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Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture. By Will Brooker. New York: Continuum, 2004.
In his introduction to Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture, Will Brooker acknowledges the complexities of his announced subject: "'Carroll' and 'Alice' and what they mean to us" (xvii). Citing Virginia Woolf 's argument that Lewis Carroll and his Alice books are impossible to pin down-ever changing as we try to make sense of them-Brooker suggests that analyzing the countless "texts" growing out of the "cultural myths" associated with "Carroll" and "Alice" would be a nearly impossible task. Consequently, Brooker addresses "a small sample" of Alice-related "texts" produced between 1990 and 2003, dividing them into nine categories-biographies of Carroll, newspaper and magazine articles, literary criticism, illustrations, fiction, film, videogames, fan clubs, and museums/theme parks (xv). Additionally, he focuses on "two contemporary traces of two specific discourses around Carroll and 'Alice'." In the first, "Carroll is a sainted innocent, his books are joyous nonsense and Alice is his muse," while in the second, "Carroll is a paedophile [sic], his books are dark allegories, and Alice is his obsession" (xv). Unfortunately, Brooker's narrow focus and thesis prevent him from saying much that is original or insightful about the meaning of either Carroll or Alice in popular culture.
I am not suggesting that this study has no redeeming qualities. Readers with little prior knowledge of Alice imitations and adaptations may enjoy some of Brooker's thick description of contemporary Alice texts. However, scholarly readers may conclude that Alice's Adventures: Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture is a little like the "Caucus-race" in Carroll's Wonderland-a circular journey leaving participants with the question, "But who has won?"
Most of Lewis Carroll in Popular Culture follows a formula established in the first two chapters. In "The Many Lives of Lewis Carroll," Brooker begins his quest to discover Carroll's place in popular culture by examining some of the many biographies about him. He begins by discussing three "early" biographies of Carroll (actually published in the...