EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club discussion

Buddy read discussion thread for:


The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Please use spoiler tags as needed. Start time and pace will be discussed below.

I have the annotated edition out from the library and so I'll have to start pretty soon.

Joana My Hero!
I am going to post this location to at least two other people who may join us.
Thanks

I musta been very tired last night. I had some reason in my head that this was not the place to start a buddy read.
I mean it is called Buddy reads and all...

Anyway I have gotten through most of the Baum Bio. I think I knew a little about him as a News paperman, so much more! I had no idea.
Facinating how many names of his centry he had face to face time with.

Not gonna say more till we get a tad more organized.
I just e mailed a couple other people. so perhaps a start day can hold tilll we get to hear from everyone.

I am game for goal of some steady pace. The book is barely 190 pages in my reprint first edition. but the annotated version totals out at 500+.

shall we not hold up those who mostly want to read the story and add in what we can from the background?

I just got a copy today and would love to read along as well! I am curious to see how the book compares to the movie, although I haven't seen the movie in a long time either. It will be a good excuse to go back and watch it again after we've finished :)

I am not sure just how many buddies we have.
My recommendation is we start on Saturday Dec 7.
A day of some less than wonderful meaning but maybe we can not go into a day of infamy.

Absent another notion the book is very short so maybe we can comment as comments occur.
Or have we a major concern with spoilers?
Meanwhile those for us with annotations can add background as the spirit moves.

Any other thoughts?

good for me

Tomorrow is the official open season.
As of this mo, I have read WWofOz and about lxxxvi of the annotated version.
This much is a bio of Mr. Baum. Whatta guy.
had taken a shot at all kinds of things from chickens to very early animated /special effects silent picture.

Looking forward to what you guys think

Opening day
Grey Prairie, One room farmhouse soul crushing loneliness and lots of grey.

A little heavy of an opening for a children's book?

Baum was consciously attempting to create an American library of fairy stories. He was clearly drawing from the European traditions, but he want this to be recognizably America.

At that time. Much of midlands, farm America was one dust storm away, or one Tornado/hurricane away from at least financial ruin. Still this struck me as a heavy handed opening. No place like home indeed. Anywhere would have to be better. At least adrift in an ocean there would be some color.

OTOH a secret to writing for children is to be sure to include something for the adults.

I highly recommend the Salman Rushdie essay on the movie Wizard of Oz. One of his points is that the Kansas scenes are filmed in black and white while the Oz scenes are in color.

I am 14 pages into the Annotated book which is barely as many paragraphs in the story. The annotations are in a smaller print, double columns and this is a large format book.

Readers of the annotated copy we will need some Kansas Farmer/farm wife resilience.

There is about 2 pages of speculation over the likelihood that Baum's Kansas of which he knew little was really the South Dakota where he briefly lived.

Yeah, I doubt that I'm going to read every word of the annotations! :)

A lot of things come to mind in this poster from the then famous 1903 musical Wizard of Oz.
Children's book is only one of them:

That looks photo-shopped.

Perhaps but it matches several version I have seen, including in the Annotation book and elsewhere inc for sale via reputable art/poster dealers.

The mere fact of what is supposed to be a ten yr old or less Dorothy in fitted slacks, or shorts, in live, posed theater lobby ad photos - pics available on line. No not adults only, just not entirely child like.

Bottom line I think you are also thrown by the poster.

Very much thrown, yes. I'll have to look for an explanation.

Meanwhile, since I can only read this heavy annotated book at the table, it's slow going. So far, in fact, I'm in the intros... which are so laudatory they are apparently making the reader feel ok about dropping big bucks on a story that is actually avl. in public domain. ;)

Cheryl wrote: "Very much thrown, yes. I'll have to look for an explanation.

Meanwhile, since I can only read this heavy annotated book at the table, it's slow going. So far, in fact, I'm in the intros... which a..."

The Annotations go and go and go
I have hammed my way past four chapters of the Oz book and have another 250+ pages to go , or about 2* the length of the entire Oz book. I get this guy is enthusiastic but Jimmeny Cricket!

Still in the introduction (even though I'm skimming it). I appreciate that Baum supported women's suffrage. I like the observation that the three companions represent the vegetable, animal, and mineral 'kingdoms.' I'm intrigued by the note that adults enjoyed WOZ too, and that one of their very favorite books of the time was one I'd never heard of, apparently a sort-of-kind-of adventure fantasy called Graustark.

I rather likes the Baum Bio. I did not realize how many ways he was accomplished and that he was several times a top of the charts children's book Author.
I am tempted to go for Graustark But Prisoner of Zenda is pretty good and there are the books beginning with The 39 Steps and the Ashenden: or, The British Agent and what some consider the first modern spy novel The Riddle of the Sands so I am less sure how far down the list of american male verses old European monarchies I waant to go.

