Day 1 - Storm at sea - Dorothy washed off boat on chicken coop
Day 2 - Storm subsides - Billina lays her 1st egg - Dorothy & Billina washed
  up on Evian coast - meet Tik-tok - escape Wheelers - imprisoned by Languidere
Day 3 - Ozma & party approach Evna in AM - free Dorothy, Tik-tok, Billina -
  discussion of plan to free the royal family of Ev
Day 4 - Party leaves Evna at daybreak - Billina lays her 2nd egg - they enter the
  Nome King's dominions - Ozma, Tin Woodman, 26 officers & private begin guesses,
  which continue until "after midnight" - Billina falls asleep under Nome
  King's throne 
Day 5 - Early in AM Billina learns of Nome King's power - Tik-tok enchanted -
  Dorothy frees Evring - Billina lays her 3rd egg, disenchants remainder of party
  - Dorothy seizes Magic Belt - party escapes - Evardo proclaimed King of Ev
Day 6 - Dorothy's party crosses the desert - night with "Munchkin king"
Day 7 - Party meets Jinjur - welcome at Emerald City
 
"Several weeks" pass before Dorothy leaves Oz for Australia

Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 15:39:57 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Some thoughts on _Ozma Of OZ_
 
Hello there,
     When I was a child, _Ozma_ was one of my favorite Oz books, but
upon re-reading it I find that I am still bothered by the same few
things that bothered me then:
     First, Tik-Tok says "Af-ter-ward the King of Ev re-gret-ted his
wick-ed ac-tion, and tried to get his wife and the chil-dren a-way from
the Nome King, but with-out a-vail.  So, in de-spair, he locked me up in
this rock, threw the key in-to the o-cean, and then jumped in af-ter it
and was drowned."  If Tik-Tok was locked up in the rock, how did he know
what happened afterward?
     Second, it seems to me that a firm of "won-der-ful in-ven-tors"
like Smith & Tinker could have come up with something more efficient to
"keep folks from fin-ding the un-der-ground pal-ace" than that "i-ron gi-ant".
     Third, on page 158, the Nome King's army is described as consisting
of "rock-colored Nomes, all squat and fat", but in the picture on the
opposite page they all seem to be slim and trim.
     Fourth, a definite point is made that eggs are poison to Nomes, but
they don't seem to have that effect.  Even when the Scarecrow throws the
eggs at the Nome King, the only result seems to be that he can't see
because his eyes are blocked by the egg liquid.  He seems to suffer no
lasting health problems.  Maybe the Nomes just don't like eggs.
     Fifth, and last, what ARE those things on either side of Ozma's
head?  (Do they have any relation to Princess Leia's weird hairdo in
_Star Wars?)
 
Awaiting Enlightenment,
Bob Spark
 
   
--
"Women are like elephants to meI like to look at 'em
 but I wouldn't want to own one."
                               W.C. Fields

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 22:07:26 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-28-97
 
Bob:
How Tik-Tok knew what Evoldo did after locking him up: clearly Smith and
Tinker gave his brain some kind of limited clairvoyance. (It must have
been pretty limited or he could have told which ornaments were the
enchanted Ozites and Evites.)
 
And Neill's illustrations, as I have said repeatedly recently,
frequently contradict the text; the one you mention is just one more.
 
Your other two points I quite agree with. Another one that always
bothers me whenever Tik-Tok is on stage is that, while I can believe
that a key can do an adequate job of winding up his thinking (which
probably doesn't use up a lot more energy than the works of an ordinary
clock - and an ordinary clock can run for 8 days on a winding that's
only moderately tedious), and can conceive of its being able to run his
speech for a while, especially if he doesn't talk a lot, there's no way
that a little girl is going to be able to crank a key around enough
times to wind up a spring that would run his action more than a couple
of minutes at the outside. I always wanted to see a big crank that gave
enough mechanical advantage that it was believable for Dorothy to wind
him up enough to walk several miles after a fight with the Wheelers.
Even that's unlikely in a real world, but one can make liberal
allowances for magic.
 
