Rare Book Monthly
Articles - January - 2004 Issue
Mark Burstein & Alice: a World of the Mind
John Tenniel's illustration for an early edition: Everything and nothing have changed.
In time, the LCSNA evolved into a more complex organism: a butterfly that has turned into a caterpillar. Where once it was the collectible book that was the focus, it is now the content that is in the cross-hairs and its language is plumbed and parsed to illuminate and elucidate all manner of events within the book and without. Think of it as Tarot cards for the intellectually capable.
This transition seems to precisely suit Mark, the son and sun of this evolving galactic enterprise who day and night edits the Knight Letter, the semi-annual journal of the LCSNA, and also serves as its vice president.
It is a sprawling thing that would leave Dodgson himself bemused about the enthusiasm and intensity which emanates from the journal pages like reflected heat on macadam in July. The most recent issue contains two principal parts: “The Rectory Umbrella” and “Mischasch” and beneath their extended canopies nineteen articles and many items of diverse lengths present a panoply of wisdom, information, direction, dissection and announcements and the touch of the whimsy that Mark brings to this endeavor. For the hare-brained there is something for everyone. The latest issue, but one which measures a stout 44 pages all in, is reported pregnant with ambitions and articles that will carry the impending one to the printer’s cosmic limit – 56 pages, the most that the present binding arrangements will tolerate without busting its buttons.
For those who find the written word insufficient, there are two LCSNA conferences staged each year at least six unicorn leaps apart to allow Carrollinians on both coasts their chance to dissect, resurrect and hypothesize in person.
A few years ago, Sandor gifted his extraordinary collection of Carrolliana to Mark. We find today in Mark’s home a cosmic Alice assemblage in a very comfortable environment where the collection breaths easily and the residents must hold theirs, for this material lives in a constant state of impending birth. If the collection could speak, you would expect it to say, “Get out! I need more room.” And it would be true.
For collecting Alice is different than collecting, say, a period or subject in American history. It’s true that interpretations change but they tend to change slowly and the flow of new material on most subjects is both moderate and not necessarily of interest to the collector of the early or original materials. Alice, by comparison, is published in many languages and for some collectors, accumulating the book in these many languages and in all the editions of these various languages is a collecting pursuit.
