Day 1 - Dorothy meets Zeb & Jim around 5 AM - earthquake - descent to Mangaboos
  & arrival of the Wizard - the party kills Gwig & picks the Princess
Day 2 - Fire trick before the Mangaboos
Days 3-4 - "Two or three days" pass
Day 5 - Party driven into Black Pit - pass through Valley of Voe - sleep in country
  of Gargoyles
Day 6 - Escape from Gargoyles during "night" - the party encounters the
  Dragonettes - Ozma uses the Magic Belt at 4:00 PM
Day 7 - Jim meets the Sawhorse - holiday and procession in honor of the Wizard's return
Day 8 - Festivities continue
Day 9 - On "the third morning after Dorothy's arrival" Ozma misses the
  piglet - trial of Eureka begins at 3:00 PM
Day 10 - Dorothy looks in the Magic Picture "the next evening after the trial" - party for Dorothy and Zeb 
Day 11 - Dorothy and Zeb return to their homes in the AM

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 17:46:14 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Ozmopolitan and DotWiz
 
 
Dotwiz:
We've tossed this book around a good deal already over the past year and
a half, so saying something fresh may be difficult. It's certainly the
darkest and gloomiest of Baum's books, without much humor and what there
is rather black. It's also an Idiot Plot, in that if Dorothy had just
remembered in the beginning that Ozma would bring her to Oz if she made
a sign at 4:00, most of her adventures would have been avoided. And it
doesn't reflect well on Ozma that, even though Dorothy didn't make the
sign, she left her little friend in serious danger when she must have
seen the problem.
 
The trial of Eureka is also a classic kangaroo court, and again doesn't
reflect very well on Ozma. Eureka is probably not more than eight or ten
weeks old (she seems to have just started eating solid food); sure,
she's sassy and even offensive in some of her remarks, but putting her
to death is about the equivalent of capital punishment for a human
10-year-old. This is not what I think a wise and warm-hearted ruler
would do.
 
As a final query: does anyone know if there was a fashion in posing
little girls around 1907-8 with their upper bodies tilted forward and
their derriere sticking out? Dorothy takes up this pose frequently in
the illustrations to DOTWIZ, and to the best of my recollection she
doesn't do it in any of the other books.
 
OK, there's something for people to chew on.
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 21:23:33 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
DotWiz:
This was the first "modular" book of the FF. That is, a story that contained
many sub-stories. It is true that earlier FF books had some of the same
elements (such as the Dainty China Country), but this was the first story
that was totally constructed out of smaller elements.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:11:00 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Thoughts on _Dorothy and the Wizard_:
Everyone seems to agree that this is one of Baum's least appealing Oz books:
it's dark, gloomy, morbid, badly plotted, etc. etc. etc.  But one thing
struck me about Richard Tuerk's article in the Winter 1996 _Bugle_. While he
dutifully catalogued all the disagreeable features of the book, the editor's
note at the beginning of the article indicated that this was in fact one of
Tuerk's favorite Oz books when he was a child.  My own experience is
similar:  I enjoyed it thoroughly when I was first reading the Oz books (age
8 or so).  Perhaps we should start with a more positive point of view:  what
is *good* about this book?  Why does it apparently appeal to children
(beginning with Baum's own contemporary readers, who continued unabatingly
to clamor for more Oz books after _Dorothy and the Wizard_), even if adults
find it inferior?  
 
A while back we were discussing the location of Hugson's Ranch in
California, and David surmised that it was probably near Salinas rather than
northward in the Sacramento Valley.  I'd like to back that up.  If Dorothy
caught a train from San Francisco, she couldn't be heading up into the
Sacramento Valley.  If you're going in that direction, you still have to
cross the Bay, though no longer on a ferry, and catch a train from Oakland.
It seems to me, though, that the ranch is probably farther south in the
Central Valley, around Fresno or possibly even Bakersfield, since Dorothy
has crackers in her bag from "luncheon" on the train, and the train doesn't
get to Hugson's Siding until five in the morning.  Even allowing for a very
slow ride because of the earthquakes, a trip this long would no doubt take
Dorothy more than a couple of hundred miles.
 
Notes on the printing of the book:  Does anyone know why the running title
inside the book, at the top of the pages, is "Little Dorothy and the Wizard
in Oz"?  Was this perhaps the original idea for the title?  And another
question:  the word "Ozite" on p. 224 (p. 222 of the BoW edition) has an
asterisk following it.  Was there supposed to be a footnote there?
 
I wonder if it has occurred to anyone else that the entire book, from
beginning to end, is dominated by the motifs of eating and being eaten.  Of
the four principal phases of the underground journey, only the Gargoyle
episode doesn't involve the threat of being eaten.  The Mangaboo Princess
plans to throw Dorothy, Zeb, and the Wizard to the Twisting Vines, where
they will be "devoured" to make the plants grow bigger; the red bears of Voe
attack and eat anyone they meet; the hungry Dragonettes would readily devour
the travelers if they weren't tethered to the walls of the cave. By the same
token, the theme of Eureka's desire to eat the piglets runs through the
whole book, and there is a more or less steady discussion of what the
travelers are eating, beginning with their landing in the vegetable (!)
kingdom, fashioning a fishing hook to get food for Eureka, eating fruits and
crackers in the Mangaboo land, eating a sumptious lunch in Voe, and eating
(or not eating) dama fruit in Voe.  They face death by starvation in the
cave just below the surface of the earth.  Even in the concluding episode in
Oz there is an odd emphasis on eating, not only in the trial of Eureka and
the usual mention of fat babies in connection with the Hungry Tiger, but
also in the rather long description of the palace servants' attempts to find
the right food for Jim.
 
Hungry protagonists and hungry enemies:  I'm not sure what to make of all
this, but it most assuredly is a unifying theme, and it also ties in with
other motifs of deprivation (the lack of sound in the Gargoyle land, the
lack of visibility in the Valley of Voe, the lack of emotion in the Mangaboo
country).
 
Dorothy's green stripe:  the Mangaboo suns create a green streak through the
center of her face where the blue and yellow lights come together (p. 25).
Just three years before the publication of _Dorothy and the Wizard_, Henri
Matisse had produced a sensation in the art world by exhibiting "Green
Stripe (Portrait of Mme Matisse", which depicts his wife with a green stripe
running down the center of her face.  I'm not saying that this parallel is
anything but a historical coincidence, but it is certainly an *interesting*
coincidence.
 
On p. 218, the Imperial Cornet Band of Oz (stop for a minute to think what a
band composed solely of cornets would sound like!) marches out playing the
National air, followed by standard bearers with the Royal flag, which is
described as being "divided into four quarters, one being colored sky-blue,
another pink, a third lavender and a fourth white.  In the center was a
large emerald-green star. . .The colors represented the four countires of
Oz, and the green star the Emerald City."  Any ideas about why the colors
have become washed out to the point that the Winkie yellow is white?
 
There is internal evidence that Baum may have been aware of (and was
prepared to defend) the belated use of the Magic Belt to rescue the
travelers, but I'll write about that later.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:49:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
A sort of postscript comment on "Dorothy and the Wizard" --
 
   It's interesting to note that it's one of the many examples of influence 
of sf on Oz.  I haven't read the various early examples of 
journeys-to-the-center-of-the-earth myself, but looked up what J.O. Bailey 
had to say on that motif in his landmark study of early sf, "Pilgrims 
through Space and Time."  He traces that motif back to the 18th century, 
but there was a big boost to the popularity of the theme early in the 19th 
century, when John Symmes came up with his crackpot, but appealing, theory 
that the Earth was hollow inside, with openings at the poles, and sailing 
into the inside through the polar openings would be possible.  Even 
when journey stories did not draw directly on Symmes (for instance, Verne's 
"Journey to the Center of the Earth" portrays a large cavity in the Earth, 
rather than an entirely hollow inside, and does not assume polar access to 
the cavity), they drew on the popularity that Symmes had given to the 
notion of journeying inside the world.  Some of the stories that Bailey 
discusses make use of details that show up in the "Dorothy/Wizard" 
interior-of-the-Earth, including the artificial sunlight in many colors, 
and the near-weightlessness that makes it possible to walk on the air.  (It 
doesn't match up very well with the physics of the situation, and works 
better in a world below Oz than in the early sf stories Baum was following, 
probably.)
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 17:36:24 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kiex at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-11-97
 
On DOTWIZ:
Does anyone think Ozma really intended to follow through on her threat to
kill Eureka?  I don't, although maybe the fact that I am fond of cats has
something to do with that.
 
--jeremy and KIEX, partners in incoherency

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:21:04 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
David Hulan:
   You'll probably get general agreement on seeing problems in the ending 
of "Dorothy and the Wizard."  Even Cal Dobbins, who wrote an article, 
"Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz Revisited" ("Bugle," Spring 1983), on its 
good qualities, didn't like the ending.  I think Baum plotted himself into 
a hole (literally, too), as it would have been an anticlimax to get the 
characters all the way up that mountain and out onto the surface and then 
still have to get them across the Desert and to the Emerald City.  Of 
course, he could have had the mountain surface at the Emerald City, but 
that would have established a road to Oz too easy of acess (well, easier 
than most).  And it would be hard to plot the surface leg of the journey so 
that it would seem like a continuation of the rise in the action, rather 
than an anticlimax (rather like the trip -- after getting all the way back 
to the Emerald City -- to Glinda's to finish up in "Wizard").  So he got 
them all the way up the mountain, but not to the surface.