Oh, and the "things on either side of Ozma's head" are giant poppies.
Neill put them there in almost (but not quite) all his illustrations
that showed Ozma (including the three in LAND), although they're never
mentioned in the text of any of the FF. As to whether they had anything
to do with Leia's hairdo in STAR WARS, you'd have to ask George Lucas
about that, unless someone already knows he's been asked the question
and what the answer was.
 
David Hulan

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 1997 22:29:58 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-28-97
 
Bob S.: Tiktok tells us "The ir-on gi-ant...was made for the Nome King by 
Smith & Tinker, who made me, and his du-ty is to keep folks from find-ing 
the un-der-ground pal-ace."  The Nome King may have commissioned the 
inventors to make that specific machine (the giant), not to make a keeping-
folks-from finding-the-palace machine. I have more faith in Smith & 
Tinker than to believe that the whole lame idea was theirs. As for how 
Tiktok knew about the rest of Evoldo's story, that always has bugged me, 
too.  Most illos of the Nomes show them as squat. If you think Neill 
goofed in that picture, check out the one where the Scarecrow throws the 
egg at Roquat.  The Tin Woodman is in the background.  WRONG!  He's 
supposed to still be transformed at that point.  I'm not touching the egg 
question with a 10-foot yolk. No one has ever explained it away to my 
satisfaction. The "Things" on each side of Ozma's head are poppies and, 
yes, they probably do have something to do with Princess Leia, if you 
accept the theory that Chewy=C.Lion, etc.
 
--Robin

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 10:48:56 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
On _Ozma_:
1) Has there ever been a more succinct depiction of the instability of the
narcissistic personality than Langwidere's mirrored chamber with the 30
heads that she changes out from one day to the next?
 
I notice also in the illustration of these thirty heads (p. 89) that Neill
impudently included a couple of heads that don't exactly qualify as
"beautiful," and one of them, in a wonderful twist of fate, bears more than
a passing resemblance to Margaret Hamilton.
 
2) Like Joyce, I find it very unfortunate that the sensible, plain-talking
Dorothy of _WWoO_ reverts here to Baby Snooksisms (as Gore Vidal put it)
like "'zactly" and "drea'ful."  You have to hand it to Baum, though:  at
least he is gender-neutral with these cutesy effects.  Button-Bright, in
_Road_, has even more trouble with big words than Dorothy.  As David Hulan
remarked, _Ozma_ marks the beginning of a second phase in Baum's Oz books,
and these speech mannerisms are one indication of the change in style.
David:  I'd be interested in knowing what other features that you see as
characteristic of the second phase.  There definitely is a shift here.
 
3) One of the many appealing things about Baum's imagination, for me, is the
way he drops unexpected bits of corporate America into the fantasy world of
Baumgea. Take Tiktok--who comes equipped with a printed card that evokes all
the trappings of entrepeneurial capitalism:  patent protection (in fine
print yet!), advertising slogans such as "extra-responsive" and "our special
clock-work attachment" (not to mention Tiktok's later reference to his
"improved steel brains")--all of which suggests, improbably, the existence
of a lively, highly competitive mechanical-man industry in the land of Ev!
The label on the bottle of Dr. Nikidik's "celebrated wishing pills" is
another example of this wonderfully daffy referencing of American marketing
ploys.
 
4) (Who's in charge of continuity?) As anyone noticed the way Dorothy's
stockings keep alternating between white and blue in the color plates?
 
5)  At the risk of once again being labeled a city-boy (remember the
discussion of the excretory habits of grasshoppers back in September?), I
wonder if anyone can clarify for me that strange exchange between Dorothy
and Billina on page 214--the discussion of whether or not a Kansas farmer
would call Billina a chicken or a hen.  Was "chicken" the generic word for
poultry?
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 97 09:45:49 (PDT)
From: Dave Hardenbrook <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
Subject: Ozzy Things
 
The _Ozma_ discussion officially began yesterday, but we seem to be still
in transition...
 
As has been already mentioned, the "big things" are Ozma's poppies, as
much Ozma's "trademark" as the stovepipe hat is Lincoln's, the cigar is
Churchill's and the white turtleneck is Jerry Brown's. :)  We also see
in _Ozma of Oz_ the poppies' long stems that I always worry got in her
way...She seems to have cut them short in later years for that very reason.
 
