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Alice Miniseries on the Syfy Channel, December 6th-7th

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If you haven’t heard the hype, Syfy is rolling out a hot new four-hour miniseries inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, this coming Sunday and Monday evenings starting at 9pm. (Syfy used to be called the Sci Fi Channel, and this rebranding is being boycotted by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Slate as an “unsupportable offense against orthography.”) This show should should be a wild take on the Alice “myth”, with Carroll listed as only one of many influences including Doctor Who and other classic genre-benders. The adult Alice (Caterina Scorsone) can do karate. You may remember Harry Dean Stanton, who plays an insurgent Caterpillar “resisting” the Queen of Hearts, as a regular from David Lynch movies and the slithery Fundamentalist Mormon prophet in Big Love. And the Dodo, also an insurgent, is played by Tim Curry, who was of course once the sweet transvestite transsexual from Transylvania. The Syfy plot sounds too complicated to recap before seeing it, involving some sort of coveted ring of power, the Gem of Wonderland, but the production and acting all sound first rate. There’s trailers and other promo material at www.syfy.com/alice, and Troy Patterson’s review at Slate (which I was just paraphrasing) is here. Patterson coined a delicious Carrollian portmanteau “maluscious” (luscious and malicious) to describe Kathy Bates’ Queen of Hearts.

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Lauren Mechling on Alice: "We are all changelings."

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Lauren Mechling, the author of the Dream Girl series (starring the irritatingly named Claire Voyante), has a short essay posted today about Carroll and Alice at the Wall Street Journal’s blog Speakeasy. In lieu of the high-profile Alice projects coming out, she looks at the phenomenon thru her modern Teen-Lit spectacles:

[…] Yet the weirdness for which the story is best remembered is beside the point. Trippy as the events may be, its sharpest element is the profound sense of melancholy overhanging them. “‘It was much pleasanter at home,’ thought poor Alice, ‘when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller and being ordered about by mice and rabbits,’” wrote Carroll. Near the end of the tale, a hookah-smoking caterpillar asks her who she is. “‘I hardly know sir,’” she replies in good-mannered consternation. “At least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

In addition to going it alone, Alice is stuck dealing with a body that is betraying her every step of the way. It’s a universal—and horrifically personal—condition. I defy you to find anyone who hasn’t watched on with alarm as her body grew pimples, love handles, or, with enough years, begun to curl over and shrink. Some fuss has been made over Burton’s choice to cast a 19-year-old actress rather than a child to play Alice in his film version, but the Alice experience is not constrained to the world of children. Quite the opposite.

And when Carroll writes, “‘For it might end,’ Alice said to herself, “in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?’” we feel the author’s frustration and sadness layered over Alice’s own. We are all changelings. And, all the more excruciating, so are our loved ones—a fact that Carroll knew all too well.

by Lauren Mechling
The Wall Street Journal’s blog Speakeasy
December 5th, 2009
Also, Rachel just found this amazing entry at Answers.com, a website with answers to all questions:

We should ask them why a raven is like a writing desk.

UPDATE: They already have a disappointing entry for Why is a raven like a writing desk?.
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Swann Galleries to auction "Portrait of Emily Cecilia Harrison"

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On December 8th, Swann Galleries in New York will be auctioning Dodgson’s “Portrait of Emily Cecilia Harrison,” a 6.5 by 5 inch albumen print of Emily and her doll in a comfortable-looking chair. The sale is notable, first for its seriously fancy online “3D” catalogue, and secondly for a very exciting re-telling of Mr Dodgson’s biography:

Although best known for novels “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass,” he also invented croquet, billiards, various forms of chess, scrabble, ways to divide certain numbers and two different form of the Arabic zero.

The estimated sale price is $4,000 to $6,000. Perhaps it should be higher?

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Силви и Бруно: Sylvie & Bruno now in Bulgarian!

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I believe this is the first time Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie & Bruno has appeared in Bulgarian, in a new translation by Rosa Grigorova. Here’s the blurb from knigagb.com:

Очарователната приказка – последното голямо произведение на Луис Карол, е триумф на човешкото въображение, каквото само човек с неговата рядка чувствителност може да създаде.
За „Силви и Бруно” литературните критици казват, че това е трудът на живота му, а книгите за Алиса са само генералната му репетиция.
Разказ за странните приключения на малки сестричка и братче в три различни места: Англия, Фейландия и Вънландия – прелестна пародия на реалния свят на Карол в Оксфорд с веселата си йерархия от ректори, заместник-ректори и ерудирани, макар и много разсеяни професори, и още десетки други, всички изобилно поръсени с типичната за Карол игра на думи, до един въвлечени в заплетени и изпълнени с напрежение приключения, пътуване във времето, несподелена любов… и гения на един от най-очарователните и изобретателни виртуози на английския език.

