Customer Reviews

Agony of Lewis Carroll

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Richard Wallace has based his book upon the incredibly dubious principle that the secret to all of Lewis Carroll's inner demons can be found by searching for the most vile anagrams possible in his works. The anagrams are preposterous, the analysis pathetic, and you are left wondering why anybody would waste their time on such an enterprise. The ultimate injustice comes when Wallace actually removes eight letters from a fifty letter verse to make up an anagram that suits his needs! Nobody needs or deserves this book.

It turns out this book is about anagrams; it is not a deep exploration of Lewis Carroll's life. Supposedly, Charles Dodgson AKA Lewis Carroll used anagrams to encode homosexual messages into his work. A quick trip to anagramfun.com convinced me that one can find anagrams for anything in anything. I even found a clever one for the title of this work, which amazon.com won't let me print.

The author of this book repeats over and over how he set a very strict rule of using all the letters in a phrase for constructing anagrams. Let us now turn to page 40, and I quote, "There are fifty letters in the verse aqnd with eight removed an anagram emerges which I believe represents a manifesto..."

The anagram is then used as one of the epigraphs of the book.

So what was that about a strict rule?

This book is simply filled with bizarre assumptions. The underlying assumption is that Lewis Carroll filled his poems and stories with a variety of anagrams that tell about his homosexuality, his lust for young children, his desire for dalliances with animals, his hate for his father, and on and on. Every incident in a story must mean something sordid. Every phrase must be turned into the most foul and vulgar anagram possible. I'm reminded of the Freud quote; "Somtimes a cigar is just a cigar." Mr. Wallave would have done well to heed this thought.

One possible anagram for this title:
ANGRY SELECTOR ILL OAF WHO
wrote this darn book.

I was sorry to see the negative review of this book. I read it and the following book with great interest. I've read extensively about criminology, psychology, and serial killers, including all the current thought on Jack the Ripper. Overall, I think the book makes an interesting case. And, it's well written and just plain interesting. We have such a nostalgic view of Carroll's work, it's difficult to see it challenged. But, that's one reason I like the book & author; a cherished subject is not often examined critically and when it's well done (as this is), it provides a new lens to view the subject.