   I'd make a guess that the business of having Zeb and Jim and Eureka in 
their different ways unhappy in Oz society was also partly at attempt to 
find an interesting action to occur in the Emerald City, so that the 
closing section would also not seem like an anticlimax, but the device 
doesn't work very well, particularly as regards Eureka.  I kind of wish 
he'd closed off the theme of Eureka's desire to eat the piglets by having 
her go see Ozma privately to explain that she'd tried to eat one but 
failed.  She could then have said that she enjoyed being able to talk and 
wanted to stay in Oz, but would agree to obey the "house rules," as Greg 
Gick referred to it in his article on Ozma's governance in the recent Oz 
Research Organization mailing, and would not hunt her fellow-citians.  And 
possibly then her later pinkness could have been explained as a sort of 
mild punishment that Ozma imposed on her, by way of reminding her how she 
came to Oz and her guest-status.)

   Besides disliking much of the plot, I very much dislike Neill's artwork 
in this one book.  (In the other books, I like his work very much.)  The 
drawings in this one are too busy in many instances, the the drawings of 
the Wizard are so exaggerated that he looks as if he is wearing clown 
makeup or has been drinking too much.  Like you, I think the poses of 
Dorothy bent at an angle look peculiar.  You may be right in guessing that 
the odd slant was a fashion that year, but I don't know.

   My niece Harriet Sogin, however, liked the book a good deal when I read 
it to her a few years ago, especially for the Mangaboo Princess.  She had 
been noticing that many books use few female characters and put those few 
into subordinate roles, so was enchanted to discover that Tip was really 
Ozma, and went on taking note of women rulers that show up in the Oz 
books.  She was disappointed that there was no picture of the Mangaboo 
Princess in the b&w copy I was reading to her out of.  Fortunately, just 
about then Books of Wonder brought out its edition, with the color plates, 
so I bought her one of those, and she enjoyed the color plate of Dorothy 
and the Wizard picking the Princess.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:39:20 +0300 (IDT)
From: Gili Bar-Hillel <gili at scso.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Hi Digest!
  Thanks to all for the friendly welcome back.
 
some thoughts on "Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz": I have always been rather
fond of this book, myself. The reasons may be in part personal, as it was
a copy of this book that launched what is now my collection. I paid $8 for
it in a bookstore in San-Francisco when I waaas only nine years old.
Though the spine is cracked, many pages are discolored, the label is
rubbed, some of the clolor plates are loose and one may even be missing, I
am still pleased with the bargain I got...
 
D&W also reminds me of another fantasy book which I have already mentioned
here as an Oz imitation, but I'll describe it again. The book is called
"The Amazing Land of Wew" by John Kaufer. The plot mixes elements from
different Oz books, especially "The Pastchwork Girl" and "Dorothy and the
Wizard". There is one episode especially that is like the kingdom of the
mangaboos: the hero and his friends reach a land inhabited by tree-people.
The monarch, who is very cruel, has just "sprouted", which means his acorn
must be replanted so a sucessor can grow. By accident, the visitors cause
the ebony acorn to be ground up in a grinder with acorns of other, common
trees. The tree people are furious and want to execture them, but the
visitors quickly plant the ground-up acorns, which grow instantly into a
large bush, on which is growing a beautiful queen who is made of a
combination of different types of wood. She ends up joining them in their
quest (they are looking for ingredients for a magic potion to release the
capitol city from an evil sorcerer) because her subjects refuse to be
ruled by a mixed breed.

execture should have been execute, sorry
 
 
   |\      _,,,---,,_
   /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_      Gili Bar-Hillel,
  |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'      gili at scso.com
 '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)            

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 07:28:13 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Talking about DOTWIZ,
     First, a couple of quotes:
> the word "Ozite" on p. 224 (p. 222 of the BoW edition) has an
> asterisk following it.  and:
> On p. 218, the Imperial Cornet Band of Oz 
 
     I have a Rand McNally paperback edition (these comprise the bulk of
my Oz books) which I had always assumed to be an exact copy of the
original.  My pagination appears to be completely different than yours.
My pages 222 and 224 fall after the end of the story.  Both are part of
a list of all the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.  The Imperial Cornet Band
of Oz is discussed on my page 185.  Do I somehow have an abridged
edition?

     Second, for some reason I have just been re-reading H. Rider
Haggard (don't ask me why, I don't know myself.  It seemed a good idea
at the time).  I find myself drawing parallels with DOTWIZ.  The
protagonists find themselves (willingly or not) in an undiscovered
society completely different than the one to which they are
accustomed.     Disregarding any value judgements, these societies had
been perking along fine until the arrival of our heroes.  They then
proceed to wreak havoc and then leave with said society in shambles. 
All of this is viewed as good and proper.  A similar situation could be
found with our recent involvement in Vietnam (Oops, bite my tongue. 
Politics has reared it's ugly head.  Disregard the previous comment.) 
Possibly I am just in some kind of weird mood.  Haggard can do that.

     Third, (and not on DOTWIZ),
> A while back we were discussing the location of Hugson's Ranch in
> California, and David surmised that it was probably near Salinas 
> rather than northward in the Sacramento Valley.  

     I agree.  As a resident of Sacramento I can attest to the fact that
we are not nearly as subject to earthquakes as the San Francisco Bay
Area and the Salinas valley.  The San Andreas and its related faults are
located 100 or so miles west of us. There is, however, a small town
named Hughson near Modesto (about 60 miles south of Sacramento).  I had
wondered about that.  Probably just coincidence.
 
Bob Spark 
 
-- 
"Outside of a dog,
a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog,
it's too dark to read."
    Groucho Marx

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 14:06:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
DOT/WIZ was another survivor of Ma and her sibs, and in almost as good a
condition as LAND. Which should have warned me, not that I was of an age to
take warnings of that nature yet. I agree. This book is damned hard to
actually LIKE. It's scary, it's unpleasant, Eureka's trial is a blot on
Ozma's escutchion and there is the "idiot plot" detail to have to contend
with. (Although to be honest, didn't someone comment that at the time of
DOT/WIZ Ozma was only looking in on Dorothy on Saturday afternoons?) Unlike
LAND, the story never gets tiresome, and the characters are excellent, which
is what saves it, IMHO, but even the intermittant comic relief is on the
grisly side. Which is probably its worst flaw. With better comic relief, it
would make an excellent Indiana Jones story.
 
This is the first book in which we actually get a picture of the Wizard's
character. And if he was not quite so good a man as he claimed himself to be,
he was a lot more resourceful one. But I agree with whoever it was (David?)
that pointed out that this was actually Zeb's book. This is unquestionably
the "Boys' Adventure Story" version of the Oz universe, with Dorothy very
much along for the ride. I also agree that even though Zeb is drawn to look
about twelve or so, in an e-text version, he comes across as easily 14-15,
making his return to California much easier to understand. In fact, it was
inevetable, Zeb was already too old to really enjoy Oz. 
 
I also get the distinct impression that Baum didn't really seem have much
admiration for horses. Both Jim and the Sawhorse have a distincly nasty
streak to their dispositions, and perhaps intentionally, they appear to have
very much the SAME kind of nasty streak. Jim's kicking the Sawhorse in a snit
was no more than a dose of the Sawhorse's own medicine, given some of the
Sawhorse's own past (and future) behavior. This seems all the more noticable,
since during the early part of the book, when the party was all in danger,
Jim was a valuable and honorable member of the group. (Hank, who is refered
to interchangably as a mule and a donkey, does not seem to share this trait.
He has a much less distinct personality overall, but he only kicks someone in
defense.)
 
As to the odd stance in which Dorothy is posed throughout the book, it was
not necessarily a fashionable stance for little girls but it was the
characteristic stance used in drawings of fashionable grown women. The
straight-fronted "health corset" which was introduced in 1902 enforced it.
And Neil does seem to have very much followed fashion when drawing his
characteres. (I think it was Melody who pointed out that Neil's Dorothy
looked like a rich relative of Denslow's. She was certainly far too
well-dressed for an inpoverished farm child.) 

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 11:34:38 -0700
From: ozbot <ozbot at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
 
DOTWIZ--
 
What was good about it?  Well, when I look at it now with my adult eyes, I
can see the character studies that I find interesting.  Dorothy's character
as a stoic adventurer comes clear, as does the Wizard's self-grandiosity
(ooh, a new word!) and American imperializism (which you can parrelell to
his character in WIZARD)  Zeb and Jim remain a counterpoint-- the more
"realistic" and horrified responce to all of this strangeness.  Eureka is
just a perfect cat-- an independant jerk but you gotta love her.  DOTWIZ
remains a series of character studies, rather than a strict adventure story
a la OZMA's "let's go save Ev"
 
As a child, perhaps the appeal is that this story follows along the same
lines of Hansel and Gretel-- the wayward travellers attempting to get home.
 There was a study (I can't remember who wrote about it ugh.) that asked
kids which fairy tales they preferred.  The overwhelming responce was
Hansel and Gretel.  However contrived the dues ex machina is, Dorothy
nonetheless retains the power to save her party-- the child empowered uses
her ability to escape horror.  
 
Interesting that the "eating" motif can be parrelleled to HandG as well. .
.  Food can always play a big part in kids lit for whatever reason. Even
WIZARD is preoccupied with it, as is OZMA (especcialy with eggs being the
key for Roquat's undoing.)
 
