Well, he partially uses the short article in the January 2012 issue of Vanity Fair to plug his own children’s books, but his reverence for Looking Glass is genuine:
Salman Rushdie, c. 1988
By the time Lewis Carroll wrote Through the Looking-Glass, in 1871—140 years ago this month—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) was already a beloved book. So the pressure was on; Carroll faced a real “follow-that problem.” … “Still she haunts me, phantomwise,” he wrote in the book’s epilogue, and thank goodness she did, because Through the Looking-Glass was anything but an anticlimax, giving us the Jabberwock, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Walrus and the Carpenter to add to Carroll’s pantheon of magnificently nonsensical immortals. [continue reading.]
An article by “Explainer” Brian Palmer at Slate.com seeks to answer the question “What do you do on a Scientology Cruise Ship?” “They hang out in the Starlight Room, play shuffleboard, and achieve Operating Thetan Level VIII,” is part of his explanation. And, according to him, our favorite novel is also included in training routines:
"Alice: Ace of Diamonds" by Annie Rodrigue, deviantart.com. 5x7 watercolour, ink and acrylics on hot pressed watercolour paper.
Coursework on the Freewinds is a combination of independent book study, cooperative activities, and personal counseling sessions. In lecture halls, students complete lists of assignments that include reading book chapters and using modeling clay to demonstrate their understanding. They also participate in “training routines” to improve their communication skills. Classic examples include staring another student in the face for hours without blinking, or reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to each other. [continue reading.]
A quick Google search finds dozensof other articles corroborating that AAIW is used. The Wikipedia article on Training Routines (Scientology) describes TR-4 called “Dear Alice” thusly: “The student reads several lines from Alice in Wonderland to the coach as if saying them himself. The coach either acknowledges the line or flunks the student according to whether the line is communicated clearly.” The footnotes reference Cooper Paulette’s 1971 book The Scandal of Scientology and Jon Atack’s A Piece of Blue Sky: Scientology, Dianetics & L. Ron Hubbard Exposed (1990). By the way, Jon Atack is a great name for a writer of exposés. Anyway, I wonder which edition of AAIW they use…
Secret supper clubs are all the rage, so we’ve heard (we’ve never found one). Right now, somewhere in Vancouver, the Swallow Tail Supper Club is entertaining diners with fine food, cocktails, and live entertainment on a Wonderland theme. Local blogger Ariane Colenbrander seems to be in on the secret:
The evening starts at the outskirts of a moonlit forest, where guests are greeted by a frantic White Rabbit, who ushers them down the rabbit hole, to a nostalgic world of childhood fairytale characters. The Mad Hatter pours tea and soup is served in a “Drink Me” bottle labeled either “Big” or “Small”. The bottle guests drink from will determine their next course. More…
According to the same blog, celebrity chef and Food Network star Bob Blumer may also be involved, though it is not clear how. The supper club will be operating for only a few more days—they don’t seem to be sold out yet. Tickets cost $129 a head.
…So when I learned about What Middletown Read, a database that tracks the borrowing records of the Muncie Public Library between 1891 and 1902, I had some of the same feelings physicists probably have when new subatomic particles show up in their cloud chambers. Could you see how many times a particular book had been taken out? Could you find out when? And by whom? Yes, yes, and yes. You could also find out who those patrons were: their age, race, gender, occupation (and whether that made them blue or white collar, skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled), and their names and how they signed them.
John Plotz at Slate.com explains the What Middletown Read database, the labor of Ball State University English Professor Frank Felsenstein. We at the LCSNA were naturally immediately curious about how often Lewis Carroll books were checked out, and the result is mysteriously bare: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the only Carroll book that the Muncie Public Library owned, wasn’t acquired until 1900, and then only checked out ten times in an eight month period. Unless we’re missing something, that’s it. Perhaps it wasn’t popular in the midwest until later, or perhaps it was a common book in private collections therefore unnecessary in the public library? Or maybe the local pick-a-little-talk-a-littles thought it was a “dirty book,” like BALZAC. If anyone has any theories, please comment.
The short article contains no shocking revelations from the family vault, (except, perhaps, his admission, “As a child I never read Alice,”) but it is interesting to see what the family is up to these days. Do you think Lewis Carroll would have liked one of these armchairs for his rooms in Christ Church? It is upholstered in Hugh St. Clair’s own fabric, “Large Oval Flamingo.”
Rounding off our coverage of the Tate Liverpool’s Alice in Wonderland exhibition, here’s a video interview with co-curator Christop Schulz that gives some tantalizing glimpses of the artwork on display.
Yesterday, chief art critic at the UK Telegraph newspaper, Richard Dorment, gave the exhibition a three star review (“by no means all the work in the show is terrible . . .”), nevertheless, we still wish Liverpool was a little easier to get to on public transit (from California). For the rest of this month we will focus on Alice news and events more accessible to folks in the New World, we promise.
The catalog for the Tate Liverpool’s Alice in Wonderland exhibition is now for sale on the Tate’s website. Edited by Gavin Delahunty, head of exhibitions and displays at Tate Liverpool, and Christoph Schulz, curator of the exhibition, it reproduces the art of the exhibition in 120 color illustrations. Also included are critical essays by Dame Gillian Beer, Alberto Manguel, and Edward Wakeling, and a new fairy tale by Carol Mavor.
Art from CBR: “‘Alice in Wonderland’ will fill readers in on what happened to Alice Liddle [sic] since she last appeared in a Zenescop Wonderland book”
Art preview from CBR for Raven Gregory's forthcoming Alice in Wonderland.
Graphic novelist Raven Gregory has now written several installments in the Wonderland universe, beginning with Return to Wonderland (2007) and followed by various Tales and Escapes. The original Return to Wonderland followed Alice Liddell’s granddaughter Calie, but according to Comic Book Resources, “the fate of Wonderland’s original protagonist has been remained untold, until now.” So the prequel, called Alice in Wonderland, will star an Alice Liddell bustier and blonder than you’ve ever seen her. Zenoscope will release it in December with covers by Artgerm, Eric Basaluda and Nei Ruffino.
CBR News: Raven, before “Alice in Wonderland,” you had sent your time following the escapades of Alice’s granddaughter Calie in Wonderland. In fact, this is the first time you’ve actually visited the original character of Alice. What prompted the change in focus?
Raven Gregory: We’d been talking about doing the “Alice” story for quite some time, but we all agreed we’d only do it if we had a really good story to tell. After how well the “Wonderland” trilogy turned out, the last thing we wanted to do was to run this thing into the ground. We decided the only way to do it was to wait for the right story to come along, one that would be able to stand on its own merits yet also play into this massive mythology we’ve developed over the last five years. [continue reading.]
Issue 187 of Prospect Magazine contains a good article on the influence of the Alice books written by Richard Jenkyns, professor of Classics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. The article is free to read on Prospect’s website.
Jenkyns makes several interesting points that may get LCSNA members thinking and, perhaps, arguing.
Here are some extracts:
Previously, most books for children had been either educational or improving; the only purpose of Alice is to give pleasure. We have grown so used to bunnies in blue jackets with brass buttons that it is hard to remember how comparatively recent such things are…
Dreams are a solipsist’s kingdom: nothing exists in them except the dreamer. It is appropriate, therefore, that the people and creatures that Alice meets in Wonderland lack roundedness and solidity…
Figures like the Red and White Queens and the White Knight come with distinct personalities independent of Alice’s imagining. It makes sense of a kind for there to be speculation in the looking-glass world about whether someone else is dreaming of Alice; to pose that question in Wonderland would be preposterous.
…So when I learned about 
