Alice through the ages

A really fun and interesting post about Alice in Wonderland, and the fanfic it generates, and the different interpretations Lewis Carroll’s book has engendered. I especially liked this bit:

The Tea Party Is Mad, Not the Hatter. Well, he might be crazy, it’s just that Lewis Carroll never called him the Mad Hatter, in all the pages of Alice in Wonderland, just the Hatter. The name of the chapter is The Mad Tea Party, but it’s popular usage that elided the “Mad” to oft-referred to character, with a back story of its own. “Mad as a hatter” is an old expression, derived from the mercury used to cure hatbands. It’s just not an association that is Carroll’s. The Disney movie posters got it wrong, but Woolverton had that detail right: Depp is only called “the Hatter.”

“Really, now you ask me, “ said Alice, very much confused, “l don’t think—“

“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.

“It’s the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life.”

Go read the whole thing.

Here’s a piece I wrote about Johnny Depp as the Hatter.

Thanks to James Wolcott for the link.