{"id":715,"date":"2022-11-12T13:42:27","date_gmt":"2022-11-12T21:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nathanbak.com\/?p=715"},"modified":"2026-01-02T19:59:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T03:59:39","slug":"louie-or-charlie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/?p=715","title":{"rendered":"Louie or Charlie?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many children, I was exposed to Alice and Wonderland and many other fantastical creations of Louis Carroll via book and screen. I found the stories palatable but not among my favorites. It was not until I was a bit older that I began to better appreciate the cleverness behind much of the writing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During my junior year of high school I encountered G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid<\/em> by Douglas R. Hofstadter. The book interweaves math, art, and music in a study of cognition and, to my delight, alternating chapters were written in a Louis Carroll-ish style using curious creatures engaging in odd activities and conversation to depict various theory. G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach<\/em> influenced me in a variety of ways, but germane to this post was it made me reevaluate actual Louis Carroll texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next year I wrote my Senior Paper about the logic in the writings of Lewis Carroll. I learned that “Lewis Carroll” was actually a pen name for logician and mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Within his various “children’s” stories are representations of and allusions to many different logical concepts and I excitedly delved into different occurrences. The story didn’t matter as much as the concepts behind the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years after that, while studying literature as both an undergrad and graduate student, I revisited some Lewis Carroll texts. This time I was focused on his word usage and structures. Sometimes in invented new words. Sometimes he deliberately misused words. Sometimes he embedded different poetic structures into texts. I generally refrain from diving too deeply into this sort of realm, but nevertheless found that just beneath the layer of silliness was a significant depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Originally I thought Lewis Carroll to be a writer for children. Later I thought Charles Dodgson to be representing math and logic. After that I found him to be careful crafter of clever and cryptic composition. Sometimes I wonder if I infer more that was intended by by the author, but perhaps that doesn’t really matter. In the words of Lewis\/Charles: “Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them: so a whole book ought to mean a great deal more than the writer meant.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many children, I was exposed to Alice and Wonderland and many other fantastical creations of Louis Carroll via book and screen. I found the stories palatable but not among my favorites. It was not until I was a bit older that I began to better appreciate the cleverness behind much of the writing During … Continue reading “Louie or Charlie?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=715"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":718,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715\/revisions\/718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanbak.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}