Jonathan Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections (2001), a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His most recent novel, Freedom, was published in August 2010.[4]
He is known for his 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaning the state of literature, and for the 2001 controversy surrounding the selection of The Corrections for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen writes for The New Yorker magazine.
Franzen was born to an American mother and Swedish father,[5][6] in Western Springs, Illinois,[7] raised in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in German in 1981.[8] As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979-80 academic year with Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich program.[9] He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981-82.[10] From these experiences, he speaks fluent German. While struggling with his first novel, he briefly worked in the seismology laboratory at Harvard University.[11]
Fiction
Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch.[citation needed]
Strong Motion (1992) focuses on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life.
The Corrections
Franzen's The Corrections, a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.[12] The novel was also on the short list for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction[12] and was named a finalist for the 2002 PEN /Faulkner Award.[13] A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it lost to Empire Falls by Richard Russo.[14]
In September 2001, The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in How To Be Alone titled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however, The Oregonian printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry — I'm sorry that it's, uh — I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking. I see this as my book, my creation.[15]
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."[16][17]
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."[18]
Following the success of The Corrections and the publication of The Discomfort Zone and How to Be Alone, Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in The New Yorker: "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.[19]
On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an extract from Freedom, his novel in progress, in The New Yorker. The extract, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second extract — titled "Agreeable" — was published, also in The New Yorker.[20]
On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel.[21][22] Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "…material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."[22]
On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air to discuss Freedom in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.[23]
Freedom was the subject of a highly unusual "recall" in the United Kingdom starting in early October 2010. An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake. The publisher, HarperCollins initiated an exchange program, but thousands of books had been distributed by that time.[24]
While promoting the book Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King did so in 2000.[25] He discussed the implications of the Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England in October 2010.[26]
On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.[27] On December 6, 2010 he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.[28]
In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled "Perchance to Dream." Referencing manifestos written by Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe, among others, Franzen grappled with the novelist's role in an advanced media culture which seemed to no longer need the novel. In the end, Franzen rejects the goal of writing a great social novel about issues and ideas, in favor of focusing on the internal lives of characters and their emotions. Given the huge success of The Corrections, this essay offers a prescient look into Franzen's goals as both a literary and commercially-minded author.[29]
Since The Corrections Franzen has published How to Be Alone (2002), a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream", and The Discomfort Zone (2006), a memoir. How To Be Alone is essentially an apologia for reading, articulating Franzen's uncomfortable relationship with the place of fiction in contemporary society. It also probes the influence of his childhood and adolescence on his creative life, which is then further explored in The Discomfort Zone.
In September 2007, Franzen's translation of Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) was published. In his introduction, Franzen describes the Broadway musical version as "insipid" and "overpraised." In an interview with New York magazine, Franzen stated that he had in fact made the translation for Swarthmore College's theater department for $50 in 1986 and that it had sat in a drawer for 20 years since. After the Broadway show stirred up so much interest, Franzen said he was inspired to publish it because "I knew it was a good translation, better than anything else out there."[30]
Franzen published a social commentary on cell phones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space, I Just Called To Say I Love You (2008),[31] in the September/October, 2008 issue of "Technology Review", published by MIT.
Personal life
He married Valerie Cornell in 1982; they separated in 1994 and are now divorced.[32] Franzen now lives part of the year on the Upper East Side of New York City and part in Boulder Creek, California.[33]
In 2010, he attracted attention while on a visit to London when a literary event was stormed and his spectacles were whisked from his face, a ransom note for $100,000 deposited and a police chase initiated through the city.[34][35][36]
“Rules for Writing”
In February 2010, Franzen (along with writers including Richard Ford, Zadie Smith and Anne Enright) was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.[37] Franzen's rules ran as follows:
1.The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2.Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3.Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4.Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5.When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6.The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7.You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8.It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9.Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10.You have to love before you can be relentless.
He is known for his 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaning the state of literature, and for the 2001 controversy surrounding the selection of The Corrections for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen writes for The New Yorker magazine.
Franzen was born to an American mother and Swedish father,[5][6] in Western Springs, Illinois,[7] raised in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in German in 1981.[8] As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979-80 academic year with Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich program.[9] He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981-82.[10] From these experiences, he speaks fluent German. While struggling with his first novel, he briefly worked in the seismology laboratory at Harvard University.[11]
Fiction
Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch.[citation needed]
Strong Motion (1992) focuses on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life.
The Corrections
Franzen's The Corrections, a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.[12] The novel was also on the short list for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction[12] and was named a finalist for the 2002 PEN /Faulkner Award.[13] A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it lost to Empire Falls by Richard Russo.[14]
In September 2001, The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in How To Be Alone titled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however, The Oregonian printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry — I'm sorry that it's, uh — I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking. I see this as my book, my creation.[15]
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."[16][17]
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."[18]
Following the success of The Corrections and the publication of The Discomfort Zone and How to Be Alone, Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in The New Yorker: "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.[19]
On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an extract from Freedom, his novel in progress, in The New Yorker. The extract, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second extract — titled "Agreeable" — was published, also in The New Yorker.[20]
On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel.[21][22] Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "…material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."[22]
On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air to discuss Freedom in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.[23]
Freedom was the subject of a highly unusual "recall" in the United Kingdom starting in early October 2010. An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake. The publisher, HarperCollins initiated an exchange program, but thousands of books had been distributed by that time.[24]
While promoting the book Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King did so in 2000.[25] He discussed the implications of the Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England in October 2010.[26]
On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.[27] On December 6, 2010 he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.[28]
In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled "Perchance to Dream." Referencing manifestos written by Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe, among others, Franzen grappled with the novelist's role in an advanced media culture which seemed to no longer need the novel. In the end, Franzen rejects the goal of writing a great social novel about issues and ideas, in favor of focusing on the internal lives of characters and their emotions. Given the huge success of The Corrections, this essay offers a prescient look into Franzen's goals as both a literary and commercially-minded author.[29]
Since The Corrections Franzen has published How to Be Alone (2002), a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream", and The Discomfort Zone (2006), a memoir. How To Be Alone is essentially an apologia for reading, articulating Franzen's uncomfortable relationship with the place of fiction in contemporary society. It also probes the influence of his childhood and adolescence on his creative life, which is then further explored in The Discomfort Zone.
In September 2007, Franzen's translation of Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) was published. In his introduction, Franzen describes the Broadway musical version as "insipid" and "overpraised." In an interview with New York magazine, Franzen stated that he had in fact made the translation for Swarthmore College's theater department for $50 in 1986 and that it had sat in a drawer for 20 years since. After the Broadway show stirred up so much interest, Franzen said he was inspired to publish it because "I knew it was a good translation, better than anything else out there."[30]
Franzen published a social commentary on cell phones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space, I Just Called To Say I Love You (2008),[31] in the September/October, 2008 issue of "Technology Review", published by MIT.
Personal life
He married Valerie Cornell in 1982; they separated in 1994 and are now divorced.[32] Franzen now lives part of the year on the Upper East Side of New York City and part in Boulder Creek, California.[33]
In 2010, he attracted attention while on a visit to London when a literary event was stormed and his spectacles were whisked from his face, a ransom note for $100,000 deposited and a police chase initiated through the city.[34][35][36]
“Rules for Writing”
In February 2010, Franzen (along with writers including Richard Ford, Zadie Smith and Anne Enright) was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.[37] Franzen's rules ran as follows:
1.The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2.Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3.Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4.Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5.When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6.The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7.You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8.It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9.Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10.You have to love before you can be relentless.
Andrew Geoffrey "Andy" Kaufman (January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer, actor and performance artist. While often referred to as a comedian, Kaufman did not consider himself one.[1] He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, referring to himself instead as a "song-and-dance man". Elaborate hoaxes and pranks were major elements of his career.
Kaufman was born in New York City, on January 17, 1949, the first son of Janice (née Bernstein) and Stanley Kaufman. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family,[2] in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and began performing at age nine.[3] He attended the now defunct two-year Grahm Junior College,[4] in Boston, graduating in 1971. He then began performing stand-up comedy at various small clubs along the East Coast.
Career
Foreign Man and Mighty Mouse
Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as Foreign Man, who claimed to be from Caspiar (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea) and would appear on the stage of comedy clubs to play a recording of the theme from "Mighty Mouse" and lip-synch one line—"Here I come to save the day." He would proceed to tell a few jokes and perform a number of impersonations (Archie Bunker, Richard Nixon, et al.). Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the Mighty Mouse number was featured in the October 11, 1975 premiere, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the November 8 broadcast that same fall.[5]
Foreign Man would often try to impersonate a whole series of different celebrities, with the comedy arising from Foreign Man's obvious ineptitude at impersonation. For example, in his fake accent Kaufman would say to the audience, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States", and then in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." At some point in the performance, usually when the audience were entirely used to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, Foreign Man would announce, "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley," turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation which Presley himself described as his favorite.[6] Like Presley, he would take off his leather jacket and throw it into the audience, but Kaufman would then immediately ask for it back again. After, he would take a simple bow and say in his Foreign Man voice, "T'ank you veddy much!"
Latka
Main article: Latka Gravas
Kaufman first used a version of the Foreign Man character as Andy the Robot in the pilot for the sitcom Stick Around in 1977. The character was then changed into Latka Gravas, for ABC's Taxi sitcom, appearing in 79 of 114 episodes from 1978 to 1983.[7] The producers of Taxi had seen Andy's Foreign Man act and, according to producer Ed Weinberger, "We weren't considering Andy for the show before we saw him. Then we wrote a part for him." Bob Zmuda confirms this: "They basically were buying Andy's Foreign Man character for the Taxi character Latka."[8] Andy's long-time manager George Shapiro encouraged Andy to take the gig. "My feeling was that it would be a nice boost for his career...and he would be playing a character that he knew very well, the Foreign Man—this particular character speaks poor English in Taxi and his name is Latka Gravas."[9]
Kaufman disliked sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being in one. In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder, which allowed Kaufman to randomly portray other characters. In one episode, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like Alex Reiger, the main character played by Judd Hirsch. Another such recurring character played by Kaufman was the womanizing Vic Ferrari. His role did lead to two Golden Globe nominations, in 1979 and 1981.[10]
Taxi was an award-winning show with a large audience and Kaufman was widely recognized as Latka. On some occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's stage performances expecting to see him perform as Latka, and heckling him with demands when he did not. Kaufman would punish these audiences with the announcement that he was going to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The audience would laugh at this, not realizing that he was serious, and Kaufman would proceed to read the book to them, continuing despite audience members' departure. At a certain point, he would ask the audience if they wanted him to keep reading, or play a record. When the audience chose to hear the record, the record he cued up was a recording of him continuing to read The Great Gatsby from where he had left off.
Tony Clifton
Main article: Tony Clifton
Another well-known Kaufman character is Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer who began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Sometimes it was Kaufman performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda. For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. News programs interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act, with the mood turning ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up. Kaufman, Clifton insisted, was attempting to ruin Clifton's "good name" in order to make money and get famous.
