<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" As told to Julie Vadnal   &amp;quot;My beloved grandmother gave me Lewis Carroll&amp;#039;s Alice In Wonderland when I was eight. I memorized both the text and the illustrations by John Tenniel, and immediately I began to draw and &amp;quot;write&amp;quot; tablet-novels of my own. The stories in which Alice finds herself the protagonist are somewhere between the comic and the surreal \u2014 there is never a dull moment in Wonderland, and one is never wholly at ease. `Curiouser and curiouser,&amp;#039; says Alice, and isn&amp;#039;t this the most apt expression to describe our world? The admixture of the real and the surreal; the sense of normality shading into nightmare and back again; a strong female protagonist; bizarre, comic, threatening, mysterious figures \u2013 these are all elements in my own writing. It can&amp;#039;t be a coincidence that one of my early novels is titled, Wonderland.&amp;quot;  Joyce Carol Oates latest novel, A Fair Maiden, is out now. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/news/a3498/joyce-carol-oates-on-the-enduring-influence-of-alice-in-wonderland-4680/>