Or, according to Google Translate: “For Sylvie and Bruno literary critics say it is difficult of his life, and Alice books are just his general rehearsal.” This goes for €10 where all fine Bulgarian books are sold.
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Poet Marianne Moore & Lewis Carroll creatively combined in an exhibition by Sue Johnson at Philadelphia’s Rosenbach Museum & Library

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The Rosenbach Museum & Library’s Artist-in-Residence Sue Johnson has an original installation called Moore Adventures in Wonderland running from September 23rd, 2009, thru June 6th, 2010. The Rosenbach collection is highlighted with large archives by both Lewis Carroll and Marianne Moore, the witty American modernist poet, so Johnson’s installation sets out to explore the two writers’ connections. In her own words (quoted in last Friday’s Philadelphia Daily News):

Moore almost exclusively uses nature as her platform. She doesn’t people her poetry very often, and I felt a resonant chord with that. With Carroll, of course, it’s Alice’s adventures, but it’s Alice’s adventures with creatures that have been anthropomorphized. So I thought that there was a good conversation that could be had there between two creative people that I felt an affinity with.

Marianne Moore willed to the Rosenbach a room from her Greenwich Village apartment, which was then recreated on site. The exhibition is downstairs from the Moore living room, so Johnson played with the house’s layout and available looking-glasses above fireplace mantles: “I was thinking about going through the looking glass upstairs in the Moore room and landing downstairs in the room that I created. So it’s almost like watching an old filmstrip, where there’s a slippage of the film and you find yourself in another place, down the rabbit hole. I wanted people to be toggling back and forth between those spaces.” (also quoted from the Daily News, where there’s a further detailed description of the installation.)
The Rosenbach Museum & Library is at 2008-2010 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19103. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $5 for students and children; closed on Mondays. Too Many Thoughts to Chew: A [Maurice] Sendak Stew is showing simultaneously.
(The Lewis Carroll Society of North America will be meeting at the Rosenbach and viewing Sue Johnson’s installation on April 24, 2010. To learn more about the society, see www.lewiscarroll.org. As the meeting date gets closer, we will be posting additional information about our program that day on the society’s website. – from Clare Imholtz, LCSNA Secretary)
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Alice at 8,700 feet

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With all the coverage of the forthcoming Tim Burton movie and Syfy channel series, Alice does seem to be getting about at bit lately. However, there must be someone out there left to be surprised at finding her 8,700 feet up a mountain in the French Alps.

The ski resort of Courchevel, favored winter playground of Russian oligarchs, Saudi Arabian princes and well to-do British families, is known for extravagance. Their decision to hold a season-long exhibition of Dali sculptures, including his “Alice in Wonderland”, up and down the mountain sides is, therefore, business as usual in that surreal and expensive winter fairyland.

The video below shows the thirteen foot-tall statues of “Alice” and “Woman in Flames” being manoeuvred into place. I particularly like the part where Alice is flying between the mountains, suspended on a long cable beneath the helicopter.

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Lou Bunin’s 1949 animated Alice in Wonderland showing in L.A. on Saturday

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Cinefamily, a “movie lover” organization in L.A., will be showing Lou Bunin’s Alice in Wonderland at the Silent Movie Theatre, 611 N. Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036. Two shows on Saturday, November 28th, at 5:00 & 7:30pm, for $12. Here’s the description & musical clip from their listing:

Alice In Wonderland (1949)
This ambitious, highly faithful late-’40s Alice adaptation took years to complete, and features an abundance of impressive, meticulous and labor-intensive stop-motion work from pioneer puppeteer Lou Bunin. After a live-action prologue showing the historical inspirations for the major characters, Alice (a decidedly adult Carol Marsh) is quickly launched into surreal realms of design and color. Remarkably, the film stays true to the original novel’s anarchic construction, and the inspiration of Victorian illustrator John Tenniel’s Alice imaginings. Bunin’s handiwork is at its peak during the musical numbers, which dunk you head-first into the film’s opium-riddled dreamworld–and in addition, live-action director Dallas Bower comes up with clever, simple solutions to the FX limitations of the day. Originally suppressed by Disney for fear of its potential upstaging of their own animated Alice, Bunin’s work comes to you here at the Cinefamily in a rare screening of a beautiful MOMA-restored 35mm print!
Dirs. Dallas Bower & Lou Bunin, 1949, 35mm, 76 min.

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New Alice book illustrated by LCSNA member out now

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At the LCSNA Spring Meeting in 2008, Oleg Lipchenko, artist, illustrator and LCSNA member, described the challenges of illustrating Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland anew. “It’s like illustrating “IT.” You know what “IT” means, right?”