As a requirement for Kaufman accepting the offer to star on Taxi, he insisted that Clifton be hired for a guest role on the show as if he were a real person, not a character. After throwing a tantrum on the set, Clifton was fired and escorted off of the studio lot by security guards. Much to Kaufman's delight, this incident was reported in the local newspapers. Paramount TV and producers James L. Brooks and Stan Daniels later released a statement that said that although Clifton was "no longer welcome on the set", his friend Andy Kaufman would continue in his role as Latka, which he did until the show ended its run in 1983.
Carnegie Hall "milk and cookies" show
At the beginning of an April 1979 performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman invited his "grandmother" to watch the show from a chair he had placed at the side of the stage. At the end of the show, she stood up, took her mask off and revealed to the audience that she was actually comedian Robin Williams in disguise. Kaufman also had an elderly woman (named Eleanor Cody Gould) appear to have a heart attack and die on stage, at which point he reappeared on stage wearing a Native American headdress and performed a dance over her body, seeming to revive her.
The performance is most famous for Kaufman ending the show by actually taking the entire audience, in twenty buses, out for milk and cookies. He invited anyone interested to meet him on the Staten Island Ferry the next morning, where the show continued. This kind of performance art is a hallmark of Kaufman's career. This was depicted in the biopic Man on the Moon; however, in the movie, it takes place after Kaufman was diagnosed with cancer, when in reality, it took place nearly four years earlier.
Andy's Funhouse aka The Andy Kaufman Special and The Andy Kaufman Show
The Taxi deal with ABC included giving Kaufman a television special/pilot. He came up with Andy's Funhouse, based on an old routine he had developed while in junior college. The special was taped in 1977 but did not air until August 1979, on ABC.[11] It featured most of Andy's famous gags, including Foreign Man/Latka and his Elvis Presley impersonation, as well as a host of unique segments (including a special appearance by children's television character Howdy Doody and the "Has-been Corner"). There also was a segment that included fake television screen static as part of the gag, which ABC executives were not comfortable with, fearing that viewers would mistake the static for broadcast problems and would change the channel - which was the comic element Kaufman wanted to present. Andy's Funhouse was written by Kaufman, Zmuda, and Mel Sherer, with music by Kaufman. In 1980 a very similar looking show would be filmed for PBS's SoundStage, called the The Andy Kaufman Show. It would feature a peanut gallery like Funhouse and is often confused with Andy's Funhouse. The show opens right in the middle of an interview Kaufman is doing in which he is laughing hysterically, and then he proceeds to thank the audience for watching and the credits roll. After this, opening credits do come on and the show has its "proper" beginning. This show is easy to confuse with Andy's Funhouse as they both feature "The Has-Been Corner" and Kaufman wears his "I Love Grandma" shirt in both shows among other similarities.
The Fridays incident
In 1981, Kaufman made three appearances on Fridays, a variety show on ABC that was similar to Saturday Night Live.[12] Kaufman's first appearance on the show proved to be memorable. During a sketch about four people out on a dinner date who excuse themselves to the restroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman broke character and refused to say his lines.
In response, cast member Michael Richards walked off camera and returned with a set of cue cards and dumped them on the table in front of Kaufman. Andy responded by splashing Richards with water. Co-producer Jack Burns stormed onto the stage, leading to a brawl on camera before the show abruptly cut away to commercial.[13] It was later revealed that this incident was a practical joke.[14]
Regardless, Kaufman appeared the following week in a videotaped apology to the home viewers. Later that year, Kaufman returned to host Fridays. At one point in the show, he invited a Lawrence Welk Show gospel and standards singer, Kathie Sullivan, on stage to sing a few gospel songs with him and announced that the two were engaged to be married, then talked to the audience about his newfound faith in Jesus (Kaufman was Jewish). That was also a hoax. Later, following a sketch about a drug-abusing pharmacist, Kaufman was supposed to introduce the band The Pretenders. Instead of introducing the band, he delivered a nervous speech about the harmfulness of drugs while the band stood behind him ready to play. After his speech, he informed the audience that he had talked for too long and had to go to a commercial.
Professional wrestling
Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the world in which they perform. Inspired by the theatricality of kayfabe, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World", taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him.
Kaufman initially approached then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner Vince McMahon, Sr. about bringing his act to the New York territory. McMahon found Kaufman's act too gimmicky and suggested to Kaufman that he try his luck in the Southern wrestling territories, where his gimmick might have more appeal.
Later, after a challenge from professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man — Lawler himself. Their ongoing feud, often featuring Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman. For some time after that, Kaufman appeared everywhere wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were worse than they were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.
Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were later revealed to have been staged, or a "work", as the two were actually friends. The truth about its being a "work" was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary, A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, aired on NBC in 1995. Coincidentally, Jim Carrey is the one who reveals the secret, and would later go on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler claimed he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident. Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King...Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair pretended that the injury was more severe than it was. He also said that Kaufman's explosion on Letterman was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.
Kaufman also appeared in the 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie with professional wrestling personality "Classy" Freddie Blassie, a parody of the art film My Dinner With Andre. The film was directed by Johnny Legend, who employed his sister Lynne Margulies as one of the girls who appears in the film. Margulies met Kaufman for the first time on camera, and they later became a couple, living together until Kaufman's death.
Appearances
Although Kaufman made a name for himself as a guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live, his first prime time appearances were several guest spots as the 'Foreign Man' on the "Dick Van Dyke Variety" Show in 1976. He also appeared four times on The Tonight Show[15] from 1976–1978, three times on The Midnight Special in 1972, 1977 and 1981.[16] In the 1977 episode, Kaufman performed a song called "I Trusted You" (which features only those three words, repeated over and over, as lyrics), while in 1981 he is shown sitting in the audience during Tony Clifton's act (although it was obvious Kaufman was not in the audience during the sketch).
His SNL appearances started with the inaugural October 11, 1975 show; he made 16 SNL appearances in all,[17] although his last two appearances were simply aired video-tapes and not live. He would do routines from his comedy act, such as the Mighty Mouse sing-along, Foreign Man character, the Elvis impersonation, etc. After he angered the audience with his female wrestling routine, in January 1983 Kaufman did make a pre-taped appearance (his 16th) on the show, where he asked the audience if he should ever appear on the show again, and said that he would honor the audience's decision and stay off the show if the vote was negative. SNL ran a phone vote, and close to 195,544 people voted to "Dump Andy" and approximately 169,186 people voted to "Keep Andy",[18] so Kaufman did not appear "live" but Saturday Night Live did air a tape of him thanking the 169,186 people who had voted "yes" for him to appear again, which could be considered a 17th appearance.
Though it was never made clear whether this was a gag, Kaufman did not appear on the show again. During the SNL episode with the Keep Andy/Dump Andy phone poll, many of the cast stated their admiration for Andy's work and read the "Keep Andy" number more clearly than the "Dump Andy" number.[19] After Eddie Murphy read both numbers, he said, "Now Andy Kaufman is a friend of mine. Keep that in mind when you call. I don't want to have to punch nobody in America in the face." Mary Gross read the "Dump Andy" number at a rate so fast that audiences were unable to catch it.[19] The final tally was read by Gary Kroeger to a cheering audience. As the credits rolled, announcer Don Pardo said, "This is Don Pardo saying, 'I voted for Andy Kaufman.'"
Kaufman made a number of appearances on the daytime The David Letterman Show in 1980, and eleven appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982-1983,[20] including one where he claimed to be homeless and begged the audience for money and one where he talked about his adopted children, who turned out to be three fully-grown black men.
He appeared twice on The Merv Griffin Show (1979–1980),[21] and once, in 1978 as a participant, on The Dating Game[22] under a presumed name and as a supposedly real contestant. He also made numerous guest spots on other television programs hosted by or starring celebrities like Johnny Cash (1979 Christmas special), Dick Van Dyke, Dinah Shore, Rodney Dangerfield, Cher, Dean Martin, Redd Foxx, Mike Douglas, Dick Clark, and Joe Franklin.[23]
He appeared in his first theatrical film God Told Me To in 1976, where he portrayed a murderous policeman. He also appeared in several others, including as a televangelist in the 1980 film In God We Tru$t.
Laurie Anderson worked alongside Andy Kaufman for a time in the 1970s, acting as a sort of straight woman in a number of his Manhattan and Coney Island performances. One of these performances included getting on a ride that people stand in and get spun around. After everyone was strapped in Kaufman would start saying how he did not want to be on the ride in a panicked tone and eventually cry. Anderson later described these performances in her 1995 album The Ugly One with the Jewels.
At Park West Theatre in Chicago on March 26, 1982, Kaufman performed stage hypnosis where he induced local DJ Steve Dahl to urinate while sitting in a large box. Other staged inductions included Bob Zmuda's childhood friend Joe Troiani mimicking the behavior of a pig and long-time friend Bill Karmia dressed as a police officer arresting Kaufman for inducing public nudity with a woman he had hypnotized.
Personal life
Kaufman never married. He was survived by his father[24] and daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 out of wedlock with a high-school girlfriend of Kaufman's, but later placed for adoption. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.[25]
In college, Kaufman learned Transcendental Meditation. According to a BBC article, Kaufman used Transcendental Meditation to build confidence and take his act to comedy clubs. For the rest of his life Kaufman meditated and performed yoga for three hours a day.[26] He trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in Majorca, Spain from February to June, 1971.[27]
Death
At Thanksgiving dinner with his family on Long Island in November 1983, several family members grew concerned over Kaufman's persistent coughing during the dinner, and openly expressed worry about it. Kaufman claimed to them that he had the cough for nearly a month, but also claimed that an initial visit to his doctor told him that nothing was wrong. After returning to Los Angeles, Kaufman consulted a physician where he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital for a series of medical tests and a few days later, he was diagnosed with a rare type of lung cancer. Despite his doctor's prognosis that there was no hope for recovery, he was committed to fighting the disease until his death. After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during his performances in January 1984, Kaufman acknowledged having an unspecified illness, which he hoped to cure with "natural medicine" including an all-fruit and vegetables diet, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had rapidly spread from his lungs to his brain. His last resort was "psychic surgery", a debunked procedure that includes the use of sleight of hand, performed in Baguio, Philippines, in March 1984. Kaufman died in a hospital in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984[28] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old. Because he kept the true nature of his illness a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt.
