Through the Looking Glass XII -- chapters 9 - 12: The End

Chapter 9:

I'm not really sure how to approach this one; there's really not a whole lot to say about it.  Alice is Queen.  Carroll has said goodbye.  She takes her position gracefully (no stiff-neckedness here), and as things settle, so they fall apart.  The dream ends here, just like it did in the Tart Trial of Wonderland, and the only thing left to Carroll is to end the saga.  This is a very charitable finale, as he does so tenderly, and as he is no longer a part of it.  The chapter is rife with excellent jokes and wordplay, but there's a distance between reader and action, surely drawn--intentionally or not--by Carroll's own increasing distance from the growing Alice.  One detail I'm a big fan of, and regarding the relationship's terminus, is that he sends her off with fireworks!

By the way, I mentioned earlier that Carroll never wrote poetry in anapests.  Well, this chapter proves me wrong.


Chapters 10 and 11:

It was at the suggestion of another of Carroll's young friends that the Red Queen turn into the black kitten, Kitty.  Further, there's an article called "Alice Through the Zodiac," in which one Everett Bleiler points out how the twelve chapters align with signs of the zodiac, including the Tweedles as Gemini, the Goat on the train as Capricorn, and so on.  "True" Carrollians (a club to which I can't claim to be member, though not necessarily for this) believe Carroll simply wanted twelve chapters, as he never displayed interest in the Zodiac.

Chapter 12:

I'm interested by Kitty, the black kitten, who, like all cats, only says the same thing, *purr*, no matter what the conversation.  Of course this isn't any kind of a conversation; there must be contrast for dialog.  In my personal experience with children and teens (as a father and teacher, respectively), this isn't uncommon, especially when the kid in question is of one of the following three types (though, really, this goes equally for adults): obstinate of mood, an idiot, of extremely heightened emotion (very happy, very sad, very angry, etcetera).  I wonder who, if anyone, the little black kitten may be at this point.

Bearing in mind the fact that it was Carroll, not Alice, who wrote the book, as well as Carroll's relationship with and love for the girl, and whatever psychoses he may or may not have had toward her, what do you think of the "serious" question Alice posits to Kitty?

THE MACHINE STOPS, by E.M. Forster

E.M. Forster is another of the dozens of important authors whom I know very little about.  By recommendation of a Facebook "friend," I clicked a link to one of Forster's short stories, "The Machine Stops," and read it.  Perhaps dramatic irony, perhaps just fitting placement (by posting it on FB), the story is another science fiction allegory cautioning against mankind's growing dependence upon technology.

I don't think you can really call what I'm about to say a review, but here it goes:

The story is very well written, and possessed of some nice nuance and human insight, but I liked WALL-E better.

Through The Looking Glass XI -- THE WASP IN A WIG

If you haven't yet read "The Wasp in a Wig" episode, and/or the publishers of your edition didn't deign to include it, read it here.

1. A male wasp in an interesting choice for character.  The males are sting-less and impotent, especially compared to females, and so with chess kings and queens--except chess pieces are not so universally loathed as, well, wasps.
2. It's unlikely that Carroll is the Wasp, at least by intention, like he was the Knight, as this Wasp is but a lower-class drone (indicated through his language, his species and gender, and even to a degree his wig) and Carroll prided himself on being a Victorian gentleman.  Martin Gardner posits that the Wasp acts as a ventriloquist's puppet here, voicing Carroll, as the animal's character and age, both particularly significant if taken in their close contextual proximity to the White Knight, so closely resemble Carroll and other characters whom he's "inhabited" through the book.
3. PUN (one among so many, of course, but this one perhaps more subtle than the coming comb): This wasp has the newspaper--the paper, paper being, of course, the substance employed for the crafting of a wasp's nest.
4. Yellow is a classic symbol for age.
5. Word play: a lack of neck-bending, stiff-neck, and conceit.  Will Alice soon have the stiff-neck of a chess queen to go with the typically queenly conceit?  
6. Contrast Alice's attitude going into the episode with that of her leaving at its conclusion.

The most important question is this:  Should the chapter have been suppressed at all?  Did Carroll ere, permitting as he did Tenniel to talk him out of its inclusion?

THE WASP IN A WIG -- full text, suppressed from THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

Just before the mass of asterisks that indicate Alice's jump into the eighth and final rank where Alice will assume her queenly crown, Carroll once intended this episode to be included.

