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107 Plays3 months ago
Author Jenn Thorson joins the lads for a discussion of the classic children’s story, Alice in Wonderland.
Jenn's latest work is set in the world of Wonderland. She writes about Mary Ann Carpenter, the White Rabbit’s former housemaid, who must solve various mysteries. Jenn has also written humour and humorous science fiction.
Mark, Joe and Jenn discuss the history of the Alice in Wonderland books and the impact they've had on our culture. It's a fascinating conversation about the nature of writing with a “dream-like” quality.
For more information, check out the show notes for this episode.
Re-Creative is produced by Donovan Street Press Inc. in association with MonkeyJoy Press.
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Transcript
Introduction of Jen Thorsen
00:00:10
Speaker
Oh, nice. Nice touch. I think I missed that note. yeah Mark, how are you? I am good. How are you? I'm exhausted, actually. I'm not surprised.
Host's Exhausting Trip Story
00:00:22
Speaker
I was telling our our guest, ah who is ah Jen Thorsen, who we'll hear from in a few moments that I just finished a week and a half trip. moving one of my daughters from Toronto to St. John's, which involved going to Toronto and back and then all the way to St. John's with the ferry. I wrote about it in the in the newsletter. Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was exhausting. It looked exhausting. I imagine driving through that much fog is very stressful. It's like driving through a whiteout in the blizzard, basically, right?
00:00:53
Speaker
Well, I just followed the advice of my uncle Vernon who said, to you know, when the fog obscures your hands in the steering wheel, it's time to pull over.
Marmalade Preference Debate
00:01:01
Speaker
So we were almost at that point. It's time to pull over by.
00:01:08
Speaker
The level of fog made the news, like the CBC News in Toronto. Every second person you'd talk to there, some would say, oh no, it's the worst I've seen in 51 years thereby. My apologies. I think the accent's charming. I'm not mocking the accent. But then other people would say, no, no, no, this is completely normal. so Yeah, it sounded like a lot of people complain about the fog. So I imagine you already been screeched in because you that wasn't your first time to so to Newfoundland, right? It was my second time. Yeah. And the weather was ah much better the the first time. And I still enjoyed it because i you know it's a great province. The people are fantastic. And I think I got my daughter settled.
00:01:51
Speaker
So, but I am, I am happy to be back and sleeping my in my own bed with no dogs peeing on my sleeping bag before, right before I turn in, which is one of the things that happened. Just like ah stray dogs just wandering into your. ah Oh no, this was our, but my daughter's beloved pooch, an American Cocker Spaniel, lovely dog. I don't know why he did that. It's probably stressed out all the moving and driving and Yeah. right I don't know. Maybe in his twisted mind, he thought he was doing me a favor somehow. Anyway, how are you? I'm good. I have a, I have a pertinent question to today's topic and I think it's probably one of the most divisive questions I've ever asked. Ooh. Okay. All right. do So you're about to have a nice piece of toast or a scone or something like that.
00:02:49
Speaker
And the only thing you have to spread on it is orange marmalade. Do you? Absolutely. In fact, whenever I'm at like, you know, ah like a brunch or anything like that, I see what their offerings are. And if there's no marmalade, I ask for it because that's my number one choice. Oh, okay. You're dead to me.
00:03:10
Speaker
We, I think we finally found the issue we don't agree on. Yes. I see Marmalade is disgusting. No, I love Marmalade, me and Caddington Bear.
Jen Thorsen's Writing Journey
00:03:22
Speaker
Yeah. So that's where, that's where I thought we would jump in because of course that's pertinent to our topic today and Jen Thorsen, welcome. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Author of There Goes the Galaxy series, I think we should put in some credits before we go. what Where do you stand on this very divisive issue? Marmalade? Yes, no. i I would have the Marmalade, I'm afraid. I hate to say that. It's going to put me on the wrong foot right from the start here. No, it's fine. yeah ah But we can be pals. yeah Stones can be pretty dry, right? I mean, how can I be like this toaster scone, right?
