Today I received an unexpected surprise in the mail- Rare, Uncollected, Unpublished, & Nonexistent Verse of Lewis Carroll! Here are a few peeks inside. The cover and every illustration inside is truly beautiful. Thank you muchly, Lewis Carroll Society of North America! So delighted to still be a member. Catch me pouring over this for the rest of my life.
Yesterday, I was at USC for the Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA) meeting. It was truly an experience! A detailed report under the cut.
At first, I felt a bit lost like Alice myself on the campus. I eventually found the library but there were no signs inside as to where to go. However, I came across people who were obviously Alice fanatics from their t-shirts and accessories. Two of them were Matt from Vintage Disney Alice and his wife Wendy. I was able to talk to them, Wendy being very, very kind, and I complimented Matt's t-shirt of the TARDIS in the rabbit-hole with Alice, but once I realized who they were, I became too shy to say anything again (next time!).
We did find the Lecture Hall and starting from 9am until around 4pm, we listened to the speakers in there. The first speaker was Dan Bergevin about his collaboration with about 50 artists to produce an Alice with different illustrators for each picture. That was actually rather interesting to hear about and many of the illustrations were fantastic (available here or here).
Next was an online skype video chat with Bryan Talbot who wrote "Alice in Sunderland", a sort of graphic novel about the history of Sunderland and the connection to the Alice stories. Though I had heard of the book, I had assumed Sunderland wasn't a real place and the book was a sequel or something. My mistake! I'm afraid I have to admit my attention wandered since I had not read the book (and hadn't even known Sunderland was a real place until that moment) and the discussion presumed the listeners had read the book or at least had a good idea of what was in it (which I, of course, didn't).
After that, it was Christopher Tyler talking about his book "Parallel Alices" which is about the medieval themes in the Alice books. He started off by saying this was all speculation and he didn't know how much Mr. Dodgson knew of medieval history...and it was a good thing he had such a disclaimer because everything he said was a HUGE stretch. Mainly, his theory was that Eleanor of Aquitaine was a inspiration for the Red Queen and Alys, Countess of the Vexin, was the inspiration for Alice. He very clearly knew his medieval history, there was no doubting in that, and the history lesson would have been interesting in its own right, but it had nothing really to do with the Alice books at all. A very poor attempt to connect an old "Alys" to the Alice of classic literature.
However, his most ridiculous claim was that the Hatter at the tea party was meant to be Dean Liddell (based off simply that the Dean sort of resembled the illustration), the Dormouse based off of Thomas Prout (who, according to overtold stories, fell asleep often during the Dean's staff meetings, but also coincidentally, was behind the preservation of the Treacle well in Binsey), and...he proposed the March Hare was based off of Mr. Dodgson himself! He only provided the illustration compared to a picture of him as some sort of evidence, which frankly, I couldn't see the connection of at all. Tyler would also repeat the worn out, disproven myths about Dodgson; it was quite obvious he did not know about the man as well as he knew his medieval history. The only thing I did agree with him about was that Alice Liddell was only a namesake and said that Mr. Dodgson had said the character was fictional...but then he claimed the character Alice was based of Alice Ellen Terry (the actress who went by her middle name) even though he just mentioned what Mr. Dodgson said.
(I was not the only person who thought he was stretching too much apparently. Later, I talked to someone who said he had thought of buying the book on amazon, but was glad he had waited until the talk!)
We took a break for lunch which was delicious! I had the impression that ordinarily you buy your own food at these meetings, but this time the university paid for everything, including the catering.
After lunch, we continued with a panel discussion with two winners (who've won two years in a row) of USC's Wonderland Awards. The main purpose of the Wonderland Awards is to encourage the use of the amazing Lewis Carroll collection they hold. The amount of participants have been small though and they're hoping to increase the word that any student enrolled in a California college may compete. It sounds like they're planning on a large event for next year's award reception to attract the Carrollians again.
