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"The Haunting of the Snarkasbord" is a dark, humorous parody of
Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark" concerning what followed
the Baker's vanishing and the Crew's continued hunt for a snark on
Snark Island. Alison Tannenbaum wrote the poetry in "Snarkasbord: A
Crewsome Choice" and also wrote notes on Byron W. Sewell's
illustrations for it. An introduction and Gardnerian-style notes
have been written by August A. Imholtz, Jr in his inimitable style.
This edition marks the first public publication of the poems "The
Booking," "The Recrewting," and "The Sailing"-the three "Missing
Fits" composed by Charlie Lovett. These were originally written for
a secret English Snarkian Society, and were mentioned by Selwyn
Goodacre in his "The Listing of the Snark" in Martin Gardner's
final version of The Annotated Hunting of the Snark. Hitherto, they
have only ever been seen by the members or guests of the Society.
In addition to his wonderful illustrations, Byron W. Sewell has
contributed an original short story, ,"" which tells what happened
to the Baker from the viewpoint of the Boojum. Like Lovett's
parodies, this short story has never before been seen by the
public; it was issued in a very limited number to his Carrollian
friends.
In this retelling of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, Alice's fall
down the rabbit hole turns into a terrifying descent through the
centre of the Earth, hopelessly snarling her hair into a tangles
mess, and nearly setting it alight.
In the first of these two crime fiction tales, R.I.P. (Restless in
Pieces), modern grave-robbers steal the bones of Charles Dodgson
(also known as Lewis Carroll), expecting to hold them for ransom.
But they also discover a rare first edition of "Alice's Adventures
in Wonderland" as well as one of Dodgson's missing Diaries in the
casket. This sets off a series of events, both deadly and comical,
across England, Wales, and North Korea. Inspector Ian Spectre of
Scotland Yard is brought in to solve the case, assisted by none
other than Dodgson's ghost. The second tale, "The Oxfordic Oracle,"
is set in Victorian Oxford. Inspector Spectre goes undercover to
investigate numerous reported strange events during the meetings of
the Oxford Phantasmalogical Society, where an actress prophesies
under the influence of ethene gas escaping into the basement of the
building. Charles Dodgson also makes a first time appearance at the
Society meeting, which gets out of hand as too much ethene escapes
and everyone begins to prophesy nonsense which becomes the
inspiration for some of the famous poems in Carroll's "Sylvie and
Bruno" books."
Although the author (with many previous unique Snarkian works under
his belt) describes "Snarkmaster" as the final work in a trilogy,
it stands alone quite distinctly as a unique, gripping tale of a
power struggle between good and evil, concluding with the
development of an unusual intermediate state. Most of the story
takes place prior to the traditional Snark voyage (described in
verse in Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark"), but becomes
inextricably linked with it-unless it isn't... The literary
structure of "Snarkmaster" reveals some influence of Carroll's
"Sylvie and Bruno" tales, as the characters (including the great
Charles Dodgson himself) experience dream states and the appearance
of at least one fairy. The comprehensive glossary and painstakingly
hand-detailed maps of each of the islands in the archipelago may
not be essential to follow the story, but they certainly enhance
it. The meticulously hand-inked illustrations emphasize some of the
important aspects of the story and provide a tropical ambiance for
the text. While not necessarily a prerequisite, knowledge of
Carroll's original poem is likely to make Snarkmaster more
enjoyable for most readers.
Roa Wioz (1882-1937), the locally-admired though otherwise
little-known Zumorgian translator, spent seventeen years of his
miserable life (when he wasn't tending to his beloved goats)
translating Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland" into Zumorigenflit and transposing it into u ian
culture. Sadly, u was swallowed up by the Soviet Union in 1947.
Most of its citizens were either purged (lined up and summarily
shot when they refused to combine their goats into a communal herd)
or transported to the Gulag for political re-education and attitude
adjustment. All cultural artifacts were systematically destroyed
and most Zumorigenflit books were burned as part of the Soviet
effort to obliterate u, along with any memory of it. The only known
present-day u ian survivors of The Great u Purge (other than any
possible survivors of the Gulag, whose descendants might
conceivably live in Siberia) are now toothless old women, whose
parents fled with them as infants from u to Transjordan the night
of the purge. Today they live (if you can call it that) in a
squalid refugee camp on the desert outskirts of Amman surrounded by
very unhappy and angry displaced Palestinians. Some of these u ian
refugees are still able to speak a little Zumorigenflit, though few
of them can read it. For those interested in such esoteric things,
"Alo k ujy Gigio Soagenli y" was first published by the Itadabukan
Press in the capital city of Sprutni ovyurt in 1919. The city,
which was mistakenly thought to be a German forward supply area,
was literally flattened and burned to the ground by Royal Air Force
saturation bombing in 1943, and all that remains of it are a few
remnants of the ancient Palace's foundations and a gigantic
reinforced concrete statue of Joseph Stalin, whose face has been
shattered by what was probably machine gun target practice. The
original story has here been updated to modern times, as if this
strange, harsh, and dangerous land still existed in the modern
world. It doesn't, except in my imagination and that of Mahendra
Singh, whose heart swells with the Song of the Goat. -- Byron W.
Sewell
Lewis Carroll's classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" has been
translated into over a hundred languages, from French to Japanese
to Esperanto. In this translation into the rich dialect of the
Appalachian Mountains, the translators have treated the story as a
folktale, in order to create the sense that the reader is listening
as an adult tells the story to a child. The story has been
transported from Victorian English to post-Civil-War West Virginia,
into an Appalachian setting appropriate for the dialect. The
spelling used aims towards a literary orthography, rather than
towards a phonemic respelling of the language entirely, and so it
avoids unnecessary "eye-dialect" ("funkshun" instead of "function,"
and so forth). The sounds of the language used in "Alice's
Adventures in an Appalachian Wonderland" will certainly be familiar
to most readers, but a short glossary has also been included.
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