00:03:57
Speaker
That's true. Actually, if i all I had was that or nothing, I might have the marmalade. Yeah. I mean, I will go to raspberry. You know, I like raspberry. but Marmalade is the preference. i i This is not the first time I've been ah voted on this. I was on a trek in Nepal and it was me, one Canadian and one other Canadian, his wife who is British or English, another English person, and then a bunch of Australians. And in the middle of the trek,
00:04:29
Speaker
we ran out of marmalade and it was like we'd been hit by an avalanche or something. It was just the worst thing that could have possibly happened. And I'm like, but there's strawberry jam, there's raspberry jam. No, it has to be marmalade. I'm like, I don't understand you people a as bad as running out of tea. I suppose for for that game, that would have been like, yeah, I could, I could have had to call off the expedition. You would have had to just, yeah, go home. understandable So before we go any further, we have been admonished for not properly introducing our guests until like, you know, it's like some television shows where, you know, the credits used to be at the beginning you or like the opening. And now you're like three quarters of the way through the episode before they finally go with the opening. So, uh, I think Jen, before we go any further, we should, uh, we're going to do the usual thing of asking you to introduce yourself if you don't, don't mind.
00:05:22
Speaker
All right, my name's Jen Thorsen. I'm out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the U.S. I write humorous sci-fi and fantasy novels in my spare time. Otherwise, i'm I'm in marketing during the day. I have a series, a trilogy called There Goes the Galaxy, which is a pillow in space, ends up having to save the universe against his will. and two novels that are about the maid of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland and how she has to solve a murder mystery of her father and a few other characters within the course of Wonderland. It's a little bit treacherous to just go around. And your books are quite well reviewed on up there on the various sites like Amazon and whatnot, yeah. Yep, they've done pretty well, yeah yeah. Now is that due to your marketing skills? work
00:06:18
Speaker
Oh, I'd like to think so. But I think people really are looking for humor and a little bit of fun sometimes. And it's pretty escapist. I mean, that's why I wrote them in the first place for my own personal escape and enjoyment. So I'm happy that other people are finding a similar kind of escape with it. There Goes the Galaxy is is really a fun read. It's it's. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Yeah. It's ah another one that I'm adding to my increasingly long list of ah books that, yeah. Oh, the list? yeah Yeah, the list of books you have to read, or not have to read, but want to read. It's just like, oh my God, there's so many. and I saw some article ah by, it was about Roberto Ico recently, he was saying that
00:07:00
Speaker
We should all stop feeling guilty about the big lifts. I only skim the article, but ah the the gist of it was that we should feel... Because like who has time to read articles when I have all these books waiting? But the gist was we should stop feeling guilty about all the piles of books that we have waiting for us. It's a good thing to have all these books and then you have this choice and get rid of the sense of obligation. Yeah, I was out the other day with some friends and they asked me what I was reading and I listed like four things. Cause that's, that's the reality for me is I'm usually reading at least a couple of things, nonfiction and one or two things that's other, you know, fiction or whatever. Is that just me? Am I, am I the non Marmalade person? No, no, no. I, I've often had many books on the go. What about you, Jen? Do you have like a huge, I tend to be a person who focuses very much on one thing at a time. Um, because I feel like I get too easily derailed otherwise.
00:07:54
Speaker
So everybody who knows me knows whatever project I'm working on or whatever book I'm reading or whatever, that's the thing and I go through it until I'm i'm done. It's both good and bad. Do you have to finish what you started or can you abandon a book? Oh yes, I have to finish everything I start. There's only one project I did that I I bailed on because it was making me miserable. um But almost always, i I have to. That is a skill that has to be cultivated, Joe. yeah learning Learning to understand you don't have to finish everything you start. It's hard, right? It's very hard. But i I think I'm there now. But yeah, it's still very hard for me to go, you know what? I'm not going to finish this. It is. It's like, well, maybe I didn't give it enough time. You read half the book. You gave it enough time.
00:08:43
Speaker
Well, I always think there's got to be something gleaned from it somewhere within those pages, even if it's, boy, I really hated this. I did not enjoy it and maybe I can understand better why it bothered me so much. you know there's There's always something. Yeah, I find that with them. like I can usually finish a bad movie that I've started because I actually i find them instructive because I sit there going, what is wrong with this? you know what What don't I like about it? What can I learn from this that for my own
00:09:15
Speaker
work. I find it more difficult with a book because if the book just isn't working for me, then I i kind of got to put it down because sometimes it's just not the right time. You know, like Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I picked that up three times and then the third time somehow it gripped me and then I loved it in a way that wasn't possible the first two times. I'm hoping that will happen with me and Ulysses. oh Yeah, I'll not be picking up Ulysses. Someday I'll finish Ulysses. I never get past the bathroom chapter. I'm kind of like, I think I'm done for now. no I know what he's doing. It's pretty brilliant, but yeah, no. So Jen, we, uh, so we had tried this once before with you and we had technical glitches and you've been extremely gracious and and coming back and giving us a second chance.