Danny

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 19:46:28 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Gordon: Great questions. I wish I knew the answers. Maybe Peter Hanff 
will know, but he's outta town right now. I checked my 1sr. edit. and, 
sure enough, there was the mysterious asterisk. I don't recall having 
ever before noted it, so I checked my childhood copy (from the '50s with 
the odd redrawn cover...matching the equally odd Russian Mosque cover on 
the LAND of that vintage). The asterisk in my childhood copy is so 
heavily inked that it looks more like a blob than an asterisk, and I 
s'pose that's how I interpreted it as a kid.  Maybe Baum was going to add 
a footnote about the term "Ozite," but was convinced that footnoting a 
kiddy book was a bad idea. I know that there's a footnote in OZMA 
--something about even princesses must darn socks--and one in MERRY GO 
ROUND., but I think that's it for the whole series. Hmm.

        Theme of deprivation. Another "Hmm." What was going on in Baum's 
life at that time? Any connection? Eating as a unifier. Fits even the 
discarded chapter which was to have been "The Garden of Meats." Very 
grim. Very scary. And this from the man who started the series with the 
intention of keeping nightmares out of fairyland. He's got almost every 
nightmare possible in there, other (oddly enough) than one about a witch. 
(O.K., he has a heartless male magician instead.) Even dragon(ette)s, 
although I don't think a youngster would be too scared of them, since 
they're tied by their tails. But Mother was to have returned soon, right? 
I guess I'll reread the book. Too many gaps in my memory. I'm one who 
isn't fond of it, but your comments genuinely intrigue me.

        ...and I love the Matisse connection. I'll bet it's deliberate.
 
                                        --Robin

Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 00:13:22 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: TODAY'S OZ GROWLS
 
Now for DotWiz - This was the first Oz book I ever read, at about 7 years
of age.  This is the second time I have read it.  What I remembered from
the first reading was the "quest."  This was the first book I read that had
characters going on an interesting trip.  I loved it and this is still a
favorite type of literature for me.  The second thing was really being
taken aback when the characters were transported to Oz by Ozma.  I was
really disappointed.  It seemed like cheating at the time.
 
On this reading I noticed the violence.  Jim commits assault and battery on
the Sawhorse.  His punishment?  Implied threat by the "big cats."  Eureka
only attempts murder and that is apparently all right?  Try that in your
local hood! The Wizard and the Tin Woodman conspire to conceal her alleged
felony! This is kindhearted?  Dorothy's feelings are more important than
the piglets life?  Well, I guess you can tell, I am one of those law and
order types.  I'm also a cat lover - what a quandry.  =
 
Finally, sometime in the fifties my family was invited to a cabin on the
slopes of Mt. Hood in Oregon.  Nearby us kids found an old run-down cabin
which served as a post office at one time.  In it I found a turn of the
century "Munsey" magazine, still in reasonable shape. (Of course I still
have it.) Many of the models in the magazine looked like Dorothy.  Above
the waist vertical and flat-chested and below the waist puffed out behind
(probably with a bustle).  I think Neill was just reflecting the current
fashion.  Ladies?????
 
Do any of our older members remember the expression "VOE!"  Answer later.
 
Cryptically, Bear  (:<)

Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 15:47:10 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Tyler:
Good point, that DOTWIZ was the first Oz book entirely constructed from
smaller blocks. This practice became so common in the later books that
it's worth remarking that the first three books, with occasional
exceptions (the Dainty China Country - and really the whole trip to
Glinda - in WIZARD; the Jackdaws' Nest in LAND), had plots where
everything in the book was integral to the main story. Of course, many
of Baum's non-Oz fantasies used this modular approach well before
DOTWIZ; DOT AND TOT, MASTER KEY, SANTA CLAUS, JOHN DOUGH - even ZIXI, to
a considerable extent.
 
Gordon:
Good question: why _do_ children seem to like DOTWIZ quite a lot, even
though most adults think it's inferior? I can't speak for myself; it
wasn't one of my favorites even when I was a kid, though since it was
one I borrowed rather than owned I only read it once or maybe twice, and
didn't have very distinct memories of it until I acquired my own copy
while in my 30s and read it again. Of the books I borrowed but didn't
own as a child, the ones I remembered most fondly were OZMA, ROAD,
PATCHWORK GIRL, TIK-TOK, ROYAL BOOK, LOST KING, HUNGRY TIGER, YELLOW
KNIGHT, PIRATES, and OJO. As an adult rereading all the books I
understand why I didn't remember DOTWIZ, COWARDLY LION, GRAMPA, GNOME
KING, JACK PUMPKINHEAD, and PURPLE PRINCE very well, but I don't know
why SCARECROW and GLINDA made so little impression on me - or, for that
matter, why I liked ROAD and TIK-TOK as much as I did, when as an adult
I find them rather lacking. (Of the Thompsons, my adult opinions are
pretty close to my childhood ones. Note that OJO was the latest Oz book
I was able to read as a child by borrowing; the later books I either
owned or didn't read for the first time until I was an adult.)
 
But I suppose one reason why kids liked DOTWIZ is that it's an exciting
story, with several episodes of serious danger to Dorothy and her
companions, and kids generally like that kind of thing. Starting with
ROAD, episodes of actual physical danger to the child protagonist of a
story seem to drop, by and large, to no more than one or two a book. I
think it likely that children remember the exciting incidents and ignore
the general lack of intelligence in the plot.
 
I agree that Salinas itself is no doubt too far north for Hugson's
ranch; I had missed the mention of Dorothy's "luncheon on the train"
when I made my earlier post. That would imply that she had boarded
around noon, if not earlier, and the train was due at Hugson's Siding at
midnight, though because of the earthquakes it was nearly dawn. Even
assuming that it was a milk train (and one that stopped at Hugson's
Siding probably would be) that didn't average more than 20-25 mph, you'd
expect it to get 250-300 miles from San Francisco in no less than 12
hours. If it were heading down the Central Valley that would put it
somewhere between Fresno and Bakersfield; if it were taking the more
westerly route then it would be between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.
 
In either case, though, I think it's pretty conclusive that the quake in
question could not possibly have been the 1906 San Francisco quake. Even
in Salinas and Monterey that quake didn't do any significant damage, and
as far south as Dorothy evidently was it's doubtful she'd even feel it
if she were in a moving buggy, though she might if she were standing
still on the ground.
 
The green streak in Dorothy's face where the light from the blue and
yellow suns comes together is pretty implausible, in that based on the
description of them all the suns were visible at the same time. The only
way you could get such a green streak would be if something were between
the blue sun and the left side of her face, and something between the
yellow sun and the right side of her face, but both could illuminate the
center. (You might expect this, for instance, if she were looking
through a narrow slot in something opaque. But not if she were standing
out in the open.) In fact, the human eye adjusts very rapidly to the
changes in the color of the illumination source, and nobody would notice
anything unusual about colors unless they were in a partial shadow.
 
A cornet band seems plausible enough, as an extension of the classic
"drum and bugle corps". Cornets are, after all, basically bugles with
valves that allow a wider range of notes to be played. I expect the
cornet band included a few drums as well.
 
Ruth:
Dorothy & Co's experience in the Land of the Mangaboos doesn't fit much
of any kind of physics. Weightlessness, if they were indeed at the
center of the earth, would be correct - that is, there's no net
gravitational force inside a hollow sphere, if the hollow is concentric
with the outside of the sphere. But if there were no net gravitational
force it would be like being in free fall in space; you couldn't walk
anywhere, or keep your head "up", unless you were holding on to
something.
 
Also, clearly they weren't near the center of our earth. The journey of
a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but this would have been
a climb of over three thousand miles, and it isn't going to happen in a
few days. They couldn't have been more than, oh, 40-50 miles down at
most, I'd say.
 
Jeremy:
If Ozma didn't intend to put Eureka to death if she'd been found guilty,
why did she cause Dorothy a great deal of distress by saying she would?
 
Ruth:
It seems to me that having the tunnel in the mountain surface near the
Emerald City would have been less anticlimactic than the Magic Belt
solution Baum resorted to. In fact, all he'd really have had to do was
stick to Ozma and Dorothy's original agreement, that Ozma would look for
her every Saturday morning, to get around the whole problem. Because the
only plausible place they could have stopped was Voe, and the only way
they could do that was to eat the dama-fruit and become invisible - in
which case Ozma wouldn't have been able to see Dorothy's signal. So they
just kept climbing until they got to the surface or Saturday came,
whichever was first.
 
I agree that the art in DOTWIZ isn't up to Neill's usual standard.
Especially compared to ROAD, which immediately followed and is among his
best. Maybe Baum - who was obviously having trouble with the book -
delivered the MS late and Neill didn't have as much time as he usually
did? Does any information of that sort exist?
 
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 17:37:16 +0600
From: rri0189 at ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Gordon Birrell wrote:
>Everyone seems to agree that this is one of Baum's least appealing Oz books:
>it's dark, gloomy, morbid, badly plotted, etc. etc. etc.  ...
>Why does it apparently appeal to children
>(beginning with Baum's own contemporary readers, who continued unabatingly
>to clamor for more Oz books after _Dorothy and the Wizard_), even if adults
>find it inferior?  
 
Except for the one plot hole, what is _artistically_ bad about any of these
things?  "Because they don't go in kid's books.  They're bad."  Thank you,
Barney; we will now sing you the anvil song....  I recall C. S. Lewis observing
somewhere that he placed only two restrictions on "The Chronicles of Narnia"
-- no scenes of romantic love, and chapters of roughly equal length (for
bedtime-reading convenience).  D&tW was one of my favorites, too.
 
>stop for a minute to think what a
>band composed solely of cornets would sound like!
 
Errr....  Like a drum corps (or, as we called them in my youth, a drum and
bugle corps)?  Nothing odd about a "cornet band" at all, at least at that
date.
 
