Although author Lewis Carroll’s most famous character was a young female, Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” was not particularly preoccupied, at least not primarily so, with Alice’s gender, age or romanticized depictions. “Alice” was basically a novelized stand-in for the real life Alice that Carroll knew and was fascinated by, at least to a certain extent, and also happened to be a girl. Carroll was more preoccupied by mathematics and logic, as cryptically revealed in his eventual world-famous novel than with any cynical, presumed infatuations or gender dynamics, as any such hint of scandal was almost wholly posthumous to Carroll’s British/Victorian era life. Alice was, among other things, Carroll’s writing/novel outlet for a fantastical portrait of a girl, and even if the real life Alice was an obsession…though doubtful…Carroll’s ethics and propriety, towards the young, appeared to be generally impeccable, according to the most impassioned observers of his life and times. Of course, Carroll is not the first novelist to be sullied and derided, though nominally, and in his case the brunt of it posthumously, by a publicity-hounding, hypocrisy-pocked handful seeking to damage this brilliant author’s reputation with cynical, dreadful speculation, although the lot of them should hardly have been taken seriously without some kind of empirical evidence. Nor was Carroll the last.
Like Carroll, our Mark (of the Party of Commons and The Generation Jumpstart Club circles) faces similar scrutiny for his young female protagonists via his short form and mostly serialized novels and essays, including actual models and AI depictions. Although detractors of Mark, more likely political than not, use journalistic cover — or their particular brand of sleazy, run-of-the-mill politics — to whitewash their not all that covert sorties, by the use of innuendo, distortions, out-of-context attributions and other tricks of the trade related to their particular professions, hobbies, or crafts. Mark has been through this and has had to stiff-arm dubious assertions in the past, though pretty much concedes that this goes with the territory of being an independent, more-or-less unconventional, imaginative writer who writes what he wants, is often political, and is pretty much not intimidated (or at least tries not to be — a kind of murky middle) by attempts to paint him as something more than that.
(Written text is 100% ASLNL)
American Sun-Light News & Literature 