00:10:06
Speaker
um So thank you very much for that.
Obsession with 'Alice in Wonderland'
00:10:08
Speaker
We know from the first attempt that you had done your homework and and picked a subject that you wanted to talk about, which I believe is Alice in Wonderland, which you've already mentioned. Alice in Wonderland. ah Yeah, Alice in Wonderland and Alice through the Looking Glass. Mainly because I'm, as a person, I have been obsessed with this. I mean, ever since I was a little kid, ah we went my family on a camping trip down to Cape May, New Jersey when I was a kid and had Alice in Wonderland. on, it was an old PBS version of it from like 1971 or so with Thea Fullerton in it. And I had such a good cast, the characters Michael Crawford was the white rabbit and Peter Sellers was in it, who I knew as a little kid from all the Pink Panther movies and Uzzie Moore. And it was very much like the book, they almost, scene for scene, you know, pulled things that looked like the illustration.
00:11:01
Speaker
And I just absolutely haunted and obsessed by this. So that kind of got me on my way. And since then, I mean, I collect Alice in Wonderland. I'm part of groups for that. I've written the Curious Case of Marianne books set in that world and trying to be really respectful of it. So it's ah it's been an important part of life in general. And I think in marketing, you know, all the madness involved in some of those projects that I've had probably reflects that too. Yeah. No, forgive me. This, this Peter Sellers, uh, Dudley Moore, that was what, that was a ah film. No, it was a film. Yes. It was being shown on PBS. It was public broadcast, but it might've been a BBC production.
00:11:48
Speaker
I'm not familiar with that. Have you seen that, Mark? I do recognize that as you're describing. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I watched that. I definitely remember it because I remember we watched it because of Michael Crawford. Who's unrecognizable as the white rabbit under all the fluff. Yeah, because my family were big fans of his. Yeah, I saw him on stage once and yeah, we were big fans of his. So I'm sure we watched it. But now that you say Peter Sellers was in it, what did he do? you're that Peter Sellers is in it. He is the March Hare. Oh wow. Okay. And have you seen this as an adult or? I have seen this as an adult. I was lucky enough to be able to find it on DVD.
00:12:28
Speaker
the wonders of our technical world now that I was able to get that. um So I have and it's it's really pretty delightful. There's quite a bit of nice music and everything in it and it does, I think, follow the actual book pretty well, um which not all of them do and because it's a little bit hard to translate to to the screen and not be yeah difficult with all of the poems and other things like that. Gee, that would be fascinating to see. And now I've got to get my hands on that. I want to see it again. I definitely want to see it again because I, i for sure I've, it sounds so familiar. I must have seen it, but yeah. Wow. Okay. So you saw that in the film and then, and then saw it at the books, presumably and read the books. I read the books and it just was something I always was, was going back to, um, you know, it, it, I loved the idea of,
00:13:18
Speaker
the this world being within our world in just a simple way, like, you know, a rabbit hole, a mirror, some easy way to get somewhere else. Again, it's that escapism element of it, I think, for me. I like that this was just here underneath everything all along, and so I was always always interested in stories along those lines. So, yeah, like portal fiction. Portal fiction, sure. This just occurred to me and and I like, this is probably an unfair question, but is it related? Like is his, is his, are his stories related to like the idea of fairies at all? That kind of idea that there's just this other world that's just right next to us, but you can only get it at certain times of the year or certain diet times of the day. Not technically, I think he, it's evolved that way, but because he,
00:14:12
Speaker
set everything up as it was Alice dreaming. you know I think we have seen more versions ah more recently that ah reflect that kind of portal concept where she really goes there. But because it's all in in her head because she's been dreaming and he sets it up that way in both books, I think ah that makes it a little bit different. um They did not really do that whole portal thing too much in the children's fiction of that era, even up to when the Wizard of Oz came out, if she just hit her head. you know and it yeah yeah There was that sense of we've got to interject the reality here. so That could be the fairy version though, right? Because it could be you fall asleep and the fairies come. It's like a Midsummer Night's Dream. The fairies come and this is something that's playing in front of your eyes metaphorically as you're asleep.
00:15:05
Speaker
But it seems like he was ah maybe writing this ah a little bit before that whole fairy craze. that. Yeah. Oh yeah. But it's an ancient tradition in in in Britain. So I was wondering if there was connection. Yeah. yeah but no let Let's step back for a second if we can actually. And for the, you know, three or four people who are unfamiliar with Alice in Wonderland, can you recap the, you know, just quickly summarize what happens in the first book. Oh yeah. Good question. In the first book, Alice is in a field with her sister and her sister's reading a story.
