CORRECT VERSION: Author Showdown: Pay The Toll And Travel Thorugh The Looking-Glass!

[Lord Macbeth]

This time, after we've had that initial Dante/Milton Battle of Hell and then a three-way battle between Faulkner, Proust, and Joyce for period supremacy, I'm returning to to textual theme and tone as the subject of our bout...

Namley: Caricaturized Social Commentary.

New Years Eve, a time for lots of fun and excitement, and also a time when all the social classes and kinds of people mingle.

It's ALSO a time of craziness.

And what better purveyours of crazy worlds and social commentary than Lewis Carroll and his Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass (most versions of Caroll's work features both works together as they are really companion pieces, so I've decided to follow that example and keep them together), Jonathan Swift and Gulliver's Travels, and Norton Juster and one of the first books I ever truly loved as a little kid, The Phantom Tollbooth?

All three utilized caricatures-as-characters and strange locales to give social commentary about the world around them, from the Mad Hatter, Liliputians, and the Humbug to Dictionopolis, Brobdingnag, and Wonderland.

So:

Which characters, locales, text and author win the title this time?

(And is it worth noting that I'm suddenly in the mood for tea?)

(First version was screwed up due to computer error, sorry.)

[Lord Macbeth]

This was a TOUGH CHOICE...I like all three of these authors and love all three works.

Carroll's is a classic, Swift's contains some of the most memorable images in literature for its time, and I will go on the record by saying that I cannot think of a better book for 4th and 5th graders than Juster's and sincerely hope that it's required reading across the nation.

I LOVE the Mad-Hatter and March Hare! (Possibly because I actually DO have an affinity for both nonsense with equally-nonsensical friends and tea!) ;)

I'm CAPTIVATED by that infamous image of Gulliver being tied down by the Liliputian people, it just says so much in that one literary image!

And I STILL remember so many quotes and lines from Juster's work, including:

"Things won't look nearly the same at fifteen as they did at ten, and at twenty everything will change again."

Seeing as how today's my 20th birthday I can safely say...one of the wisest and TRUEST things I've EVER read! (Another great line, when Milo realizes that all the lands in the Tollbooth are beyond the land of Expectations, the Whether man tells him, quite truly, that "To get anywhere you must always go beyond Expectations!")

Not bad for "children's books," eh? All three were originally marketed as such, and so the authors had more reign and freedom to bite at the adult world as they could always safely fall back and claim it was "just a children's book," and who really ever reads those or takes those seriously, right?

My pick?

I honestly wish I could pick all three, but I felt compelled to pick Carroll's; Swift's is fantastic but does feel like it slows in places, which is fine since it really highlights the greater moments but still, Carroll's work never feels like it drags, and for as much as Juster used caricature and mataphor to get the point across, and ESPECIALLY word play (Milo learns it's literally not very tasty when one has to eat his own words) Carroll did so as well, and did so before Juster.

So by a hare--the March hare, to be precise--I chose Carroll's work...overflowing with ideas, commentary, a little philosophy, madness, and, of course--TEA! :D

[Taliesin]

As far as I have understood, Carroll satirized modern mathematics with his work, I must have missed where he commented on social stuff.

[Lord Macbeth]

The White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, and March Hare, to start with, are all at least somewhat satirizing high society.

The Rabbit the fact that people are always "late" and so focused on making dates that really they seem to spend more time in a rush than actually doing the task or enjoying their life (the Rabbit's always "late" adn on the move and nervous, he never actually is into his task that much and I'm not sure if he's EVER happy, almost an early comment on how our mdoern workplace is getting in the way with life fulfilment.)

The Mad Hatter and March hare do the same sort of satire of the high society tea parites and social gatherings, their absurdity mrirroring the perceived absurdity of real-life parties, the fact they're always pouring more and more mirroring the overly-opulent English society of the time in that they pour so much--an allegory for consummerism--and actually DRINK so little--an allegory for waste and over-consumption.

On top of that they really DO poke a ot of fun at the English language...

[stlukesguild]

Well... I never read... or even heard of Norton Juster. I love Lewis Carroll... but I don't see the social satire as a central issue to his writing. That leaves Swift, who certainly is a brilliant satirist. Better alternatives might have been Gunter Grass, Voltaire, Rabelais, Alexander Pope, Chaucer, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain... but as it stands I must go with Swift.

[JCamilo]

I think it is a stretch. The time issue was actually one of the mathematical paradoxes Carroll liked. The Mad hatter was indeed a joke of some of the other teachers and formality, but not as deep.

Swift as satirist is something else. He is The Satirist. Even Voltaire is a good boy close to Swift. Anyways Carroll and Swift are out of place here.