Lewis Carroll in Alice Land
Here's a fun fact:
While researching for my Honors thesis on Lolita, I came across Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) wrote Alice in Wonderland--great movie, by the way. Saw it twice in Imax 3D so far.
So Lewis Carroll was a pedophile who loved taking nudey pics of eleven-year-old girls, which, I'm sure, he left out of his query letter. Now lo and behold, we have a classic.
There's really no point in this post, just thought I'd share. So yea...just write an awesome query letter, keep your private life private, and uhh, your novel just might stand the test of time, become a movie, & net $210.3 million its opening weekend. *applause*!1!
5 comments:
The Victorians worshiped little girls, so it's difficult to ascribe modern morality to their fascination with all things prepubescent.
Carroll gets picked on (for good or ill), because he was a artistic portrait photographer. He wasn't alone in his girl fascination, however.
He wasn't just any artistic portrait photographer though. He took completely nude photos of kids and tried to marry 11-year-old Alice Liddell. And his friends and family members tried to "suppress [the] information and generally sanitize Dodgson's memory" (Graham Vickers, Chasing Lolita p. 26), which shows that it wasn't the norm and even the Victorian society felt it was something to be kept hidden. So I think we *can* ascribe modern morality to their practices because they saw some shame in it, as well.
In any case, I was just sharing some info I bumped into while researching Lolita. I didn't mean to pass judgment on Carroll, just thought it went along well with the movie coming out and all...
In photography class we got to study several of those pictures before they disappeared down the rabbit hole (ha ha). They were artistically brilliant, yet, I will admit, vaguely creepy, not because of the understated sexuality but the intensity of the models.
The large debate was if they were from Carroll or not. One theory was that their family snatched up all of those photos, and these were from one of his friends. I am not so sure. They followed his style, and the equipment wasn't that common.
In any event, I am dating myself here. Carroll's photography work went out favor long ago, but that was only my point, not that I was making a judgment on your non-judgment. heh. But there was a time were it was seriously studied.
That's so interesting! I wish I could see the photos too, though the photography techniques would probably be lost on me.
I guess we'll never know if they were his pictures or not.
You are right though. Carroll wasn't the only artist-pedophile out there. Charlie Chaplin, Roman Polanski...maybe the super-creative gene is commonly paired with a penchant for young'uns and innocence? Ah well, time to work on my powerpoint presentation on Lolita for tomorrow! Eep
Haven't enjoyed reading a post THIS MUCH in a while, girl. Thanks for sharing.
P. S. Best of luck with your presentation!!
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