00:15:42
Speaker
And Alice becomes very bored and sleepy, falls asleep, and dreams that she chases White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and ends up in a corridor where she can just barely see the a beautiful garden through one of these tiny doors. There's a tiny door, there's a lot of doors in this room, and she peeks through and sees this beautiful garden that she just has to get into. and with various ah drinking and eating, nibbling of beverages and food that appear, she ultimately will get into the garden, which is the Queen of Hearts' garden. She, throughout this, her whole quest is to get into this garden. So she goes through and meets a whole bunch of different characters who eventually lead her to that garden
00:16:36
Speaker
and she meets the queen and plays croquet and causes much trouble along the way by disturbing a bird's and nest. There's a lot of scenes that they don't actually ah show too much in movies but it's enough to get her in trouble with the queen and the queen puts her on trial and there's the whole off with her head concept and eventually she wakes up realizing that the cards that she thinks are flying around her, the pack of cards from the queen of hearts is group are just like flower petals and just been dreaming all along. So there's not a lot of deep meaning to it, but there's a lot of ways to interpret it. So it makes it interesting. And it sure has had a huge cultural impact. If you think about just, just white rabbit, just Google white rabbit and see what comes up. It's pretty crazy.
00:17:33
Speaker
many, many versions of the song that everybody's familiar with, um including more recently, I think Pink did it. But yeah, there's there's so many interpretations of it at this point. There's some pretty dark versions like American McGee's Alice and um but in video games and things. There's definitely the Gothic community has taken over. their versions that are i side projects almost that have shot from there and the Disney version which is quite different in the cartoon that became pretty iconic. Some people only know that version and so they they don't know how much has been changed from the original so it's always interesting. Is that the case then for reading going back to the original text and and reading them because and otherwise you don't get the full story?
00:18:29
Speaker
I think, I think
Cultural Impact of 'Alice in Wonderland'
00:18:30
Speaker
absolutely. um I think people would be surprised to learn that the, for instance, how much Through the Looking Glass and Alice in Wonderland are two very separate books with very separate characters in it in general and how You know, Tweedle Dee isn't in Wonderland and, you know, everything that's been pushed into for a nice big unified plot doesn't happen in the book. So it's it's interesting to see those changes. So why do you think it has become such a cultural phenomena? Is it because it's just so darn good? I think it's because there's so much room for interpretation. I think that's part of it. I think the escapism is certainly an element of it.
00:19:16
Speaker
I think because if there's a lot of, I mean, personally for me, some of the wordplay and the whimsy to it is enduring. Even if you don't know, for instance, that a lot of the poems in the original books were taken from common poems that kids had to learn in school in the Victorian era. It doesn't lose anything by having that new poem, you know, a kid experiencing that poem now. They don't get all the in jokes of why it's so funny. um You know, the spoofing of it is so funny. It would be like a Weird Al song today where people don't know the original song. Yeah.
00:19:56
Speaker
yeah But but it it carries over. There's a lot of meat to it that still makes it interesting and compelling for some people today. Some people are not big fans of Alice in Wonderland. I've had a few tell me how much, oh, no, I i hate that. But you know that's OK. There's always going to be a bunch of people. Oh, yeah. They probably don't like marmalade either. there Yeah. Yeah, definitely yeah masters that don't like marmalade. That's the one thing that just jumped. I just started ah holding up my listeners. I'm holding up my folio edition. I was rereading the start of it today. I was like, I was like, she's falling down the hole. And that's so loud because it's all caps. She sees a cupboard with orange marmalade. I'm like, oh, that's hilarious.
00:20:43
Speaker
and yeah all about marade um know I just as as an aside you mentioned weird out yankovic and I just want to say that I want a new duck Completely stands on its own and I i actually think is and I love Huey Lewis, but I think it's better than I want a new drug there There are certainly ones that have permeated my brain and I cannot hear the original. Any more addictive disbuds is just there for me always. Yeah. Another genius. Yeah. I tried one time actually to try to get weird out for this ah podcast and I was just completely ignored, but I will not give up.
