Before I share my thoughts with you on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, I'm going to read
from the wiki to give you just some general information about it.
So the book is commonly called Alice in Wonderland.
It was published in 1865 in England, I guess.
It's written by Lewis Carroll, which that's a pseudonym.
Nondiplume?
It's a writing name.
What do you...
Yeah, yeah, nondiplume is correct.
People use nom de guerre for writers, which is silly because that's the war name.
Although I don't know the full context of it, but literally it means war name or warrior's
name as opposed to like pen name.
So it just seems strange to me.
But anyway, it deals with the young girls.
So yeah, so it's funny.
It's interesting.
It calls Lewis Carroll a mathematics don at Oxford University, which is true, but it doesn't
say anything about the fact that this is not his real name just in the top of that, which
I find kind of interesting.
But whatever.
It was written by Lewis Carroll and it details the story of a young girl named Alice who
falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures.
It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre.
The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood engraved illustrations for the book.
And what else is there to say about it?
The cover from the first edition has her holding the pig baby, the baby pig, the pig masquerading
as a baby.
That's kind of funny.
Apparently, you know, it can also be classified as a portal fantasy because Alice does literally
go through a portal to end up in this fantasy world.
And it's also a list is literary nonsense.
Macmillan is, I guess, the current publisher, and it was followed by the sequel through
the looking glass.
And actually, the source that I got it from, I listened to it from cloud library for free.
And the audiobook version I have, it had like a two hour introduction, which.
If you're really interested in the historicity of it and in the background of the book and
learning more about Lewis Carroll, then I would suggest that you go ahead and listen
to that.
But there are rumors and whispers and little things you hear here and there about Alice
in Wonderland.
I heard as a kid from regarding the Disney animated version of it that it was trippy
and possibly drug related.
And this is a family friendly show.
So I'm going to be touching on very sensitive topics, but I won't actually say anything
outright unless you are against your children hearing that something is drug related.
Then, you know, sorry.
But that's I guess we're still feeling each other out.
So trust me, I'm doing my best.
But I also don't want to have to dance around everything.
But there's certain things regarding the the reality behind this book and the background
behind this book that are odd or creepy, criminal, whatever, that I won't really fully go into.
But yes, the the bio and the behind the scenes, the making of a piece in this book.
I can't tell you which edition it was, except for it's the one that I found a cloud library.
So good luck finding that one.
It seems to validate that there are odd, creepy, uncomfortable things in the author's real
life that are attached to the fact that this book was created at all, which is interesting.
But that's very much off of the point.
And I have stated previously that I have no interest in canceling or attacking or denigrating
anybody in in this project of going through all these middle grade books.
But I also, you know, I'm a person.
I foolishly listen to this entire thing and it colored sort of colored my perception of
the book or my reception of it.
But it didn't.
It made me feel like honestly, learning about the background made me think, do I really
want to read this?
But I went ahead and read or listen to it anyway.
And I thought, you know, I part of my ethos is I want to be able to divorce the artist
from the art and take the art and let it stand on its own.
Because if I didn't know these things and there are plenty of people who are ignorant
of them, you know, how would I judge this?
And I have to say that, you know, whatever the author did in his real life, it doesn't
really change how I feel about the book, other than it's just slightly creepy.
And honestly, it's turned me off of going into the next book.
However, I think the content of this book itself was enough to turn me off of going
into the next book.
I will go to the sequel and there's even like a second sequel, which is like an elegy for
Ellis, which for Alice, not Ellis, which is even stranger and even weirder and makes things
even more uncomfortable.
But again, that's that's not really something I have to go into.
So yeah, this book is weird.
This book is really weird.
It is called Nonsense.
You know, it very well may be the seminal work of nonsense literature.
And I agree with that.
It's interesting because nonsense is kind of a serious business if you think about it.
And the wiki mentioned something about this, but it kind of helped to codify what I wanted
to say.
So I'm not reading from the wiki.
I just I was inspired by something that said, which is that there is a talent and a trick
and a structure to nonsense.
I feel like I've said this recently in one of my recordings, but I don't think it's been
for this sub series of story over everything.
So I'll go ahead and share it here, which is that writing, performing and making comedy
that works is difficult.
And I mean, whether it's comedic stage play or it's a humorous book or it's a stand up
comics routine, it is difficult to do or to make effective comedy because even though
it's light hearted and funny, there is a craft and there is a structure and there is a way
that things need to be done.
In fact, I heard a songwriting comedian on a podcast who is talking about the fact that
music has a tension and release cycle to it.
And he says that comedy is the same way and that the thing with stand up comedy is it's
you have even less time and you even have less word count you can use to build up the
tension, set up the scenario and then have the release, which is interesting because
I can see that applying here.
