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mask131 · 4 months

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So you want to know about Oz! (2)

In 1986, an anime was released in Japan: Ozu no Mahoutsukai (which is just "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" in Japanese).

This animated series was an adaptation not just of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", the first Oz novel by Baum, but of all those that would follow! You had book 2, "The Marvelous Land of Oz", and book 3, "Ozma of Oz"... But then we jump to book 6, "The Emerald City of Oz", which forms the grand conclusion of the series. Book 4 and 5 were not adapted... completely cut out.

Why? Because these two books are, unfortunately, skippable.

Last time I left you on the enormous, ever-growing success of the original Oz trilogy. Now I want to present you... the curse that befell the creator of Oz.

L. Frank Baum wasn't just "the guy who wrote The Wizard of Oz". He was an author for children first and foremost, and he wrote a LOT of other books outside of his Oz stuff. His other most famous children work to this day, the only one able to rival his Oz creation, was his 1902's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which was a work of fictional fundamental in the development of the modern image of Santa Claus:

But this was truly the only one of his other works that escaped the shadow of the Oz-mammoth... Before and in parallel to his Oz trilogy, Baum had written many other things. "Mother Goose in Prose", "American Fairy Tales", "The Enchanted Island of Yew", "Queen Zixi of Ix", "Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea", "John Dough and the Cherub"... But none of these books became as successful or famous as his Oz novels. Worse: they sold really bad.

Everybody wanted Oz books. More Oz books, more Oz books! And while Baum had quite some fun working on "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and "The Marvelous Land of Oz"... he had never intended to serialize them. For him they were stand-alone novel, and that was done. But since his audience only asked for more Oz books, and disdained his other works, well, he had to do what paid! And so he continued the Oz novels... but with a certain "bad will" that clearly transpires in his work.

This already pops up by the third Oz book, "Ozma of Oz".

The first two Oz novels followed a specific rule: the story must happen in the Land of Oz, which is a magical land enclosed and shielded from the rest of the world. The Land of Oz is surrounded by a gigantic desert that one cannot cross unless exceptional events. Beyond this, is the human world... Yes, that's something people tend to forget: in his original vision for the Land of Oz, Baum wanted this magical land to be... somewhere on the American continent. Right in the middle of the 1900s American nations. Hence how a simple tornado can carry a little girl from Kansas to Oz... This is also explicitely told in the second book, where the characters cross the desert by accident, and discover "the world Dorothy came from".

But by Ozma of Oz, the rule was broken. Dorothy gets carried away by a storm in... a new land, the Land of Ev, who as it turns out exists outside of Oz, beyond the desert... Ozian characters cross the desert and join Dorothy in this new land, and most of the story is spent discovering this entire new setting.

While it is very pleasant and delightful to read, and brings some interesting worldbuilding, this already betrays the annoyance Baum was starting to feel towards Oz itself... He had written two novels taking place in Oz, and he was starting to run out of ideas. He had conceived two self-contained novels, two "one-shots" if you wish, and had no idea how to continue within Oz itself. So his solution was to take the characters everybody loved and wanted (he did brought back Dorothy in "Ozma of Oz" BECAUSE his audience kept asking him "Why wasn't Dorothy in the sequel?), but place them in a new "magical land" where he could have a breath of fresh air and work a new plot. This is what makes "Ozma of Oz" so interesting... But it was what would cause the start of the Oz downfall...

In 1908, Baum published "Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz", the fourth book of the Oz series. And a good part of this novel is... Dorothy, alongside the Wizard of Oz himself (who returns after his last appearance in the original novel), ending up sent into an underground realm, and exploring various magical chthonian lands as they try to make their way back to the surface... The last portion of the story does take place in Oz, mind you, but the bulk of the story is in random lands and realms Baum invented just for this book and never reuses later. Because at this point, Baum, who was stuck into doing Oz books but didn't want to continue Oz-stories, had decided to use a trick: only have the Oz protagonists but not the Oz land. Have Oz appear in the last chapters, but only after two thirds of adventures everywhere but in Oz. This was his way to still give what the audience wanted (more Oz adventures) without actually writing Oz books, but rather other fantasies that happened to connect with Oz...