Oddly even the same guy who gave us The Blue Lagoon did a pretty severe, cautionary and rather vital, at the time The Pools of Silence. It may look like a Great White Hunter book, but it gets very political before it ends.

I also found it interesting that there were books being marketed to teens at the time. In discussions of children's lit that I've participated in elsewhere, we've been assuming that YA is a modern phenomenon, but apparently not so much.

The descriptions of the special effects of film were revealing, too. Baum even said, a century before photoshop, "a camera can be made to be a fine liar."

Point of note, the sequels by RPT start with The Royal Book of Oz, which is *not* (according to this biography of Baum) based on notes he left behind.

I do plan to try to read Father Goose His Book and then, if I like it, more books by Baum, possibly even more Oz books.

I hope to be able to find the magazine article "Why Librarians Dislike Oz" by (Martin?) Gardner.

And about that musical extravaganza: As the bio describes, it was basically a vaudeville show set in the world of Oz. The chorus girls are the poppies, and the girl in front is actually a new character, Sir Dashemoff Daily the Poet Laureate. Baum liked at least some aspects of it well enough, but it was not the book brought to the stage... many attempts at that came later.

No timeline in the book, no clear list of the Oz books in the dense bibliography, no index. The author did not live to see the Judy Garland musical, but I suspected his wife did, so I checked, and I was right:

"Four years before her death, she slipped and broke her hip, remaining bedridden for the rest of her life. Surviving her husband by 34 years, Maud died at Ozcot on the night of March 6, 1953, 21 days shy of her 92nd birthday."

Back in the day, it was common for women to outlive their husbands by many years. Which explains, in part, why many brides were younger than the men they married. But still, it's a good thing Maud was her own woman, had the royalties, and had sons... but still, to live so long without her sweetheart could not have been easy! (I think about this because my husband is 65 and I'm 57 and I'll probably outlive him by a fair bit.)

Anyway, I hope she liked the movie and that she did get a fair shake on the royalties.

Rushdie asks how it is that the Munchkins land was so pretty and cheery. Hearn points out that antebellum plantations were pretty, too... but that doesn't mean that the slaves weren't miserable.

From the story itself, I note that there are no hired hands, no crone on a bicycle, no travelling salesman as in the movie with Judy Garland. It really was a stroke of genius to add them.
But the book itself is brilliantly written: not twee, not fanciful, just straightforwardly telling this adventure story as a child would want to hear or read it. What did Dorothy eat? Baum tells us. Did the Scarecrow need to sleep? No. What did he do at night? Baum tells us.

I don't remember how the beginning of the adventures went in te movie, but it is a little jarring to see the original Dorothy disregard the delights of Oz and ask for help getting home just moments after being introduced. It is explained later, but not satisfactorily to me (or to some of the other critics, apparently).

A comparison is made to Franz Kafka's The Castle... I'll have to look for that.

I'm roughly half done; Dorothy has been given her assignment by Oz... tomorrow I'll pick up with the next character's audience with the Great and Powerful Wizard.

Interesting to learn that Margaret Hamilton thought that the idea that the movie might have an appeal to last ten years to be "crazy!"

I had forgotten that the Winged Monkeys (which terrified me when I saw the movie as a child) were not actually the witch's slaves (because in the movie they kinda were, I guess). Turns out that they're the beasts' equivalent of 'fairies' just like our humanoid fairies. I'd read a sequel that featured them - does anyone know of one? (My research says no, but I'm not a good googler.)

I like that this annotated version reproduces the original. It includes the mention of "buttercups and yellow daisies" as the flowers the gang walks through to get back to the Emerald City. This is important because each 'country' has its own favorite color. Later editions change the flowers to "bright."

I'm a bit troubled that the lion was gifted a collar. I see clothes on animals, especially collars, as a symbol of subservience, even of slavery. In fact slaves have worn collars for centuries, and Baum would have known this. I'm sure that his intent was innocent, that it seemed adornment, but it's still troublesome imo.

"Distant Ventriloquism creates the illusion a ventriloquist can throw their voice much further. By varying the voice’s level and modulation, a skilled performer can make it sound as though the voice is coming from far away. In order for this to be effective, the voice must appear to originate further away from the spectator than the ventriloquist is. You cannot “throw” your voice behind someone you are in front of."

https://learn-ventriloquism.com/how-d...

Just saying....

I'm enchanted that there are actually three quests in the book, first to get to the Emerald City, then to kill the Witch and get back, and then get to the Good Witch of the South to learn how to send Dorothy home. (And btw to give the other characters a chance to learn how to make good use of their new 'powers.') After all, most fantasy stories have one quest and then the HEA.

I liked the note about the chapter about the China country. China irl has a Great Wall, and imperialism does indeed shatter natives of their identity, so I opine that the speculation connecting history to this episode is spot-on.

