But who was the Eggman?

Has anyone here seen the November issue of Harper's? There's an excerpt from a new book by one Richard Wallace, a child psychotherapist (God help them), who proves ineluctably that Jack the Ripper was none other than Lewis Carroll.

Golly.

Like many of our sublimest loons, Wallace is obsessed--nay, besotted--with anagrams, rendering the first verse of "Jabberwocky" as:

Bet I beat my glands til, With hand-sword I slay the evil gender. A slimey theme; borrow gloves, And masturbate the hog more!

And there's more in this throbbing vein--much more--and all darkly encoded in the children's books. Can this be coincidence? the doctor asks, trembling. And strokes his beard.

Browsing the 'Net, I found the following demure reply:

Dear Editor,

We enjoyed Richard Wallace's revealing "Malice in Wonderland" reading from your November issue. It soon became clear to us, though, that the author was trying to hint at something...perhaps even unburden himself of a great weight. He seemed obsessed with anagrams. Could that be some kind of clue? Sure enough, the very first paragraph of his article contains a grisly confession, thinly veiled in an anagram.

Rearranging the letters of:

This is my story of Jack the Ripper, the man behind Britain's worst unsolved murders. It is a story that points to the unlikeliest of suspects: a man who wrote children's stories. That man is Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, author of such beloved books as Alice in Wonderland.

we arrive at:

The truth is this: I, Richard Wallace, stabbed and killed a muted Nicole Brown in cold blood, severing her throat with my trusty shiv's strokes. I set up Orenthal James Simpson, who is utterly innocent of this murder.

P.S. I also wrote Shakespeare's sonnets, and a lot of Francis Bacon's works too.

Painfully obvious once you spot it, isn't it? Off with his head!

Francis Heaney, New York, N.Y.

Guy Jacobson Bridgewater, N.J.

Grin. Hope it's published.