>Any ideas about why the colors
>have become washed out to the point that the Winkie yellow is white?
 
Obviously the flag was between Baum's informant and the sun!
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
> Some of the stories that Bailey 
>discusses make use of details that show up in the "Dorothy/Wizard" 
>interior-of-the-Earth, including the artificial sunlight in many colors, 
>and the near-weightlessness that makes it possible to walk on the air.  (It 
>doesn't match up very well with the physics of the situation, and works 
>better in a world below Oz than in the early sf stories Baum was following, 
>probably.)
 
Not really.  The near-weightlessness is quite accurate, although the
"walking on air" per se is nonsense.  Baum is more nearly correct than
Edgar Rice Burroughs (there would be no gravity whatever in Pellucidar).
Of course the hollow Earth itself is pretty much nonsense; Cavendish's
initial calculation of G pretty well determined the mass of the Earth, so
that long before Baum's time, it was known that the Earth _couldn't_ be
massively void.
 
// John W Kennedy -- Hypatia Software -- "The OS/2 Hobbit"

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 97 23:07:56 (PDT)
From: Dave Hardenbrook <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
Subject: Ozzy Things
 
David H. wrote:
>One thing that's puzzled me about the Magic Belt is that it's supposed
>to protect its wearer from harm - but it did not, at the end of OZMA,
>protect the Nome King from having the belt stolen from him. This seems
>inconsistent with Dorothy's later use of it in LOST PRINCESS and GLINDA.
>(Something that protects the wearer from harm while it's being worn, but
>that can easily be removed from its wearer by a hostile person, isn't
>all that much protection.)
 
Jellia: The Belt's magic had run down [in accordance with Aaron's et. al 
        theory of the Belt's reserve of magic periodically running out like a 
        battery and it then having to be "recharged"] by the end of _Ozma_...
        Oddly enough, the Belt's power runs down much faster while it's in the
        possesion of someone evil...
Wogglebug: BTW, in regard to Dorothy's "green streak", I'll add that it 
        wouldn't work anyway, because in *optics*, which is what sunlight
        would be governed by, yellow and blue don't make green -- they 
        make...white!
 
                                                       -- Dave

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:09:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: atty242 at mail.utexas.edu (Atticus)
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-16-97
 
_DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD_ AND DEUS EX MACHINA:
my theory about why baum had the adventurers come to a stand-still and have
to be rescued by ozma is to establish right off the bat the wizard's
subservience to ozma.  throughout the previous chapters, the wizard uses
humbug magic or other ordinary devices to lead the children and animals out
of danger.  at last they've reached a point where the wizard fails and only
ozma's magic can help them.  it's kind of like "pay no attention to that
man behind the curtain" all over again.  plus, the sudden disappearance of
dorothy and his own instant teleportation disconcerts diggs and further
augments his feelings of inferiority in relation to ozma.  he must, after
all, be humbled since he has up to this point exhibited a certain amount of
braggadacio.

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 10:37:51 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-16-97
 
Bob:
I don't think the Rand McNally Oz books are abridged, but their type was
reset and so the page numbers are inconsistent with R&L editions. That's
why I don't try to give page references for Oz books, but just chapter
references (which do seem to be consistent from edition to edition).
 
I don't think Modesto is far enough from San Francisco to require the
long train journey Dorothy apparently had, so Hughson is probably not
relevant. Down around Camarillo or Ventura might be plausible, and
that's definitely ranching country where it isn't urban - which it
wasn't then.
 
Joyce:
At the end of OZMA Dorothy and Ozma agree that Ozma will check Dorothy
every Saturday morning, but in DOTWIZ Dorothy says Ozma checks her every
day at 4:00 PM. I find this evidence that Dorothy must have made at
least one unrecorded visit back to Oz between those two books, at which
point she and Ozma changed their arrangement. As I said in my last post,
DOTWIZ would actually have made more sense if Baum had left the
arrangement in its original form; I don't know why he made the change.
Since he didn't specify a day of the week at any time during the book,
it would have been easy enough for Dorothy to say something like, "Well,
now that we've survived until Saturday morning, I can signal Ozma and
get us out of this."
 
I disagree that Zeb was too old to enjoy Oz - _I'm_ not too old to enjoy
Oz, should I be fortunate enough to get there! However, Zeb was too
prosaic to enjoy Oz, and his age might have been a factor there.
 
Robin:
I noticed that missing footnote the first time I ever read DOTWIZ (which
was in a fairly early edition, probably ca. 1920), and have noticed it
every time since. There are at least a couple of other footnotes I
recall from Baum - one in TIK-TOK where he explains the Nome King's
change of name, and one in MAGIC where he tells how to pronounce "patio"
(which isn't the way it's pronounced today, if it ever was). There may
be others.
 
Bear:
Eureka's attempted murder wasn't "all right"; she was confined to
Dorothy's rooms - in effect, imprisoned - because of it, and chose exile
to Kansas in preference to that. And Jim's "assault and battery" on the
Sawhorse has to be considered in the context that the Sawhorse doesn't
feel pain; if Jim had kicked a flesh-and-blood creature I'm sure his
punishment would have been much more severe.
 
John K.:
There's nothing intrinsically bad artistically in a book - even a
children's book - being dark, gloomy, and morbid, but it's a kind of
writing that I don't think Baum did very well, and it isn't what most of
us love in the Oz books. YMMV.
 
Dave:
You're right about yellow and blue light adding to make white, rather
than green. I hadn't stopped to think about that. You can't get green by
adding two colors of light, because green is an additive primary.
 
David Hulan

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 12:24:12 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-11-97
 
Did you guys notice that the Oz National Air is "The Oz-Spangled Banner?"
Ironically, "The Star-Spangled Banner" did not become the U.S. national
anthem until 1931.  Does anyone know who made the Oz flag in the new
documentary?
 
Scott

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 13:44:02 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Gordon Birrell and Bob Spark and Robin Olderman: "Dorothy and the Wizard"
was the only Reilly & Britton (or Lee) Oz book that varied significantly in
pagination between editions.  That was partly because they counted the
color plates in the first edition as being pages, and then had to
re-paginate when they dropped them.  Bob's edition is probably full-length,
not abridged, in spite of being shorter.  Robin is probably right in saying
that the asterisk on "Ozite" was meant to refer to a footnote that was
dropped at the last minute.  Baum did put a couple of footnotes into later
Oz books.  There's one in "Glinda" defining "patio" (probably less common
outside California then than now), and I don't remember for sure if the
information (in "Rinkitink?") defining "nome" as "one who knows" was worked
into the text or presented as a footnote.
 
Gordon: Interesting comments on the motif of eating and being eaten. //
The pastel flag should probably be considered an experiment (by Baum in
effective flag descriptions; by Ozma early in her reign in designing or
re-designing a national flag).  Pastels really cannot work very well on
flags -- bright colors and strong contrasts are needed to show up on
something meant to be viewed at a distance.  So it's not surprising that
the experiment was later revised.  (It's still a bit difficult as a flag
design -- the yellow contrasts nicely on the one side, but the central
green and the borders with purple, blue, red are probably a bit difficult
to distinguish when the flag is flown.  Still, if the green portion is a
sparkly "emerald" green, say, and the blue a pastel blue, the design is
probably distinguishable enough.)
 
Gili Bar-Hillel: "The Amazing Land of Wew" does sound like an Oz clone.
When did it come out, do you know?  A curious "Dorothy and the Wizard"
imitation is Grace Duffie Boylan's "Yama-Yama Land," which came out the
year after "Dorothy and the Wizard" (from Reilly & Britton), and features
a little San Francisco girl, who gets caught in the earthquake and
follows the opened crack down into the lands inside the hollow Earth.
(Although when I say "the" earthquake, I am funding on whether it is,
say, 1906 or not.  Perhaps it's the same as Dorothy's earthquake,
regardless of what year it is?)  Some of the other characters make their
way there by boat through the Polar opening, so this one is more Symmesian
than Baum was.  Some of the territories of lost objects (lost dolls, lost
pins) sound a bit like "Dot and Tot in Merryland."  It's an enjoyable
story, with nice artwork.
 
David Hulan: Yes, weightlessness in a hollow Earth with the hollow
symmetrically centered on the Earth's center is correct enough.  But
some of the early hollow-Earth books Bailey describes were like "Dorothy
and the Wizard" in assuming a kind of near-weightlessness, with people of
lighter weight able to go "higher," and the effect falling off as
one went further "up" from the surface -- and that's a situation more
plausible with magic in an Oz book than when presented as "scientifically"
likely.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 15:57:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kiex at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-16-97
 
And on to Oz?
I agree, the magic transport via Ozma's wish does cheat the reader out of a
more complex and well-thought out plot.  But then again, Baum did about reach
the length of the average Oz book with no end in sight . . . which hardly
excuses it!  Still, there are admirable things about the book, as many have
pointed out, and I always liked it just as much as the others.
---
Somewhat instrumental to the plot...:
As a cornet and trumpet player, I can give informed knowledge to the effect
that cornets are basically the same as trumpets, just with more coiled tubing
so they seem smaller.  The tubing in cornets becomes gradually wider from
mouthpiece to bell, giving them a mellower sound, while in trumpets the
tubing remains the same diameter until it gets abruptly wider at the bell.
 [The bell is the wide part at the end of the horn, where the notes come
out.]  Trumpets are generally used for marches whereas cornets are used for
softer, melodic pieces.  I always found my cornet easier to play, because it
takes less air for me to get a higher note [but that may just be me].
---
Ozma: Cat-hater or Not?
Okay, good point; she did cause Dorothy a lot of pain at the idea of putting
Eureka to death--pain which was probably not unfounded.  I would say Ozma was
still getting used to ruling Oz and didn't always know how justice is
administered properly.
 
