simpering females just irk me half to death. Hard to enter the Victorian mindset.

[Whistler]

Marvelous, V-man! I really had no idea. And to think that he actually read Sylvie and Bruno! Anyone who has read it will tell you flatly that it's a book for only the most dedicated Carroll fan. And as for the remarks by Lewis...yes, yes, exactly!

I now like Tolkien and Lewis even better than before, and that's saying a good deal.

Vison: the tragedy with Carroll is that people project onto him modern values, sensibilities and motives. These have turned him, in popular thinking, into either an outright pedophile or at best a repressed one. Also people refuse to believe that he wrote the books without the use of drugs. Apparently the concept of imagination is alien to them.

Manson will of course drive these misconceptions home with a vengeance: he has already said that Carroll was a more disturbed creature than he is himself, and that is absolute trash.

As to Tenniel's illustrations...you will by no means find them annoying! Carroll worried over them like a mother hen and drove Tenniel half out of his mind, insisting on one detail after another. The resulting illustrations are almost as much Carroll as Tenniel: they are so much a part of the book that it is impossible to imagine it without them. Even artists who have dared to try their hand at creating new illustrations have usually ended up doing little more than creating variations on Tenniel's designs.

I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that the Carroll/Tenniel collaboration proved to be the among the most perfect in publishing history.

[vison]

I don't know if Mr. Dodgson was a repressed anything. Repressed is not evil, it's repressed. Still, that aspect of his life is troubling, and not just because I have modern sensibilities.

Mine are not as modern as Marilyn Manson's, though. I'm pretty old. I was brought up in a very different era!

The books should stand alone. The work should exist aside from the creator. If every work of art was held responsible for the artist, there wouldn't be much left to admire.

Illustrations. While it is true that I didn't read much children's literature as a child, I did read the Little House series. (Still do, btw.) I took them out of the library over and over and over again. Years later I bought the set in paperback with the charming illustrations by Garth Williams. But the other day I saw an old hardback - with the original illustrations by someone else. I can't remember the name. Both Williams' pictures and the other's were perfect, adding just the right amount of "extra" to the stories.

[Holbytla]

Yes Whistling Dude the veracity of any Wiki article is suspect I suppose.
Although most of them seem to require citations. I take what I read there with a grain of salt. It seems at least plausible that there are x amount of known copies in libraries though. I suppose if one wanted, one could track down one of those libraries for verification.
Hmmm...

I haven't done this in ages and ages, but I suppose I could reactivate my alter ego. You would be amazed at how many places and people you can get on the phone if you pose as a freelance journalist, writing an article about whatever profession you are interested in. I mean you can't just call the Mt Wahington Observatory and ask them how the weather is, but you can pose as a journalist and spend 30 mnutes asking them all kinds of neat questions.
Anyhoo if nothing else, Wiki does have the audiobook.

Marilyn Manson? Tim Burton?
Well Marilyn definitely seems like the inspiration for Jack. Or vice versa.

[WampusCat]

Congratulations on your print, Whistler! What a treasure.

I've read many books with illustrations, but Tenniel's Alice drawings stuck with me like no other. I recall them in great detail, and the ones you posted seemed like old friends.

[Inanna]

I haven't done this in ages and ages, but I suppose I could reactivate my alter ego. You would be amazed at how many places and people you can get on the phone if you pose as a freelance journalist, writing an article about whatever profession you are interested in. I mean you can't just call the Mt Wahington Observatory and ask them how the weather is, but you can pose as a journalist and spend 30 mnutes asking them all kinds of neat questions.

NEAT!!! What a cool method.

Its what I would like to be - a freelance journalist!

[Primula Baggins]

One of the best-kept secrets in the world is the fact that the world is full of people who love love love to tell you all about whatever it is they study or manage. A writer can call up any scientist and have a fair chance that someone in the lab, but often the scientist himself, will willingly spend half an hour on the phone explaining some weird aspect of the lab's research.

Wikipedia—heck, the entire Internet is evidence of the fact that people love to share information. It provides some kind of gratification that matters more than money or status, and I think we're extremely lucky that this is so.

[Whistler]

Hi, Wampus!

Holby, I don't really question the Wiki article. But I think it's also likely that Carroll and Tenniel did at least consider dumping the books on the American Philistines. The Victorian English really did believe they were better than everybody else in the whole world, and today that fact is probably more amusing than offensive.

Carroll despaired that his stories were wasted on the Yankees, observing once that "there are no children in America."

[WampusCat]

Hi Whistler!

I'm more likely to believe that these days there are no adults in America.