Kaufman allegedly told many people—including Bob Zmuda—that he wished to fake his own death prior to his actual death. This has caused some fans to believe Kaufman is still alive.[29] Kaufman himself purportedly claimed that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later, which would have been in 2004.[30]
The 1999 Jim Carrey film Man on the Moon leaves the question open-ended. "Tony Clifton" performed a year after Kaufman's death at The Comedy Store benefit in Kaufman's honor, with members of his entourage in attendance. Bob Zmuda has acknowledged "death hoax" rumors over the years quite tongue-in-cheek, admitting that Kaufman and he had discussed faking his death at times and that he seemed "obsessed with the idea", but he maintains the opinion that Kaufman truly did die and his death was not faked. Bob Zmuda claims he does not think he would be cruel enough to go this long without making contact with his family if he was still alive. His official website states that his death was not a hoax and he did die.[31]
During the 1990s, "Tony Clifton" made several appearances at LA nightclubs, prompting speculation that perhaps Kaufman was still alive and working under the makeup. Jim Carrey stated on the NBC special Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman that the Clifton character had been passed on by Kaufman to Bob Zmuda while he was still alive. Kaufman's death certificate is on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and is also available on the website The Smoking Gun.[24]
Kaufman was born in New York City, on January 17, 1949, the first son of Janice (née Bernstein) and Stanley Kaufman. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family,[2] in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and began performing at age nine.[3] He attended the now defunct two-year Grahm Junior College,[4] in Boston, graduating in 1971. He then began performing stand-up comedy at various small clubs along the East Coast.
Career
Foreign Man and Mighty Mouse
Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as Foreign Man, who claimed to be from Caspiar (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea) and would appear on the stage of comedy clubs to play a recording of the theme from "Mighty Mouse" and lip-synch one line—"Here I come to save the day." He would proceed to tell a few jokes and perform a number of impersonations (Archie Bunker, Richard Nixon, et al.). Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the Mighty Mouse number was featured in the October 11, 1975 premiere, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the November 8 broadcast that same fall.[5]
Foreign Man would often try to impersonate a whole series of different celebrities, with the comedy arising from Foreign Man's obvious ineptitude at impersonation. For example, in his fake accent Kaufman would say to the audience, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States", and then in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." At some point in the performance, usually when the audience were entirely used to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, Foreign Man would announce, "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley," turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation which Presley himself described as his favorite.[6] Like Presley, he would take off his leather jacket and throw it into the audience, but Kaufman would then immediately ask for it back again. After, he would take a simple bow and say in his Foreign Man voice, "T'ank you veddy much!"
Latka
Main article: Latka Gravas
Kaufman first used a version of the Foreign Man character as Andy the Robot in the pilot for the sitcom Stick Around in 1977. The character was then changed into Latka Gravas, for ABC's Taxi sitcom, appearing in 79 of 114 episodes from 1978 to 1983.[7] The producers of Taxi had seen Andy's Foreign Man act and, according to producer Ed Weinberger, "We weren't considering Andy for the show before we saw him. Then we wrote a part for him." Bob Zmuda confirms this: "They basically were buying Andy's Foreign Man character for the Taxi character Latka."[8] Andy's long-time manager George Shapiro encouraged Andy to take the gig. "My feeling was that it would be a nice boost for his career...and he would be playing a character that he knew very well, the Foreign Man—this particular character speaks poor English in Taxi and his name is Latka Gravas."[9]
Kaufman disliked sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being in one. In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder, which allowed Kaufman to randomly portray other characters. In one episode, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like Alex Reiger, the main character played by Judd Hirsch. Another such recurring character played by Kaufman was the womanizing Vic Ferrari. His role did lead to two Golden Globe nominations, in 1979 and 1981.[10]
Taxi was an award-winning show with a large audience and Kaufman was widely recognized as Latka. On some occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's stage performances expecting to see him perform as Latka, and heckling him with demands when he did not. Kaufman would punish these audiences with the announcement that he was going to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The audience would laugh at this, not realizing that he was serious, and Kaufman would proceed to read the book to them, continuing despite audience members' departure. At a certain point, he would ask the audience if they wanted him to keep reading, or play a record. When the audience chose to hear the record, the record he cued up was a recording of him continuing to read The Great Gatsby from where he had left off.
Tony Clifton
Main article: Tony Clifton
Another well-known Kaufman character is Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer who began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Sometimes it was Kaufman performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda. For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. News programs interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act, with the mood turning ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up. Kaufman, Clifton insisted, was attempting to ruin Clifton's "good name" in order to make money and get famous.
As a requirement for Kaufman accepting the offer to star on Taxi, he insisted that Clifton be hired for a guest role on the show as if he were a real person, not a character. After throwing a tantrum on the set, Clifton was fired and escorted off of the studio lot by security guards. Much to Kaufman's delight, this incident was reported in the local newspapers. Paramount TV and producers James L. Brooks and Stan Daniels later released a statement that said that although Clifton was "no longer welcome on the set", his friend Andy Kaufman would continue in his role as Latka, which he did until the show ended its run in 1983.
Carnegie Hall "milk and cookies" show
At the beginning of an April 1979 performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman invited his "grandmother" to watch the show from a chair he had placed at the side of the stage. At the end of the show, she stood up, took her mask off and revealed to the audience that she was actually comedian Robin Williams in disguise. Kaufman also had an elderly woman (named Eleanor Cody Gould) appear to have a heart attack and die on stage, at which point he reappeared on stage wearing a Native American headdress and performed a dance over her body, seeming to revive her.
The performance is most famous for Kaufman ending the show by actually taking the entire audience, in twenty buses, out for milk and cookies. He invited anyone interested to meet him on the Staten Island Ferry the next morning, where the show continued. This kind of performance art is a hallmark of Kaufman's career. This was depicted in the biopic Man on the Moon; however, in the movie, it takes place after Kaufman was diagnosed with cancer, when in reality, it took place nearly four years earlier.
Andy's Funhouse aka The Andy Kaufman Special and The Andy Kaufman Show
The Taxi deal with ABC included giving Kaufman a television special/pilot. He came up with Andy's Funhouse, based on an old routine he had developed while in junior college. The special was taped in 1977 but did not air until August 1979, on ABC.[11] It featured most of Andy's famous gags, including Foreign Man/Latka and his Elvis Presley impersonation, as well as a host of unique segments (including a special appearance by children's television character Howdy Doody and the "Has-been Corner"). There also was a segment that included fake television screen static as part of the gag, which ABC executives were not comfortable with, fearing that viewers would mistake the static for broadcast problems and would change the channel - which was the comic element Kaufman wanted to present. Andy's Funhouse was written by Kaufman, Zmuda, and Mel Sherer, with music by Kaufman. In 1980 a very similar looking show would be filmed for PBS's SoundStage, called the The Andy Kaufman Show. It would feature a peanut gallery like Funhouse and is often confused with Andy's Funhouse. The show opens right in the middle of an interview Kaufman is doing in which he is laughing hysterically, and then he proceeds to thank the audience for watching and the credits roll. After this, opening credits do come on and the show has its "proper" beginning. This show is easy to confuse with Andy's Funhouse as they both feature "The Has-Been Corner" and Kaufman wears his "I Love Grandma" shirt in both shows among other similarities.
The Fridays incident
In 1981, Kaufman made three appearances on Fridays, a variety show on ABC that was similar to Saturday Night Live.[12] Kaufman's first appearance on the show proved to be memorable. During a sketch about four people out on a dinner date who excuse themselves to the restroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman broke character and refused to say his lines.
In response, cast member Michael Richards walked off camera and returned with a set of cue cards and dumped them on the table in front of Kaufman. Andy responded by splashing Richards with water. Co-producer Jack Burns stormed onto the stage, leading to a brawl on camera before the show abruptly cut away to commercial.[13] It was later revealed that this incident was a practical joke.[14]
Regardless, Kaufman appeared the following week in a videotaped apology to the home viewers. Later that year, Kaufman returned to host Fridays. At one point in the show, he invited a Lawrence Welk Show gospel and standards singer, Kathie Sullivan, on stage to sing a few gospel songs with him and announced that the two were engaged to be married, then talked to the audience about his newfound faith in Jesus (Kaufman was Jewish). That was also a hoax. Later, following a sketch about a drug-abusing pharmacist, Kaufman was supposed to introduce the band The Pretenders. Instead of introducing the band, he delivered a nervous speech about the harmfulness of drugs while the band stood behind him ready to play. After his speech, he informed the audience that he had talked for too long and had to go to a commercial.
Professional wrestling
Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the world in which they perform. Inspired by the theatricality of kayfabe, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World", taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him.
Kaufman initially approached then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner Vince McMahon, Sr. about bringing his act to the New York territory. McMahon found Kaufman's act too gimmicky and suggested to Kaufman that he try his luck in the Southern wrestling territories, where his gimmick might have more appeal.
Later, after a challenge from professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man — Lawler himself. Their ongoing feud, often featuring Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman. For some time after that, Kaufman appeared everywhere wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were worse than they were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.
Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were later revealed to have been staged, or a "work", as the two were actually friends. The truth about its being a "work" was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary, A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, aired on NBC in 1995. Coincidentally, Jim Carrey is the one who reveals the secret, and would later go on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler claimed he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident. Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King...Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair pretended that the injury was more severe than it was. He also said that Kaufman's explosion on Letterman was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.
Kaufman also appeared in the 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie with professional wrestling personality "Classy" Freddie Blassie, a parody of the art film My Dinner With Andre. The film was directed by Johnny Legend, who employed his sister Lynne Margulies as one of the girls who appears in the film. Margulies met Kaufman for the first time on camera, and they later became a couple, living together until Kaufman's death.
Appearances
Although Kaufman made a name for himself as a guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live, his first prime time appearances were several guest spots as the 'Foreign Man' on the "Dick Van Dyke Variety" Show in 1976. He also appeared four times on The Tonight Show[15] from 1976–1978, three times on The Midnight Special in 1972, 1977 and 1981.[16] In the 1977 episode, Kaufman performed a song called "I Trusted You" (which features only those three words, repeated over and over, as lyrics), while in 1981 he is shown sitting in the audience during Tony Clifton's act (although it was obvious Kaufman was not in the audience during the sketch).
His SNL appearances started with the inaugural October 11, 1975 show; he made 16 SNL appearances in all,[17] although his last two appearances were simply aired video-tapes and not live. He would do routines from his comedy act, such as the Mighty Mouse sing-along, Foreign Man character, the Elvis impersonation, etc. After he angered the audience with his female wrestling routine, in January 1983 Kaufman did make a pre-taped appearance (his 16th) on the show, where he asked the audience if he should ever appear on the show again, and said that he would honor the audience's decision and stay off the show if the vote was negative. SNL ran a phone vote, and close to 195,544 people voted to "Dump Andy" and approximately 169,186 people voted to "Keep Andy",[18] so Kaufman did not appear "live" but Saturday Night Live did air a tape of him thanking the 169,186 people who had voted "yes" for him to appear again, which could be considered a 17th appearance.
Though it was never made clear whether this was a gag, Kaufman did not appear on the show again. During the SNL episode with the Keep Andy/Dump Andy phone poll, many of the cast stated their admiration for Andy's work and read the "Keep Andy" number more clearly than the "Dump Andy" number.[19] After Eddie Murphy read both numbers, he said, "Now Andy Kaufman is a friend of mine. Keep that in mind when you call. I don't want to have to punch nobody in America in the face." Mary Gross read the "Dump Andy" number at a rate so fast that audiences were unable to catch it.[19] The final tally was read by Gary Kroeger to a cheering audience. As the credits rolled, announcer Don Pardo said, "This is Don Pardo saying, 'I voted for Andy Kaufman.'"