00:21:20
Speaker
Well, we'll try again. I hope you realize that dream someday. Someday. Someday. So would you mind actually recapping as well the second book? So the first one is Alice in Wonderland and the second is Through the Looking Glass. And what, what is it about and how is it different? Through the Looking Glass is a much more structured sort of story and that um Alice is once again falling asleep but this time by the fire while she's playing with her her kittens, her cat, Dinah's kittens actually, two two of them who then kind of become surrogates for the white queen and the red queen going forward. Where she ends up, she dreams she goes through the mirror in her little parlor there and ends up in a completely other room in someone else's house
00:22:06
Speaker
And she encounters the Red Queen, who sets her on the task of getting to become a queen herself by playing the chess game, which is a giant chess board that their whole land is in different locations throughout the realm. Her job is to safely make it through these different squares, and eventually she will be queen. Obviously, she meets some pretty interesting locals along the way. She's nearly captured by a knight where she's rescued by the white knight who basically is considered to be the author, Dodgson Lewis Carroll himself. Finally, she makes it to the end where she feels she's going to be queen and there's all sorts of painful tests that she has to endure and um various rudeness from the other queens. And ultimately, she has a meal she cannot eat
00:23:03
Speaker
because it's a dream and ah very unsatisfying. And um she ends up waking up semi-crowned, basically. She doesn't get to enjoy her own queening party very much at all. Okay, yeah, I'm not gonna interpret that too much. Actually, I wanna take us back to the first one, because the first one, I believe he told that story to his three nieces, is that right? They were not relatives. They were girls within the area. He and a couple of other people went out boating. They would go boating regularly. And um so he had them in the rowboat with them and to entertain them. He told this story. It was what, July 4th? So when everybody else is celebrating Independence Day here in America,
00:23:56
Speaker
um There are a number of us who are celebrating the day that the first story got told about Els in Wonderland, between Alice and Lorena and her other sister. so Do you actually celebrate it in some way or on Reddit? There are groups that we all share and say, hey, guess what day it is? It's Alice day. There's no dressing up. There's no real party. I mean, I celebrate with some Marmalade maybe this year. I don't know. Marmalade, yeah. I just remembered to do that too. I'm just doing so much for Marmalade sales. I'm so proud of myself. You are. I'm silly. Just see about a sponsor. Yeah, which is probably your whole hidden agenda. You really like it. I'm part of Big Marmalade. Big Marmalade, of course.
00:24:36
Speaker
uh, citizens for Marmalade. So, so he, that story though, was a very ad hoc, kind of like he was, you know, entertaining children. And I think it comes out a little bit and there's still structure to the book, but like the book is kind of very much very dreamlike, like you're right. Describing as a dream. It is. It's very random. It's, it's very scene to scene to scene. And, um, he added more to the story within, was it, it was about a year, I believe between when he did the tail, told the tail to the girls verbally. And then he gave a copy to Alice, who had was the one who had requested specifically that he write it down. Is that Hargreaves was there her name, little, little, like little, little, right. Yeah. And so that goes pretty viral, right? Like it's pretty popular book. He, he decides to get it published and it gets picked up by McMillan.
00:25:34
Speaker
I love the original tenial illustrations. And I would say that's probably my favorite. I mean, I know a lot of people are really fond of the the Disney version on that, but I have things I collect. I prefer if I can find the original tenial pieces. It's so good. Yeah. And so so is it a I'm sorry, Mark, is it not? I'm just wondering if it if it's work that would hold up today, like if it was published today, would it stand out? Would it? Well, publishing is very different today, right? I mean, if they he wasn't a known commodity then, so he probably would have a harder time getting a deal in the first place. So it was a very different situation. Yeah. So maybe not a fair question. But yeah, sorry, Mark. I interrupted you. No, he probably would have had to self publish it.
00:26:22
Speaker
Really, I mean, realistically, yeah you know, he might've sold 150 copies and he might've had some connections because he was, he was, where was it done? He was a don at one of the universities, right? Oxford. Oxford. So yeah, he might've had some connections in the publishing industry, but I would imagine otherwise he'd have to self publish it because it's not a very traditional. paper Yeah, it's not a traditional story. Yeah. But it's incredibly successful. And so you you mentioned the the Through the Looking Glass is more structured in the way that it's told. How much difference, like how much time went past between the two books? Alice was done in 1865 and Through the Looking Glass was 1971. 1871. Yeah, that was also a long time ago.
00:27:16
Speaker
Well, that's impressive. so Several years, quite quite a chunk of time. He had published some other things in between, including the Jabberwock poem. It came out actually before through the Looking Glass where it appears in. So he kind of tucked that one in. Yeah. And so it you mentioned that they're both ah they're both
Dreamlike Structure as Escapism
00:27:40
Speaker
dreams. And these days, it's I think it's considered ah a cliche if you write a story and that, oh, it just turns out to be a dream, unless you're Bob Newhart, in which case it's an effective way to end your series. It's a genius. Yeah. But that in no way undermines the the power of these tales. Right. This is in fact, it's probably ah a feature, not a bug. Yeah.
