Otherways- Fiction Fanatics

One hundred and fifty years ago, one of the most iconic pieces in literature came into being. An odd piece of work that breaks the rules of character, plot, and basically every other rule about writing that I’ve ever heard, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland is still one of the best loved tales, spawning multiple movies, reinterpretations, plus at least one television special, and Broadway musical.

Why do we love this story so, and how, if you were to try to sell it today, would you even categorize it? Literary historians have basically created a category for it, “Literary Nonsense”, and claim it is one of the best examples of that genre. I suppose you could claim it is a children’s book, as the protagonist is certainly a child, and children do love the story. There is a certain darkness to the story, however, a subtle poking at the values of adult society that is lost on children, yet appeals to adults.

Whether we are taking advice from a hookah smoking caterpillar on who we are, or following a perpetually late and flustered rabbit, or taking part in a ridiculous trial, there is a wondrous sense of the ludicrous, both within the story and in the society that it reflects.

Awesome as it is, I sincerely doubt any publisher would even look twice at it today.

Even if we dispense with the fact that it uses the “it was all a dream” cliché, and forgive the obvious references to drug use in a children’s book, I still doubt it would fly. I know, it still sells, it is in fact very popular, but I doubt it would pass the “marketability test”.

I hope it would, I just don’t see it happening. You see, if you remove Alice from the literary world, there really isn’t anything like it that has done well. People whose business it is to make a profit tend to look at a fact like that and decide that a new work isn’t worth taking a gamble on. They have a point, and the publishing world has gotten to be a dangerous place to try to make a living. I’m not saying that I blame them, just pointing out that sometimes our best beloved literature doesn’t fit comfortably in a pigeon hole, nor is it always the familiar that we love.

So here’s to Lewis Carroll, aka Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, for providing us all with a bit of our childhoods we’d all be poorer without, whatever genre we may decide it belongs in.

Cheers,

Michelle