--Jeremy and KIEX, partners in ... well, partners at least  :-)

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 21:29:17 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
David & Ruth:
 
On Dorothy's strange pose---Top leaning forward with bottom pushed back--I
remember one time seeing an illo of a grown Victorian woman in exactly this
pose, accompanied by copy that said women's corsets of the time pushed them
into this fashionable pose, which was known as "the dyspepsia front."
 
Ruth:
 
I agree with you on Neilll's pics of the Wiz--yecccch. I like his simple
style in "Land" better than the busier style he uses in later Oz books.
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 23:28:27 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Gordon:
Ok, I'll try. Probably the one thing that appeals to most people about
_Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz_ is the return of the Wizard. While not a
saint in the first book, he was an important fixture in early Oz, and his
return closed a very important loop.
 
Kiex:
While we may never know if Ozma really intended to kill Eureka or not, she
was certainly acting quite seriously, even to the point of having a formal
jury trial. David Hulan wrote about this once, and IIRC, he concluded that
Ozma was not likely to put Dorothy through such needless torment if she never
intended to put the kitten to death.
 
Tunnel:
Clearly, the ending would have been better if the crew in _Dot&Wiz_ could
have gotten out of the tunnel and found themselves in Oz.
 
Hollows:
While our own Earth cannot be hollow (our density is 5.5, much more than
water and surface elements, therefore the center must be even more dense
than that), the world of Oz probably could be, with different rules for
gravity. BTW, this is another reason to believe that the world of Oz is not
physically the same as our own.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 00:36:56 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-16-97
 
        The first Dotwiz I ever saw was one a friend showed us at her
house--and she thought the story really wierd because it wasn't "Wizard."
The first Dotwiz I bought and read was the Rand McNally whitecover
paperback edition. I found the story as dark and morbid as many of you did.
 
        Baum seems to knock "lookism" in Dotwiz--the Mangaboos are
gorgeous, but heartless and cruel. The people of Voe cannot be seen, and
therefore cannot be judged by their looks, but they are very hospitable and
concerned about the travelers' safety. The Gargoyles are stereotypical ugly
and mean. (Chris Dulabone tried to correct this "Braided Man of Oz" a book
that features a good Gargoyle.)
 
        The Mangaboos, don't seem to be completely emotionless. The
Mangaboo Prince states that they become angry when rocks fall and break
their glass buildings. Later, when the Mangaboos drive out the strangers,
Baum says that Eureka's claws ruined so many vegetable complexions that the
Mangaboos *feared* her as much as the flyilng heels of Jim. So the
Mangaboos, at least at that time, could feel anger, fear, and probably hate
as well. As Zim observes in SBM1,  they seem to  feel only negative
emotions. It's their veggy faces that don't express any feeling at all.
 
        Beauty is apparently very important to them--they are angered when
falling rocks spoil their fine buildings and the Mangaboo prince would
rather destroy Dorothy & Company than let them "ruin our pretty melon vines
and berry bushes" by eating them. *****Plot spoilers for SBM1**** There's
another reason featured in SBM1--when Tip eats veggies, it really grosses
out his Mangaboo companions. To vegetable folk it's like watching somebody
eat live mice, lizards,canaries, etc. Tip also saves himself from being
killed right away by the Mangaboos by using the importance they place on
beauty.
 
        "DotWiz" does seem like an Idiot Plot--especially since Baum or
Dorothy forgot that Ozma is supposed to look in on them every Saturday, not
every day. I agree with David--Baum *could" have strengthened Dotwiz and
saved it from Idiot Plotting with only a modicum of tinkering--by having
Dorothy say, "Ozma agreed to look  in on me every Saturday at 4:00, but
it's Monday!"
        Zeb: And the Mangaboos are after us!
        Wizard: We must find a way to stay alive until next Saturday...!
 
        David:
 
        Clever of you to point out that while Voe was relatively safe as
long as Dorothy & Company chose to be invisible, Ozma would not see
Dorothy's hand signal. Of course, on the other hand:
 
        Ozma: Why, I asked for Dorothy and the Magic Picture showed
Nothing! Dorothy must be in trouble. I had better consult Glinda! Or try to
transport Dorothy here. Maybe Dorothy's just invisible....
 
        Or:
 
        Ozma: The Picture just showed me a meadow. Oh, no! What if--if
Dorothy's b--buried there? What if she's---de-e-ead! Boo-hoo-hoo-----!
 
        JOdel:
 
        Indeed Baum may not have admired horses very much. Phyllis Karr
once made a very good point--that the horseless Emerald City would be
paradise to someone who had to put up with the smell and mess of horse
droppings in the streets of Baum's era. Indeed, I tend to prefer cars as
transportation despite their problems--yes people get disabled by car
wrecks but people were disabled by horses, too, when they were used for
transportation. People have been disabled and killed by horse kicks, being
thrown from them, falling off of them, etc. Give me untemperamental
transportation any day! :-) The Sawhorse's future behavior: he kicks the
poor Woozy in "Patchwork Girl."
 
        Different animals have different personalities. Hank was probably a
more mild-mannered mule than most--mules have been known to kick, too!
 
        Dave:
 
        You're right--different colors of *light* blended together do add
up to white--if you add enough of 'em.
 
        I didn't think much of the "Eureka on Trial" sequence, either.
 
        If more children love DotWiz than adults, it's probably for the
reasons that you folks mentioned. A.) It's the sort of exciting
action-adventure kids do love. B.) It's episodic--able to hold short
attention spans.I've loved certain shows or stories as kids--then come back
to them as a grownup and wondered what I ever saw in them. Example: kids
love (or loved?) the excitement of Power Rangers, but adults think the show
silly--because adults can see the shallow characters, outrageous plots,
unscientific science, the dumb dialogue, obvious pandering to power
fantasies, etc. The ideal is for a writer to appeal to children without
insulting the intelligence of grownups. Even if, as someone says, nobody
ever got poor underestimating the intelligence of the public, still-- if
the intelligent ones think something is dumb, think they're *all* going to
refrain from telling everyone else? (Eh, David? Elbow, elbow. :-) :-)  )
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 20:29:36 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: TODAY'S OZ GROWLS
Content-disposition: inline
 
David - This is a perfect example of the dichotomy between conservatives
and liberals.  It seems as though the liberal usually relates to the
criminal while the conservative relates to the victim.  Did Jim know the
Sawhorse didn't feel pain, when he kicked him, hmmmmmm?  And, some might
not consider exile to Kansas punishment. :)
 
Cryptically, Bear  (:<)

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:58:31 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-97
 
Atticus:
>From an Oz-as-literature POV your comments make perfect sense. But from
an Oz-as-history POV you're saying that Ozma didn't rescue Dorothy, at
least, because she needed to teach the Wizard a lesson - which doesn't
sound like Ozma's character in most of the books, though given her
attitude toward Eureka, maybe she was Going Through A Phase in DOTWIZ?

Jeremy:
Actually, DOTWIZ is one of the shortest of the Oz books even with all
the miscellaneous happenings in Oz after Ozma does her _dea ex machina_
trick, including the Wizard explaining his origins, the conversation,
race, and fight between Jim and the Sawhorse, and the extended trial of
Eureka. Whatever Baum's reason for running Dorothy & Co. into a dead end
and calling on Ozma, fear of making the book too long couldn't have been
one.
 
I agree that my books will never be as "Ozzy" as Baum's better ones -
though I think that
he wrote several books that weren't in the spirit of his better books
(and DOTWIZ is one of them), and that other authors (Thompson, Snow, and
McGraw at least) have written books that are Ozzier and better than
Baum's lesser works, and I don't concede that I might not, whether or
not  I have so far notwithstanding. YMMV.
 
Melody:
Sure, there are ways around Dorothy's invisibility in Voe preventing
Ozma from knowing she was signaling. But at least it would make sense
that Dorothy might not know that, so she'd choose to go on until
Saturday...
 
It's not just the smell and mess of horse droppings. They breed flies -
FLIES - and those are more annoying, and unhealthy, than the droppings
themselves. Having grown up, off and on, in communities that still had
large horse populations and in ones that didn't, I can confidently state
that the "shmutzige fliegen - from the stable to your table" were far
commoner in the former. As was typhoid fever.
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 20:51:02 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-97
 
David Hulan,
> I don't think Modesto is far enough from San Francisco to require the
> long train journey Dorothy apparently had, so Hughson is probably not
> relevant. 
     You are probably right, although I don't believe that the trains of
that day were any speed demons.  I used to work for the Southern Pacific
and can recall that the trip on a freight train from Roseville (near
Sacramento) to Sparks, NV (next to Reno) was a little over 100 miles and
took around 13 hours.  That was in the 60's.  Stopping to load coal and
water was not even a necessity then.  Mainly a matter of weight and
crossing the Sierra Nevada, but a trip from San Francisco to around
Modesto could (at that time) certainly fall within our time limits.
-- 
If a man is makes a statement 
in the forest with no woman 
around is he still wrong?

