The Last Hundred Days of a Fictional Poet

Patrick McGuinness is an extraordinary man worthy of his own parade of big black cars and well-behaved bystanders waving flags and cheering. In this case it is Ceaușescu's regime and the fall of Communism in Romania that provide the emperor's new clothes and form the background to this well written and entertaining fact based fiction (if you'll forgive that description because it does read like a factual memoir). The writing is delicious in it's own right because of it's precision and grim faced humour. That's because McGuinness is really a poet. But you can't make a living as a poet. So by profession he is an academic. He presumably does this fiction lark as a semi-lucrative diversion. That's really annoying - that he can invade other people's memories, other people's countries and other people's professions and be so exquisitely expressive in all of them.

The old maths teacher tortoise drawling, stretching and fainting in coils

There's a lot of nonsense written about Lewis Carroll's Alice stories so I don't intend to add to it here. I recently re-read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the extended version in Alice's Adventures under Ground and Through the Looking Glass and probably enjoyed them less than you'd think so I have only a few simple observations.

There's a tendency to see Charles Dodgson's life through a contemporary looking glass whether that's unhealthy relationships with children or sixties drug induced psychedelia. This is, as I say, complete nonsense. 

What comes through most strongly in my reading is a profound other worldly imagination that is wild and wonderful and also curiously Victorian and moral in its outlook. Don't look here for deep characterisation - you won't find the inner turmoil of a modern psychological fantasy. So it is difficult to identify strongly with the characters, even, or especially, Alice. Dodgson's note about the stories is steeped in very conventional Christian feeling and sentiment. What he wanted to do was entertain and amaze small children. This he does mesmerically in concept and comes up with great images and some really natty one liners in dialogue which continue to amuse adults. In this regard these books contain strong visual imagery and some poetry. The facsimile edition show his own original illustrations which are just as good as the brilliant John Tenniel illustrations that we all know and love (and that I have attempted to match with the Duchess above).  But they ain't novels. They're just not.