00:28:05
Speaker
I'd say and i don't i I kind of like the concept that's more modern of of actually going there. I mean, having the ability to go there, but that's probably just my own need for escapism again, as opposed to, well, I can dream this. But but I do appreciate the dream qualities that are in the material. It's very reflective of how actual dreams are my favorite seen it one of them in through the looking glass is when Alice is in a shop and she wants to buy an egg and the egg does not stay still. She looks at it. She can kind of only really see it in her peripheral vision. She tries to grab it and it moves and then the whole shop melts away and she's in a like a pond
00:28:55
Speaker
with the proprietress of this place, who's a sheep. And, you know, it just all evolves. And they're just having a casual conversation the whole time, like, this is perfectly fine and normal, you know? But I mean, that's how dreams are, right? If you think about what your dreams are like, that's well, well, I was heading to work, but now I'm in an airplane and I'm flying it. and you know And Alice's self-talk is so great. I mean, especially the first one, it's like, well, I don't actually know what that is, but I think it's that. It's like, oh, maybe someone shouldn't be paying attention to me because I don't know what I'm talking about, you know? Right. Well, it's maybe can you there's certain things like, can you read things in dreams really well? No. Can you remember? You might speak very eloquently about something. And then when you wake up, you think that's not the answer to that at all.
00:29:47
Speaker
Yeah. And that was my point with like the relationship with the fairy world. Like the idea that the the fairy world is this, it's just this, we don't quite have access to it on our in our conscious minds. We can only really access it in our subconscious minds. And that's kind of what these books are so good about in terms of they telegraph that so well. They give you that feeling while you're conscious. It's pretty cool. Well, she would be, if it really were the fairy realm, she'd be in a lot of trouble because she eats and drinks too many things to ever get back out of there. And you never introduce yourself with your actual name. You never do that. No, no, no. But they don't remember her name half of the time anyway. They they call her a monster because she's grown and shrunk and and disrupted people's houses and all sorts of other things. So she's broken
00:30:38
Speaker
broken, uh, the white rabbit's house and a bird's nest and a few other things. So yeah, have these works, uh, and their significance in your life affected your own work impacted them in any way. I feel like they, they have, and they have affected the way I, I see things, even just normal situations. My, my favorite day job. reflection on Alice in Wonderland was a time where I was doing marketing for a client who had me do surveys and they said, um okay, we're going to be doing these surveys for our internal people, so we want this to be anonymous. Perfect. So we set it all up, anonymous surveys, sent them out, they got the responses and I hear from the client and the client says,
00:31:27
Speaker
We were looking for the names of those people that filled out our survey. And I said, the anonymous survey. And they said, yeah, we didn't collect that information. And then I says, oh, oh, OK, that's fine. Just send us their emails then.
00:31:49
Speaker
i I'm in a mad place now. I can't come back from this. yeah um In my own novels, I feel like, I mean, in There Goes the Galaxy, poor Bertram Ledlow. He's basically my Alice in that, where he's thrust into this world where everybody sort of knows what's going on but him. And certainly they they have their space legs much better than he does. He he thinks he's am gone mad.
00:32:20
Speaker
and from the stress of his PhD program. um So which is obviously likely and way very well could be and and Bertram's been in the PhD program probably longer than many candidates too. So you know, ah he was going to be a lifetime student. So he encounters all these different alien folks and there's a lot of commercialism in in the alien land and um drawing on my own marketing spirit. So it he's definitely my Alice thrust into the wonderland of space, whether he knows it or not. And did you know it when you were writing that? That were you conscious of applying Alice in Wonderland, they get the character in the
00:33:07
Speaker
more retrospectively, I think some of the things I did to him, I think it was more afterwards, I was kind of laughing a bit like, yeah, he's pretty much my Alice, just because of ah how he tries his best under the circumstances, but there's really no way he's going to figure some of these things out because they know the culture and he
Influence on Thorsen's Writing
00:33:26
Speaker
doesn't. And you can only learn so much when you've got that many species and in such a weird situation. Yeah. Do you guys both find that that after you write something or or put a book out that afterwards you're like, where did that come from? You know, what actually inspired that or influenced it that we weren't aware of, you know, do you make those connections? I do for sure. Sometimes it's intentional for me, but sometimes it's absolutely not. How about you with plotting? I know when I'm plotting things out,
00:33:57
Speaker
I will not realize the connections until they start to, things start to come together and then suddenly it's, oh, this all makes sense now. Yeah, I gotta say I've, I went from being a plotter to a pantser and that, that really changed my relationship with the stories because as a plotter, you think you know what you're doing, but you don't really. As a pantser, you think you don't know anything, but you actually do. and interesting And I think as a pantser now, I'm like, I know kind of what this is about psychologically, even if I don't know exactly where it's going. I kind of know but the what the emotions are, what the thoughts are, what, you know, what how they connect to my life.