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 23:23:07 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-97
 
DOTWIZ: I'm slowly convincing myself that this book was created with a 
stage play in mind. Neill's illos back this up...esp. the Wizard's comic 
mask and the fact that Zeb looks like a real person, not a standard Neill 
face at all...not even when he draws members of his family. Neill's style 
was in transition for this book. In LAND, he was required to look 
something like Denslow. In OZMA, he's still heavier of line than 
usual...figures squatter than in later versions...still experimentint. By 
DOTWIZ, we see some of his more delicate stuff showing up, but mostly in 
incidental drawings. The cp's, however, look like sketches for the stage. 
Look at the one, especially, of the Mangaboos on their parent plants. 
Boy, is that stagey. (Also, BTW, it contradicts the text in having a 
woman instead of the prince with the star there.)  I can't help but 
wonder if the Princess of the Mangaboos is the forerunner to Ozga and if 
the Mangaboos themselves aren't forerunners to  the roses in TIK TOK.  
TIK TOK was definitely meant as a stage play...mostly a rewrite of OZMA, 
but did Baum salvage the live plants from DOTWIZ as good stage stuff? Is 
that why the section is there in the first place?  And when were the 
Fairylogues? Couldn't Baum have planned to have glass slides projected to 
a screen at the back of the stage as a special "Floating down to the 
glass city" effect? And I'm pretty sure they could "fly" actors by 1908. 
Great special effect.  I don't know how farfetched this is, but I'm gonna 
play with the idea some more before I abandon it...if I do abandon it. 
Baum was theatrical at heart and wanted to repeat his stage success. Did 
he try to repeat it with DOTWIZ? Feedback, please.

Thanks to those who reminded me of footnotes I'd forgotten. 
 
--Robin

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 07:55:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: earlabbe at juno.com (Earl C. Abbe)
Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Rally Round the Flag!
 
In the 6/14 Digest, Gordon Birrell asks, <Any ideas about why the colors
[of the Oz national flag carried in the grand procession in _DotWiz_]
have become washed out...?>

Perhaps this particular flag has some special meaning for Ozma -- a relic
from her father's reign, perhaps.  If so, it would continue to be
displayed, no matter how faded it became.
  
Earl Abbe

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 14:01:11 -0700
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-97
 
> I agree with you on Neilll's pics of the Wiz--yecccch. I like his simple
> style in "Land" better than the busier style he uses in later Oz books.
> 
> Melody Grandy
> 
*I* liked Niell's portrait of the Wizard so much, when I had a terrible
copy of DOTWIZ that was being junked I removed the portrait page and had
it mounted.
 
Steve T.

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 15:07:23 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-18-97
 
DOTWIZ: Gee it's slow reading for me. I'm surprised at how strong my 
antipathy towards it is...makes it hard to be objective. One of the 
reasons I love Tolkien is because he knew how to relieve the darkness of 
a story by inserting a gentle, warm incident into just the right place. 
Baum wasn't good at that, and it shows most in DOTWIZ.  RPT, BTW, *did* 
use the relief incident; the Soup Sea in KABUMPO and the Box Wood/Ix 
scene in SILVERT PRINCESS come to mind.
 
--Robin

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:06:04 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Bear: Interesting point about Jim's intent, and whether it should make a
difference in punishment for kicking the Sawhorse.  I wonder if someone
in the group has formal legal training to comment on how "intent" matters.
I seem to recall a theory that good intent matters in law (if you didn't
mean to kill someone but did, it's not murder), but bad intent doesn't
matter much (assulting someone with the intention of killing, if the assault
fails to kill, is not worse, or only a little worse, than simple assault).  But
I'm not sure I'm recalling the source accurately, and don't know for sure if
the source (a magazine article) was authoritative.  Actually, though,
considering that Jim has been fighting Gargoyles earlier in the story, I
suspect that he has reason to believe that a wooden Sawhorse can be
injured but will not feel pain.
 
Robin Olderman:
     You might be right in thinking that there's some stage influence on
how Baum was thinking of the characters and how Neill was drawing
them (and in idea that Baum drew on the Magaboos and their Princess
when he was working up Ozga and the Roses for the stage "Tik-Tok"),
but I don't think "Dorothy and the Wizard" as a whole was intended for
the stage.  Journey stories, where the scene keeps changing, and the
different scenes are about equally important, are hard to stage (it can be
done, as with the "Wizard," but it isn't usually the plan that someone
intending a play chooses -- "Tik-Tok" is formally a journey, but the not all
the places are scenically important), and the characters don't include any
choruses-of-pretty-girls such as extravaganzas of the time aimed for
(unless you count the one paragraph description of the Cloud Fairies --
the Mangaboos and Ozites are of both sexes), and the invisible Voe-ans
would be hard to present.  I don't remember when the Fairylogues were,
but think it was a bit later -- will try to remember to check.
 
Earl Abbe: Faded flag as a relic from Pastoria's reign -- that's a touching
idea.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 22:39:36 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Bear:
 
I'm not sure that Eureka was really exiled to Kansas. It seems to me that the
Ozites simply assumed that she would return there with Dorothy, perhaps as a
"cooling off period", after which she would be welcomed back to Oz.
 
That, of course, is another can of worms altogether. Eureka's return to Oz is
a little unclear. She is not mentioned in _Road_ or _Emerald City_, yet she
suddenly appears in _Patchwork Girl_. Some have suspected that she sneaked
along in _Road_ and jsut stayed there until she was discovered. Nobody
wanted to send her to Kansas where nobody would take care of her.
 
March Laumer has a very interesting story of how Eureka got to Oz, but it's
too lengthy to go into here.
 
On yet another related note, I remember the Shaggy Man talking about Eureka
to the Glass Cat. He hints that Eureka is very popular and has a lot of
influence, but I think he was just blowing smoke trying to "scare Bungle
straight".
 
Which brings to me to yet another side-issue. People have commented that
Baum did not like horses. Since Eureka and Bungle are of less than stellar
reputation, I submit that he did not care too much for cats, either.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 08:02:20 +0600
From: rri0189 at ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-97
 
"Jeremy and KIEX" wrote:
>As a cornet and trumpet player, I can give informed knowledge to the effect
>that cornets are basically the same as trumpets, just with more coiled tubing
>so they seem smaller.  The tubing in cornets becomes gradually wider from
>mouthpiece to bell, giving them a mellower sound, while in trumpets the
>tubing remains the same diameter until it gets abruptly wider at the bell.
>[The bell is the wide part at the end of the horn, where the notes come
>out.]  Trumpets are generally used for marches whereas cornets are used for
>softer, melodic pieces.  I always found my cornet easier to play, because it
>takes less air for me to get a higher note [but that may just be me].
 
The two modern instruments are quite alike, and sound much alike, but that
was not always so.  The trumpet has always been made of metal, and resisted
the introduction of valves for a long time, and until valves were in use,
was typically much longer than it is now.  Since a brass instrument with
no valves or toneholes has notes that grow closer together as you go higher,
that gave it more usable notes, but also gave it a nobler tone.  Until quite
recently, it, not the bugle (which has a still wider bore than the cornet, 
making it still easier to play) was the military signal instrument, and 
many countries required a government license to own or play a trumpet.  
The cornet, on the other hand, was originally a wooden folk instrument 
with tone holes (like a recorder).  The infamous "serpent" was the bass 
member of the family, and the saxophone was originally invented by sticking
a clarinet mouthpiece on an instrument of the family (which had changed to
brass by that time).  Soon after the introduction of the cornet-a-piston,
however, it swept away the older forms.
 
Yes, the cornet is easier, and less tiring, to play.  That's why it is the 
usual main brass instrument in military bands, while orchestras use it only
for special effects (although theatre orchestras, apart from grand opera,
used to use the cornet until quite recently; all of Sullivan's theatre
scores except "Ivanhoe" specify the cornet).  Jazz also originally used
the cornet, until Jazz players discovered that they could coax extremely
high notes from a trumpet that they couldn't get from the other instrument.
 
// John W Kennedy -- Hypatia Software -- "The OS/2 Hobbit"

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 10:39:46 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Melody:
You're right about the Mangaboos' showing a certain range of emotions.  
When I was cataloguing the theme of deprivation in the novel, I should 
have spoken of lack of compassion rather than lack of emotion in the 
vegetable kingdom.
 
* * * * * * SPOILER FOR _THE DISENCHANTED PRINZESS OF OZ * * * * * * * *
One of many pleasures of Melody's wonderful book is the section in which 
Dinny and Gilo retrace the journey of the Wizard's party in _Dorothy and 
the Wizard_ and we get to see the trail of anguish, confusion, and 
desolation that the earlier visitors from the upper world had left behind 
them as they ascended to the surface of the earth.  The land of the 
Gargoyles is a nightmare landscape of charred and blackened ruins.  For 
the Mangaboos, the visitors have passed into legend as an 
incomprehensible visitation, a terror that came from the sky.  The 
Wizard's balloon, a surviving remnant of the visitation, has assumed 
totemic functions as a ritual instrument of death (the "Cloak of 
Darkness").  By way of contrast, Dinny's stay in the Mangaboo country 
eventually leads, through Zim's botanical work, to the gift of extended 
life and the birth of feelings in the Mangaboos.  The Age of Imperialism 
(in Baum's work) has been superceded by the Age of the Peace Corps.
 
I might add that Dinny's adventures in the underworld are recounted with 
considerably more good humor and high spirits than are present in the 
original story.
 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * END OF SPOILER * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * **
 
On hard-hearted Ozma:
It's not just the death penalty for Eureka that bothers me about Ozma's 
behavior at the end of the book.  Almost as disconcerting is her "merry 
laughter" when Zeb beats up on the Munchkin and hurts him so much that he 
cries.  Apparently the readers of 1908 had different attitudes about the 
acceptable levels of physical violence than the readers of today (or at 
least *this* reader of today!).
 