“I hope it encouraged him,” she said, as she turned to run down the hill:  “and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen!  How grand it sounds!”  A very few steps brought her to the edge of the book.  [‘THE WASP IN A WIG’ HERE]  “The Eighth Square at last!” she cried….

It's generally believed that Tenniel's argument with the episode (both artistic and contextual) was the primary impetus for its removal (and, really, how attached to it could Carroll have been if he let it go?), and critics generally believe the book is better without it (remember also that Carroll likely had not begun the revision process for this episode; he regularly had text put to printing plates before editing them).  I hope you'll have a more open mind.  Its import is not its dubious contribution to the general plot, insofar as plot is a series of events, but in demonstrating Alice's maturity and grace--her arc of character--perhaps appropriately fitting/preparing her for the combined religious and patriotic significance of a crowning, even if it means the final and needful separation of Alice and Carroll.

As you read, note the contrast of age between Alice and the Wasp, and remember that at the time of this book's publication, Carroll was twice as old as Alice: he was 40; she was going on 20.

The Wasp in a Wig

...and she was just going to spring over, when she heard a deep sigh, which seemed to come from the wood behind her.

"There’s somebody very unhappy there," she thought, looking anxiously back to see what was the matter. Something like a very old man (only that his face was more like a wasp) was sitting on the ground, leaning against a tree, all huddled up together, and shivering as if he were very cold.

"I don’t think I can be of any use to him," was Alice’s first thought, as she turned to spring over the brook: - "but I’ll just ask him what’s the matter," she added, checking herself on the very edge. "If I once jump over, everything will change, and then I can’t help him."

So she went back to the Wasp - rather unwillingly, for she was very anxious to be a queen.

"Oh, my old bones, my old bones!" he was grumbling as Alice came up to him.

"It’s rheumatism, I should think," Alice said to herself, and she stooped over him, and said very kindly, "I hope you’re not in much pain?"

The Wasp only shook his shoulders, and turned his head away. "Ah deary me!" he said to himself.

"Can I do anything for you?" Alice went on. "Aren’t you rather cold here?"

"How you go on!" the Wasp said in a peevish tone. "Worrity, Worrity! There never was such a child!"

Alice felt rather offended at this answer, and was very nearly walking on and leaving him, but she thought to herself "Perhaps it’s only pain that makes him so cross." So she tried once more.

"Won’t you let me help you round to the other side? You’ll be out of the cold wind there."

The Wasp took her arm, and let her help him round the tree, but when he got settled down again he only said, as before, "Worrity, worrity! Can’t you leave a body alone?"

"Would you like me to read you a bit of this?" Alice went on, as she picked up a newspaper which had been lying at his feet.

"You may read it if you’ve a mind to," the Wasp said, rather sulkily. "Nobody’s hindering you, that I know of."

So Alice sat down by him, and spread out the paper on her knees, and began. "Latest News. The Exploring Party have made another tour in the Pantry, and have found five new lumps of white sugar, large and in fine condition. In coming back - "

"Any brown sugar?" the Wasp interrupted.

Alice hastily ran her eyes down the paper and said "No. It says nothing about brown."

"No brown sugar!" grumbled the Wasp. "A nice exploring party!"

"In coming back," Alice went on reading, "they found a lake of treacle. The banks of the lake were blue and white, and looked like china. While tasting the treacle, they had a sad accident: two of their party were engulped - "

"Where what?" the Wasp asked in a very cross voice.

"En-gulph-ed," Alice repeated, dividing the word in syllables.

"There’s no such word in the language!" said the Wasp.

"It’s in the newspaper, though," Alice said a little timidly.

"Let’s stop it here!" said the Wasp, fretfully turning away his head.

Alice put down the newspaper. "I’m afraid you’re not well," she said in a soothing tone. "Can’t I do anything for you?"

"It’s all along of the wig," the Wasp said in a much gentler voice.

"Along of the wig?" Alice repeated, quite pleased to find that he was recovering his temper.

"You’d be cross too, if you’d a wig like mine," the Wasp went on. "They jokes, at one. And they worrits one. And then I gets cross. And I gets cold. And I gets under a tree. And I gets a yellow handkerchief. And I ties up my face - as at the present."

Alice looked pityingly at him. "Tying up the face is very good for the toothache," she said.

"And it’s very good for the conceit," added the Wasp.

Alice didn’t catch the word exactly. "Is that a kind of toothache?" she asked.

The Wasp considered a little. "Well, no," he said: "it’s when you hold up your head -so - without bending your neck."

"Oh, you mean stiff-neck," said Alice.