00:34:43
Speaker
I'm completely a, a, a pantster, except I hate that term. It just seems such an awkward, clumsy term. I gotta give some thought to a better term. and but let let us know but Yeah. I'll do that. I better refer. You could be a refer. You could be a, uh, okay. I've got a list for you ad hawker ad liver. That's pretty good actually. Improvisio. What else? Yeah, I will figure it out. ah Okay. Dr. Lewis Carroll. Now, did your interest in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, is it confined to the books or are you are you interested in and the author and the events surrounding the writing of the book as well?
Interest in Books Over Author
00:35:28
Speaker
I am am more specific to the books themselves. um i I don't have great knowledge on the author. I mean i know general information on that. it's it's more of a I say it's more of an aesthetic and linguistic influence than a persona. so That makes sense. Yeah. You know, and I think there's merit to that because I think sometimes when we get too wrapped up in the circumstances of the writing of the work or the creation of the work or know too much about, you know, the creator who might not actually not talking in this instance, but in other instances might not be a great person, you know, in some ways it's ah maybe better to just stick to the work.
00:36:16
Speaker
i I think so. I think that is probably an issue that would have come up much sooner with many, many authors through the ages. If we had if they had social media, we might not like any of them, and to be honest. so Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although I must admit I have a compulsion for, you know, when I do read something or, or even like music, even tonight, I was listening to Rupert Holmes, The Escape, the Peña Colada song. I'm not expecting that coming. I like What's wrong with that song? That's the marmalade of pop music.
00:36:54
Speaker
yeah And I was just curious. I was like, wait, whatever happened to Rupert Holmes? And, you know, so then I'm looking him up and, you know, he's still alive. I don't know what he's doing, but he's not playing Vegas somewhere. I interrupted before I finished the Wikipedia article. I have to go back and finish it. Yeah. But but I was happy to see that he's still around doing, doing something. So. And yeah, it has absolutely nothing to do with Alice in Wonderland. Well, Pina Colada, it can make you smaller or bigger. It depends. Well, and I guess, you know, he was trying to, in that song, he was trying to escape. It says, you know, just like you were referring to earlier, he might not escape. He didn't like his life. As was his wife. Yeah, but he failed to escape. Yeah.
00:37:48
Speaker
So yeah, any other thoughts then on Alice in Wonderland and and through the Looking Glass and and that whole, I just think that, uh, it's very interesting to watch because I belong to a number of these, uh, Wonderland groups, how much, uh, people diverge on what it is they gravitate to within the ah Alice in
Diverse Interpretations by Fans
00:38:09
Speaker
Wonderland. I mean, it's, it's become such a ah big thing that everybody sort of has their own version of what they think it is and should be. and may not experience other parts of it over here or even have read the original. And the internet interestingly has caused, and Tim Burton to some extent has caused people to believe some quotes that were never in the books at all. And I see people tattooing them on themselves with, you know, Lewis Carroll's name underneath it. You kind of,
00:38:45
Speaker
people are happy with what they have and that's awesome. ah But it's very interesting as a culture how it's evolved ah to the point that some folks don't even know what the original pieces ah of where where the stuff they love came from. um So it's very diverse. Does it does that matter? or are Are you a purist or are you open to? I only think it matters for the knowledge purposes of it. I mean, if I'm tattooing it on me, obviously, I would like to know specifically where whether it was or wasn't from the book.
00:39:18
Speaker
And there are a lot of quotes, even that aren't from, as far as I know, any movie, any book, they're just being attributed to to the stories. So, I mean, it's for informational purposes, I think. There is someone out there who has done a collection of these quotes that are incorrect, and and she has a book that explains, no, these are not right. people are going to you know, gravitate toward what they like and that's okay, you know. if If that means, if the phrase means something to them, then I guess that's, that's their own personal wonderland, so. Were we to wake them up? I agree. I guess those quotes are, they're basically just fanfic, yeah. no you know Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to know where some of them were from. I don't, I have not read that anywhere.
