Where'd the last two years go?

I deleted them. The last two years were pathetic for keeping The Taze Files updated. There was very little of substance worth preserving. Here's what I bothered keeping.

Feb. 13, 2006

from Alice in Wonderland

For as long as I can remember I was always bored with the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. It didn't have any memorable songs, the turn-when-you-hear-the-chimes record and book set I had in the 70s was retarded, and when I finally had a chance to see it on The Disney Channel in the 80s I had better things to do.

Screw the movie and screw Disney. The source, the book, there is the masterpiece.

Any scholar of Children's Lit knows the deal with Alice's creator. I have a previous post on Lewis Carroll's biography which serves as a fine text-book. Once you know his ways, his contemporaries, and his style you'll be able to dissect his books for all the puns and statements layered throughout.

Fortunately, unlike Swift's book from nearly two centuries before, this is not necessary to experience Alice. The better puns don't require a Who's Who of 19th Century Oxford. The poems and parodies are priceless (being better remembered than their sources which have disappeared into scholarly obscurity.)

***

In school we're taught that Alice's journey represents a girl's struggle to "fit in" (hence all the growing and shrinking) in a world that doesn't make sense, with everything that "seems right" leading to unforseen consequences.

It's possible, after all Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was a genius. However, he created the story from scratch while on a boat ride with Alice Liddell and her sisters one fine July 4th while America was in the middle of the Civil War. He presented her a copy of his story later on, and was encouraged to publish it. He tidied it up a bit, but most of what we know was invented on the spot.

I've always liked the Father William and the Walrus/Carpenter poems, but there's one part, early on, that I like best. I don't know why. It's kind of stupid.

Alice had grown so large while inside the White Rabbit's house that she was trapped. When he came home he feared the apparent monster and summoned help. The lizard Bill was sent down the chimney after her but a swift kick sent him flying.

Now who, when the weight of home and responsibilities seems to be crushing down on their shoulders, wouldn't want to boot a bill that had been sent to them clear over the horizon?

Feb. 13, 2006

from B is for Burglar

In the first book Kinsey killed someone. In the second book she was battered and shot. In a period of barely a month she's worked two cases that ended up with four dead bodies after the fact. This is normal when it's not the real world.

The methods in the first book were plausible. The methods in the second book, while possible, were more unlikely. Wait until the third book, you've seen nothing yet.

Feb. 21, 2006

from Through the Looking-Glass

Even before there was really such a thing as a sequel they rarely held up to the original. Take the opening paragraphs of Through the Looking-Glass and what Alice found there. Compare them to the opening page of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The first book starts off the action right away, while the second is about as exciting as having your face washed by a cat.

When Carroll wrote this it was already a decade after his first masterpiece. His beloved Alice Liddell was an adult and married to someone else. A picture of her around that time, available in Cohen's biography, shows her looking like a stuffed and miserable Victorian. There was the problem, and it can be found throughout this book.

The gist is that Alice is crossing a field and having adventures which can be symbolized as a chess game. The dominant theme is that, by advancing to the end and becoming a Queen, Alice is growing up. Carroll was fond of female children and often wasn't as comfortable around adults, even among those who had been his former friends. This book is Carroll's way of letting go, and he tries too hard. I mean, the first book has a theme, but Lewis created most of the story all at once during a picnic. The humor and symbolism is fresh, funny and intelligent. With the sequel it just seems too forced.

***

Oh yes, the White King and Queen. I guess they're alright, but the White Knight, which was Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson himself, was the most boring, overlong segment in any children's book (and I'm including Montgomery's Avonlea series in that statement.)

It makes me almost wish that Carroll had gotten his little 11 year old Nymph after all.

Feb. 27, 2006

from Peter Pan

That's the style of the book. I don't get it, and yet whenever I return to Peter Pan I can never put it down. Much like in Gus van Sant's Elephant I get it without understanding in plain English what exactly I'm getting.

Peter Pan is the purest form of a boy's adventure story ever put to paper. Of course there's the pirates and redskins but it goes beyond that. The Good sometimes have evil or otherwise unlikeable personality traits and vice versa with the villains. Also Death is a very real force, even in the fantasy world of Neverland. It's too bad Disney didn't play that to the hilt, with Peter delighting in ending the lives of stars, or his matter-of-fact conclusion that Tinkerbell, whose existance he has forgotten about, is dead.

June 19, 2006

Yesterday I unintentionally omitted a book I've been keeping in my inner coat pocket: Tristram Shandy. Like James Joyce, The Bible and Shakespeare I like to open it at random and just read anything out loud for nothing but the sound of the language. I have read the entire thing before, just like the others. Also I purchased a small copy of Sonnets From the Portugese for fifty cents on Friday. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the last of the poets I like whose works I didn't have any copies of.

I might've promised some non-fiction yesterday but if I did I'm not going to give you anything but Nickel and Dimed, a book about not getting by in America, mainly because I can't remember the author's name (It's Barbara something with an E.) If I wasn't using WebTv I'd just be able to open another window and find the info without losing what I've done here so far. And no I don't feel like just saving this as a draft and coming back to it. Maybe tomorrow.

People at work saw me reading Browning during lunch and asked if I was done with that other book?

"What book?"

"The one with the small print you were reading Friday."

So I had to tell them how I just read bits and pieces of Tristram.

June 24, 2006

Last night I picked up a copy of a book I already have but hadn't read. It, like most of my books, are packed away in storage and won't be released until I have a decent place to live (just a couple more months away, knock on wood.) I figured when I have both copies side by side I can just trade one back in at the used book store.

It's called Murder at Hogans Corner, Washington by Wallace Exum. I lived in Hogans Corner when I was in elementary school from 1981 to '84. Hogans Corner is a residential neighborhood two miles outside of Ocean Shores which had a population of "175 more or less" and was technically a Hoquiam mailing address (even though Hoquiam was 20 minutes away.)

The murder of Virginia Barsic happened in 1991. If I'm not mistaken the apartment house she lived in hadn't been built yet when I lived there. There was no McDonalds, no movie theater, no casino, no high school. Still it's eerie reading this true crime story and knowing all the streets, businesses and landmarks. When two of the assailants are hiding in tall grass behind some trees watching the others walk away from the crime scene I can remember hiding in that same grass myself many times while playing war.

While many names are changed most law enforcement officials are referred to by their given names. One of them I recognized due to his connection to other cases I've been aware of, but another one I actually knew personally way back when. More accurately my parents knew him, I knew his daughter. We were practically next door neighbors. (We lived on perpendicular streets but there were only vacant lots between our houses.) I've briefly worked with his wife a little over a year ago.

I have a great interest in True Crime stories, I watch the various crime and forensics shows on A&E religiously, and I'm a member of The Doe Network. While I had no involvement in that case it was still something on a personal level to have a connection of some sort.

Ocean Shores - Hogans Corner isn't a hot spot for crime but when it happens it's usually a tough one. The year before I lived there a second grade girl was murdered by a family friend; her body was dumped within eyesight of the house I would live in. A few years after the Barsic murder a white racist was killed in self-defence by Asian visitors in the middle of downtown Ocean Shores.