This formula would be repeated with the fifth book of the series, which I'll talk about later, and unfortunately it creates a sincere drop in quality in those two novels. While very inventive, and entertaining to a certain extent (if you ignore some heavy doses of racism and old-fashioned xenophobia here and there), these novels are not as good or memorable as the original trilogy, and for one precise reason... They have no over-arching plot. They are just... travel stories. You have a set of characters, swept away into magical lands, travelling the lands, then partying in Oz and returning home. Gone is the "Quest to have our wish granted" of the first book, gone is the "national revolution mixed with a quest for a lost heir to the throne" of the second book, gone is the "let's save an imprisoned royal family" of the third book... Now it's just "Oh, looks like we randomly dropped into a fairy-land! Let's promenade a bit and then return home". An "Alice in Wonderland" type of non-plot, basically... but without the Alice in Wonderland charm.

Things are even sadder when you look at the fifth book of the series, "The Road to Oz".

At least with "Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz", there was a semblance of a mini-plot at the end, when everybody arrived in Oz. You had criminal charges and a trial, and competition-debates as to whether mundane or magical beings are better... But with "The Road to Oz"? You have literaly zero plot. The characters just get dragged from vision to vision, from land to land, and when they arrive in Oz, it is just to have a party, and then they literaly return home once it is over.

But the true desperation of Baum comes from this specific party... Because what Baum did in this novel was maybe the first "crossover event" of the history of American literature. All of the guests at the party are characters that never appeared before in any of the Oz books so far... They are characters straight out of Baum's other, non-Oz, children books! Characters from "The Magical Monarch of Mo", "Queen Zixi of Ix", "John Dough and the Cherub", and many other books you probably never heard about (and that the Oz readers at this point also never heard about!). Yet these characters were described in detail and given quite a space in the final act of the book...

This was because Baum was tired of Oz hogging all of the attention and money. He was so sad at seeing his other children works be forgotten and ignored by mass audience that he literaly decided to bring them into his Oz series in hope that it would interest his Ozian readers and encourage them to check out the other books he did. Yes you heard it right, this novel... as just an big ad for Baum's other books. That's how tired he was of Oz.

And, unfortunately for him, it did not work...

Cut to 1910. L. Frank Baum releases his sixth Oz book "The Emerald City of Oz"... that he also intends to be his final.

With "The Emerald City of Oz" we have the grand finale! Dorothy decides to leave Kansas and to settle permanently in Oz! She brings with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry who are given a complete tour of the Land of Oz! Meanwhile the greatest and most terrible ennemies Oz ever faced gather for an invasion! And, in the final chapter, Glinda the Good Witch decides that enough is enough, Oz had enough troubles from the outside world: she casts a spell that will make Oz unreachable by anyone from the human world...

And thus, Baum with teary eyes says goodbye to his character, and encourages his audience to say farewell to Oz, as the gates of the Marvelous Land close forever...

THE END

...

Who are you kidding? No, not the end! Cursed, Baum was, CURSED! Despite him writing EVERYTHING needed for the grand, conclusive finale, despite him literaly writing "IT'S OVER GET OUT"... His other books didn't sell. His other series didn't start. And he kept being pressured by all sides to write more and more Oz books.

As such, by 1914... a seventh Oz book was made. Opening with Baum writing basically "Sigh... So you know how I told you no other Oz story could be made, because there's this magical barrier and I will never know what happens behind it anymore? Well... sigh... turns out they have radio, somehow? And so... double-sigh. And so I have broadcast in Oz, which means... you'll get more Oz books."

Next post: How we got a HELL LOT of more Oz books

#oz #land of oz #l. frank baum #the emerald city of oz #oz books #road to oz #dorothy and the wizard of oz #oz novels #history of oz #so you want to know about oz

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