Showing posts with label Jim Gaffigan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Gaffigan. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Christopher wrote a nice review of this book, in which he placed the work within the larger historical context of children's literature. That is an interesting facet of the book. At the time when Wonderland was published, children's literature was instructive and largely religious in nature. So, Carroll's absolute absurdism was something out of the ordinary.

The comedian Jim Gaffigan does a bit about dreams, in which he points out how people are alway really keen to tell others about their dreams, but to anyone but the ones having them dreams are horribly boring. That's how I felt about Wonderland and Looking Glass. While each had their moments of creativity, I generally found them to be quite tedious. I am sure that within the pantheon of children's literature, these works are extremely important, that they marked a veritable sea change...I just didn't care for either.