The Blog of the LCSNA
Librerías Gandhi, one of the largest chains of bookstores in Mexico, commissioned an ad campaign in 2011 (sorry, we just found it) from Ogilvy & Mather, México. The tag line was “Find Your Book,” and it consisted of three digitally produced scenes, each featuring a different literary character reading a book. Gregor Samsa was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, Little Red Riding Hood Steppenwolf, and to see what Alice was reading, click here.
Urban Comics in France has published Alice au pays des comics, a French translation of Craig Yoe & Mark Burstein’s Alice in Comicland, a compendium of Carrollian comic book stories from 1901 to 1960. ISBN: 978-2365776769.
Grace Slick’s amazing vocal track to “White Rabbit” has surfaced, sans accompaniment. It’s a little echo-ey and there are 31 seconds of silence before it starts, but it’s well worth a listen. Feed your head here.
Foundwaves, a nonprofit global music website, put together a very fun project to celebrate the 150th anniversary by assigning different chapters of Alice to specific bands all over the world and asking them to write a song inspired by it. There is new artwork as well, and one can read the original text too. (Being Carrollian, chapters are listed in reverse order.) Click here!
Our partners in crime across the pond have published a new text on Carroll’s 1895 paper What the Tortoise Said to Achilles. This special edition of The Carrollian contains the original plus five new articles on this classic philosophical logic paper. Get yours directly from The Lewis Carroll Society today! Check out the preview here.
Our 2017 Spring Meeting will be in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area on the weekend of March 31 – April 2. The full-day Saturday meeting with be at the state-of-the-art Koret Auditorium (left) of the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch, followed by a reception at the San Francisco Center for the Book. Speakers and presentations comprise a particularly fascinating lineup: click here for the complete program and all related matters (transportation, accommodations, meals, advance reservations, etc.). On Sunday, a trip to the Wine Country is in order, visiting the renowned Burstein Collection in Petaluma (right, although Alice is Photoshopped, not painted). Start making plans and reservations right away!
A beautiful 24-page, apx. 7 x 10 inch letterpress “Jabberwocky” has been printed and illustrated by Norman McKnight of the Philoxenia Press in Berkeley in an edition of 50. He describes is as “a pamphlet sewn into covers and Japanese Yuzen wrappers. The typeface is 20 point Frühling by Rudolf Koch (1914), and newly cast at the Stempel Foundry in Frankfurt-am-Main. The title is set in 60 point Goudy Text and 36 point Luthersche Fraktur. The text paper is Rives Heavyweight White. The wrapper has a tipped-on duplicate of plate #1. The cost is $50 sent post free.” Email Norman at philoxenia@earthlink.net.
A developer in Woodbridge (a suburb of Detroit) has rehabilitated a century-old home, turning it into a “Wonderland House” with statuary, stained glass windows, and the like. He previously has done houses on the themes of Dr. Seuss’s Lorax and the movie Up. Details here.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC announced that it is making 370,000 public domain items in their collection available digitally for download. Searching for “Lewis Carroll” has 63 results, eight of them his own photographs, such as The Beggar Maid (left).
The mad, mathematical, musical, magical, and thoroughly Carrollian Raymond Smullyan died on February 6th at the age of 97. Renowned for his logic puzzles, lightning wit, many books, magic tricks, and brilliant improvisations at the piano, Smullyan will be particularly remembered by Carrollians for his 1982 book Alice in Puzzle-Land: A Carrollian Tale for Children Under Eighty and his droll lecture on Carrollian Logic at our fall 2012 gathering in New York, not to mention his magic tricks at dinner that night. As we prepare an appropriate “In Memoriam” column for the Knight Letter, you can read more about this most remarkable individual in Wikipedia or his obituary in The New York Times. Or see the 2001 documentary This Film Needs No Title: A Portrait of Raymond Smullyan .
“Why should I worry about dying? It’s not going to happen in my lifetime!” – R. Smullyan