And I would say that while the incidents and the scenes or the set pieces or however you
want to call them in Alice in Wonderland are like, I don't have much affection.
Well, it's funny.
It's a really weird thing.
I kind of felt like I was captivated by this book and kind of taken prisoner a little bit.
And it wasn't that bad of an experience.
But it's not something I really want to repeat.
Like let me put it this way.
Lewis Carroll was obviously a brilliant man and the structure and the intelligence at
play in the absurd and nonsensical Alice in Wonderland are remarkable.
They deserve to be remarked upon because it's very well structured.
It is very intelligent and it's all silly and nonsensical.
There's a lot of wordplay.
There's a lot of puns.
There's a lot of like taking things and turning them over and exploring them from the other
side or from the inside out or the outside in.
And it's very interesting.
And like, I don't know, there's a very loose narrative, which is basically this spoilers
if you haven't read it or seen the movie or anything like that.
Alice falls into the rabbit's hole.
She goes from absurd scenario to absurd scenario where things are awkward and brusque.
People are brusque and violent and vulgar and sort of unhinged and they're all attacking
her.
And it's weird.
There's this whole thing where Alice is shrinking and growing and shrinking and growing and
she references shrinking and growing in size.
At one point she equates it to shrinking and growing in age.
And at the end of the book of the climax, Alice sort of grows up and becomes larger
and defends herself.
And at that point she's able to free herself from whatever happened.
And she wakes up effectively and like runs into the house for dinner or tea or whatever
it is.
And you realize it was all sort of a dream maybe, but maybe it wasn't and who knows.
But it's absurd.
And there's something weird about the fact that she grows to great size and then she
realizes that all the troubles that had beset her were nothing.
They were ephemera.
They were nothing more than a dream or a fancy.
And that all she had to do was like get up and ignore them in order to move on with her
life.
And that's true in one sense, but in another sense that's not true because she doesn't
really do that.
But then again, she is such a young girl, eight, maybe 10 at the most, that she doesn't
have really an arc.
There's no suggestion or notion that Alice is a flawed character.
We see that she's flawed.
We see that her way of viewing the world and others is not correct from an adult point
of view.
But the narrative really never gets into that.
It never examines it.
It never puts Alice under a microscope and talks about her flaws, if there are any.
Or at least it never occurs to her that she has real legitimate flaws.
There's some things that the narrative states, the story states, or Alice thinks about and
we get in on that.
And she's totally wrong.
But the story doesn't say that.
And because it's so focused on her and her perception of herself and the world around
her, she doesn't really see that she's incorrect about things.
And she kind of lets herself slide on certain things that she wouldn't necessarily let other
people slide on.
And it's a little unfair.
And I'm not judging Alice Harsley because she's a child and it's written from this very
childish perspective, which is interesting because that's kind of a complaint I had about
Natalie Babbitt's, the way she told her story in The Time Everlasting.
And that was the last book I read, listened to, last book I analyzed and thought about
and chatted about.
So it's most strongly on my mind right now as I'm thinking about what Carol did with
Alice.
And it's strange.
I'm more forgiving of what Carol did with Alice is in the book.
And as far as the story is concerned, than I am with what Babbitt did with, what's her
name?
Winnie, Winnie Foster.
I'm more accepting of what he did with her than what Babbitt did with Foster, with Winnie.
Because while the characters in each scene and each scenario kind of do take themselves
very seriously, there is a playfulness and an impermanence and an unreality that is apparent
in the absurdity of everything going on in this wonderland that Alice finds herself in
that isn't true of Winnie's world and the scenarios that she finds herself in in Tuck
Everlasting.
So it's also unfair.
They're very different books.
And it feels a little unfair, honestly, to compare them to each other.
But I think spending some time talking about them in conversation with each other does
make sense.
Not that they're literally in conversation with each other, but they're two pieces that
I've talked about and experienced recently.
And if you're following along with me, then there's something that, you know, there are
two things that you've recently had an experience with.
And there are things that can be talked about in each of them, you know, that do bear on
each other or at least seem to reference each other, even though they were written, I don't
know, 100 years apart or so.
And golly, I think that's interesting.
It's really interesting to me that, you know, taking a step backwards and looking at my
process for doing this examination of middle grade fiction, broadly speaking, is that I
have broadly, broadly, broadly broken up middle grade fiction or these stories for children
that could qualify as middle grade fiction before that was a real category in classic
and modern.
And being from, I think it's 1875, Alice's classic and being from 1975, Tucker Everlasting
would be considered modern.
And yet I see similar problems with them.
