Why Writers Should Embrace Nonsense

The author Jesse Ball discusses Lewis Carroll's ‘Jabberwocky’ and how precise prose doesn't always make for meaningful work. When I spoke to Jesse Ball, the author of A Cure for Suicide, he forged into the dense, alliterative groves of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Carroll’s poem famously relies on a strange, idiosyncratic language—but, Ball argues, it’s far from meaningless.