Post by Old Dragon (Al) on Dec 4, 2004 15:11:01 GMT 1
Here is a copy of the email that I have received this afternoon from our judge, Douglas Houston.
I'd like to say a special thanks to Douglas for all the hard work, dedication and effort that he has given to the task. We are all most grateful and appreciative, thank you. - Al.
On reading Alice in Cuckooland . . .
To the extent that Alice in Cuckooland is a great and uniquely entertaining success, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes", as the Dodo said to an ancestor of our present heroine. The considerable life of the whole story to date lies in its spectacular variety of tone, content, character, language, and incident. This is a product of the multiplicity of authors involved and none lets the side down, howsoever brief a character’s appearance might be. We have, for example, the one-off star turns by Ani-Watima-B’nevergood and Snakeman, both of whom expand the envelope of possibility with their respectively hilarious and violently candid idioms. All have contributed excellently to a whole that can delight with the finesse of its contemporary comedy of manners, provoke to hilarity with its Rabelaisian double entendres, and move the reader with its occasional riches of natural description and its truths about our lives and how we live them.
Any judgement to be made as to the respective merits of the characters must, however, hinge partly on quantitative considerations. Alice, Ms Widdell, Miss Wiggesley, Amy Fuddle, Nick Flipper and Edna are among those who spring first to mind as the mainstays of the narrative, which would be much the poorer without any one of them.
Results
For my money, the winner and runner up must be:
Winner: Alice
Runner-up: Mrs/Ms Widdell
These two are the main drivers of the enterprise. Both are established early as characters set on paths of change and personal development and both go on generating new interest and rewarding the reader with the purposeful energy of their letters.
Alice, my winner, vividly demonstrates the emotional and intellectual development she embarks on in the growing richness of her treatments of the wild environment after arriving on the island. The poetry in her responses to nature gives life to the self-possessed idealism that blossoms in her as her adventures continue. Like that other Alice, she displays a bold contrariness when called on to suffer fools that lends strength to her open, intelligent character. She is the product of an accomplished hand and will certainly have amounted to something when the saga reaches completion.
Mrs/Ms Widdell is definitely a mainstay. In her, too, we see new patterns of emotional and social possibility arising in convincing enactment of the dynamics of positive personal change. She retains her attractive dash of naivete throughout and offers many a moment of high amusement with her wacky registrations of events. She is written with a finely judged ear for good cadence and is a perfect foil for Miss Wiggesley and Alice herself. Cuckooland could not exist without her.
Altogether, my pleasure . . .
Douglas Houston.
I'd like to say a special thanks to Douglas for all the hard work, dedication and effort that he has given to the task. We are all most grateful and appreciative, thank you. - Al.
On reading Alice in Cuckooland . . .
To the extent that Alice in Cuckooland is a great and uniquely entertaining success, "Everybody has won, and all must have prizes", as the Dodo said to an ancestor of our present heroine. The considerable life of the whole story to date lies in its spectacular variety of tone, content, character, language, and incident. This is a product of the multiplicity of authors involved and none lets the side down, howsoever brief a character’s appearance might be. We have, for example, the one-off star turns by Ani-Watima-B’nevergood and Snakeman, both of whom expand the envelope of possibility with their respectively hilarious and violently candid idioms. All have contributed excellently to a whole that can delight with the finesse of its contemporary comedy of manners, provoke to hilarity with its Rabelaisian double entendres, and move the reader with its occasional riches of natural description and its truths about our lives and how we live them.
Any judgement to be made as to the respective merits of the characters must, however, hinge partly on quantitative considerations. Alice, Ms Widdell, Miss Wiggesley, Amy Fuddle, Nick Flipper and Edna are among those who spring first to mind as the mainstays of the narrative, which would be much the poorer without any one of them.
Results
For my money, the winner and runner up must be:
Winner: Alice
Runner-up: Mrs/Ms Widdell
These two are the main drivers of the enterprise. Both are established early as characters set on paths of change and personal development and both go on generating new interest and rewarding the reader with the purposeful energy of their letters.
Alice, my winner, vividly demonstrates the emotional and intellectual development she embarks on in the growing richness of her treatments of the wild environment after arriving on the island. The poetry in her responses to nature gives life to the self-possessed idealism that blossoms in her as her adventures continue. Like that other Alice, she displays a bold contrariness when called on to suffer fools that lends strength to her open, intelligent character. She is the product of an accomplished hand and will certainly have amounted to something when the saga reaches completion.
Mrs/Ms Widdell is definitely a mainstay. In her, too, we see new patterns of emotional and social possibility arising in convincing enactment of the dynamics of positive personal change. She retains her attractive dash of naivete throughout and offers many a moment of high amusement with her wacky registrations of events. She is written with a finely judged ear for good cadence and is a perfect foil for Miss Wiggesley and Alice herself. Cuckooland could not exist without her.
Altogether, my pleasure . . .
Douglas Houston.