From Lewis Carroll’s preface to Sylvia and Bruno, an awkwardly surreal book I first read as a teenager which nevertheless stayed with me somehow. Been meaning to reread it for a while.
It’s not great, but it’s weird and unique especially seen as a late-style descendant of Alice
Conversation
He quotes Horace in preface too
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae
We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is to come out of the urn. All must to eternal exile sail away.
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Weirdly memento mori prefatory note for a book about 2 fairy children flitting in and out of the life of an adult.
It’s almost wonderland turned inside out darkly, suffusing reality in a fey way only some are sensitive to, and it is the same as sensitivity to mortality
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It’s interesting how he inverts the sense of the phrase “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing”.
Replying to
It sounds like good marketing. "If you're scared of death, this may not be the book for you."