One thing I've always wondered -- Since they're never mentioned at all in
any FF text, how do we for certain that they *are* poppies, or that she
*always* wears poppies, and doesn't also don hybiscus or elysium for
variety?
 
        -- Dave

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 11:59:22 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-28-97
 
Bob--George Lucas did once say her hair was based on Ozma's poppies.
Scott

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 10:30:09 -0700
From: Bob Spark <bspark at pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-97
 
Hi there,
     I would like to second Gordon's question about chickens and hens. 
I thought that possibly the terms have changed somewhat in meaning
through the years.  Maybe not.  At any rate I have always assumed that
hens, roosters, and chicks (not to mention capons, etc.) could all be
referred to as chickens.  As a parallel (and totally off the point) when
are bovine "cows" and when can they be called "cattle"?
 
Gordon, probably we are both "city-boys",
 
Bob Spark

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 22:52:38 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Bob:
The only answer I can come up with is that the King of Ev told Tik-Tok what
he planned to do after he was locked up.
 
Smith and Tinker may never envisioned a concerted large-scale effort to get
to the Nome King's dominions. The sight of the giant could easily be enough
to scare a lone person or two.
 
Illos and text rarely match exactly, which is why many people do not count
them for scholarly research (myself included, with rare exceptions).
 
Ozma:
Another change at this pahse is that large parts of the adventure occur
outside of Oz. Not until _Patchwork Girl_ does an adventure take place
exclusively in Oz.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 23:18:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-97
 
Ozma:
This one was my favorite of the Oz stories to which I had access as a child.
(Not difficult, since the others either had story elements which made them less
than altogether satisfactory - Land & DotWiz - or were missing pages.) It
was also the one which marked a personal triumph in my having managed to reread
it in two hours flat at about age ten or so. 
 
I still think this story flows very nicely. There are certainly small
glitches in continuity, like Tik-Tok's knowlege of what happened after
he was walled up. There are also some faintly silly jokes which I noticed
far less at the time. (Along with Dorothy's suddenly "twee" diction.)
Still, the main thing which strikes me is that while Ozma may be the title
character, the book is not about her at all. The story, from beginning to
end, is Dorothy's, and Dorothy's alone. 
 
Ozma, actually, is a difficult person to know. In more books than this, Baum
keeps standing between her and the reader and fending us off with
"explanations". Nor does she cover herself in glory in this tale.
It is a far from minor flaw in the telling that, having succeeded in her
intentions only through blind luck and the wits of others, and, more importantly,
primarily through others who were NOT part of her hand-picked expedition, that
she does not, within the hearing of the reader, ever admit, even privately, to
having LEARNED anything.
 
The temptation to resort to another facitious political "interpretation"
of this story is not strong. Nor will I do one. But the invitation is far from
absent. Ozma's comic-opera version of gunboat diplomacy is ludicrous. And the
various parallels with the more naive interpretations of foreign policiy as it
is summarized later is hard to overlook. As is the implicit assumption of cultural
superiority evidenced by the whole Ozian party, upon no better grounds than that
THEY live upon the surface of the earth while the nomes live under it. This jars
upon the modern ear, and must be excused only through consideration of when the
book actually was written. (The assumption of moral superiority is another matter,
and one far more excusable.)
 
BTW, it should come as no surprise to learn that I agree with David's essay regarding
Ozma's reign, wherein he shows that this rescue expedition was recklessly planned and
poorly executed. (One seriously wonders just what Glinda would have DONE had Billena
not been fortuitiously eavesdropping and the party remained as enchanted bric-a-brack
in the Nome King's halls. She couldn't -and wouldn't- have pretended to ignorance,
with everything being faithfully recorded in the book of records.) 
 
Still, this is an enjoyable story, and Billena is a strikingly successful creation.
She is unmistakably a hen in character and outlook, and one of the few "adult"
characters (yes, there were others) which Baum ever sent to Oz who hadn't anything
noticably peculiar about them. 