I see similar, similar craft and deafness and skill in the authors.
But I think they're definitely going for two different things.
And wow, I don't know, I don't know how to finish that thought.
So I'm not going to.
If you have an idea of how to finish that thought, please let me know.
Give me a comment to help me out here to have this conversation, because I'm just, I'm just
not sure.
And I know I'm restraining myself.
I don't quite want to go as far as I could go because I don't think it's useful or appropriate
for the audience.
And while I do not aim this show at a child audience, I do want it to be accessible to
children if they so desire, if their parents or guardians want to let them in on it.
On this, dare I say, like higher level conversation on these books, because while these books
are made for children, they are not read exclusively by children and they're made by adults for
children.
And therefore, while I think it is important to let the work stand on its own merits, it
is important to also thinking about what the adults who wrote these books for children
maybe had in mind or maybe had to say to these children.
And while I think Tuck Everlasting did have things to say to children and it didn't speak
down to children, which I think is a merit, and while maybe I didn't like what it had
to say or how it said it necessarily, I think that Carroll's book has nothing to say to
children specifically, which feels really weird.
It's almost, I don't know, it's almost an exploration of the mind and or dreams of a
child and like giving those life and breathing some breathing life into them and giving them
structure and form so that they can be explored and played with.
And maybe, maybe there's some sort of social commentary going on that I'm now many years
divorced from Victorian England and what is it, 125?
Is that what it is?
Many years divorced from Victorian England and I also don't come from a culture being
born in the late 1980s in America, Southern California area, like that's so foreign to
me.
That culture of tea rooms and nurseries and all this propriety, which I don't think is
a bad thing necessarily.
I think every era has its pluses and minuses and my point is that I'm just so out of touch
with the milieu where this was written that I don't really understand certain things.
Certain things about it are universal, the way language is being played with and maybe
it's because I'm a self-taught writer type person and I've consumed a lot of literature
perhaps because of that.
Some of the jokes and games of logic that Alice has engaged in or trapped in, you could
say, they're more apparent to me than maybe your average eight year old today.
I kind of think Alice was supposed to be eight years old.
If you gave a modern eight year old this story, I don't know that they would appreciate it
in the same way that I'm able to and that an eight year old of Alice's time would have
been able to because of the exposure to certain concepts and ideas and manners of thinking.
I feel like if I keep going I'm going to just babble on.
What's that you say?
I've been babbling already?
Oh my apologies.
I didn't mean to babble but here we are.
Lest I babble on anymore and cause greater confusion, I will try to wrap this up quickly
by saying I think the book is very skillfully written.
I think Lewis Carroll is a very intelligent man and I think he applied his intelligence
and his skill for logic and games very deftly here and some aspects of it are enjoyable.
In fact the Mock Turtle song is like it was a joy to experience especially in the audiobook
version of it.
There's something kind of magical about this but it also felt like I was like I was abducted.
I was taken for a ride and I didn't like it.
Some parts of it were enjoyable but some parts of it were very unenjoyable and it was like
I can't wait for this section of the book to be over for this chapter and go to the
next one and see where it goes.
Is there a narrative here?
I don't really know if there's a narrative here.
It's almost like each thing was a skit or an opportunity.
Like each thing was its own self-contained unit which was created for a specific purpose
that I don't quite understand what each specific purpose of it was because I was waiting for
an overall narrative arc to happen and to unfold and it didn't really.
There's like weird questions of identity like with the caterpillar and stuff and like certain
things keep coming up about if you call a person or a thing or a place by a certain
name does that name matter?
Does it empower?
Does it change if you change the name or if you can twist the name and make a joke out
of it does it transform the thing into something else?
It sort of does but it sort of doesn't and it's a weird kind of postmodernist way of
thinking which I think there's a little utility.
That's almost a joke and a puzzle in and of itself.
I think there's a little utility in postmodernist thinking but I also think it's sort of toxic
because of where it leads and yeah I will restrain myself from saying much more but
I didn't really there were things that were enjoyable about the book and there were things
that I liked but there were also areas where I was made so uncomfortable by the book and
what was going on and I don't really I don't really know again this is what I said last
time I don't know what the use is or what the purpose of this book was and I don't know
what benefit it was to me in reading it.
I don't feel like I was enriched by reading this book at all and I was entertained from
time to time but I was also befuddled and confused and it's not a book I will read again
and I do not plan on reading any of the sequels and if any of my children were to ask me if
they should read it I would tell them no it's not really worth your time.
If you want absurd writing or like absurd storytelling I would suggest just right off
the bat James and the giant peach I've listened to my family read most of it and that seems
much more beneficial and much less uncomfortable and like overall a greater experience for
an absurdist adventure and I would even say I think did we meet Charlie and Chuck's Factory?