On the much-disputed Trial of Eureka the Kitten:
Amidst all the negative things that have been said about this trial, it's 
been overlooked that this is in fact one of the funniest episodes in the 
book, with all that silly repartee about the "mind's eye," ineptitude on 
the part of the prosecution as well as the defense, and a defendant who 
angrily rejects as libelous the efforts of her own legal counsel to 
exonerate her.
 
Beyond that, I think there may be a parallel here to _A Midsummer Night's 
Dream_, in which a seemingly unrelated closing episode (the little drama of 
Pyramus and Thisbe) actually recapitulates significant themes of the 
principal action of the play.  Eureka goes through a trial in which her 
very life is at stake knowing all along that she has the means to save 
herself:  isn't this precisely what Dorothy did in the preceding episodes 
of the book, enduring one life-threatening situation after another but 
aware (at some level) that Ozma was always there to rescue her and her 
friends?  (This may be one reason why Baum changed the schedule of Ozma's 
checking the magic mirror from every Saturday to every single day.)  And 
Eureka's explanation for her withholding the crucial information about 
the missing piglet explains as well why Dorothy didn't act earlier in 
asking for Ozma's assistance:
 
"But why didn't you tell us at first?" [Dorothy] asked.
"It would have spoiled the fun," replied the kitten, yawning.
 
It was David IIRC who suggested some months ago that Dorothy is reluctant 
to call on Ozma from the start because basically she loves a good 
adventure and it would "spoil the fun" to go straight to Oz at the first 
sign of trouble.  Even during the hair-raising descent into the depths of 
the earth she is looking forward to "another adventure, which promised to 
be just as queer and unusual as were those she had before encountered."
 
I think, in other words, that the trial of Eureka *may* have been Baum's 
way of signalling to the reader that he knew exactly what he was doing in 
delaying the use of the magic belt, and the delay is best understood not 
as an inept plot device but as a way of understanding the motivations 
(conscious or otherwise) of the heroine.
 
David & Dave:
Good points about the green stripe.  Baum was clearly thinking about the 
mixing of pigments rather than light.  I wonder though about whether the 
combination of yellow and blue light would produce white light:  don't 
you have to combine all three primaries (red, green, and blue) to get 
white light?  I admit that my information is gleaned from the chapter on 
color channels in _Photoshop 3 for Dummies_, not perhaps the most 
reliable source.
 
Ozzy note:  the title of that chapter is "Auntie Em versus the Munchkins 
(Death Match)"  :)  Auntie Em representing b&w and the Munchkins the 
world of color.
 
On the geography of _Dorothy and the Wizard_:  it's interesting that the 
travelers follow a spiral pattern in their ascent:  cross a valley, climb 
through the interior of a mountain, enter a new country, cross a valley, 
climb through the mountain, enter a new country, etc.  I've generally 
assumed that the various countries were immense but finite caverns 
stacked vertically.  This time around it struck me that maybe the 
countries are in fact concentric shells in the earth, each one a separate 
"globe."  What do the rest of you think about this?
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 23:21:02 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Gordon:
True, the coutroom scene, on it's own terms, was hilarious. I especially
liked the Tin Woodmans song defending Eureka about demanding meat. Not the
best defense, in all likelihood.
 
The concentric shell theory is intriguing. Certainly, the Mangaboos had
their own suns, although Voe had no discernible light source. Also, Baum
never made mention of any "roofs". We'd need to figure out an explanation
for the sevens underground kingdoms in _Yellow Knight_, though.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 00:02:53 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-19-97
Content-disposition: inline
 
Gordon:
 
        It *is* infuriating and/or saddening to be laughed at when hurt.
Pouring salt in the wounds, so to speak. My only defense for Ozma's
behaviour is her youth at the time. And as Tip, she wasn't above  pulling
the occasional pig's tail. 
 
        Thanks for your positive review of the underground adventure in
SBM. I'll also add The Peace Corps only does their improvements because the
Mangaboos agree to them. :-)
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 00:47:51 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy odds and ends
 
Blue+yellow=white; Yes that's right. In the additive palate, yellow is a
secondary color made by adding red to green. With the addition of blue, all
three primary colors are present.
 
Baum and cats; Yeah, I think it is fairly likely that he found the little
savages irritating. Seems to have preferred dogs, anyway. Somehow, though,
you'll notice that while Bungle and Eureka may be obnoxious as all get out,
they don't seem to get in the way, or spoil other character's set plans one
quarter as often as Toto does. (Dorothy would have been safely in the storm
cellar--except for Toto. She would have been aboard the balloon, headed home
with the Wiz--except for Toto, etc.) 

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 00:51:30 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-19-97
 
DOTWIZ: Eureka's trial strikes me as stagey, too. It would certainly play 
better than it reads.  As for whether this book was meant to any degree 
to be staged, we'll probably never know. But there are very strong 
theatrical elements. On t'other hand, no real plot--which kinda spoils it 
as much onstage as in the book. Maybe Baum started off with one thing in 
mind and then had to switch. Dunno.
 
--Robin

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 07:42:38 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Robin Olderman: I checked on the Radio Plays, and you were right in seeing a
connection between them and "Dorothy and the Wizard."  The Radio
Plays performances toured September 24-December 16, 1908, in the
Midwest and East, so were probably written during 1908; "Dorothy and
the Wizard" came out 1908, so was probably written during 1907.  (And it
occurred to me belatedly that what I said about the non-stage-like
qualities of the book didn't really apply to film.)  The show as performed
did not include any "Dorothy and the Wizard" film, but slides of scenes
from the book were shown during the intermission.  And an adaptation of
the book was filmed at some point (either filmed at the time, and left out
because the film + live-theater-material combination was too long, or
filmed two years later when Selig tried to recoup the Radio Play losses by
packaging the filmed material as one-reel movies) -- at any rate, Selig's
1910 five one-reeler Oz films included a "Dorothy and the Wizard" reel.
 
Gordon Birrell: Like you, I enjoyed the revisionist revisiting of "Dorothy
and the Wizard" sites in Melody's "Disenchanted Princess."

   Parallel between Eureka's and Dorothy's knowledge of how to get out
of their "trials" is interesting, but the difference that Eureka is conscious
and Dorothy unconscious of having that knowledge undercuts it a good
bit?

   Mixing yellow and blue light to get white vs. needing three primaries --
yellow is mixture of red and green, so all three are there (counter-intuitive,
but there it is).

   Idea that Mangaboo country, Voe, Gargoyles, and maybe Braided
Man's and dragon's levels could be surfaces of entire interior shells
rather than individual cavities along one underground mountain is
appealingly spectacular, but doesn't really fit with the "feel" of the
descriptions.  They don't sound big enough.  There would have to be lots
and lots of "mountains" to hold the various layers apart (and probably
heavy-duty magic to keep the whole shebang from collapsing anyway),
and there is no mention of other such mountains in view anywhere.  And
it would be hard to match up the geography of global-wide layers of
these countries with the geographies encountered by other trips
underground in the Oz books ("Tik-Tok," "Hungry Tiger," "Grampa,"
"Speedy," and assorted Nome spaces).
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 11:22:45 -0500 (CDT)
From: atty242 at mail.utexas.edu (Atticus)
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-19-97
 
TYLER:
>Which brings to me to yet another side-issue. People have commented that
>
>Baum did not like horses. Since Eureka and Bungle are of less than stellar
>
>reputation, I submit that he did not care too much for cats, either.
 
of course not.  he was a dog person.

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 14:19:39 -0700
From: Tyler Jones <Tyler at apprentice.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Ramblings:
All this talk about the trial in _DotWiz_ got me thinking of the time when this
was discussed before. Many people were of the opinion that, in and of itself,
eating animals in Oz is not wrong. After all, there are instances of this in the
Baum 14, and nobody does much about it. It is only this one time that much
of a fuss was made.
 
Many of us concluded that the reason for the difference was due to one of
two factors: That the incident happened in a civilized area, or that the piglet
was the pet of Ozma, and thus "special". The first theory has some parallels
in _Magic_, and was also mentioned in Farmers non-HACC _Barnstormer_.
 
Anyway, it reminded me of an episode of "The Simpsons".
 
It was the episode where Homer goes back to college for Nucelar Phyics 101.
As  a prank, he and some other students kidnap a neighboring school's
mascot, which happens to be a pig.
 
Things go a little wrong, the pig becomes ill, and the Dean appears.
 
Dean: "Gosh, guys. I've never expelled anyone before, but that pig had
powerful friends."
 
Richard Nixon: "Oh, you'll pay. Don't think you won't pay"
 
Omby Amby: "Well, we've never had a trial for eating animals before, but that
piglet had powerful friends"
 
Wogglebug: (see Nixon)
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 22:26:01 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-19-97
Content-disposition: inline
 
Steve:
 
Were you referring to the Wizard "picture taken by the Royal Photographer"?
Yes, that is a compelling pic of the Wiz. The problem seems to appear more
in the color plates than Neill's B&W pics. The Wizard's face looks too
red--but he worked outside as a a circus balloonist before they invented
modern sunscreen.  But the Wizard also looks like he's wearing lipstick,
and I think men stopped painting and powdering by the Victorian era. (Would
circus men of that era have painted their lips? Oh, it's tricky to give a
man's lips a natural shade of pink without going over the line into the
"lipstick look" in a drawing.)   It *could* be related to faulty
reproduction of Neill's art. One colorized "Elfquest" collection had that
problem--the artist complained the reproductions came out much redder than
the original colorized illos.
 