Kaufman made a number of appearances on the daytime The David Letterman Show in 1980, and eleven appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982-1983,[20] including one where he claimed to be homeless and begged the audience for money and one where he talked about his adopted children, who turned out to be three fully-grown black men.
He appeared twice on The Merv Griffin Show (1979–1980),[21] and once, in 1978 as a participant, on The Dating Game[22] under a presumed name and as a supposedly real contestant. He also made numerous guest spots on other television programs hosted by or starring celebrities like Johnny Cash (1979 Christmas special), Dick Van Dyke, Dinah Shore, Rodney Dangerfield, Cher, Dean Martin, Redd Foxx, Mike Douglas, Dick Clark, and Joe Franklin.[23]
He appeared in his first theatrical film God Told Me To in 1976, where he portrayed a murderous policeman. He also appeared in several others, including as a televangelist in the 1980 film In God We Tru$t.
Laurie Anderson worked alongside Andy Kaufman for a time in the 1970s, acting as a sort of straight woman in a number of his Manhattan and Coney Island performances. One of these performances included getting on a ride that people stand in and get spun around. After everyone was strapped in Kaufman would start saying how he did not want to be on the ride in a panicked tone and eventually cry. Anderson later described these performances in her 1995 album The Ugly One with the Jewels.
At Park West Theatre in Chicago on March 26, 1982, Kaufman performed stage hypnosis where he induced local DJ Steve Dahl to urinate while sitting in a large box. Other staged inductions included Bob Zmuda's childhood friend Joe Troiani mimicking the behavior of a pig and long-time friend Bill Karmia dressed as a police officer arresting Kaufman for inducing public nudity with a woman he had hypnotized.
Personal life
Kaufman never married. He was survived by his father[24] and daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 out of wedlock with a high-school girlfriend of Kaufman's, but later placed for adoption. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.[25]
In college, Kaufman learned Transcendental Meditation. According to a BBC article, Kaufman used Transcendental Meditation to build confidence and take his act to comedy clubs. For the rest of his life Kaufman meditated and performed yoga for three hours a day.[26] He trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in Majorca, Spain from February to June, 1971.[27]
Death
At Thanksgiving dinner with his family on Long Island in November 1983, several family members grew concerned over Kaufman's persistent coughing during the dinner, and openly expressed worry about it. Kaufman claimed to them that he had the cough for nearly a month, but also claimed that an initial visit to his doctor told him that nothing was wrong. After returning to Los Angeles, Kaufman consulted a physician where he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital for a series of medical tests and a few days later, he was diagnosed with a rare type of lung cancer. Despite his doctor's prognosis that there was no hope for recovery, he was committed to fighting the disease until his death. After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during his performances in January 1984, Kaufman acknowledged having an unspecified illness, which he hoped to cure with "natural medicine" including an all-fruit and vegetables diet, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had rapidly spread from his lungs to his brain. His last resort was "psychic surgery", a debunked procedure that includes the use of sleight of hand, performed in Baguio, Philippines, in March 1984. Kaufman died in a hospital in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984[28] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old. Because he kept the true nature of his illness a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt.
Kaufman allegedly told many people—including Bob Zmuda—that he wished to fake his own death prior to his actual death. This has caused some fans to believe Kaufman is still alive.[29] Kaufman himself purportedly claimed that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later, which would have been in 2004.[30]
The 1999 Jim Carrey film Man on the Moon leaves the question open-ended. "Tony Clifton" performed a year after Kaufman's death at The Comedy Store benefit in Kaufman's honor, with members of his entourage in attendance. Bob Zmuda has acknowledged "death hoax" rumors over the years quite tongue-in-cheek, admitting that Kaufman and he had discussed faking his death at times and that he seemed "obsessed with the idea", but he maintains the opinion that Kaufman truly did die and his death was not faked. Bob Zmuda claims he does not think he would be cruel enough to go this long without making contact with his family if he was still alive. His official website states that his death was not a hoax and he did die.[31]
During the 1990s, "Tony Clifton" made several appearances at LA nightclubs, prompting speculation that perhaps Kaufman was still alive and working under the makeup. Jim Carrey stated on the NBC special Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman that the Clifton character had been passed on by Kaufman to Bob Zmuda while he was still alive. Kaufman's death certificate is on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and is also available on the website The Smoking Gun.[24]
Martin Heidegger (Meßkirch, 26 de Setembro de 1889 — Friburgo, 26 de Maio de 1976) foi um filósofo alemão.
É seguramente um dos pensadores fundamentais século XX - ao lado de Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Adorno e Michel Foucault - quer pela recolocação do problema do ser e pela refundação da Ontologia, quer pela importância que atribui ao conhecimento da tradição filosófica e cultural. Influenciou muitos outros filósofos, dentre os quais Jean-Paul Sartre.
Nascido na pequena cidade de Meßkirch, distrito de Baden, no interior da Alemanha. Inicialmente quis ser padre e chegou mesmo a estudar em um seminário. Depois, estudou na Universidade de Friburgo, com Edmund Husserl, o fundador da fenomenologia.
Em 1916, como tese de habilitação ao ensino universitário, publicou A Doutrina das Categorias e do Significado em Duns Escoto. Mais tarde descobrir-se-ia que a obra de Escoto considerada por Heidegger, isto é, a Gramática Especulativa não era de Duns Escoto. Mas isso não tinha muita relevância no pensamento de Heidegger, já que o seu trabalho, com os interesses metafísicos e teológicos que dominam, é mais teórico do que histórico.
Nesse meio tempo Husserl foi chamado a ensinar em Freiburg e Heidegger o seguiu como assistente. Professor por alguns anos na Universidade de Harburgo, em 1929 Heidegger sucedeu Husserl na cátedra de filosofia em Friburgo, dando sua aula inaugural sobre O que é a Metafísica?. Desse mesmo ano é o ensaio Sobre a Essência do Fundamento, bem como o livro Kant e o Problema da Metafísica.
Em 1927, porém, saíra o trabalho fundamental de Heidegger, Ser e Tempo. A obra seria seguida de uma segunda parte, que, no entanto, não apareceu, já que os resultados alcançados na primeira parte impediam o seu desenvolvimento. Ser e Tempo é dedicado a Husserl, que posteriormente não aprovou a obra, o que ocasionou o rompimento entre ambos. Heidegger, no entanto, afirmava trabalhar com o método fenomenológico.
Heidegger inscreveu-se no partido Nazi (NSDAP) em 1 de Maio de 1933 (ano da chegada ao poder de Adolf Hitler), tendo posteriormente sido nomeado reitor da Universidade de Freiburg, pronunciando o discurso A Auto-afirmação da Universidade Alemã. Porém, pouco depois se demitiu do cargo de reitor, se colocando contra a perseguição, de cunho anti-semita, a professores da universidade.
Martin Heidegger teve como aluna a judia Hannah Arendt, que se tornou também uma importante filósofa do século XX, com quem se envolveu amorosamente.
Heidegger considerava o seu método fenomenológico e hermenêutico. Ambos os conceitos referem a intenção de dirigir a atenção (a circunvisão) para o trazer à luz daquilo que na maior parte das vezes se oculta naquilo que na maior parte das vezes se mostra, mas que é precisamente o que se manifesta nisso que se mostra. Assim, o trabalho hermenêutico visa interpretar o que se mostra pondo a lume isso que se manifesta aí mas que, no início e na maioria das vezes, não se deixa ver.
O método vai directamente ao fenómeno, procedendo à sua análise, pondo a claro o modo como da sua manifestação. Heidegger afirma que esta metodologia corresponde a um modelo kantiano, ou coperniciano da colocação ou projecção da perspectiva. Neste sentido, a sua metodologia operava uma inflexão do ponto de vista, na medida em que o foco deveria ser desviado do dasein para o ser. Esta inflexão focaliza os modos de ser do ente, correspondendo a uma inversão da ontologia tradicional.
Além da sua relação com a fenomenologia, a influência de Heidegger foi igualmente importante para o existencialismo e desconstrutivismo.
Conceitos fundamentais
É habitual dividir a produção filosófica de Heidegger em duas partes, uma até ao final da década de vinte, outra a partir daí. Por vezes considera-se também uma terceira anterior à produção de O Conceito de Tempo (conferência proferida em 1924, mas publicada apenas em 1983, em Francês). Assim é comum falar-se do primeiro ou do segundo Heidegger, conforme se faz referência às suas produções anteriores ou posteriores ao seu livro Da essência da Verdade, escrito em 1930, embora a publicação seja de 1943. Gianni Vattimo fala de três momentos da filosofia de Heidegger (ver Introdução a Heidegger, Tradução João Gama, Instituto Piaget, 10ed., 1996).
A divisão da filosofia de Heidegger em momentos não é pacífica. Há quem recuse a divisão, defendendo a continuidade do seu pensamento.
O ponto de partida do pensamento de Heidegger, principal representante alemão da filosofia existencial, é o problema do sentido do ser. Heidegger aborda a questão tomando como exemplo o ser humano, que se caracteriza precisamente por se interrogar a esse respeito. O homem está especialmente mediado por seu passado: o ser do homem é um "ser que caminha para a morte" e sua relação com o mundo concretiza-se a partir dos conceitos de preocupação, angústia, conhecimento e complexo de culpa. O homem deve tentar "saltar", fugindo de sua condição cotidiana para atingir seu verdadeiro "eu".
As bases de sua filosofia existencial foram expostas em 1927, na obra inacabada Ser e Tempo, 1927, publicada em Marburgo, que o tornou célebre fora dos meios universitários. Oriundo de uma família humilde, Heidegger pôde completar sua formação primária graças a uma bolsa eclesiástica, que lhe permitiu também iniciar estudos de teologia e de filosofia. Profundamente influenciado pelo estudioso de fenomenologia Edmund Husserl, de quem foi assistente após a Primeira Guerra Mundial (até 1923), começou então seus estudos no seio da corrente existencialista.
Embora sempre tenha vivido em Friburgo, exceto nos cinco anos em que foi professor em Marburgo (recusou uma proposta para Berlim), cedo se tornou um dos filósofos mais conhecidos e influentes, influência essa que se estendeu mesmo à moderna teologia de Karl Rahner ou Rudolf K. Bultman. Sua disponibilidade para colaborar com o regime nazista, após a tomada de poder por Hitler, em 1933, aceitando o lugar de reitor em substituição a outro vetado pelos nazistas, abalou seu prestígio. Também contribuiu para isso o fato de equiparar o "serviço do saber" na escola superior ao serviço militar e funcional. Em 1946, as autoridades francesas de ocupação retiraram-lhe a docência, que lhe foi restituída em 1951. Outras importantes obras suas são Introdução à Metafísica, 1953, Que Significa Pensar?, 1964, e Fenomenologia e Teologia, 1970. A obra completa de Heidegger foi editada na Alemanha em 70 volumes.