Finally, the long awaited for moment arrived and American McGee finally stepped up to speak about his Alice games. However, I shan't be saying anything about this at the moment for I did try to film all of it. I'm going to try to edit together a video to put on Youtube later today or tomorrow. Though, in advance warning, my recording was crap for multiple reasons (some others seemed to be filming too so perhaps a better quality recording may pop up). However, you may be interested to know he called the Burton Alice a ripoff of his!
We had a break and I was able to explore the tables in the next room. There was about 7 people selling their wares and another had items for display only. 3 of those 7 were selling their own books: Dennis Armstrong was selling "A Shadow of Alice", his sequel to the Alice books( not yet available online), Angelica Carpenter was selling her biography "Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass" (I haven't heard of it; do any of you know if it's good?), and Raul Contreras was selling his retelling "Alice's Bloody Adventures in Wonderland". Matt and Wendy from Vintage Disney Alice also had a stall, but I presume in a rare instance, they had more non-Disney items to sell instead of Disney. I met Joel Birenbaum who is one of the ones behind a major celebration being planned for NYC in 2015 called Alice150, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first book. The profits of all the items he was selling would go towards the funding for the event. I bought a comic of the 1966 Hanna Barbera Alice as I'm an Alice movie memorabilia collector (as many of you know). I may share panels in the future.
After the break was over, we were led on a tour of the wonderful Cassady Lewis Carroll collection USC has. I have been there before to look at Edward Wakeling's publication of Dodgson's diaries. When I had visited, I was only allowed to bring a laptop in. You couldn't even bring in a pencil or notebook (if you needed them, you had to use the pencils and notecards they provided). Another thing was that all the books seemed to be in the reading room which was different from when I was there previously when an assistant had to go to another room to bring the diaries back to me (I spotted the same books this time on a high shelf). However, I was incredibly surprised to find that we were allowed to take pictures (many, many people did). There were certain items on display such as some beautiful editions of Alice and some real letters written by Mr. Dodgson! I was pleasantly surprised by the presence of concept art of the 1985 and 1949 Alices, which I shall share in another post. Also, they had the 1985 Alice anime DVD boxset in what seems like English?!
After the tour, there was a reception outside with, again, delicious food and Alice themed music played by music students. I stayed for only an hour because I found myself with a headache and eventually the music and the talking were so loud, I couldn't even hear what my tablemates were saying. However, the time I was there was very pleasant!
You know, it's surreal to be in a room of Alice fans. I mean, of course I've been in online chats with you readers, but it's quite another thing in "real life"! I've never really been in a conversation about Alice in which I didn't have to explain some of what I was talking about, but here everyone automatically knew and I knew what they were mentioning. Alice quotes were used in conversation which everyone would catch.
There was a large table in the middle of the area with many sweets, including mushroom shaped meringue (I believe it was). There were two plates of those treats on both sides of the table. One of my tablemates proposed what if these treats made you larger and another said she rather it make her smaller. He replied: "those are on the other side." We all laughed and I added in "but which is which?!"
I won't name those I met (who aren't already known on the internet) as I respect their privacy, but I will say they were all incredibly wonderful and kind people and that I hope I'll see them at events in the future! Oh, and hello to the couple of you there who may be reading this!
Hey guys, I've gotten the agenda for the Lewis Carroll Society of North America meeting in LA this November.
Probably the most exciting to you guys is that American McGee will be there to talk about how he transfered Alice into a video game medium. I imagine the third game will come up. I'll try to record the audio of that.
Other speakers will be Dan Bergevin (Bootstrapping in Wonderland), Henry Jenkins and Byran Talbot (Alice in Sunderland), Christopher Tyler (Parallel Alices; a new book coming out), and Karen Mortillaro. I'm excited that we'll be given a tour of the award-winning Lewis Carroll collection at USC.
Guys look what we just found! I am unbelievably happy right now; it's so neat! The voices are so interesting and it sounds perfect so far. My Carrollian heart is too happy! Makes me wish I was home so I could wear my LCSNA pin...
