Thursday, October 07, 2010

Utter Nonsense

Thanks to the fabulous Adele at Un:Bound, I have a post up at Everybody's Reading, the site for the festival of reading in Leicester this week. I wish I could be in Leicester for the celebration, but I suppose this will be the next best thing.

I write about my love of nonsense and its roots in Lewis Carroll's books (which is of course why I insert a picture of me in my Mad Hatter hat from Brussels):

If there is one theme of my life, it has to be nonsense. I blame Lewis Carroll. I had a jacket-less hard cover edition of both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There that was the lynchpin of my childhood. Along with the Mary Poppins series, Alice’s adventures filled my head as a child in some profound kind of way that – looking back – I realised has shaped me ever since. Carroll’s books prepared me to discover Peter Cook, Monty Python and Vic Reeves and put me permanently out of step with my contemporaries.

I don’t care. 

Read the rest over at their site and please consider leaving a comment so they know you dropped by. By the by, if you're wondering where my BitchBuzz columns are, my editor is on holiday in Greece and I didn't get it together to write posts in advance (madness! utter madness!), so I got a two week holiday, too. However, there are still fantastic columns by our other writers so drop by.

I have to run to campus now because I realise it's probably my duty as programming chair to print the placards for all the panelists so you can know who's talking in the panels at Albacon. Sigh. At least I remembered!

Kit Marlowe and I will be there, of course, flogging our books. Kit's got her own Facebook page now, so drop by and "like" it as we say in the parlance of our times. Look for our lovely promo postcards -- and our lovely selves who are really one. Of course. But I'm talking nonsense again...

9 comments:

Todd Mason said...

It took me till the other day to finally buy a copy of Lear's, in an omnibus, but CHILDREN'S DIGEST was probably the first exposure I had to Alice, at about age 4, and I was a reader of Carroll (and such fans of his as Henry Kuttner) not long after. "Mimzy" indeed.

Todd Mason said...

Slightly more top-hattish would be apropos...

C. Margery Kempe said...

Well, if you're a Tenniel purist I suppose. Hee! I love Lear -- I've even written fake Lear and passed it off successfully...

Todd Mason said...

I've read Lear in bits and pieces over the years, but until the other day have never owned a volume, much less the COMPLETE (hmm.).

I've commented over at the page, but no one's approving of such effrontery yet...

C. Margery Kempe said...

Argh -- I don't understand requiring comment approval then not being around to do it. There are so much better spam catchers now, it hardly seems necessary. But thank you anyway!

Anonymous said...

mmmm....spam catchers!
-b

C. Margery Kempe said...

Lovely spam, wonderful spam!

Todd Mason said...

Well, my trenchant *koff* and still-unapproved reply is a one-liner, anyway...

You’re such a card, Kate.

...off with it's head.

C. Margery Kempe said...

Gaah -- well, you should tell me what you posted anyway. I have a lovely coaster from the Alice shop in Oxford with the Red Queen and "Off with its head!" on it.