Dasein
Ainda assim, até ao final da década de trinta, a leitura da filosofia de Heidegger estrutura-se sobre conceitos como Dasein (o ser-aí ou o ser-no-mundo), morte, angústia ou decisão. Como entroncamento central de toda a sua fenomenologia encontra-se o conceito de Jeweiligkeit: ser-a-cada-momento ou de-cada-vez (Respectividade). Esta noção é fundamental para se compreender a de Dasein, que não deve ser sem mais vertida para Ser humano, homem, nem mesmo para Realidade Humana (ver, a este respeito, A Carta sobre o Humanismo- para mais pormenores sobre a difícil tarefa da tradução do termo veja-se o artigo correspondente, Dasein).
O horizonte de fundo de toda a sua investigação é o do sentido de Ser, os modos e as maneiras de enunciação e expressão de ser. Nesta medida o importante está em alcançar a colocação correcta da questão pelo sentido de ser. Assim, ele põe a claro a desvirtuação dessa investigação ao longo da tradição que sempre se prendeu a uma compreensão ôntica, dominada pelo ente, em vez de se dedicar adequadamente ao estudo do ser. Esta notificação deve indicar-nos que não apenas o ente é, mas que o ser tem modos: há modos de ser. E cada ente deve ser abordado a partir do modo adequado de o abordar, o que deve ser esclarecido a partir do modo de ser próprio do ente que em cada caso está em estudo.
O Dasein, pela sua especificidade, inicia qualquer interrogação. O Dasein é o ente que em cada caso propriamente questiona e investiga. É também o Dasein que detém a possibilidade de enunciar o ser, pois é ele que tem o poder da proposição em geral. Daí que na questão acerca do sentido de ser seja fundamental começar por abordar o ser deste ente particular. E tem que ser o próprio Dasein a fazer isso, tem que ser ele próprio a mostrá-lo, a partir duma análise fenomenológica esclarecida (hermenêutica).
Neokantismo
Ver artigo principal: Neokantismo
Algumas obras de Heidegger revestem-se de inspiração kantiana, quer pelo método crítico que os rege, quer pelos seus resultados, quer pela escolha dos temas. Regra geral considera-se que as obras anteriores a Ser e Tempo são de teor kantiano. Esta fase do seu pensamento constitui para alguns estudiosos o primeiro momento da sua filosofia, marcado pela influência de Kant e pela pujança fenomenológica. Apesar das reservas dos seguidores da sua metodologia, Heidegger tende a ser aproximado ao movimento existencialista. Esta fase é aquela que mais facilmente se relaciona com este movimento.
A tese de doutoramento sobre A teoria do juízo no psicologismo (1913), a tese de docência acerca d'A doutrina das categorias e do significado em Duns Escoto (1916) e o tratado A História do Conceito de Tempo, também conhecido como Conceito de Tempo em Historiografia (1914), são consensualmente aceites como (neo)kantianas. Estas obras, dentro de uma terminologia e temática próprias do Neokantismo, abordam problemas que o extravazam e já não podem ser resolvidas nas estritas fronteiras kantianas.
A facticidade da existência, que viria a fazer parte da terminologia de Ser e Tempo, torna impraticável a posição de um sujeito do conhecimento como sujeito puro que se supõe na reflexão de tipo transcendental. A consciência implica uma temporalidade irredutível ao tempo físico, estritamente métrico ou cronológico. Esta temática torna-se o cerne da sua lição inaugural, na Faculdade de Teologia da Universidade de Marburgo, A História do Conceito de Tempo.
Husserl
Nos escritos de Husserl, na formulação conhecida até 1920, Heidegger podia encontrar já uma novidade radical relativamente ao Neokantismo. Este privilegiava a ciência e aspirava para a Filosofia uma linguagem igualmente rígida e estrita. Para Husserl, o acto de cognição resolvia-se na intuição eidética (Anschauung). O acto cognitivo não podia assim ser limitado ao conhecimento científico, pois trata-se dum encontrar as coisas.
O ir às coisas elas mesmas husserliano ficou conhecido para sempre: trata-se dum encontro com as coisas em carne e osso. Esta concepção já não entende o fenómeno em oposição à coisa em si ou ao númeno, mas como manifestação positiva da própria essência da coisa, por assim dizer (veja-se a este respeito H. G. Gadamer, Die phänomenologische Bewegung em Philosophisce Rundschau 1963, pp. 19-20). Esta posição saía da matriz neokantiana e dos limites do transcendentalismo.
Fenomenologia
Heidegger encontra na fenomenologia, na forma que tinha à época, nas obras de Husserl até então publicadas, um mundo em pleno desenvolvimento. Husserl afirmava que "a Fenomenologia somos eu e Heidegger".
A Fenomenologia recebe assim influência de Heidegger que lhe inculca alguns dos seus problemas e temas centrais, tais como a Lebenswelt. A influência é, portanto, mútua. Nesta altura Heidegger recebe também vigorosas influências provenientes da segunda edição de Kierkegaard e de Dostoievski, ao mesmo tempo que vê surgir o interesse por Hegel e Schelling por todo o meio académico alemão. As poesias de Rilke e de Trakl são outras fontes de inspiração. Nietzsche, influência e preocupação maior dos anos que vão de 1935 a 1943, está ainda, entre 1910 e 1916, longe do seu pensamento.
A esta altura Heidegger encontra-se principalmente ocupado na interpretação de Dilthey e Kierkegaard.
Dilthey
Dilthey ocupará um lugar central em Ser e Tempo. O pensamento dele e o do conde de Yorck têm o sentido de mostrar que a historicidade só se pode fundamentar se fundeada numa recolocação do problema do ser. Em permanente diálogo com Duns Escoto começam-se a delinear em Heidegger as linhas mestras que haveriam de produzir Ser e Tempo: o problema da historicidade é um problema da filosofia da vida. São precisamente os fenómenos da historicidade e da vida que instam à recolocação do problema do ser.
Nesta envolvência instala-se essa preocupação fundamental com a dinâmica existencial. É nesta perspectiva que Kierkegaard adquire uma relevância importante.
Kierkegaard
Para Heidegger, para os heideggereanos e, de facto, para a maior parte dos existencialistas, Kierkegaard é um pensador que enunciou explicitamente o problema da existência. Contudo, Heidegger considera que a colocação do problema não remanesceu existencialmente, mas que, pelo contrário, permaneceu geralmente a um nível existenciário ou ôntico.
A formação do pensamento que levaria ao Ser e Tempo encontraria ainda contributos de São Paulo, de Lutero e de Calvino. No semestre de Inverno do ano escolar de 1919-1920, Heidegger profere um dissertação em jeito de discurso sobre os Fundamentos da mística medieval e, no ano seguinte, um de Introdução à fenomenologia da religião.
No semestre de verão de 1921 surge um discurso intitulado S. Agostinho e o neoplatonismo. Isto numa época em que as suas preocupações estão centradas na problemática da temporalidade com o estudo de Kierkegaard a fornecer-lhe novos horizontes, e Heidegger traçava novos planos teóricos rasgando com o esquema da ontologia clássica que o próprio Kierkegaard havia deixado intacto, bem como com a estrutura metafísica helénica preservada pelo neoplatonismo e adoptada por Aurélio Agostinho.
Em 1947, Heidegger respondeu pessoalmente a uma carta enviada pelo psiquiatra suíço Medard Boss pedindo esclarecimentos sobre suas idéias filosóficas.
Iniciaram um processo de troca de correspondência e visitas que se prolongou por doze anos e frutificou na iniciativa de Boss em promover a realização de uma série de encontros com a participação aberta para alunos e colegas psiquiatras, os Seminários de Zollikon, realizados entre 1959 e 1969.
Considerados fundamentais na concepção e conceituação da Daseinsanalyse, nestes seminários discutiram as possibilidades de integração da ontologia e da fenomenologia de Heidegger à teoria e práxis da medicina, psicologia, psiquiatria e psicoterapia.
Os protocolos destes seminários e as correspondências trocadas por Heidegger e Boss foram publicados na Alemanha em 1987. Heidegger também contribuiu e participou da edição da obra de Boss "Existential Foundations of Medicine and Psychology", publicada em 1979, texto que advoga uma fundamentação existencial para a medicina e para a psicologia.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (pronounced /ˈdɒdsən/ dod-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ karr-əl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergymen. His great-grandfather, also Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become a bishop. His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars, when his two sons were hardly more than babies. His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.[1]
The elder of these sons — yet another Charles — was Carroll's father. He reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to Rugby School, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827 and became a country parson.[2]
Young Charles' father was an active and highly conservative clergyman of the Anglican church who later became Archdeacon of Richmond[3] and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the Anglican church. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of Newman and the Tractarian movement, and did his best to instill such views in his children. Young Charles was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his father's values and with the Anglican church as a whole.[4]
Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury near Warrington, Cheshire, the eldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half-year-old marriage. Eight more children were to follow. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.
Education
Home Life
During his early youth, young Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer — a condition shared by his siblings — that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At age twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) at nearby Richmond.
Rugby
In 1846, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently less happy, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place:
I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.[5]
Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby", observed R.B. Mayor, the Mathematics master.[5]
Oxford
He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval that remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" — perhaps meningitis or a stroke — at the age of forty-seven.
His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he received a First in Honours Mathematics, and was shortly thereafter nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend, Canon Edward Pusey. A little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.[6]
Character and appearance
Health challenges
The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender, and had curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life.[7]
The stammer has always been a potent part of the conceptions of Dodgson; it is part of the belief that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea.[8] Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; it is said he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often-repeated, for which no firsthand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but that this was a reference to his stammer is simply speculation.[6]
Although Dodgson's stammer troubled him, it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. At a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well-equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.[7]
Social connections
In the interim between his early published writing and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among other artists. He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well — it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that convinced him to submit the work for publication.[7][9]
Politics, religion and philosophy
In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as a Tory who was "awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors." [10] The Revd W. Tuckwell in his Reminiscences of Oxford (1900) regarded him as "austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical reverie, watchfully tenacious of his dignity, stiffly conservative in political, theological, social theory, his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape." [11] However, Dodgson also expressed interest in philosophies and religions that seem at odds with this diagnosis. For example, he was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research[12] and he based the entirety of his last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, on certain aspects of Theosophy.[13] It has been argued by the proponents of the 'Carroll Myth' that these factors require a reconsideration of Gardner's diagnosis, and that perhaps, Dodgson's true outlook was more complex than previously believed (see 'the Carroll Myth' below).
