Wonderful Wonderland and Annoying Alice

I have two books to talk about. The first is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the second is Through the Looking-Glass. Both of them are by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who published them under the name Lewis Carroll. I read them in an edition called The Annotated Alice which had a lot of notes and interesting comments. The edition also has the original drawings from the first publication of the book.

When I started reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I was disappointed. I had no patience for Alice and the story was uninspiring. However, the book cleaned itself up and by the end I was liking it.

For the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, the actions of Alice and the characters she meets are represented as if she is in a chess game. The opening of the book has a chess board and a list of moves which match up with when Alice meets characters such as the Red Queen or the White Knight in the story.

While some of the nonsense in the books was whimsical and enjoyable, much of it came across as annoying and pedantic. I was reminded of someone I know who often criticized my language. He would apply the standards of formal logic to what I said in everyday situations. He dissected my words and phrases to the point where I did not want to say anything to him. A lot of the characters in the story have the same problem. They think they are smart or funny by taking what someone says literally, but they are really a bunch of jerks.

The story has a lot of poems or songs in it that are parodies of well known children's rhymes of the time. Since these are not familiar to today's readers they lose their creativity and meaning. It was only through the copious annotations I learned about them.

I would say the weaknesses and strengths cancel each other in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The book nets to neutral. Through the Looking-Glass was better, but I would not recommend either of them. Maybe if I read them when I was younger I would have liked them more.

Wonderland is a great place to explore and has a good cast of characters to build a story. I think derivative works could be better and more interesting than the book.