The Wasp said "That’s a new-fangled name. They called it conceit in my time."

"Conceit isn’t a disease at all," Alice remarked.

"It is, though," said the Wasp: "wait till you have it, and then you’ll know. And when you catches it, just try tying a yellow handkerchief round your face. It’ll cure you in no time!"

He untied the handkerchief as he spoke, and Alice looked at his wig in great surprise. It was bright yellow like the handkerchief, and all tangled and tumbled about like a heap of sea-weed. "You could make your wig much neater," she said, "if only you had a comb."

"What, you’re a Bee, are you?" the Wasp said, looking at her with more interest. "And you’ve got a comb. Much honey?"

"It isn’t that kind," Alice hastily explained. "It’s to comb hair with - your wig’s sovery rough, you know."

"I’ll tell you how I came to wear it," the Wasp said. "When I was young, you know, my ringlets used to wave - "

A curious idea came into Alice’s head. Almost every one she had met had repeated poetry to her, and she thought she would try if the Wasp couldn’t do it too. "Would you mind saying it in rhyme?" she asked very politely.

"It aint what I’m used to," said the Wasp: "however I’ll try; wait a bit." He was silent for a few moments, and then began again -

"When I was young, my ringlets waved
And curled and crinkled on my head:
And then they said ‘You should be shaved,
And wear a yellow wig instead.’

But when I followed their advice,
And they had noticed the effect,
They said I did not look so nice
As they had ventured to expect.

They said it did not fit, and so
It made me look extremely plain:
But what was I to do, you know?
My ringlets would not grow again.

So now that I am old and grey,
And all my hair is nearly gone,
They take my wig from me and say
‘How can you put such rubbish on?’

And still, whenever I appear,
They hoot at me and call me ‘Pig!’
And that is why they do it, dear,
Because I wear a yellow wig."

"I’m very sorry for you," Alice said heartily: "and I think if your wig fitted a little better, they wouldn’t tease you quite so much."

"Your wig fits very well," the Wasp murmured, looking at her with an expression of admiration: "it’s the shape of your head as does it. Your jaws aint well shaped, though - I should think you couldn’t bite well?"

Alice began with a little scream of laughing, which she turned into a cough as well as she could. At last she managed to say gravely, "I can bite anything I want,"

"Not with a mouth as small as that," the Wasp persisted. "If you was a-fighting, now - could you get hold of the other one by the back of the neck?"

"I’m afraid not," said Alice.

"Well, that’s because your jaws are too short," the Wasp went on: "but the top of your head is nice and round." He took off his own wig as he spoke, and stretched out one claw towards Alice, as if he wished to do the same for her, but she kept out of reach, and would not take the hint. So he went on with his criticisms.

"Then, your eyes - they’re too much in front, no doubt. One would have done as well as two, if you must have them so close - "

Alice did not like having so many personal remarks made on her, and as the Wasp had quite recovered his spirits, and was getting very talkative, she thought she might safely leave him. "I think I must be going on now," she said. "Good-bye."

"Good-bye, and thank-ye," said the Wasp, and Alice tripped down the hill again, quite pleased that she had gone back and given a few minutes to making the poor old creature comfortable.

GENRE FICTION: KEELER versus PATTERSON by analogy of METAL

While I tend to avoid for the most part the "lesser" writing of so-called genre-fiction (becoming less and less the case as I continue to find, or am introduced to, examples of the stuff of unimpeachable literary excellence), I have always harbored a taste, and kept it fairly closeted until now, for another strain of genre, this one "musical" (quotes should connote potential for sarcasm) --that of heavy metal.  Just like mystery and sci-fi and thriller and horror and whatever else in fiction, so in music there is hip-hop, R&B, grunge, metal, jazz, and so on--ad infinitum, really (just check out that family tree of rock n' roll below).

a graphical history of 40 years' of rock n' roll, from lindsargwatt.com

I have not been quiet about my recent reading of Harry Stephen Keeler's mystery novel, Riddle of the Traveling Skull, which both delighted and astonished me.  I am now reading another genre piece, this one by famed genre master ("genre": though not typical of this author; and "master" only if sheer staggering quantity of book sales qualifies one for such a title), James Patterson: his Witch and Wizard (well, it's not really his--some Charbonet character, ghost writer--but has his name on the cover and bigger, which is essentially the same thing, as I can't imagine he'd sign off on it if it didn't at least match his far-from stringent qualifications).  While I firmly believe that Keeler surpassed the typecast of his genre (and this by a dense combination of wit, originality, utter abandonment of reality, and a total dedication to his craft), Patterson has murdered it.