Dodgson wrote some studies of various philosophical arguments. In 1895, he developed a philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes of the philosophical journal Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later, in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled Practical Tortoise Raising.[14]
Artistic activities
Literature
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, both contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855.[7] Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived, La Guida di Bragia.[15]
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll." This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.[2]
In the same year, 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life and, over the following years, greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife, Lorina, and their children, particularly the three sisters: Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. He was for many years widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. This was given some apparent substance by the fact the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out her name, and that there are many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been pointed out that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child,[16][17] and frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and no one has ever suggested this means any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.[17]
Though information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), it does seem clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips accompanied by an adult friend[18] to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.[19]
It was on one such expedition, on 4 July 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.[19]
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier.[9] The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.[20][21] Dodgson vehemently denies this story, commenting "...It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred";[22] and it is unlikely for other reasons: as T.B. Strong comments in a Times article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify [the] author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works".[23][24] He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.[9]
Late in 1871, a sequel — Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There — was published. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.[25]) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that lasted some years.[9]
The Hunting of the Snark
In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of tradesmen, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature. The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.[9]
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.[9]
A recent study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling[26] exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls, though this may be a highly distorted figure as approximately 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing,[27] so any firm conclusions are difficult. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, and trees. His studies of nude children were long presumed lost, but six have since surfaced, five of which have been published and are available online.[28] His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden, because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.[18]
He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.[9]
Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He reported that he stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was difficult (he used the wet collodion process) and commercial photographers (who started using the dry plate process in the 1870s) took pictures more quickly. [29]
With the advent of Modernism, tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s.
Inventions
To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.[30][31]
Another invention is a writing tablet called the nyctograph for use at night that allowed for note-taking in the dark; thus eliminating the trouble of getting out of bed and striking a light when one wakes with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.
Among the games he devised outside of logic there are a number of word games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He also appears to have invented, or at least certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first); a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.[9]
Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociam (a type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation;[32] more nearly fair elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the college common room he worked in later in life, which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip for things like the fastening of envelopes or mounting things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.[9]
Mathematical work
Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra, mathematical logic and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books which he signed with his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. He worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, an occupation that gave him some financial security.
Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. It achieved nowhere near the success of the Alice books. Its intricacy was apparently not appreciated by the contemporary readers. The reviews and its sales, only 13,000 copies, were disappointing.[33][34]
The only occasion on which (as far as is known) he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867, which he recounts in his "Russian Journal" which was first commercially published in 1935.[35]
He died on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts" in Guildford, of pneumonia following influenza. He was 2 weeks away from turning 66 years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.[9]
Controversies and mysteries
The 'Carroll Myth'
The accepted view of Dodgson's biography has received a major challenge recently by a group of scholars, notably Hugues Lebailly and Karoline Leach and, latterly, Sherry L. Ackerman, John Tufail, Douglas Nickel and others, who argue that what they term the 'Carroll Myth' has wildly distorted biographical perception of his life and his work. Leach's book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, in particular has raised a considerable amount of controversy. In brief they claim:
In general terms Dodgson's life has been simplified and 'infantilised' by a combination of inaccurate biography and the longstanding unavailability of key evidence, which allowed legends to proliferate unchecked.
by the time the evidence did become available the 'mythic' image of the man had become so embedded in scholastic and popular thinking it remained unquestioned, despite the fact the evidence failed to support it.
if the evidence is examined dispassionately it shows many of the most famous legends about the man (e.g. his 'pedophilia', and his exclusive adoration of small girls) are untrue, or at least grossly simplified.[36]
In more detail, Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child-photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child-nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron, made them as a matter of course. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material. Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th or 21st century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was in fact a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time.
Leach's reappraisal of Dodgson focused in particular on his controversial sexuality. She argues that the allegations of pedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea, fostered by Dodgson's various biographers, that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth".[37] She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several scandalous (by the social standards of his time) relationships with them. She also pointed to the fact that many of those he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties.[38] She argues that suggestions of pedophilia evolved only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls. Similarly, Leach traces the claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14 to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed.[39]
The concept of the Carroll Myth has produced polarised reactions from Carroll scholars. In 2004 Contrariwise, the Association for new Lewis Carroll studies.[40] was established, and scholars such as Carolyn Sigler and Cristopher Hollingsworth have joined the ranks of those calling for a major reassessment. But the concept of the Myth has been opposed by some leading Carroll scholars, in particular Morton N. Cohen and Martin Gardner (their comments, and those of more positive reviewers, can be found on Karoline Leach's own page). Biographer Jenny Woolf, while agreeing that Carroll's image has been comprehensively misrepresented in the past, believes that this can be attributed partly to Carroll's own behaviour and in particular his tendency to self-caricature in later life [41]
Priesthood
Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Anglican Church from a very early age and was expected, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church, to take holy orders within four years of obtaining his master's degree. He delayed the process for some time but eventually took deacon's orders on 22 December 1861. But when the time came a year later to progress to priestly orders, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules, and initially Dean Liddell told him he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost undoubtedly have resulted in his being expelled. For unknown reasons, Dean Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted Dodgson to remain at the college, in defiance of the rules.[42] Uniquely amongst Senior Students of his time Dodgson never became a priest.
There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested his stammer made him reluctant to take the step, because he was afraid of having to preach.[43] Wilson[44] quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words. But Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice.[citation needed] Wilson also points out that the then Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against members of the clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. Others have suggested that he was having serious doubts about the Anglican church.[citation needed] He was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F.D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions (theosophy).[45] Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s), and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood,[46] and this sense of sin and unworthiness may well have affected his decision to abandon the priesthood.
The missing diaries
At least four complete volumes[47] and around seven pages[48] of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been deliberately removed by an unknown hand. Most scholars assume the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven.[49] Except for one page, the period of his diaries from which material is missing is between 1853 and 1863 (when Dodgson was 21–31 years old).[50][51] This was a period when Dodgson began suffering great mental and spiritual anguish and confessing to an overwhelming sense of his own sin. This was also the period of time when he composed his extensive love poetry, leading to speculation that the poems may have been autobiographical.[52][53]
Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one particular missing page (27 June 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal a proposal of marriage on that day by Dodgson to the 11-year-old Alice Liddell; there has never been any evidence to suggest this was so, and a paper[54] discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in 1996 offers some evidence to the contrary.
This paper, known as the "cut pages in diary document", was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it may have been written at the time the pages were destroyed, though this is unclear. The document offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are now missing, including the one for 27 June 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.[55][56] An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the document seems to imply Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all. Until a primary source is discovered, the events of 27 June 1863 remain inconclusive.
Migraine and epilepsy
In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of 'moving fortifications' that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome.[57] Unfortunately there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine per se, or if he may have previously suffered the far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood.[58] Another form of migraine aura, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, has been named after Dodgson's 'little heroine, because its manifestation can resemble the sudden size-changes in the book. Also known as micropsia and macropsia, it is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball. Some authors have suggested Dodgson may have suffered from this type of aura, and used it as an inspiration in his work, but there is no evidence that he did.[58]
Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was diagnosed by three different doctors; a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, believed the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded from this he was a lifetime sufferer from this condition, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already mentioned.[59] Some authors, in particular Sadi Ranson, have suggested Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost, but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one incidence in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary.
Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century. Recently, Dr Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, considered Dodgson's symptoms. Her conclusion, quoted in Jenny Woolf's 2010 biography, is that Dodgson very likely had migraine, and may have had epilepsy, but she emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis of epilepsy without further information.[60]
Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (Dodgson's nephew and biographer) wrote:
And now as to the secondary causes which attracted him to children. First, I think children appealed to him because he was pre-eminently a teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects interesting and amusing. [3]
Despite comments like this, Dodgson's friendships with young girls and psychological readings of his work – especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls[61] – have all led to speculation that he was a paedophile. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations of his life and work, particularly Dennis Potter's play Alice and his screenplay for the motion picture, Dreamchild, and even more importantly Robert Wilson's Alice, and a number of recent biographies, including Michael Bakewell's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1996), Donald Thomas's Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background (1995), and Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1995). All of these works more or less unequivocally assume that Dodgson was a paedophile, albeit a repressed and celibate one. Cohen claims Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further writes:
We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself.[61]
Cohen notes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p. 229).
Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863.[62] But there has never been significant evidence to support the idea, and the 1996 discovery of the "cut pages in diary document" (see above) seems to make it highly probable that the 1863 "break" had nothing to do with Alice, but was perhaps connected with rumours involving her older sister Lorina, or possibly their governess.
Some writers, e.g., Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green, stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile, but concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world.
The basis for Dodgson's perceived 'obsession' with female children has been challenged in the last ten years by several writers and scholars (see the 'Carroll Myth' above).
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergymen. His great-grandfather, also Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become a bishop. His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars, when his two sons were hardly more than babies. His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.[1]
The elder of these sons — yet another Charles — was Carroll's father. He reverted to the other family business and took holy orders. He went to Rugby School, and thence to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827 and became a country parson.[2]
Young Charles' father was an active and highly conservative clergyman of the Anglican church who later became Archdeacon of Richmond[3] and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the Anglican church. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of Newman and the Tractarian movement, and did his best to instill such views in his children. Young Charles was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his father's values and with the Anglican church as a whole.[4]
Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury near Warrington, Cheshire, the eldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half-year-old marriage. Eight more children were to follow. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious Rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.
Education
Home Life
During his early youth, young Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer — a condition shared by his siblings — that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At age twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) at nearby Richmond.
Rugby
In 1846, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently less happy, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place:
I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.[5]
Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy his age since I came to Rugby", observed R.B. Mayor, the Mathematics master.[5]
Oxford
He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and, after an interval that remains unexplained, went on in January 1851 to Oxford, attending his father's old college, Christ Church. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" — perhaps meningitis or a stroke — at the age of forty-seven.
His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he received a First in Honours Mathematics, and was shortly thereafter nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend, Canon Edward Pusey. A little later he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study. Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were older and richer than he was, and almost all of them were uninterested. Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.[6]
Character and appearance
Health challenges
The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender, and had curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life.[7]
The stammer has always been a potent part of the conceptions of Dodgson; it is part of the belief that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea.[8] Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; it is said he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often-repeated, for which no firsthand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but that this was a reference to his stammer is simply speculation.[6]
Although Dodgson's stammer troubled him, it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. At a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well-equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.[7]
Social connections
In the interim between his early published writing and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among other artists. He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well — it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that convinced him to submit the work for publication.[7][9]
Politics, religion and philosophy
In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as a Tory who was "awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors." [10] The Revd W. Tuckwell in his Reminiscences of Oxford (1900) regarded him as "austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical reverie, watchfully tenacious of his dignity, stiffly conservative in political, theological, social theory, his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape." [11] However, Dodgson also expressed interest in philosophies and religions that seem at odds with this diagnosis. For example, he was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research[12] and he based the entirety of his last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, on certain aspects of Theosophy.[13] It has been argued by the proponents of the 'Carroll Myth' that these factors require a reconsideration of Gardner's diagnosis, and that perhaps, Dodgson's true outlook was more complex than previously believed (see 'the Carroll Myth' below).
