POINT OF VIEW
The Book That's Meant The Most To Me...
Joyce Carol Oates, Who Reads At UCCC On Oct. 26, Writes About
Writing...
No work of art so thrills us, or possesses the power to enter
our souls deeply and perhaps even irreversibly, as the "first"
of its kind. The luminous books of our childhood will remain
the luminous books of our lives.
For me, it was Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
and Through the Looking-Glass," a Christmas gift from my
grandmother when I was 8 years old. First of all, I was enchanted
by the book as a physical object, for there were few books in
our rural household: both Alice tales were published in a single,
wonderful volume (Grosset & Dunlap, 1946) with reproductions
of the famous illustrations by John Tenniel, almost as fascinating
to me as the tales themselves. There was a dreamlike cover showing
Alice amid the comical-grotesque Carroll creations that, to
an adult eye, bear a disturbing kinship with the comical-grotesque
creations of Hieronymus Bosch, and this cover, too, was endlessly
fascinating. In my memory, this first important book of my life
was quite large, about the size of what we call today a coffee-table
book, and heavy; but when I investigate -- for of course I still
have the book in my 19th-century British bookcase, along with
"The Hunting of the Snark," Lewis Carroll's "Bedside
Book," and other Carroll titles -- I discover to my surprise
that it measures only 6 1/2 by 9 inches! A quite ordinary-sized
book after all.
What is the perennial appeal of the Alice books? If you could
transpose yourself into a girl of 8, in 1946, in a farming community
in upstate New York north of Buffalo, imagine the excitement
of opening so beautiful a book to read a story in which a girl
of about your age is the heroine; imagine the excitement of
being taken along with Alice, who talks to herself continually,
just like you, whose signature phrase is "Curiouser and
curiouser," on her fantastic yet somehow plausible adventure
down the rabbit hole, and into the Wonderland world. It would
not have occurred to me even to suspect that the "children's
tale" was in brilliant ways coded to be read by adults
and was in fact an English classic, a universally acclaimed
intellectual tour de force and what might be described as a
psychological/anthropological dissection of Victorian England.
It seems not to have occurred to me that the child-Alice of
drawing rooms, servants, tea and crumpets and chess, was of
a distinctly different background than my own. I must have been
the ideal reader: credulous, unjudging, eager, thrilled. I knew
only that I believed in Alice, absolutely.
The influence of the "Alice" books on my inner life
is surely incalculable. I'd more or less memorized them as a
child from repeated readings. (I've subsequently written on
the subject, and have several times taught "Alice"
in university courses.) At any time, in any place, appropriate
or otherwise, including even listening as I'm being introduced
to give readings or lectures, and often in social or professional
gatherings, the Alice-voice rises to consciousness and I hear
"Curiouser and curiouser" -- "Who cares for you?
You're nothing but a pack of cards!" -- "Twas brillig
and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;/All mimsy
were the borogoves,/And the mome raths outgrabe" -- "Take
care of yourself! Something's going to happen!" Impossible
to know if a fictitious character has provided me with a "voice,"
or whether my natural voice was nearly identical with Alice's.
To descend down a rabbit hole, to push through a mirror in a
drawing room, to enter that "other world" of the imagination
-- this is Alice's destiny, as it might be said to be our collective
destiny, if only we value it and cultivate it. For the artist
of any kind, the experience is life itself. What is most wonderful
about the "Alice" tales, for a child reader at least,
is that though they contain nightmare material, and are, intermittently,
really quite frightening, Alice triumphs in the end; she retains
a fundamental reason, fair-mindedness and sense of justice,
as well as a necessary sense of humor, and at the end of both
adventures she "wakes" to her real life about which
we know nothing other than that she has a sister and there are
several kittens in the household. Not for Alice, our Alice,
the fate of children in the crueler of the fairy tales of the
Brothers Grimm, for Alice is the self's very obduracy, forever
innocent, and blessed.
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of over 70 books. She will be
giving readings and answering questions at Ulster County Community
College in Stone Ridge on Tuesday, October 26 at 1:30 p.m. and
7 p.m. Her most recent books include a first young adult work
and the critically-hailed new novel, The Falls. For information,
phone the College's Office of Community Relations at (845) 687-5262.