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 07:30:26 +0600
From: rri0189 at ibm.net
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-97
 
Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
>One thing I've always wondered -- Since they're never mentioned at all in
>any FF text, how do we for certain that they *are* poppies, or that she
>*always* wears poppies, and doesn't also don hybiscus or elysium for
>variety?
 
Because poppies are Romantic High Art.  I don't know why, but they are.
(Of course given the tendencies of the _spaetromantik_ era in general,
one explanation comes to mind....)  It's one little Art Nouveau idiom
that made it into post-Denslow Oz, somehow.
 
It only occurs to me at this moment that they may have had an effect on
the change in Ozma's apparent hair color:  poppies make a much more
dramatic effect against black hair than blonde.  I think the question
came up before, but I don't have a color-plate "Land"; is the blonde
Ozma ever shown in color, with poppies (which appear only in the
tailpiece in my B&W, a distinctly art-nouveau tailpiece dominated by a
giant poppy)?
 
 
// John W Kennedy -- Hypatia Software -- "The OS/2 Hobbit"

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 08:53:20 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
 
Bob Spark: How Tik-Tok knew what the King of Ev did after locking
him away -- possibly the King told him, "I'm going to drown this key in
the sea and myself with it!" and when he never came back Tik-Tok
assumed that he had done as planned.
 
Gordon Birrell: One aspect of change from the first two Oz books to
"Ozma" and several after would probably be in Baum's awareness that
he had a series going.  One difference that made was probably that
he was beginning to wonder what was outside Oz -- because he
enjoyed inventing geographies, and because he may have realized
that he would sometimes want the freedom to write books in the
series but set outside Oz (as "Ozma" mostly is), and because he may
have realized that he would want to link his geographies together,
although he didn't actually do it until two books later, in "Road."
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:57:16 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-29-97
 
Gordon:
I'll have to think about other characteristics typical of the "second
phase" of Baum's Oz books. One would certainly be "recycle the old
characters," bringing back Dorothy in OZMA, the Wizard in DOTWIZ, Toto
in ROAD, and Aunt Em (and to some extent Uncle Henry, though he had a
cameo in OZMA) in EMERALD CITY. Another is "there's no danger in Oz;"
all the dangerous situations in those four books, which I consider the
second phase, are found outside Oz. (FWIW, I consider PATCHWORK GIRL to
stand alone as the third phase, TIK-TOK through RINKITINK the fourth,
and LOST PRINCESS through GLINDA as the fifth - and best.) And, as I
mentioned earlier, those are the books where the child characters,
especially Dorothy, exhibit bad diction. Although to be fair, some of
the examples are probably more accurate phonetic spellings of the way
most people really pronounce the word than the conventional spelling -
"s'pose," for instance. Not many people even put a schwa into that first
syllable (unless they're emphasizing the word for some reason); they
just give a little extra sibilance to the "s" compared to the way a word
spelled "spose" would be pronounced.
 
Sometimes Dorothy has a white dress and white stockings, sometimes a
white dress and blue stockings, and sometimes a blue dress and blue
stockings. If I looked long enough, I might even find a case where she
had a blue dress and white stockings. (And they must have both been
pretty rank, even on a little girl, by the time she got to Oz - though
in fact I guess she was only in them about four days.) It's my
understanding, though, that all the color in all Neill-illustrated Oz
books, except for the color plates in DOTWIZ and EMERALD CITY, was put
in by the printer and not by Neill. And you can't expect a printer to
have a high degree of respect for continuity.
 
Speaking from the way my grandfather, who grew up on a farm not long
before Dorothy, and who was a gentleman farmer later on, used the words,
"chickens" in the plural referred generically to all the barnyard fowl
of the species whose meat we call "chicken" (as in, "Time to go out and
feed the chickens"); however, an individual member of the species was
only called a "chicken" when it was immature. Once a hen began laying or
a rooster crowing, they were "hen" or "rooster". I think that was the
point Dorothy was making with Billina. Most people understand that
difference when the shortened form "chick" is used (referring to the
barnyard fowl, not young female homo sapiens), but even the full form of
the word referred to a young one as my grandfather used it.
 