I know we're not like a big Roald Dahl family but we're kind of I'm definitely interested
in exploring more of his work and I know some of my kids are as well just at least a couple
more things but I would definitely suggest and I do plan on reading The Wonderful Wizard
of Oz by Alfred Baum.
Alfred Baum set out to write things to write his books to be just fun fairy stories that
weren't moralistic and didn't have necessarily a message to say to children and I don't know
off the top of my head I couldn't tell you what the message of The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz is other than maybe the thing you think you need to get for yourself is something
that you've had all along.
That might be what it is but I don't think it really is I don't think it has much of
a strong message but it's definitely absurd and it's definitely charming and I've listened
to all 14 Oz books and I'll tell you they're absurd and charming throughout but they don't
make me uncomfortable like Carol's book does.
They have a more structured narrative flow to them they have an arc some arc they've
you know even if it's just an adventure arc of exciting things happening to our friends
and heroes throughout the books and if the characters don't change which they don't really
that's okay because you know things change in the world things happen in the world there's
a progression in Oz and there is some linearity there's enough of a linear through line or
I don't know if I'm using that properly there's enough of a forward momentum throughout all
the Oz books and within each Oz book itself that it makes the quest and the adventure
feel meaningful and at least meaningful to the characters if it's not meaningful to me
it has at least a tangible meaning and progression that benefits the characters from going through
it versus I don't feel like that with this book at all it feels like a pointless book
it feels like a pointless story because it doesn't really go anywhere and it doesn't
end where it began in a circular way so that it feels homey and it feels like I don't know
like Alice went on an adventure and then gets to go home and is you know somewhat changed
or whatever it doesn't feel like that to me and I'm not saying 100% that all the Oz books
have that feel but at least tangibly the characters are physically in a different place than where
they started or at least some of them are even if the hero Dorothy for example returns
to Kansas in the beginning or at the end of her book you know not really changed but it's
okay there because I don't know just something something between personal preference and I
think like objectively what the books accomplish or what they do it's a real enough difference
to make me re I'm rereading Oz books to my kids right now obviously not when I'm talking
to you but I'm I'm halfway through the series and I'm loving it and it's so wonderful whereas
I I can't say the same thing for Alice it's not something I'm gonna want to experience
again really and I just I don't know what makes the difference but maybe you do maybe
you do maybe you can tell me I would love if you have thoughts on this after hearing
this to defend the book or to laud its merits I would love to hear that and yeah I I am
curious to see what other people think about this book and to see where they come down
on it because I'm I'm not against it I don't hate it I don't think it should be I don't
know like I I don't have if you didn't listen last episode I had a problem with or I have
a problem with Tucker everlasting I don't have that same problem with this book because it
doesn't go in the same areas but I just wouldn't recommend it and I don't understand how it's
become a classic yeah that's about all I have to say so I'm really curious to hear what
people's feedback is on this and to hear your thoughts on Alice's adventures in Wonderland
and any other any other Carol's writings if you've read them and have thoughts and opinions
and feelings on them you'd like to share okay so I thought about this a little bit and I
have an addendum I don't understand how this story became a classic or is considered to
be a classic I shouldn't say the story this book else's adventures in Wonderland I just
don't understand that so if you have an argument for that or reasons why it's classic please
tell me I'd love to hear I'd love to know what you think about it second of all I don't
think there's an actual story here which is that's the crystallization of everything that
I or of most of everything that I said and that's it to quote Elaine from this is anyway
it's like a big budget movie that goes nowhere that's a paraphrase now yeah like there's
all these blinking lights and there's smoke and there's hookahs and wine and tea and all
sorts of stuff but like nothing is of consequence and I think then therefore it logically follows
that there is no story and I don't know if you know this but to me story is the most
important thing the evidence by the fact that this is a story over everything production
you are listening to right now so the lack of story repels me there is no endearment
strong enough nothing that I found cute or fun or funny or interesting in it is substantial
enough to keep my attention or to let this take a place in my heart because there's no
story there therefore it's meaningless to me and worthless to me but if you differ I'd
love to hear why how and what the details are that what specific things you have to
counter that sentiment that argument from me and if it's because you don't believe
your story is the most important thing that's okay but just then tell me what's what is
or what is you know so worthwhile in this without a story I hope you enjoyed that subscribe
to keep up with me like and share to help me reach more people like you and go to mg
mjmunoz.com to find your next favorite thing and don't forget to let your voice be heard
stories are always better when you're part of the conversation until next time be well
this is MJ signing out this has been a story over everything production.