Although I have heard their praises sung all my long life, I have never read Frank L. Baum's OZ books. For whatever reason I just never got around to it. I grew up in a family that didn't read much, though they endured my passion for comics and science fiction and such, so stories of that kind were not part of my early childhood. And sadly, I never made them a part of the early life of my daughters either. I shared stories with them by the likes of Tolkien, Dahl, Lewis and others, but somehow never Baum. Well I'm using this year to mend that gap in my mind. And I've started by reading The Wonderful Wizard of OZ.
Like most any American my age, OZ was a part of my childhood, but not by way of Baum's books, but rather by way of Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, the movie powerhouse of the first half of the 20th Century and by CBS, the television station that acquired the rights to the movie and began annual showings of the classic musical for many decades. In old timey days when TV offered not one but three whole stations, such events had great charm. But that said, knowing the Judy Garland movie is not knowing the book.
I read the Sea Wolf Press edition which attempts to recreate the effect of the first publications and offers up the tale with the W.W. Denslow artwork intact. It's amazing work which weaves its way through the book and is not limited to the full-page art plates. It's a lovely book and as it turns out a bit of a page turner. Dorothy leaves the ubiquitous gray of Kansas and plops down in OZ within a few pages. Minus the musical numbers the story speeds right along.
The movie went out of its way to offer up a rational explanation for OZ, with the it's all a dream ending. We are introduced to dopplegangers for many of the people in OZ, but in the novel no such shenanigans. The lunacy of the existence of the Scarecrow with his body of straw which is dispersed making one wonder where his identity resides. Is it in the clothes, the particular straw, or the belief of his friends that he's real. The Tin Man's origin is ghastly, one limb getting chopped until he was no more. Where did his essence exist.
But in the end Dorothy does get home, though not in quite the same way we've come to know from the movie. And the story stops. Baum never planned a sequel. He never wanted to write a sequel. But four years later he did.
More on that next time when I read The Marvelous Land of OZ.
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