Let's keep things as positive as possible, however, at least for a minute, if no more, because, well, Patterson must be doing something right if he's got 200 million books sold, right?  W&W is written for teens.  Teens have a short attention span (if this sounds like an insult, it's meant to; I don't feel this way about adolescents, but clearly Patterson does).  So instead of bogging down the reader with things like exposition and description and even emotion, Patterson simply deletes them.  Sure, the more seasoned reader is left with the impression that he's reading a plot summary or liner notes under the panels of storyboard illustrations for in-development B-movie, but teens are eating it up.  And, well, it could even be seen as a good introduction to fantasy for new readers, especially because there's absolutely nothing original to it. The book flagrantly steals most obviously and glaringly from The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, among many others, including Lev Grossman's The Magicians (any of which is a little like watching some hack in the audition rounds of American Idol attempt a Whitney Houston number--why would he even want to have his book compared to theirs???).

Now, I've never read anything else by Patterson, so take my snap judgments of him with a grain of salt, and I don't plan to, especially after this.  I picked up W&W because so many of my students are reading it, and I wanted to be able to talk to them about it.  That and it was only 6 bucks at Wal-Mart, and I needed a new book for the bathroom.  Perhaps my problem here--because, really, this book is not next door to terrible, but flagrantly squatting in Terrible's moldy boiler room--is that maybe, just maybe, Patterson should have left fantasy alone and stuck with his more practiced genres of thriller and mystery, not to mention his shift of target audience (which audience, teen/young adult, and which genre, fantasy, tend toward the realms of sacred for me, especially in the case of the audience he's infiltrating (maybe I'm just jealous!)).  To really get my point across, however, I think I need to paint all this in the vibrant tones of analogy.

When I was a teen, my favorite genre band--hard rock/metal (metal, of course, is a subjective term and has developed significantly over the last thirty years) --was Metallica: slightly more musical than others, certainly more popular, and particularly great for weight-room blasting after track practice.  Over the years, of course, I grew up, and slowly grew away from Metallica.  In 1999, however, genre buster and genius composer/conductor for the San Francisco Symphony, Michael Kamen, decided to do up a fat concert's-worth of Metallica charts for symphonic orchestra, and charter the band to take the stage right with the strings and brass, winds and percussion.

The result was absolutely tremendous, and I loved it.  If pulp mysteries may be perhaps aligned with metal, maybe specifically Metallica, then Harry Stephen Keeler is Michael Kamen: a little bit crazy, a little bit genius, a lot reckless, and totally given up to having fun with what he does best and loves.  No matter how crazy, it just freaking works.

James Patterson, on the other hand, and apart from genre shifting yet, is more like pop hard rockers Godsmack, who simply take all the ideas that everyone else has already had, inject it all with a little more sex, a little more violence, and lot more bad language, and sell it to the highest bidder: teenagers.  Now imagine, just for a minute and the sake of argument, that a band like Godsmack took something sacred, like, oh, I don't know, Debussy's "Claire de Lune" and translated it to their particular brand of metal?  Well, you'd get--  Hold on.  Let me repeat that fantasy has more potential for sublimity, I think, than any of the other "genres."  Disbelieve me?  Take a look at the greats: Lord of the Rings and Ender's Game, a couple of my most mainstream favorites, and Summerland, though it's less well-known, or the brilliant stuff that someone like Margaret Atwood or Lewis Carroll or Louis Lowry or, heck, even Douglas Adams (to name only a few of the dozens of this world's and our history's greats) can do with it.  Let's use Lord of the Rings.  It's about as obvious for it's brilliance as is Debussy's "Moonlight."  See what I'm getting at here?  "Claire de Lune" is to Godsmack as Lord of the Rings is to James Patterson.

When it comes right down to it, the idea behind W&W is actually pretty okay, but instead of giving it to Godsmack (because Patterson DID NOT WRITE IT), why not dish it off to a band that can actually play--like a Sevendust or a Tool or a Porcupine Tree (okay, not metal, but it would be awesome) or, yeah, even Metallica?  Better yet, why not a Michael Kamen and the brute, masterful force of his orchestra behind him?  Because I still like a lot of metal out there.  And sometimes, cross-genre translations do work, but I'm sorry: Mr. Patterson, Ms. Charbonnet, yours doesn't.

(Ugh.  I'm gonna go read a poem.)