T'was Brillig and the Slithy Dr. Heyman Did Gyre and Gimble at SDSU

Evidently, that the spirit of Lewis Carroll did not want to leave the SDSU campus after Dr. Heyman’s lecture on Wednesday. And why would he when there was still Alice-themed fun to be had for the rest of the week?

The first of which is the tale of how Cristina and I, intrigued by Dr. Heyman’s lecture, professor-napped him for a few hours on Thursday to discuss in more detail his interest and scholarship on nonsense.

We were curious about the history of nonsense and its origins as a written technique in literature. According to Dr. Heyman, nonsense literature—meaning literature that is purposefully ambiguous in order to create an analytical thinking process in the reader—dates back to the medieval era! It is not, in fact, literature that makes no sense. Nonsense makes a lot of sense! Got it? Good. =)

As Dr. Heyman pointed out in his lecture last Wednesday, nonsense thrives for its ability to mean so many things. Not only does it open up the mind to process different meanings, but it also creates discussion with its diverse interpretations.

But if you don’t feel like reading medieval literature to get a dose of nonsense, and for some curious reason you don’t want to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, you can read some of Edward Lear’s limericks, whose “nonsense's irrationalityis the result of a painstaking, rational process”:

There was an old Derry down Derry,
Who loved to see little folks merry;
So he made them a book, and with laughter they shook
At the fun of that Derry down Derry.

For more modern examples of nonsense, one only needs to refer to The Beatles!

Aside from these wonderful examples, Dr. Heyman also gave us some tips on how to write nonsense literature.  We proudly present, our own nonsense poems:

Cristina’s limerick:
Hap Hazard is a playful mate

He’ll lock your hands upon the grate

In order to inspire

A person’s inner fire

The playful spirit’s always great.

My limerick:

There once was a little, black bat

Who loved to make things splat

Don’t wanna be entombed?

Then avoid being doomed

Like poor Rudy the rat.

Our limerick together:

Lucy Goosey was a big fatty

Never going to the gym, keeping it natty

Then one day on her donkey she did pass

John, who became distracted by her ass

And got a concussion that was phatty.

OK, so we’re not nonsense experts… or poets! But we tried.

After we thoroughly interrogated Dr. Heyman, we graciously let him return to his visit and rest before taking part in the discussion circle for ALICE: Curiouser and Curiouser!, where he was further questioned on the subject of nonsense. (It’s a good thing he seems to really enjoy talking about it!)

The discussion circle, which took place in the Experimental Theater at SDSU on Friday, March 6th, featured Dr. Michael Heyman, Dr. Joseph Thomas, Dr. Margaret Larlham, and Dr. Shelley Orr, with the humble inclusion of Cristina and myself.

Dr. Larlham and Dr. Orr discussed their adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and how they did their best to stick close to the spirit of Carroll’s original text.

We had the pleasure of seeing ALICE on its opening night, and we thoroughly enjoyed that they had made the caterpillar dress like John Lennon and sing "Imagine" (refer back to the above section regarding The Beatles and their use of nonsense). Among other clever interpretations of the text was the portrayal of the three sized Alices: doll-sized Alice, normal-sized Alice, and giant Alice. You have to see them for yourselves!

In case you missed our tweets and posts last week, don’t miss your last chance this weekend to see ALICE: Curiouser and Curiouser! It will be performed at the Don Powell Theater through March 15th 2015. 

Many thanks again to Dr. Heyman for visiting us! You're really awesome, and we like your style. 

Beware the Nonsense, Dear Reader: Dr. Heyman’s Presentation Recap

“Ladies and Gentle Frogs,” an expression taken from Dr. Michael Heyman’s opening address to Wednesday’s presentation, is being recycled here to re-invoke the proper tone that is needed to cover the topic of nonsense. It is indeed curious and peculiar to identify and question, how and why Alice has become a name and a figure recognized through several generations.  To answer this question, Dr. Heyman evoked the spirit of Charles Ludwig Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll) and took the audience down the rabbit hole with his “Magic Lantern Show.”

In an overview of Alice’s life as a classic, we can see the text go through many different adaptations and representations that most well known books do not experience. I mean, have you ever seen a War and Peace themed tea box? A sexy Pride and Prejudice costume? Probably not. So why is it that Alice has survived to this day and become such a pop culture icon, while other classics have not? Dr. Heyman referred us to The Sense School of Nonsense Literature for the answer.