More on OZMA:
This has been remarked before, but not recently - in OZMA Ev and the
Nome Kingdom are to the east of Oz, opposite the Munchkin country. All
the directions given anywhere in the book are consistent with this
interpretation. But in all the later books, they're opposite the Winkie
country, whether the author sets the Winkie country on the west or east
side of Oz. This is one of the really serious geographic problems, worse
than explaining the flipping around of the countries inside Oz. There
are a couple of conceivable explanations for that, but the only way I
can see that Ev could change which country of Oz it was opposite would
be a serious reversion of either Oz or the rest of Nonestica, and one
would expect that anything so drastic would have been mentioned
somewhere. (Maybe it became a repressed memory...)
 
Another interesting question: why can Billina talk? When she speaks to
Nanda, the maid is surprised she can talk, even though Nanda is
obviously familiar with Evian chickens (since she puts Billina in their
coop). If Evian chickens can't talk, why does being in Ev enable Billina
to do so? There's considerable evidence that most animals can't talk
throughout most of Nonestica outside Oz, though they can in Mo. Magical
creatures like Bilbil and Pigasus are exceptions, of course, and dragons
can talk in most legends, as well as in the Oz books wherever they're
located. 
 
Something to mull over...
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 18:42:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: BARRY ESHKOL ADELMAN <ADELMANB at adelvx.citadel.edu>
Subject: Billina in Oz
 
Jodel, how do you know Billina wasn't part of Glinda's plan?  It seems
rather fortuitous that the rescue party just happened to run into Dorothy,
who was still under the effects of Locasta's kiss, and the person (okay,
critter) who would save their skin.  Perhaps Glinda caused the storm, knowing
this would bring Dorothy and Billina into their path.  Thus, if a headstrong
Ozma and her party failed, one of the greatest heroes in Oz and a smart
chicken were there to save them.
 
Come to think of it, does Ozma's rescue party seem any more well-considered
than her (Tip's) gag on Mombi?

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 21:47:40 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
 
JOdel The Unsigned  - I think you are being much too hard on Ozma. 
"Gunboat diplomacy?"  Surely you are jesting?  Ozma is an immortal fairy. 
She may have enjoyed a brief rest as an ornament.  She also has a friend,
Glinda, with a magic book.  "Hmmm, I wonder where Ozma is?  Oops, there she
is in the Gnome King's trinket collection."  As far as I'm concerned,
Glinda can pin the Gnome King with one finger, assuming Ozma can't
extricate herself, which isn't clear.  Thus.....
 
Ozstensibly, Bear  (:<)

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 22:34:04 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-30-97
 
Bear:
>I keep hearing Ozma's ear-warmers called poppies.  They sure look that way
>on p.116 and 258, even including the stems.  However, every time I see them
>I think "Poppies, phooey!  They don't even have a scent.  Peonies would
>look better and smell nicer."  
 
But peonies don't have a narcotic effect, and in our BCF at least,
_something_ must have been anesthetizing Ozma's brain! :-)
 
(Of course, poppies don't have a narcotic effect just from being around
them in our world. But in Oz they seem to...)
 
Joyce:
I think OZMA stands up to adult rereading better than many of Baum's
books (like ROAD and DOTWIZ, in particular) because it has a
well-defined goal. I'll admit that it's a little surprising, when
looking at how far one is in the book at various points, to find that
Ozma & company don't set off for the Nome King's dominions until just
about halfway through the book. Which seconds your insight that this is
Dorothy's book, not Ozma's - Ozma doesn't even appear in it until almost
the midpoint (though she's mentioned earlier). In fact, Baum was pretty
loose about his character-based titles - WIZARD and OZMA are mostly
Dorothy's books, DOROTHY AND THE WIZARD more Zeb's than any other
individual's, PATCHWORK GIRL Ojo's, TIK-TOK Betsy's, SCARECROW Trot's,
RINKITINK Inga's, and TIN WOODMAN Woot's. GLINDA is arguably either
Dorothy's or Ozma's, or even Ervic's, but not really Glinda's.
 
