Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
3 - Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 Leaves of Letters – Walt Whitman
- 2 The Dream of a Ridiculous Writer – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- 3 Through the Jabber – Lewis Carroll
- 4 The Drunken Inkwell – Arthur Rimbaud
- 5 In Search of Lost Allusion – Marcel Proust
- 6 Writers and Lovers – D. H. Lawrence
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
I hope to go off the deep end, and by that I mean that I am going to write, if I wish, absolute nonsense, you know. I love a man like Lewis Carroll. Alice in Wonderland – what a delightful thing and how great it was! I believe that when you write freely and easily and joyously, even if it doesn't make sense, that you do more good than when you write seriously with all your heart and soul and are trying to convince people. We have underestimated humor as a leavening, as something to loosen people and make them think.
– Interview in Saturday Review, Conversations with Henry Miller (1956)Lewis Carroll may not be the first, or even last, writer who comes to mind when thinking of Henry Miller. Yet Miller, for one, counts Carroll as one of the writers who affected him the greatest, with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland occupying a position on Miller's list of ‘The Hundred Books That Influenced Me Most’ from The Books in My Life. Miller was incredibly fond of Carroll, stating in an interview in his later life, ‘I would give my right arm to have written his books, or to be able to come anywhere near doing what he did.’ At the same time, regardless of Miller's own real-life references to and personal interest in Carroll, it is important to note the direct and strong presence of Carroll in Miller's writing style and the ways in which that presence surfaces throughout Miller's oeuvre.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Henry Miller and How he Got That Way , pp. 71 - 96Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2011