The Best of Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Castle
Fiction, CH? Letters/Fantasy/Poetry
Themes: Anthropomorphism, Classics, Dreams, Portal Adventures, Weirdness
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Description
Five of the noted late-nineteenth century author's works are reprinted in this volume, with miscellaneous excerpts from various correspondences over the years.
Alice in Wonderland - Young Alice follows a little white rabbit with a waistcoat down a hole into fantastic Wonderland.
Through the Looking Glass - Passing through a looking-glass above the mantle brings Alice to another strange world.
Phantasmagoria - Various poems by Lewis Carroll, serious and otherwise.
The Hunting of the Snark - A Bellman, a Beaver, a Butcher, and other characters seek the elusive beast known as the Snark... but may stumble across
the deadly Boojum instead.
A Tangled Tale - Carroll presents a series of interconnected mathematical story problems for young people.
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Review
his is yet another part of my ongoing effort to read books I probably should've read long ago, thanks to reprints and Half Price Books. I suppose I should've reviewed
each story separately, though some parts (like the letter excerpts) aren't really something I can review alone. I rated it on average, for while Carroll's writing style
is memorable and rather charming, I don't care for his nonexistent plots. I like stories to have a discernable progression from beginning to end, with some manner of reason
to the events and characters encountered. Lewis's tales drift and flutter along like butterflies, light and pretty to look at but with no sense of a specific direction or
overarching goal. A Tangled Tale was my least favorite, for all that it was about the only one with a recognizable story arc, in part because of all the math. I never
did like story problems... Through the Looking Glass also has a bit of an arc to it, but also ultimately feels more like a series of random images strung together, a
faithfully recorded dream that may be interesting to experience at the time, but doesn't quite seem cohesive when waking. Alice's adventures, they would be ideal for out-loud
bedtime reading, when the child doesn't really need to remember what came before, might nod off for a while in the middle of a chapter, and is just enjoying the adventure in
the here and now. The fact that so many people read so much meaning into every aspect of her tales... that, I fail to understand. Carroll did an excellent job capturing the
lucid-yet-not-quite-clear consciousness found in dreams, and the breaking and melding of themes as one wanders through them, but beyond that and his turns of phrase there's
not much there, except maybe whatever a reader builds up through nostalgia.
(Speaking of nostalgia, perhaps my fondest Alice-related memory is the many hours I spent puzzling through the old Commodore game Alice in Wonderland, a Windham
Classics title. Great fun, with some excellent character dialog and truly perplexing puzzlers. Anyone who wants to dig around the Internet can find the game, and a Commodore
emulator with which to play it. They just don't make 'em like that anymore...)