Dodgson wrote some studies of various philosophical arguments. In 1895, he developed a philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes of the philosophical journal Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later, in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled Practical Tortoise Raising.[14]
Artistic activities
Literature
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, both contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855.[7] Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived, La Guida di Bragia.[15]
In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll." This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.[2]
In the same year, 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life and, over the following years, greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife, Lorina, and their children, particularly the three sisters: Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. He was for many years widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. This was given some apparent substance by the fact the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out her name, and that there are many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been pointed out that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child,[16][17] and frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and no one has ever suggested this means any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.[17]
Though information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), it does seem clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips accompanied by an adult friend[18] to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.[19]
It was on one such expedition, on 4 July 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.[19]
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier.[9] The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.[20][21] Dodgson vehemently denies this story, commenting "...It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred";[22] and it is unlikely for other reasons: as T.B. Strong comments in a Times article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify [the] author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works".[23][24] He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.[9]
Late in 1871, a sequel — Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There — was published. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.[25]) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that lasted some years.[9]
The Hunting of the Snark
In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of tradesmen, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature. The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.[9]
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.[9]
A recent study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling[26] exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls, though this may be a highly distorted figure as approximately 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing,[27] so any firm conclusions are difficult. Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, and trees. His studies of nude children were long presumed lost, but six have since surfaced, five of which have been published and are available online.[28] His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden, because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.[18]
He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.[9]
Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He reported that he stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was difficult (he used the wet collodion process) and commercial photographers (who started using the dry plate process in the 1870s) took pictures more quickly. [29]
With the advent of Modernism, tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s.
Inventions
To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.[30][31]
Another invention is a writing tablet called the nyctograph for use at night that allowed for note-taking in the dark; thus eliminating the trouble of getting out of bed and striking a light when one wakes with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.
Among the games he devised outside of logic there are a number of word games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He also appears to have invented, or at least certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first); a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.[9]
Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociam (a type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation;[32] more nearly fair elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the college common room he worked in later in life, which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip for things like the fastening of envelopes or mounting things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.[9]
Mathematical work
Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra, mathematical logic and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books which he signed with his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. He worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, an occupation that gave him some financial security.
Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. It achieved nowhere near the success of the Alice books. Its intricacy was apparently not appreciated by the contemporary readers. The reviews and its sales, only 13,000 copies, were disappointing.[33][34]
The only occasion on which (as far as is known) he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867, which he recounts in his "Russian Journal" which was first commercially published in 1935.[35]
He died on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts" in Guildford, of pneumonia following influenza. He was 2 weeks away from turning 66 years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.[9]
Controversies and mysteries
The 'Carroll Myth'
The accepted view of Dodgson's biography has received a major challenge recently by a group of scholars, notably Hugues Lebailly and Karoline Leach and, latterly, Sherry L. Ackerman, John Tufail, Douglas Nickel and others, who argue that what they term the 'Carroll Myth' has wildly distorted biographical perception of his life and his work. Leach's book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, in particular has raised a considerable amount of controversy. In brief they claim:
In general terms Dodgson's life has been simplified and 'infantilised' by a combination of inaccurate biography and the longstanding unavailability of key evidence, which allowed legends to proliferate unchecked.
by the time the evidence did become available the 'mythic' image of the man had become so embedded in scholastic and popular thinking it remained unquestioned, despite the fact the evidence failed to support it.
if the evidence is examined dispassionately it shows many of the most famous legends about the man (e.g. his 'pedophilia', and his exclusive adoration of small girls) are untrue, or at least grossly simplified.[36]
In more detail, Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child-photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child-nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron, made them as a matter of course. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material. Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th or 21st century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was in fact a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time.
Leach's reappraisal of Dodgson focused in particular on his controversial sexuality. She argues that the allegations of pedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea, fostered by Dodgson's various biographers, that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth".[37] She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several scandalous (by the social standards of his time) relationships with them. She also pointed to the fact that many of those he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties.[38] She argues that suggestions of pedophilia evolved only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls. Similarly, Leach traces the claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14 to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed.[39]
The concept of the Carroll Myth has produced polarised reactions from Carroll scholars. In 2004 Contrariwise, the Association for new Lewis Carroll studies.[40] was established, and scholars such as Carolyn Sigler and Cristopher Hollingsworth have joined the ranks of those calling for a major reassessment. But the concept of the Myth has been opposed by some leading Carroll scholars, in particular Morton N. Cohen and Martin Gardner (their comments, and those of more positive reviewers, can be found on Karoline Leach's own page). Biographer Jenny Woolf, while agreeing that Carroll's image has been comprehensively misrepresented in the past, believes that this can be attributed partly to Carroll's own behaviour and in particular his tendency to self-caricature in later life [41]
Priesthood
Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Anglican Church from a very early age and was expected, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church, to take holy orders within four years of obtaining his master's degree. He delayed the process for some time but eventually took deacon's orders on 22 December 1861. But when the time came a year later to progress to priestly orders, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules, and initially Dean Liddell told him he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost undoubtedly have resulted in his being expelled. For unknown reasons, Dean Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted Dodgson to remain at the college, in defiance of the rules.[42] Uniquely amongst Senior Students of his time Dodgson never became a priest.
There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested his stammer made him reluctant to take the step, because he was afraid of having to preach.[43] Wilson[44] quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words. But Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice.[citation needed] Wilson also points out that the then Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against members of the clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. Others have suggested that he was having serious doubts about the Anglican church.[citation needed] He was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F.D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions (theosophy).[45] Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s), and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood,[46] and this sense of sin and unworthiness may well have affected his decision to abandon the priesthood.
The missing diaries
At least four complete volumes[47] and around seven pages[48] of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been deliberately removed by an unknown hand. Most scholars assume the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven.[49] Except for one page, the period of his diaries from which material is missing is between 1853 and 1863 (when Dodgson was 21–31 years old).[50][51] This was a period when Dodgson began suffering great mental and spiritual anguish and confessing to an overwhelming sense of his own sin. This was also the period of time when he composed his extensive love poetry, leading to speculation that the poems may have been autobiographical.[52][53]
Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one particular missing page (27 June 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal a proposal of marriage on that day by Dodgson to the 11-year-old Alice Liddell; there has never been any evidence to suggest this was so, and a paper[54] discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in 1996 offers some evidence to the contrary.
This paper, known as the "cut pages in diary document", was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it may have been written at the time the pages were destroyed, though this is unclear. The document offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are now missing, including the one for 27 June 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister, Lorina Liddell. The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip.[55][56] An alternate interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumored involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother. What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the document seems to imply Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all. Until a primary source is discovered, the events of 27 June 1863 remain inconclusive.
Migraine and epilepsy
In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of 'moving fortifications' that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome.[57] Unfortunately there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine per se, or if he may have previously suffered the far more common form of migraine without aura, although the latter seems most likely, given the fact that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood.[58] Another form of migraine aura, Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, has been named after Dodgson's 'little heroine, because its manifestation can resemble the sudden size-changes in the book. Also known as micropsia and macropsia, it is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball. Some authors have suggested Dodgson may have suffered from this type of aura, and used it as an inspiration in his work, but there is no evidence that he did.[58]
Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness. He was diagnosed by three different doctors; a Dr. Morshead, Dr. Brooks, and Dr. Stedman, believed the attack and a consequent attack to be an "epileptiform" seizure (initially thought to be fainting, but Brooks changed his mind). Some have concluded from this he was a lifetime sufferer from this condition, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond the diagnosis of the two attacks already mentioned.[59] Some authors, in particular Sadi Ranson, have suggested Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy in which consciousness is not always completely lost, but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland. Carroll had at least one incidence in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary.
Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century. Recently, Dr Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at the Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, considered Dodgson's symptoms. Her conclusion, quoted in Jenny Woolf's 2010 biography, is that Dodgson very likely had migraine, and may have had epilepsy, but she emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis of epilepsy without further information.[60]
Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (Dodgson's nephew and biographer) wrote:
And now as to the secondary causes which attracted him to children. First, I think children appealed to him because he was pre-eminently a teacher, and he saw in their unspoiled minds the best material for him to work upon. In later years one of his favourite recreations was to lecture at schools on logic; he used to give personal attention to each of his pupils, and one can well imagine with what eager anticipation the children would have looked forward to the visits of a schoolmaster who knew how to make even the dullest subjects interesting and amusing. [3]
Despite comments like this, Dodgson's friendships with young girls and psychological readings of his work – especially his photographs of nude or semi-nude girls[61] – have all led to speculation that he was a paedophile. This possibility has underpinned numerous modern interpretations of his life and work, particularly Dennis Potter's play Alice and his screenplay for the motion picture, Dreamchild, and even more importantly Robert Wilson's Alice, and a number of recent biographies, including Michael Bakewell's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1996), Donald Thomas's Lewis Carroll: A Portrait with Background (1995), and Morton N. Cohen's Lewis Carroll: A Biography (1995). All of these works more or less unequivocally assume that Dodgson was a paedophile, albeit a repressed and celibate one. Cohen claims Dodgson's "sexual energies sought unconventional outlets", and further writes:
We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay behind Charles's preference for drawing and photographing children in the nude. He contended the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his emotional attachment to children as well as his aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve. He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge, even to himself.[61]
Cohen notes that Dodgson "apparently convinced many of his friends that his attachment to the nude female child form was free of any eroticism", but adds that "later generations look beneath the surface" (p. 229).
Cohen and other biographers argue that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863.[62] But there has never been significant evidence to support the idea, and the 1996 discovery of the "cut pages in diary document" (see above) seems to make it highly probable that the 1863 "break" had nothing to do with Alice, but was perhaps connected with rumours involving her older sister Lorina, or possibly their governess.
Some writers, e.g., Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green, stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile, but concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world.
The basis for Dodgson's perceived 'obsession' with female children has been challenged in the last ten years by several writers and scholars (see the 'Carroll Myth' above).
cant stop! booty time!
