Off With Their Heads

Now that the title has your attention, on to the latest installment of the Bucks and Books blog over Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. As children, several of us had seen the Disney adaptation of Carroll's fantastical novels, but at the age of six, one's scope of criticism usually falls under "I love it" or "I hate it." Personally, I remember enjoying the movie, but I did not find that same sense of enjoyment when reading the text. I kept thinking to myself, "What is the point of all this?" and after our meeting on Saturday, I feel safe in saying that at times in our reading we all felt a bit like Alice as she struggled to make sense of the Wonderland world. In fact, most of us came to the table with the same sense of having missed out on something critical in the text, leading once again to the question of Carroll's authorial intent.

Perhaps as educated adults, many of whom make a living out of reading and analyzing texts in one way or another, we are handicapped by our expectations that our reading contains subliminal messages or critical commentaries. Maybe the rambling narration and often nonsensical plot can best be appreciated by children, Carroll's target audience, who revel in stories and the more ridiculous the better. The introduction and annotations in the copy I read, explored Carroll's life and his friendships with children, particularly Alice Liddell, the Alice of Alice in Wonderland. Supposedly, Alice in Wonderland was the expansion of a story Carroll made up for the amusement of Alice and her two sisters while they were on a rowing trip one summer day. If this is the case, then perhaps the stories are simply glorified children's tales, and we as adults are discounting their entertainment value by looking for something more imbedded in the text.

Interestingly, if one believes these stories were solely for the entertainment of children, then years later they do in fact inadvertently provide insight into the time period in which they were written. The Victorian period brought about the concept of a true and marked childhood. Prior to this children were viewed as miniature adults. Secondly, these stories provide a departure of the norm of children's literature as instructional tool. Rather than building a story around a moral lesson or virtue, the story serves little purpose aside from enjoyment and even escape, interestingly one of the chief reasons for popular literature today. In many ways our difficulty with the text may also allow it to be cast as a satire due to way in which the disconnect between the worlds of children and adults becomes painfully obvious.

Needless to say, there is much more I could have written from our discussion, but in an attempt to create a cohesive thread, some has been omitted. Also, this seems a fitting time to mention the fact that while we did not go into a Freudian reading of Carroll's friendships with and adoration for young girls, there is plenty out there to read on the topic if one so desires. Secondly, this book really forced us to look at the way in which the introduction and the point of view expressed by that author can color a reading of the book and the reader's attitudes toward the author, yet another excuse not to read those pesky introductions.

Holiday on Trial or What We Thought of David Sedaris' Christmas Short Stories

"Ladies, you know what this is. Use it. I have scraped enough blood out from the crotches of elf knickers to last me the rest of my life. And don't tell me, 'I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer. You're not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf."                             --David Sedaris, "The Santa Land Diaries"

In a letter to Richard Woodhouse, John Keats talks about the poetical Character being something that "is everything and nothing" and how it "enjoys light and shade." His point was that a true poet becomes invisible behind his (or her) writing, that the voice the reader receives is the voice of the given text. Though not poetry, David Sedaris' Holidays on Ice reflects several voices both likable and despicable, ironically humorous and slapstick humorous. And it's these voices and what they had to say that we discussed on Saturday Dec. 20th.

Since Holidays on Ice is a collection of short stories, we began our conversation by naming our favorite one (I know. I know. Very sophisticated). From there, we delved into the themes and significance of each story. Here's an abbreviated avatar of our discussion:

"Dinah, the Christmas Whore."

Here, we talked about the lesson a Young David Sedaris learned about Christmas, how it's not all about him. The beginning of the story centers around a teenage Sedaris focused on asserting his individuality while exposing the corporateness of Christmas. What Young Sedaris saw was an up-close imbuing of the Christmas spirit when his sister and later his mother feed and care for a prostitute with domestic problems. 

We discussed how the story, though not factually true, was probably based loosely on some incident that Sedaris was able to sensationalize and chronicle. We used this idea to spearhead a conversation about how writers create fiction. From there, we transitioned our discussion to how stories are constructed.

"The Santa Land Diaries."

This collection of diary entries about Sedaris' experience as a Christmas Elf for Macy's one holiday season sparked perhaps the funniest part of our get together, for it constituted us reading aloud our favorite parts from his entries. 

The amazing part of this story is the amount of topics Sedaris was able to touch on in such a short period of time (the selfishness of parents poorly disguised as love for their children, the issue of Santa Claus' race, and the juxtaposition of holiday cheer with biting anger--from the same person, and what the real Santa Claus would do if he were a mall Santa). As a group, this was our favorite entry, but we knew we had others to discuss.

"Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!"

The appeal of this story was the way in which it evolves like a CSI case. I don't want to give too much away, but our discussion turned into us analyzing evidence and coming to a conclusion about the story's conclusion. We also discussed the "WASPY tone" of the piece, and a few members of our group pointed out that being a WASP (I'm not one) can help you decode what the speaker is saying. Perhaps more than any other reading, this one had a didactic tone that is often characteristic of Christmas stories.

I don't want to make this blog too long, so I'll leave it up to y'all to add as you see fit. But "Us & Them" provided the platform for April's story of how she and her brother spent Christmas giving away their presents after they disobeyed their mom who told them not to snoop around the house hunting for them. "6 to 8 Black Men" was a story that April and Bob had a copy of, but not the rest of us. This was another text w/ a WASPy tone. "Based on a True Story" was probably Sedaris' most overtly satirical piece, which seems to be the overarching purpose of this collection. 

Okay, I've obviously missed some things here, so feel free to grab your bullhorn and speak loudly about what you thought of our get together. 

Works Mentioned:

"A Modest Proposal:

Me Talk Pretty One Day

When We're Engulfed in Flames

Anchor Man

A Christmas Carol