In attempting to define nonsense literature, which may seem an indefinable term at first, let us start with the notion that nonsense lives in the realm of the strange and jumbled, functioning as a mechanism of play that forces the the reader to uncover meaning from a sort of pattern that implies sense exists but may really not.  In this place between logic and gibberish, the process of finding meaning in an ambiguous text is what makes this a terribly clever tale for adults and children alike.  This “fairy tale,” which incidentally has no fairies or moral didactic messages often found in classic fairy tales, created its own genre that would in the future be called fantasy. This bold new genre emphasized the interpretive process that links the unknown and unfamiliar to something that is somehow familiar and seems full of sense logic. Here the child finds amusement in common tune that yearns for the understanding of the adult world, and the adult finds comfort and curiosity in working to understand why it is so amusing as what makes no sense somehow makes perfect sense.

Dr. Heyman described Carroll as somewhat of the literary nonsense genius, known for his orderly kind of nonsense, a master of subverting language and logic to problematize the existent forces of structures in literature. The child who may not understand the rules of prose and narrative excels, but the adult simultaneously finds nostalgia for a once childish worldview. It is the meeting ground between adulthood and childhood, a place that means everything but nothing at the same time. “Naïve child… What does the human mind want most?” Dr. Heyman asked a child in the audience (played by NCSCL’s very own Dr. Joseph T. Thomas). The child answered, “To understand what it doesn’t understand.” Tautologically, the stimulating dialogue continued, seguing to nonsense and bringing up questions such as: When the mind understands, then does it have what it wants? Or must the mind always be in wanting of the things it does not understand?

Sense is a proposition to the mind, and while some sense must be given, the child lives within the catechism where narrative is allowed to be wrong for the sense of throwing authority into doubt. It calls upon the conscious idea that the narrative is merely a prerequisite, a place where dictionary is assumed to be helpful, but deep down inside, the mind knows nonsense has several meanings, and that is perfectly ok. This is not a parody; literary nonsense as Dr. Heyman puts it “privileges process over product.” It identifies the space that we find comfort in being around but meanwhile never have to look it in the eyes. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!”

Perhaps, the anti-authoritative and revolutionary text, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, exists today because sometimes the world itself feels like nonsense; some days it may feel like a place where we are juggling meanings of new words like “twerking” and “bae” or hashtags like #LotR or #HP. What can really be taken from this nonlesson is that the adult lives in a space where realism is constructed and what was once curious to the child becomes defined and serves as a façade. In this sense, Alice will always be alive, because it is the unconscious process of being a child and trying to place those crazy adults.

 Will the reader care to venture whether it is the something odd (?), fragmented (?), or uncannily familiar (?) in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland that will always-already make it recognizable as nonsense literature?

Getting Ready for Alice Week

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is our song and dance this week and we want everyone to come join in the festivities. Everyone has a great opportunity to become more versed in the world of Alice through the fun events (or maybe tricks) planned around campus this week.

First, be sure to check out Dr. Michael Heyman who is visiting the SDSU campus and giving a talk on March 4. He is considered an expert on aspects of Lewis Carroll’s work and is also an expert of nonsense. He is the head editor of The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense and the Faculty advisor for the Debate and Slam Poetry clubs. Dr. Heyman has been published in The Horn Book, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, The Lion and the Unicorn, The Five Owls, and Children's Literature and the Fin de Siecle. His latest book This Book Makes No Sense: Nonsense Poems and Worse (2012) is filled with some great nonsense poems, stories, chants, and songs. But moving past the nonsense, this event is one definitely worth attending because it will be jabbertastic.

But, that is not all. This Friday, March 6th, the Experimental Theatre is making room for a pre-show talk panel from the Children’s Literature Department. Doors open at 5:30pm and the panel will begin at 6pm. It will be led by the Director of the National Center for the Study of Children's Literature at SDSU, Dr. Joseph Thomas, and it will also feature Dr. Michael Heyman from Berklee College, Dr. Shelley Orr from SDSU’s School of Theatre, and several graduate students from the English department including yours truly, Cristina and Meg. This panel is intended to stir up some fun trouble in honor of the theater’s next great play: an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. ALICE: Curiouser and Curiouser! starts March 6th and goes through March 15th at the Don Powell Theatre.

If there was ever a time to familiarize yourself in the curious world of Wonderland, this is definitely it! However, we cannot guarantee that you won't be tumbled, rumbled, squmbled, and lampeled just a bit.

Looking forward to see all you Alice fans there.