The album's plot is a "parable"[29] that takes place in a thinly-veiled satire of modern America called 'Holy Wood', which Manson has described as "very much like Disney World [...] I thought of how interesting it would be if we created an entire city that was an amusement park, and the thing we were being amused by was violence and sex and everything that people really want to see."[2][52] Its literary foil is 'Death Valley', which is used as "a metaphor for the outcast and the imperfect of the world."[29][53][34]
The central character is its ill-fated protagonist "Adam Kadmon",[1][27][54] an idealized abstract figure borrowed from the Kabbalah in which he is described as the "Primal Man" or, in the similar Sufic and Alevi philosophy, "Perfect or Complete Man"—the very archetype for humanity.[27] He undertakes a journey, similar to the protagonist in German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra as well as Biblical parables, out of Death Valley and into Holy Wood.[53] Idealistic naïveté entreats him to attempt a subversive revolution through music.[53]
He becomes disenchanted, however, as his revolution is consumed by Holy Wood's ideology of 'Guns, God and Government' and co-opted into their culture of death and fame where celebrity-worship, violence and scapegoatism are held as the moral values of a religion rooted in martyrdom.[29][2][1][54][23] In this religion, dead celebrities are venerated into saints and John F. 'Jack' Kennedy is idolized as the transfigured 'Lamb of God' and modern-day Christ.[29][53][34][55][56][54][3]
This religion is called 'Celebritarianism'[54] and is a deliberate parallel of Christianity to critique both the 'Dead Rock Star' martyr/celebrity phenomenon in American celebrity culture and the role that the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ plays as its very blueprint.[55][29][23][2][57][31][3] The worldwide Guns, God and Government Tour that supported the album expanded on this with the tour's logo—a rifle and handguns arranged to resemble the Christian cross.[58]
The title, "Eat Me, Drink Me", represents a multidimensional group of themes, all of which are relevant to Celebritarianism.[16] There are prevalent concepts in the album: Eucharist, also known as the time of "Thanksgiving", in which Jesus gave his disciples the instruction to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood. This is precisely where the concept of Manson's Celebritarianism originates from; that is, in the view presented by Manson of Christ being the first celebrity and the crucifix being the first piece of merchandise, Celebritarianism is the worship of death and celebrity and is thereby, as the word itself implies, the consuming and devouring of celebrity as taken example from the symbology of the Eucharist.[16]
Notoriously adopted in popular culture by Jefferson Airplane as the rallying cry for the psychedelic generation of the 60's, as most are familiar with it, the following passages of Lewis Carroll's creation, Alice in Wonderland are of notable importance as the title Eat Me, Drink Me is quite literally taken verbatim from the instructions written on the cake and bottle respectively, along with Manson's numerous connections to Carroll via his production of Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, and Manson's fixation on both Carroll, and his intangible literary creation, Alice, created from the author's own fixation with his child friend Alice Liddell.[16]
Armin Meiwes and Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, met together after Brandes had responded to an online post by Armin Meiwes, in which Meiwes wrote, "Looking for a well built 18 to 30 year old to be slaughtered".
Brandes and Meiwes met, dismembered Brandes' penis, and consumed it together. It is reported that afterwards Brandes voluntarily consented to his own death, and was killed by Meiwes, who then ate his remains. Originally sentenced to an 8½ year sentence for manslaughter, Meiwes was later charged with murder, and resentenced, this time to life imprisonment.[16]
Directly preceding the album's release followed with numerous connections made to vampires, including the signature goth anthem, "If I Was Your Vampire", and the song "Putting Holes in Happiness" described as "a romantic-misogynistic-cannibal-gothic-vampire ballad.", one can also examine the title of the album, Eat Me, Drink Me, from a vampiristic perspective, in which the flesh is punctured and sustenance is drawn from the blood of the host, quite literally the life source of their being.[16]
In the album, Manson takes on two roles, being a substance addicted glam rocker and a gender ambiguous Alien called Omēga (pronounced oh-mee-gah) who, much like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, falls down to earth, is captured, placed with a band called The Mechanical Animals and turned into a rock star product. He has become numb to the world, either lost or high in outer space or the Hollywood Hills, through excessive drug use as a coping mechanism with his life as a product of his corporate masters. Manson's other role is that of Alpha who is based on himself and his experiences around the conclusion of the Antichrist Superstar tour/era. Acting as Omēga's foil, Alpha's emotions have only begun seeping back. Vulnerable and trying to relearn how to use them properly, he despairs about how little emotion other people feel, observing them to be "mechanical animals". Both are looking to come back into the world - looking among the mechanical animals for the thing they need to make themselves whole. They call it Coma White, unsure if she is real or simply a drug induced hallucination.[3] Subsequently, seven of the fourteen songs are from the perspective, lyrically and musically, of Omēga and his fictional band The Mechanical Animals, while the other seven are by Alpha (Marilyn Manson). The Omēga songs are typically those most nihilistic and superficial lyrically, such as "The Dope Show", "User Friendly" and "New Model No. 15". The album artwork features a dual liner note book, in which one half has lyrics for the Omēga songs, and when flipped over, has those for the Alpha songs.
The three part storyline begins with the Crowleyean statement "When you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you". The backdrop is set to a landscape of 'victims' (the 'weak'; Nietzsche's 'slaves' in his Master-Slave morality) oppressed by "The Beautiful People" (the 'masters'), a kratocratic plutarchy whose power is, in a double entendre with phallic and religious connotation, "relative to the size of their steeple" and whose authority is Social Darwinism taken to the extreme—they are "justified" by the existence of the weak. Among that populace is an abused and insignificant wretch, the protagonist, called "The Worm",[4] who develop aspirations to become one of the elite. However, he is rejected in as simple terms and after wallowing for a time in sorrow and self-pity concludes to exercise his will to power and seize authority with his own hands. The record proceeds to detail his rise to prominence presented in the metaphor of a worm to angel metamorphosis.
In his rise to power, he fashions himself into a charismatic demagogue and hierophant, the "Little Horn", to proselytize self-determination and self-realization and to usher in a new metanarrative in place of the hitherto reigning ideal. In spite of this, the Little Horn is self-punishing, with self-doubt still lingering from his dejected former self. The people respond to his revolution with adoration and blandishment. Thus, though he is successful in his aims, he is soon disillusioned and begins to despise those very adoring and sycophantic disciples when he comes to the realization that they are not interested in being saved and quite content to remain weak, imitative and oppressed. It's under this intolerable failure that he begins the final stage of his development. Dying in the manner of a caterpillar, the Little Horn rebirths himself under intense pressure, emptying his cocoon of the self-loathing, guilt and abuse that marked the Worm in harrowing fashion, to "get his wings".
Having transcended his lesser nature, all he has left is his bitterness and disenchantment. He has shed his ability to feel empathy for anyone and repurposes his newfound stature and confidence in becoming the penultimate culture war iconoclast, a Nietzschean Übermensch calling himself the "Antichrist Superstar" (or alternatively, "The Disintegrator"), having finally concluded that what the people truly want is what he sought to dispose of. They no longer deserve salvation. In this manner he adopts as his personal insignia the epithet "When you are suffering, know that I have betrayed you" as he lets his scathing vitriol spiral into nihilism and misanthropy, railing against and destroying everything. Spent and disconsolate, the "Minute of Decay" intimates that "I'm on my way down now, I'd like to take you with me. I'm on my way down" as he embarks on a final scorched earth campaign of apocalypse, delivering the condemnation, "your world is an ashtray, we burn and coil like cigarettes [...] it's the nature of the leeches, the virgins [to feel] cheated, you've only spent a second of your life" and contracting the world like the pupil of an eye into the size of a bullethole, "one shot and your world gets smaller". He begins to destroy everyone and everything including himself and his revolution, declaring, "pray your life was just a dream, the cut that never heals [...] the world in my hands, there's no one left to hear you scream [...] no one left for you". As he abrogates everything into nothingness, he begins to understand that "when all of your wishes are granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed".[5]
In September 1996, former bassist Gidget Gein negotiated a settlement with Manson where he would receive $17,500 in cash, 20 percent of any royalties paid for recordings and for any songs he had a hand in writing and his share of any other royalties or fees the group earned while he was a member. Furthermore, the settlement allowed him to market himself as a former member of Marilyn Manson. This settlement was not honored, however.[40]
Former guitarist and founding member Scott Putesky (aka Daisy Berkowitz) filed a $15 million lawsuit in a Fort Lauderdale court against the singer, the band and the band's attorney, David Codikow in January 1998 after his forcible departure from the group in the Spring of 1996. Berkowitz claimed he was cheated by the band out of "thousands of dollars in royalties, publishing rights, and performance fees." He also filed an attorney malpractice suit against Codikow, alleging that "Codikow represented Warner's interests more than the band's and that he gave Warner disproportionate control over the band's name, recordings, merchandising, and touring proceeds."[41] By October of that year, the suit had been settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.[42]
In November 30, 1998, a few days after the band accumulated "[a] total [of] more than $25,000" in backstage and hotel room damages during the Poughkeepsie, New York stop of their Mechanical Animals Tour,[43] SPIN editor Craig Marks filed a $24 million lawsuit against Manson and his bodyguards for allegedly assaulting his person and threatening to kill his family. According to Mark's interview with the New York Post, the issue stemmed from Manson's displeasure with the magazine's decision to renege on a promised cover story of the band for their January 1998 cover. According to Marks, the last-minute change was made because Manson's record wasn't "performing." The Post described the editor as "bruised and battered." Manson for his part issued a statement saying, "I had a conversation with Craig Marks expressing I was tired of Spin's immature business behavior and the series of deals they had broken with me. I told him that I didn't care what he prints or whether or not I'm on the cover. I simply no longer wanted to work with him or his magazine that obviously has a lack of respect for musicians and their fans." On February 19, 1999, Manson counter-sued Marks for libel, slander and defamation. The singer was seeking $40 million in reparation, claiming that Marks' statements were false and "were made ... with actual malice, hatred and personal ill will." According to the counter-suit, Marks' allegations have "greatly damaged and injured [Manson's] reputation and standing in the music profession, in the music and entertainment industries, in his community and in the general public, and has been subjected to great shame, humiliation and indignity."[44] As for the Poughkeepsie incident, Manson apologized and offered to make financial restitution.[45][46]
In a civil battery suit, David Diaz, a security officer from a concert in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on October 27, 2000, sued for $75,000 in a Minneapolis federal court.[47][48] The federal court jury found in Manson's favor.[49]
In a civil suit presented by Oakland County, Michigan, Manson was charged with sexual misconduct against another security officer, Joshua Keasler, during a concert in Clarkston, Michigan, on July 30, 2001. Oakland County originally filed assault and battery and criminal sexual misconduct charges,[50] but the judge reduced the latter charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.[51] Manson pleaded no contest to the reduced charges, paid a $4,000 fine,[52] and later settled the lawsuit under undisclosed terms.[53]
On April 3, 2002, Maria St. John filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing Manson of providing her adult daughter, Jennifer Syme, with cocaine and instructing her to drive while under the influence.[54] After attending a party at Manson's house, Syme was given a lift home;[55] Manson claims she was taken home by a designated driver.[54] After she got home she got behind the wheel of her own vehicle and was killed instantly when she crashed it into three parked cars. Manson is reported to have said there were no drugs or alcohol at the party. St. John's lawyer questioned "[if] there were no drinks, no drugs, why would she need a designated driver?"[54] The suit alleged Syme was returning to the party at Manson's request. The case, BC271111, was dismissed on May 29, 2003.[56]
On August 2, 2007, former band member Stephen "Pogo/Madonna Wayne Gacy" Bier filed a lawsuit against Manson for unpaid "partnership proceeds," seeking $20 million in back pay. Several details from the lawsuit leaked to the press.[57][58] In November 2007, additional papers were filed saying that Manson purchased a child's skeleton and masks made of human skin. He also allegedly bought stuffed animals, such as a grizzly bear and two baboons and a collection of Nazi memorabilia.[59] In December 2007, Manson countersued, claiming that Bier failed to fulfill his duties as a bandmember to play for recordings and to promote the band.[60] On December 28, 2009, the suit was settled with an agreement which saw Bier's attorneys being paid a total of $380,000, of which Manson's insurance company paid $175,000, while the remainder was paid by Bier's former business managers, according to Manson's lawyer Howard King.[61]
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