Several of you were lucky enough to be able to get hold of pre-publication editions and your reviews were delighted. Now the Oleg’s rich and intricate illustrations are available to all:

Dear friends,

I’m glad to inform you all that a new edition of Alice with my illustrations published by Tundra Books is available in bookstores:

Barnes and Noble, USA
Chapters.Indigo, Canada

I am grateful to all of you who purchased a copy of the Limited Edition and helped me to move ahead with my illustrations. My next my book will be published by Tundra Books in 2010. It is Humpty Dumpty And Friends. Still several copies of the Limited Edition of Alice (Studio Treasure) are available at: www.surrealice.com

Yours,
Oleg Lipchenko, artist, illustrator

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"Alice in Wonderland Syndrome": A Terrifying First-Person Account

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“Alice in Wonderland Syndrome” – not the consequence of reading Alice’s adventures too many times over – but rather the actual medical complaint, is not common. All the better for us and our already tried-to-the-limit physicians, and all the more interesting to read a rare first-person account of the malady, published last week in the UK newspaper, The Daily Mail.

Newcomers to this syndrome and ambitious hypochondriacs should know that sufferers of AIW syndrome, also known as Todd’s syndrome, experience both macropsia (where ordinary objects appear unfathomably large, and the subject unfathomably small) and micropsia (visa versa). The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (Seventh Edition) describes symptoms as “Disturbance of one’s view of oneself ± fast-forwarding of intrapsychic time.”

Rik Hemsley, 33, was “sober and hangover-free” when he first experienced symptoms:

I stood up, reached down to pick up the TV remote control from the floor and felt my foot sink into the ground. Glancing down, I saw that my leg was plunging into the carpet. It was a disturbing sensation, but it lasted only a few seconds, so I put it down to tiredness and forgot all about it.

Then things got really weird…

Everything was now distorted all the time. Walking down the road, cars appeared the size of Corgi models, while I’d feel disproportionately tall. At work, my chair seemed enormous, while I seemed to have shrunk.

The full, strange, yet strangely familiar account can be read in the article My weird hallucinations make life seem like Alice in Wonderland, courtesy of The Daily Mail Online. For now, some final words of warning from Rik: “I’m still no wiser about what the catalyst was for me – perhaps it was too much coffee or long periods spent in a darkened room programming computers.”

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"The prettiest are always further": Treasure-trove of Carroll items to be auctioned December 16th

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Yesterday the internet was thick with the news that Alice Liddell’s own copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass were be sold at auction. What few sites mentioned was that alongside these books, the auction house catalog is advertising a veritable who’s who, or what’s what, list of early Alice printed collectibles:

  • not one, but two editions of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, one of which is a first edition, presentation copy inscribed by the author to the mother of Edith Blakemore.
  • a first edition of The Nursery “Alice”, one of twelve specially bound as samples for the American market
  • a first edition of the Wonderland Postage Stamp Case, inscribed to “Miss Wordsworth [great niece of William Wordsworth], from the Inventor. May, 1891.” (A potential steal, listed at $1,000 -$1,500. Don’t you wish you had bought one for a shilling when you had the chance?)
  • An Easter Greeting to Every Child Who Loves “Alice”, inscribed to Edith Blakemore from Lewis Carroll. “Four-page pamphlet written on the celebration of Easter for young readers of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
  • and of course lot 28: “Through the Looking-Glass, First Edition, the Dedication Copy, presented to the original Alice by Lewis Carroll and signed by her …with misprint “wade” for “wabe” on page 21.”
  • an original ink drawing of Edith Blakemore by Dodgson, “in a bathing costume, holding a bucket and spade, leaning against the wheel of a bathing machine.”
  • a letter from Dodgson sending a specimen of his stamp case “…Would you kindly furnish me with the addresses of any Stationers (doing a good amount of business) to whom it would be worth my while to send a specimen-copy of my new Stamp-Case…?”
  • another first edition of Through the Looking-Glass, this one with two original pencil drawings by Tenniel on the half-title signed “Ever yours, JT”.
  • #743 of 1,500 copies of the 1932 Limited Editions Club print of Wonderland and Looking-Glass, signed “Alice Hargreaves”
  • Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing, inscribed by Lewis Carroll to Alice Blakemore, the mother of one of his child-friends.
  • and finally, an original John Tenniel drawing of the sleeping Gryphon (list price $60,000-$80,000!)

The items are being auctioned by Profiles in History on December 16th, the same Hollywood memorabilia dealer selected to auction Michael Jackson’s be-gemed and illuminated glove. Full descriptions and images of all the Alice items can be viewed in a pdf of the catalog, available on their website.

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