But OZMA is still my favorite Oz book up to RINKITINK, and maybe even
LOST PRINCESS.
 
John K.:
Assuming the BoW edition of LAND didn't omit any of the color plates,
and I don't think it did, then there's no color plate of Ozma as a
blonde. OZMA would be the first Oz book where Ozma was pictured in
color, and that may well have been the reason why Neill changed her to a
brunette in that book.
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 00:43:11 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 04-28-97
 
        The first thing I noticed when reading "Ozma of Oz" was "Why did
Ozma's hair change from strawberry blonde to black?" When the text made no
mention at all of Ozma's hair color, I concluded the illustrator goofed or
deliberately disobeyed the author. That's why I usually portray Ozma with
reddish-gold hair now.
 
        Ozma is also haughty.
 
        Ozma looked around her proudly.
        "Do you wish your ruler to plead with this wicked Nome King?" she
asked. "Shall Ozma of Oz humble herself to a creature who lives in an
underground kingdom?"
        "No!" they all shouted, with big voices...
 
        Thus Princess Ozma of Oz (cringe) comes across as less likable than
her alter-ego, Tip. (Though Tip was too given to pulling pig's tails and
playing tricks on Mombi to be strictly perfect, either.) Going from simple
peasant boy to ruler of all the land of Oz must have gone to her head, at
least for a while.As Baum did to the Tin Woodman.
 
        Ozma: I was new to ruling at the time, and I thought princesses
were *supposed* to act that way.
 
        Another Neill/Baum inconsistency: Baum says the Nome King has bushy
hair, Neill depicts the Nome King's hair & beard as slicked up & down into
points. In a later book, Baum goes along with Neill's depiction of his
villain. However, Baum never mentions Ozma's hair color again. Perhaps Baum
liked Neill's "suggestion" for the Nome King but not Ozma?
 
        The usual human pattern is for head hair to be flowing and the
beard to be bushy. Suppose the Nome King's bushy hair and flowing beard
were meant to be subtle hints that the Nome King was not human?
 
        "Zauberlinda the Wise Witch," an obvious imitation of "Wizard,"
featured a little girl who is lured to an underground kingdom by a Gnome
King. Since "Zauberlinda" predates "Ozma," one wonders if Baum pulled a
"turnabout is fair for all," and imitated his imitator. Come to think of
it, that would be a good way for Baum to hurt the sales of the rival book. 
 
        Oh, yes, and can anyone tell me how Languidere got all her heads?
Public executions? By other means? 
        It is also interesting that Baum characterizes her most beautiful
head as the meanest. 
 
        When I illustrated Phyllis Karr's "Gardener's Boy of Oz," I got
stuck when it came to portraying the Rackpat. So I wrote and asked her, "Is
your rackpat a mammal or a reptile? I cannot tell from the text." She made
the imaginative suggestion of making the rackpat a furry critter with
scales--so that's the way I drew him in the pics. She made other good
suggestions for illustrating her stories as well. 

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 23:59:41 -0700
From: Ken Cope <pinhead at ozcot.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-30-97
 
On Ozma/Leia:
 
Whether intended it or not, I was hooked on that film the second I saw
Leia discovered by threepio. Knocked back in my chair, I recognized the
Ozma ref immediately. In 1977 I hadn't seen an Oz book since the last
one I returned to the library 10 years earlier. The rule of references
in film, or other media in general, is that if you are reminded of 
antecedent material, and it doesn't look like a cheap knock-off, there
is at least a possibility that the author wanted an association to be
made by their audience. Sometimes it's the author showing off, sometimes
it's shorthand for gaining instant sympathy among a certain type of
target fan. Certainly Star Wars is a collection of quotes from famous
SF; it can easily be argued that Dune, (spice mines) and especially 
Foundation Trilogy are at least inspirational. (Han Solo was a Korellian.) 
I can't figure out whether the long skeleton in the desert was from a 
sandworm, or maybe it was just Terrybubble. ;)
 
Ozma's poppies:
 
