What's the appeal of Alice in Wonderland?

I've never understood the obsession with Alice in Wonderland. It's constantly referenced, constantly used everywhere, and constantly given adaptations. Alice Allusion is such a common trope in media.

But why? Why these children's books and not others? Land of Oz has never gotten the same treatment despite being quite similar and also rather trippy.

I would say because of their specific brand of madness.

The book is so full of puns, obscure references and poetry it reads like a fever dream; you can't really forget it once you've read it. Few children's books since have ever been like it, and there haven't really been any successful attempts to follow in its path (The Phantom Tollbooth, maybe?) ...

(As for why the Oz books don't have the same status, blame MGM.)

I'm still waiting for an accurate Oz Live-Action Adaptation that adapts multiple books.

That sounds right. I'd also add that it probably helps that Carroll was not only a famous figure in his own day (mathematician and humorous poet), but those longstanding rumors of him being a pedophile do a lot to give the books a certain scandalousness, and have a lot to do with why Alice homages are often dark/subversive. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that L. Frank Baum was a pretty famous writer in his day (although not in multiple fields/otherwise a celebrity like Carroll), and there have been a fair amount of dark/subversive Oz adaptations.

In fact, I'm kind of leaning toward saying that the two works/series are basically the British and American equivalents of each either and are pretty equivalent in terms of fame/allusions and adaptions.

Comparing the two on wikipedia, both have a lot of adaptations.

I would say Oz is seen as a little more "low-brow" since it's not full of literary puns and poetry. And Baum wrote 14 books himself (to say nothing of the non-Baum sequels), along with various stage versions, whereas Carroll only wrote the 2 Alice books. Brand dilution?

And then Carroll was a British mathematician and logician, while Baum was "just" an author.

edited 5th Oct '17 8:08:11 AM by Bense

Baum had some sort of fame, but it was mostly due to the Oz books; he wasn't famous otherwise. And, frankly, it's only due to Alice that we remember Carroll at all; he was a professor at Oxford, sure, but it was that book that gave him posterity.

Funnily enough, a lot of librarians in the first half of the 20th century wouldn't stock the Oz books because they were part of a series - that, in their eyes, made it no better than literary junk, like the Stratemeyer syndicate's pulp-fiction-for-kids (Tom Swift, The Rover Boys, The Hardy Boys, etc.)...

edited 5th Oct '17 11:57:02 AM by Aldo930

CONFOUND THOSE ROVER BOYS

"Fever dream" is a good description of Alice in Wonderland. It feels much more like a dream than anything else. Baum attempted to create his own fantasy world in the Oz books, with its own mythology and politics and all that, something that hadn't been done much at the time he wrote them. He's rather a pioneer in fantasy fiction. Alice is meant to be nonsensical and dream-like, while Oz is supposed to be a fantasy in a magical world, aimed at children.

I wonder how much both works owe to the British Pantomime (that is, children's theater, in the British usage of the term) given that children being transported to magical worlds happened all the time in those, well before either was written.

Not really. Carroll was aware of it - it was a familiar practice in nineteenth-century England - but as far as I can tell it doesn't have any influence on Alice, and Baum probably wasn't aware of it at all.

Both were adapted into theatrical productions that were very much like pantomime long after they had become hits, though.

Oz has many adaptations but most seem to just adapt the first book.

Another point, funnily enough, it shares with Alice, in that Through the Looking-Glass is rather obscure compared to the original... though, of course, most adaptations - like the classic, good Disney film - just merge the two.

But, then again, that ensures people might remember Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Walrus and the Carpenter, or even Humpty Dumpty and the White Knight. The general public might vaguely recognize Jack Pumpkinhead and Tik-Tok from Return To Oz... but what of, say, the Sawhorse? The Hungry Tiger? H.M. Wogglebug, T.E.? Nothing.

edited 8th Oct '17 3:18:52 PM by Aldo930

I haven't read all the Oz books so I can't say for sure, but perhaps the first book is the one that stands best on its own?

The later Oz books tended to oscillate between setting the story entirely in Oz, with no connection to the real world, or coming up with yet another freak occurence that transports Dorothy and/or some other residents of the US of A to Oz. I have a feeling neither of those approaches is quite as popular.

The first one does stand the best on its own, really. They all follow from each other - Marvelous Land directly follows after Wonderful Wizard, and Ozma directly follows Marvelous Land.

But, needless to say, those three books are probably the best in the series, with numbers four to seven following behind, and the rest being rather hit-or-miss, with Baum's books often leaning closer to hit.

edited 9th Oct '17 4:52:06 AM by Aldo930

Gregory Maguire seems to be the only one I can think of who's adapted anything from the Oz books past like the first 2.

As I understand, Frank Baum was himself not too keen on the later Oz books. He only wrote them because he needed the money and nothing else he wrote would sell. It may also be related to how superhero films nearly always covered the origin story until the idea of shared settings became mainstream quite recently.

It's pointless to talk about how Carroll or Baum's personal reputations may have affected their readership. The two are really only known as the authors of those novels. Even Carroll's photographs of naked children only became notorious with the internet.

I think that while Oz is liked, it is at heart a story that has been repeated many times since and some before: child is whisked to a fantasy world, grows to understand its rules, wins the day, grows from the experience and returns. Whereas Wonderland is harder to pin down. Alice never makes any headway in understanding this world; the whole point of it is that it has none that make sense to us. It's surrealist fiction, and while there are others, it's likely to be the first that Enlgish-speaking children read, and definitely one of the most colourful and inventive out there. (Much as I like Kafka, his writing is dreary even for adults, often intentionally.)

Keep in mind that the novel has become better with age. It was written in large part as what we would call a pop-culture parody; today, the references pass over us and become part of the absurdity. In this vein, modern shortcuts such as merging the two queens make perfect sense and I wish adaptations deviated more from the source. Staying true just feels like it's betraying the spirit. (And Through the Looking Glass is not obscure, nor is it remembered as a sequel, nowadays they are always published together and considered a work in two parts.)

That's more or less it in a nutshell; Oz is a quest story, and follows many of the conventions of the classic quest-myth (as parodied on SNL when they jokingly asserted that Oz was a rip-off of Star Wars), whereas Alice in Wonderland is an exercise in absurdity. The authors of each had significantly different storytelling goals, even though both involve little girls in whimsical (and sometimes a mite disturbing) fantasy-lands.

Oz is a silly fantasy for kids, Alice is a highly satirical mockery of logic. Caroll was a much better writer than Baum, which is why it's a shame he didn't write too much.

But he was kind of a one-hit-wonder (or two-hit if you count The Hunting of the Snark). Did you ever read Sylvie and Bruno?

Yeah but when your one hit is still widely read and still inspires pop culture over 150 years later the "wonder" part takes on a new meaning.

I wouldn't say that Carroll is a better writer than Baum. What Carroll's doing in Alice in Wonderland is more complex than what Baum is doing in Oz, but, again, the two are vastly different works from authors who had vastly different goals.

People like nonsense.