I find it significant that there are errors in the book that could have been caught by careful proofreading (for example the appearance of the Mouse Queen's whistle). There are more dissonances in Denslow's illustrations, mostly as to color but some others, too. And apparently the Volkov translation into Russian was changed so materially that it can be barely be called a 'translation' and should be considered more an adaptation. (Does anyone know if there's a better Russian translation since?)

I absolutely appreciate that Dorothy used the Golden Cap three times, and then our band of travelers knew they were done with it. A conniving child would say 'just hand it off to the Scarecrow and get three more chances to summon the Winged Monkeys." But Dorothy is a good girl, and Baum knows that most children, given a bit of encouragement, have a sense of honor,.. and handing off the cap would be a cheat.

I do think Hearn gives Denslow too much credit. Of course, it's made clear that Denslow gave Denslow too much credit. The story by Denslow that is appended to the end of this annotated edition is almost unreadable, imo.

All in all I'm very glad that I read this, even though I did not read every word of the notes. It is a true classic, and it endures so well that I can't even find much to say about the story itself. All of you should read the story as you find it (preferably in some sort of 'restored' or 'original' version if you can). The annotations are fine, but I think that Phoderick and I shared with you the most interesting bits so you needn't look for this edition yourself.

I'm still not convinced of the value of further adventures. Are any of you going to keep reading the series?

In general I am with you. I will be reading Book two, in part because I have some history with that book. I was hoping to read the 13 by April the 120 anniversary of the first book. That is not going to happen. 2 like this one should be plenty.

China? is that really about China? one place where he had no first hand experience? Xenophobic certainly,. Does that make the popping heads Swiss, you know protected by mountains and all those watch springs... Mostly all those mini states filled with leery and suspicious people. More of them as you gt closer to the good whitch's castle... Hmmm

Not xenophobic, reread Hearn's note about the bit about the China country.

Of course most of the notes are speculation, Hearn's and his sources' all have interesting suggestions. I never heard the Hammer-Heads compared to the Swiss, seems plausible but a stretch.

Cheryl wrote: "Not xenophobic, reread Hearn's note about the bit about the China country.

Of course most of the notes are speculation, Hearn's and his sources' all have interesting suggestions. I never heard the..."

The hammer heads was a desperation play by me. I have not gotten to this part by Hearn so I will take it as given. It just seems a forced something. Are all the other creatures symbols of some real country?

:smiles: No, iirc China is the only one.

Just read the Hearn comments on the China people. I think the effort to shove adult geo-politics into the story is not an impossible read of Baum,but wow

Allowing that much of the trip to the south reads as filler. It is not impossible that Baum was expressing an anti-colonialism opinion. I just do not buy it, The figurines are clearly based on decorative china. Such bric a brac in one form or another would have been very common. Most of the children in his audience would have had to deal with stern warnings about 'Do not touch these things' are breakable.

Hearn talks of Dresden China as if that was the only kind on the turn of the century market. This was a period when folks had all manner of clutter on their shelves and mantles and dressers. Very few would be the child who never knocked one over or who lived with an obviously glued together repaired figurine.

Yeah, I think a lot of the notes, especially the ones about China, referenced imaginative interpretations. Lots of academics make their living digging through the 'classics' for stuff like this, after all.

I am mostly impressed by how good the story itself still is. Even the 'filler' section. :)

I think Hearn was in his 20's as he wrote this.
Mostly I think he is trying too hard.
Often the connections are thin, speculative almost arbitrary.
I keep expecting him to talk about an ex girlfriend who has no relation to the Baum books than her name being Dorothy.

lol!

Well, he's not the only one trying too hard... many of his sources are, too. But yeah, I agree w/you.

As far as the movie goes I am a fan of the Rushdie essay.

This one lacks the depth and perspicacity (such a lovely word, and one one never gets to use) of SR but this is up today at the BBC news website:
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/2019...

I think a lot could be said about how Baum, in creating an American fairy tale was not just making variations on the European style but being a little subversive. Not that he was a rabble rouser, but that he did not build a world top down on princes and princesses but rather of working people working out their own answers. And making at least a little fun at then various men behind the curtains.

I just finished the Annotated Oz. Man does Hearn go on!

I love that he found and republished so many illustrations. This could have been a better than average coffee table book. Why he included that truly weak Denslow story and I think w/o its original illustrations is a confusion.

Good points, thank you. I've appreciated this buddy read and the excuse to read the annotated edition. Because of this, I have queued up other annotations, including Hans Christian Andersen.

I have not read the annotated version of this book, but i have enjoyed the books several times. I wonder if anyone was familiar with this documentary called The Secret of Oz.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2VauMFa...

No....
2 hours, eh? Have you watched it?

Just enough to be very unimpressed

Yes. I have watched it twice. It is very good and gives a great history to Frank Baum and what was going on historically in the country. country
country
One of the interesting things I the Wizard of Oz is that Dorothy's shoes are silver and not red like Disney's version.