SOURCE: "What is a Boojum? Nonsense and Modernism," in Yale French Studies, Vol. 43, 1969, pp. 145-64.

In the following excerpt, Holquist argues that Carroll's work is essential to Modern Literature Studies and that it it exhibits all the tenets of modernism.

Because the question "What is a Boojum," may appear strange or whimsical, I would like to begin by giving some reasons for posing it. Like many other readers, I have been intrigued and perplexed by a body of literature often called modern or post-modern, but which is probably most efficiently expressed in a list of authors: Joyce, Kafka, Beckett, Nabokov, Borges, Genet, Robbe-Grillet—the list could be extended, but these names will probably suffice to suggest, if very roughly, the tradition I have in mind. The works of these men are all very dissimilar to each other. However, they seem to have something in common when compared not...