Living With a Snark in Your Head

My mother held that you should read to children from their infancy.  She also seemed to hold that what you read them should always and only ever be books that are impossible for the child to comprehend.  Early on, this included everything of course, but she always moved the carrot just out of my reach.  I eventually caught up to Player Piano, The Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights, and all the other stuff people who aren't my mom probably wouldn't read to a child,  but there is one of her perennial favorites I never did (and still don't) understand --- Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark."

If anyone does understand it, I hope they keep it to themselves because I have embraced not understanding it. I'm not interested in the related scholarly analysis (there are boatloads!) in fact, I'm wildly fond of the idea that Mr. C wrote it with an eye to defying such analysis.  So fond, in fact, that I don't really care if that's not true.  I've found not understanding Hunting of the Snark to be much more enjoyable than I can imagine understanding it would ever be.

A friend mentioned Carroll's epic nonsense poem just after I wrote about my brief stage career involving The Jabberwocky, and it occurred to me that my fondness for that poem was probably due to mom reading Hunting of the Snark to me before I knew what a butcher was, let alone a bandersnatch.

Rereading the Hunting of the Snark, I recognized the source of more than a few of the odd notions, turns of phrase, and imaginary beast that stalk the halls of my mind.  At one point, I even wrote a computer test algorithm based on the formula found in the section titled "The Beaver's Lesson" which exercises all of the operations, but spits out the original value.

Here are a few of the other mental burbles that reflect my exposure to  Hunting of the Snark:

• Only one notion for crossing the ocean. (committed to a foolish method)
• What I tell you three times is true.
• Fritter my wig!
• Snark (n.) (any imaginary animal )
• Snark(v.) (to send on a fool's errand)
• Boojum (an apparently harmless something that turns out to be fatal)
• Charm it with smiles and soap.
• Recollecting with tears how, in earlier years, he had taken no pains with his sums.
• Button, feather, nor mark. (Likely eaten by a Boojum)

Most of this stays safely inside the filter, because on the rare occasion I let slip with something like "Charm it with smiles and soap," I find myself trying to explain something a genius took pains to render inexplicable. I don't want to snark myself.

Growing up, I thought the title was "The Annotated Snark" which is the title of the version my mom had (jacket pictured above.)  It's long gone but I'd like to have another copy, so if you run across one slip a note to Oleander Salad.