Review: "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator"

- If you read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and thought, ‘if only this felt more like Titus Alone—‘, then I have good news for you about the sequel.

- We get an in-universe explanation for the book’s using ‘elevator' rather than lift, but this was possibly done with an eye to US publication, right? The inclusion of US astronauts might also be a nod in that direction. There’s also some very odd stuff around the de- and re-ageing, which is functionally time travel, that makes you question whether this is set in America or the UK. The Mayflower and Admiral Nelson both get a name drop.

- The president showing up has exactly the energy of the same thing happening in season 3 of RTD’s New Who.

- This book attempts some kind of Strangelove-esque Cold War comedy. In an archetypically British move, in the same series as Oompah Loompah colonialism, imperialist aggression is magically outsourced to America as a concept and the UK is mysteriously exculpated. 

- The treatment of US politics, with a leader’s Blackadder-style reliance on Nanny, is such a weird British figuration of power, copy-pasted. Mostly when Britain talks about America it’s talking about itself, in part because the British are simultaneously incapable of: 

1. paying serious attention to anyone besides themselves, and 

2. self-reflection. 

- American military power is incredibly dangerous and belligerent in this book, but also American power is a totally legitimate source of validation. The finale of the book is the whole cast going for a mini-break at the White House. Glass Elevator is like a psychedelic ad for NATO. 

- Glass Elevator features a bizarre, quasi-racist interlude concerning Chinese names and accents that adds nothing.

- Doctor Who was first broadcast in 1963, Chocolate Factory came out in 1964 and Glass Elevator in 1972. Dahl is absolutely influenced by Who—and really, how could he not be? There’s what, all of three tv channels in the UK at the time? The pacing in particular feels very early Who: just some uninterrupted, seven-part serial of shit happening. (You also really feel the Alice at points.)

- How does Wonka know about these aliens when he’s never used this TARDIS, I mean Great Glass Elevator, for travel before? (The way the story wants you to cathect this elevator is pure TARDIS though, seriously)

- Wonka seems to initially allow 153ish people to get eaten by the aliens his squad’s just escaped: he’s not that bothered about calling anyone to warn them not to board the Space Hotel. Later the Wonka Squad see the mostly-still-alive (minus a couple dozen people who were eaten) crew under alien attack. This time Charlie suggests intervening, and they do. 

- Morality is so fucking weird in this book. Even Charlie’s beloved family isn’t safe from Dahl deciding they suck and that he/Wonka needs to kill again. But at the same time, everyone in this universe blames Wonka if they so much as get a hang-nail, when the structure of the book is most often, and quite obviously, people fucking themselves over via Wonka’s power. Wonka is consistently dodgy, and the narrative consistently has people call him on: totally the wrong things. Effectively, this lampshades all the ways in which he’s actually creepy and removes him from the scope of criticism. This starts to feel very RTD New Who, specifically the bit where Davros is rasping that Ten ‘makes people killersssssss’. Ten Era has huge moral wtfery going on, and this pseudo problem we pesudo address is not even a little It. 

- In part the book’s wobbly morality is tied into the flexibility, and ultimate dismissibility, of consequences in this story-world. While perfecting his de-aging medication, Wonka essentially killed and resurrected about 140 Oompah Loompahs. Everything is fixable in the universe of Glass Elevator: it’s only a question of what it will cost Wonka, in time and effort, to mend. 

- The book calls 80 year olds “human parasites”. The grandparents’ problem, at the end of the book, is Being Disabled, which they could shake off if only they Made an Effort.

- Charlie himself is a nothing character, an absolute non-entity.