        On the other hand, Neill's color illo of Dorothy and Ozma in the
Emerald City is wonderful. He put in some time and care drawing the folds
in Ozma's gown. 
---
In the Mangaboo sequence again--Baum does specify that the colored suns
sent colored rays darting in every direction, so SBM describes the colored
suns as being like fiery glitterballs shooting rays unevenly in all
directions--making shifting multicolored lighting on the ground possible.
Steadily-burning colored lights could not do this. It would have been
interesting to see how Baum might have rigged the Mangaboo suns in a stage
play of DotWiz, eh, Robin? Modern theatres (or Disney) might do it in the
form of a lasershow.
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 19:39:42 +0000
From: Scott Olsen <ScottO1440 at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-21-97
 
Some recent digest observations:
 
Re: _Dorothy & the Wizard_
 
I have to admit that this was my favorite Oz book when I was young
(younger?). Anyway, I think alot of the problems with the "darkness" of this
book has to do with the Neill color plates, which I didn't see until later.
Many of the color plates in this book are, well, frightening.
 
As has been stated before, the ending of this book leaves a little to be
desired--but the same can be said of such books as _Patchwork Girl_ and
_Rinkitink_. If someone wants to read a good book like _Rinkitink_ that
isn't ruined by a "god from the heavens" plot device, I suggest you read
_Sky Island_. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Scott Olsen

Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 09:37:56 -0700
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-21-97
 
Melody:
 
Yes, it is the picture taken by the royal photographer I had mounted. 
But Neill should not be blamed for the color in DOTWIZ.  He did not do
the color, did he?
 
Steve T.

Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:10:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kiex at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Notes
 
I just wanted to add two thoughts before the discussion of _DotWiz_ ends:
 
-- On rereading _D&W_ I noted how the escape from the Gargoyles (using the
wings stolen from unsuspecting Gargoyles) paralleled the escape with the Gump
in OZMA.  No Powder of Life--but the Gargoyle wings are already alive in
their own right.
 
-- Contrary to what some Digesters have been saying (I think), it doesn't
sound like Dorothy has made any other trips between _Ozma_ and _D&W_, judging
by what the characters say; so I see no reason for Ozma to have changed the
time she checks in on Dorothy.  As I said before, I think she might have
wanted to see Dorothy solve her own problems--or she might have had too much
to do to look in on Dorothy more than once or twice a week.  (None of which,
of course, explains why Dorothy didn't remember--the pleasure of being with
old friends distracted her and made her forget?
 
Anyway, sorry for the extra post.
 
--jeremy and KIEX

Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 19:32:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-23-97
 
DOTWIZ illos: I wish I were sure of this, but I *think* Neill did his own 
color work for this book.  I believe it's one of two (the other is 
E.CITY) for which Neill did paintings for the illos. For the rest of the 
series, he'd just indicate  colors to the colorist.
--Robin

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:01:23 -0500 (CDT)
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Ruth Berman:
After I had posted my idea about the possibility of concentric 
underground shells in _Dorothy and the Wizard_, it occurred to me that 
the description of the Mangaboo land, with those colored suns centered 
over the glass city, strongly suggests a cavern configuration.  And of 
course you are right in saying that other FF books don't support the 
concentric-shell theory.  To the ones you mentioned I would add _Royal 
Book_ and perhaps _Tik-Tok_.
 
About the illustrations in _Dorothy and the Wizard_:  Neill seems to have 
been intentionally striving for a nightmarish effect in the color plates 
depicting many of the underground scenes.  Another unsettling thing about 
those illustrations is the way he works against his own medium.  I have 
thought for a long time, and an artist friend of mine recently agreed, 
that Neill uses water colors like oil paint in many of those plates.  
While the illustration of Dorothy and Ozma near the end of the book has 
the typical transparency and delicacy of water colors, the earlier plates 
tend more toward the density and opacity of oils, which gives them a 
heavier, more oppressive feeling.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:44:45 +0000
From: Scott Olsen <ScottO1440 at worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-23-97
 
Re: Steve Teller "Neill should not be blamed for the color in DOTWIZ.  He
did not do the color, did he?
 
It is my understanding that Neill did watercolors for  _Dorothy & The
Wizard_ and _Emerald City_. These are the only two Oz books where he did the
color work.
 
Re: _Dorothy and the Wizard_
 
Just one more thing. I know _Dorothy and the Wizard_ is the shortest Baum Oz
book, and may well be the shortest Oz book. ...Just some useless trivia....
 
Maybe it's time to ease on down to _Road_.
 
Sincerely,
Scott Olsen

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 11:39:43 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-24-97
 
On rereading DOTWIZ:  This was a fairly quick read, less than three hours.
It started off magnificently in its descriptions in the first chapter.  It
was dark in places, but the ending was just berilliant in its wordplay as
well.  I think the dark parts were very effective.  Also, I was reading
from the Del Rey edition, but examined the color plates at Borders last
eveining.  This was perhaps Professor Wogglebug's funniest appearance in
the books.  Now I am certain my MS is less violent than this one.  I was
curious why Neill pictured Eureka in odd clothing Baum never described her
as having.
 
Scott

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:44:30 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-25-97
 
Another thing on DOTWIz, what are those little creatures in the black pit.
They look kind of like Mifkets, but nowhere are they mentioned in the
text.  Perhaps they are kobolds, which , interestingly enough, is the root
of the element "cobalt," because both were considered useless.
 
Scott

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 21:42:52 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-23-97
Content-disposition: inline
 
Steve:
 
>Yes, it is the picture taken by the royal photographer I had mounted. 
But Neill should not be blamed for the color in DOTWIZ.  He did not do
the color, did he?<
 
It is possible he did--if the photographic color separation process existed
then, he could have painted the illos in full color himself. The coloring
job (besides the Wizard's lipstick)--well I am working from memory now, but
the illos are not a simple "coloring-book" job. Many of the *outlines* are
in color themselves, and seem so well-integrated with the areas of color,
it seems one artist MUST have drawn and painted the original color illos.
The color illos simply seem to be too much of a piece. As noted earlier,
the Wizard may have very red lips because of faulty reproduction. (Color
sep creation was in its infancy then.)
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:49:49 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-18 thru 24-97
 
6/18:
Bob:
I could see a 100-mile trip that was uphill most of the way taking quite
a while on a train, but it seems unlikely to me that the run from San
Francisco to Modesto would take anything like that long, even in 1900.
But I could be wrong; I'm no expert on old train schedules. (Query:
would a train for Modesto leave from San Francisco? That would imply it
would have to go down to San Jose and then turn east over some fairly
steep hills. I'd have thought such a train, like one for Sacramento,
would leave from Oakland. Anybody know?)
 
6/19:
Robin:
I think the Braided Man incident, and maybe the dinner in Voe as well,
were attempts by Baum to relieve the tension in DOTWIZ. They just didn't
succeed very well.
 
Tyler:
If my book, EUREKA IN OZ, is ever published it explains Eureka's return
to Oz and to favor. At the moment I'm revising the original version to
editorial request, but I think when I'm done it will see print. Of
course, it doesn't agree with Laumer's or any other solution to the
problem, but I'll leave that to the HACC people to work out. It's
consistent with Baum, anyhow. (And I don't think any of the other FF
writers even mention Eureka; if they do, she doesn't do anything.)
 
Jeremy:
If Dorothy didn't visit Oz between OZMA and DOTWIZ, how did her
agreement with Ozma get changed? And if nothing happened but a short
visit at teatime, say, then why should Baum have alluded to it? Dorothy
doesn't say anything like, "I haven't seen you since we whupped Roquat,"
either. I expect that some Saturday while Uncle Henry was visiting
grown-up friends in Sydney, Dorothy decided to pay Ozma a visit, and
they worked out a more frequent check so she could pay other quick
visits when things were slack after she got back to Kansas. (As Joyce
hypothesized in a later Digest.) Saturday is usually a busy day for
farmers - that's when they go into town for supplies and such - so it's
much less likely that Dorothy would have time for a visit that day than
at other times.
 
Gordon:
Agreed that the trial of Eureka is funny, and as I recall I really
enjoyed it when I was a kid. But it doesn't fit with what we're told
elsewhere of Ozma's character. Roquat and his allies, for instance, are
intending to do something much worse than eating a piglet in EMERALD
CITY, but she refuses to use force against them, and does nothing to
punish them after they drink from the Forbidden Fountain.
 
While it's conceivable that the different levels the travelers pass
through are concentric shells, it seems unlikely to me. If they were,
then I'd think Dorothy and Zeb would have noticed them on their way
down, and nothing of the sort is mentioned. And, as others have pointed
out, it would be inconsistent with other books, like TIK-TOK and ROYAL
BOOK and YELLOW KNIGHT, that have underground segments.
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:08:16 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-25-97
 
Scott O.:
I assume you mean that DOTWIZ may well be the shortest FF Oz book? There
are a lot of shorter ones outside the FF; there's one I have that's only
two pages, and it's probably not the only one or the shortest. Anyhow, I
can't think of an FF book that's likely to be shorter than DOTWIZ.
 
Scott H.:
I wondered about Eureka's clothes, too, and had meant to say something
about it earlier but forgot. It's the only instance I can recall where
Neill dressed an animal in human-style clothes. (Kabumpo, of course,
wore his robes, but those were the kind that real elephants often wear.)
Anyone remember another instance?
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 23:35:31 -0800 (PST)
From: w_baldwin at juno.com (Warren H Baldwin)
Subject: Oz Digest
 
Scott: DOTWIZ in not the shortest Baum Oz book. The Wizard of Oz, Ozma of
Oz, The Road to Oz, The Magic of Oz and Glinda of Oz are all shorter --
at least by wordcount.
 
W. Baldwin