The two outstanding favorites of his youngest years were Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. He loved the pure anarchy that lay behind their prim Victorian facade, the incessant punning and spoonerizing, the lunatic logic, always spelled out in flawless syntax and perfect scansion; the songs whose hypnotically simple refrains (“Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?…”) needed no setting to music.
