Still Slogging Through Wonderland

A month ago, I needed something light to read and chose the adventures of Alice because:
1. We had a copy of it.
2. Our move to a new state had taken dreamish twists and turns not unlike Alice’s fall down the rabbit hole.
3. Embarrassing to confess, I’ve never read the original book.

However, our copy is a 1960 annotated edition, which makes it visually irritating (sometimes there are several pages of explanation in wee type without a word of actual story on them) and laborious to read.

Some references are helpful—for example, those that expound on unfamiliar (to me) customs and terms of Carroll’s England. But it’s not light reading. I don’t recommend it. Even the editor opens his introduction with this sentence:
“Let it be said at once that there is something preposterous about an annotated Alice.”

So why do I continue?

Maybe for the same reason a one-time marathoner finishes the race hours after his/her competitors: just to finish. To see a challenge through to the end. To persevere.

Also, I’m hoping to retain some of the factoids in case the subject of Carroll or Alice or 19th-century England ever surfaces at a cocktail party or in the Kroger checkout line. I like to be in-the-know, you know.

“Wipe your glosses with what you know.”
—from Finnegan’s Wake, by James Joyce

[Illustration by John Tenniel.]