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Wonderful Wizard of Oz: 12/24/23

Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum and W. W. Denton (1900) is one of maybe a dozen books I've re-read so many times over the course of my life that I've forgotten just how many times. It for all its flaws is a quintessentially American fantasy novel, especially when taken in context with the later Oz books.

While the remaining books have a major publishing house and a different illustrator, book one was self published in four colors with some absolutely garish design work. The book entered the public domain in 1956 and most versions since then don't fully replicate Denton's color design, or even his illustrations. A lot of the modern versions use either Evelyn Copelman's illustrations or others inspired by the 1939 MGM film.

As Dorothy is so young when she arrives in Oz much of what we know of Oz is informed by what the adults in Oz tell her. Reading as an adult, though, it's clear that they are lying to her, either flat out lying as the "wonderful" Humbug of Oz does, or through omission as is the wont of Glinda and the unnamed Witch of the North.

The 1939 film by making Dorothy older and by making her experience a "all a dream," the magnitude of Dorothy's time in Oz is negated. The young girl ends up spending between four and six months in Oz. It takes her a week to get to the "Wizard." She spends a couple days in the Emerald City before being sent West to act as a child soldier for this Omaha ex-pat. She's captured with the Witch and kept as her prisoner for weeks if not months before finally killing the Witch. She spends days lost on the way back to the Emerald City. Once back she spends another week waiting for reward from the wizard, only to be forced to do all the sewing by hand on the balloon that the "Wizard" says will take her home. Except he books it before she can make it to the balloon, thus leaving her another week or so to schlep down to Glinda's overgrown piece of Oz to ask one last adult for help.

Worst of all, had the original "good" Witch just told her how to use the silver slippers she's given, she could have gone home instantly. But, not, Dorothy is strung along throughout the book by all the adults in power for their own benefit. I understand that part of this is to show children how resourceful they can be in trying times, but it's also telling. Oz is a utopia in the literal sense (a no-place, meaning it's not on any known map) and a dystopia in the more modern sense of the words utopia and dystopia.

Dorothy is approximately six years old in this book. She's an orphan who has lived long enough with her aunt and uncle in Kansas to know no other life and to be happy with it. As the book was finished in 1899, that puts her birth in 1893, just a few short years after Frederick Turner's essay about the closing of the frontier.

If there is nowhere "new" for white people to explore, Baum's solution is Oz. Getting there, though, is a near death experience (a theme that remains in the books that involve travel from Earth to Oz and surrounds). See my review of Speedy in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson (1934) for more thoughts on death and Oz. I make the comment about Oz being for white people because that's how Oz and later Thompson wrote their books. Oz is populated by white people of various magical species and creations, as well as sentient items and furniture, and sentient animals.

Even among pastiches and retellings, Oz typically remains very white. The one big exception is The Wiz, which if you haven't seen, you should. Given how quicntenstially American the Oz stories are, I'd love to see the world explored by a wider range of Americans. I would like to see their American further reflected in Oz, as much of Oz is informed by American innovations and pop culture.

The second book in the series is The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904) which I will be re-reading in January.

Five stars

Comments (2)


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Comment #1: Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 15:03:46

Lory

The good witches are strangely limited in their power in this book. The Witch of the North doesn't seem to know the power of the slippers (I don't think she witholds the knowledge from Dorothy) and Glinda sits in her kingdom and doesn't oppose the wicked witches. She plays much more of a role in later books.

It is sad that Oz could not be more diverse in human terms. At least it was very diverse in drawing in all kinds of creatures and sentient beings.

I have noticed on re-watching the film how fast it all happens. The book does give much more of a sense of the passage of time.

Thanks for coming along, see you next month!



Comment #2: Tuesday, December 26, 2023 at 13:06:26

Pussreboots

Oz of the first book is vastly limited from Oz in later books but I still find it remarkable how much of the burden falls on a very young Dorothy to rescue herself. The MGM film follows the logic of the three act photoplay and the tropes that come from being a musical. It was further influenced in its overall look and feel by the production demands put on to it when they chose to use Technicolor for the Oz portion of the film.

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