00:40:07
Speaker
Do you have any tattoos? I do not. I do not. I have a ridiculous number of Alice in Wonderland t-shirts and other things like that, but so you can change those off and that's okay. And you have yeah craft too. Like we haven't talked about that at all. Like you're, you're a very crafty, artistic person who makes things. And I, I'm sure, I'm sure at some point I saw on Facebook or maybe Tumblr or someplace where you'd made yourself a costume or two. I've done, I do things for the kids, the turker traders at Halloween and I usually do a theme. So I've done Alice in Wonderland a couple of times for them.
00:40:44
Speaker
yeah So I've done various characters because, I mean, for me, because I do collect stuff, it's sort of just, hey, bring all the crap from the inside to the outside for the kids. And it's it's ah it looks grand, but it's an easy, quick thing to do. So, you know, we got the giant mushrooms and the big roses, and but the kids all really seem to enjoy it. So I try to theme it up for them. It's it's fun. Before we let you go, you mentioned your work off the top, but is there anything in particular that you would direct people to now to check out of yours that you're especially proud of? or i'm I'm really proud. Since this is an Alice rate related thing, I'm really proud of the curious case of Marianne, I think ah as a starting point on in my work.
'The Curious Case of Marianne' in Wonderland Universe
00:41:29
Speaker
because I feel like I worked pretty hard to fit Marianne within the cracks of the existing stories. So I did not disrupt anything that goes on within the original tales, but to have it be its own, its own piece that stands by itself. And so, you know, Marianne has her own goals and and interests and tale behind the scenes. And what's a quick elevator pitch of that one? Marianne is the Housemaid for the White Rabbit and when we see Alice She goes into the White Rabbit's house and he mistakes her for his housemaid. I guess ah bad eyesight. I don't know he's He's always late so he's not paying attention he's always late so sure sure he was just So he he has Alice get his gloves and his fan for him because Marianne's not there to do it well in in my books Marianne is off
00:42:27
Speaker
and finding out that her father, the carpenter um from the poem, The Waller's and the Carpenter, basically, has been murdered by a mysterious figure. And it's up to Marianne to determine who did this. And she is now in peril from the person who knows that she saw this, witnessed this whole thing. So she has to go into hiding. That's why she doesn't return back to the White Rabbit. So she's got ah her own set of troubles to deal with. about this piece. And then you fit the whole book into all of the situations that Alice is doing off stage. I try to. Yes. I do. Cool. Do you like Tom Staubert? Did you see that play ever or the movie? Oh, Rose and Cranston. Rose and Cranston. Oh, yes. Oh, I own a copy of that. I love that very much, yes. Because that sounds very similar, you know, the idea.
00:43:21
Speaker
I didn't think about that at all until, um, my cousin actually pointed that out to me. Oh, is this is just like, you know, this is like Rosencrantz and Gillust and like, well, i I wasn't thinking about it, but I appreciate that. And that is one of the most impressive things about Rosencrantz and Gildred Sturdard dead is this, like, he fit it perfectly. Like it just fits perfectly. It's it's so terrific and the acting is good and and oh yeah it's a lot of fun really is. I have to watch that again. So I'll have to read that. That will go on my list. Yes, me too. Mark,
00:43:59
Speaker
mark any final thoughts then on Alice in Wonderland through the Looking Glass? All I'll say is that I like Marmalade more than Marmite. I don't think I've ever tried Marmite. I haven't either. Oh, well have you tried Vegemite? No. Oh, okay. Well, you should try it. You should try it. It's not bad. It's not terrible, but it's not pleasant. Well, then why would anyone consume it? Well, it's good for you. Okay. you Right. Liver was supposed to be good for you too, but I basically refuse to consume that. well's I think it's got lots of B vitamins and stuff and some people like it. Like it's salty and if you like salt, that's good. Yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
ah Okay, excellent final thought. Thank you for that. I know, I'm an intellectual, obviously. Jen Thorsten, thank you very much for being on our podcast, Recreative. Oh, thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it. Oh, thank you so much, Jen.
00:45:24
Speaker
Recreative is produced by Mark Rainer and Joe Mahoney. Technical production of music by Joe Mahoney, web designed by Mark Rainer.
00:45:34
Speaker
Show notes in all episodes are available at recreative.ca. That's re-creative.ca. Drop us a line at joemahoney at donovanstreetpress dot.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.