This deserves an article, but Denslow went wild with the poppies, and it's
my guess that Neill recognized a good thing when he saw it. This is from
an era long before prohibition, or the war against drugs, and Opium poppies
especially were associated in the mind of the average consumer of patent 
medicines with Laudanum. Just the thing to take unsettled children to the 
land of dreams. Also, Little Nemo's Princess of Slumberland, whose 
illustrator (Winsor McCay, the kick starter of animation as an art-form) 
Baum would have preferred for his tales, adorned the Princess of Slumberland 
in a crown and pair of side ornaments that had the same overall shape as 
the poppies. This was an era where not long before, Louisa May Alcott could 
publish a tale about a group of young girls who have an eventful, but
innocent afternoon eating hashish with a dashing young medical student 
without the risk of a raised political eyebrow.
 
For more than you might care to know about Laudanum, you might remember
Poe was fond of it, as were many of the romantics. If you don't mind an
evening of bizarre entertainment, you might sometime rent _Gothic_ by
Ken (nothing exceeds like excess) Russel, wherein Percy Shelley, Mary
Shelley, and the author of the first Vampire novel, all scare themselves
silly on Laudanum in a foreboding castle, telling each other tales and
having the horrors that they would later put to paper in novels like
_Frankenstein_.
 
So if anybody has followed the tale of Sandman, the tragedy of Morpheus,
Dream of the Endless, that 70 plus comic book run contains many references
to Oz, not the least of which is found in a trade poster where a pale
Dream muses in his garden holding poppies. The Sandman series is available
in about 8 or 9 trade paperbacks, and is enjoying a second run. They have
started reissuing the series as a monthly (since the tale did end), and are 
up to maybe issue 10 by now. Highly recommended.
 
Oz transcends mere dreams, of course.
 
Ken Cope
Ones & Zeroes SurReal Estate
pinhead at ozcot.com

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 10:24:59 -0700
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at pittstate.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-30-97
 
> 
> Still, OZMA OF OZ is an enjoyable story, and Billena is a strikingly successful
> creation. She is unmistakably a hen in character and outlook, and one of the
> few "adult" characters (yes, there were others) which Baum ever sent to Oz
> who hadn't anything noticably peculiar about them.
> 
Actually I consider Billina the true heroine of the story.
> 
> Dave Hardenbrook wrote:
> >One thing I've always wondered -- Since they're never mentioned at all in
> >any FF text, how do we for certain that they *are* poppies, or that she
> >*always* wears poppies, and doesn't also don hybiscus or elysium for
> >variety?
> 
> Because poppies are Romantic High Art.  I don't know why, but they are.
> (Of course given the tendencies of the _spaetromantik_ era in general,
> one explanation comes to mind....)  It's one little Art Nouveau idiom
> that made it into post-Denslow Oz, somehow.
> 
Perhaps the popularity of Poppies in the aesthetic movement was their
association with rest and sleep (consider the deadly poppy field) and
with opiates.  Shakespeare's Iago (about 1604 says, "Not poppy nor
mandragora . . .  Shall ever Medice thee to that sweet sleep which thou
owedst yesterday."
 
 
Steve T.

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 12:19:58 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-30-97
 
Dave, George Lucas admitted to being inspirfed by the Oz books, Flash
Gordon, John Ford's _The Searchers_, Eiji Tsuburaya's _Ultraman_, and
films by Ishiro Honda and Akira Kurosawa.  I'm absolutely certain that
Avalow in John Boorman's _Zardoz_ wears her hair like Princess Leia (that
film was made in 1973, mind you) was a direct reference to Ozma.  After
all, it was inspired, in part, by the Oz books.
Scott

 
Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 18:53:40 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-01-97
 
Barry:
You could be right, although in my opinion you're making Glinda vastly
more powerful than she seems to be elsewhere in the series. It's hard to
imagine, for instance, that if she could cause a storm on the Pacific,
so accurately controlled as to pop Dorothy and Billina off a ship
without wrecking it, that she wouldn't be able to send Dorothy home at
the end of either WIZARD or OZMA on her own, without bothering with
silver shoes or magic belt.
 
There's also the case of Billina's unfortunate coop-mates, who appear to
have drowned because of the storm; would Glinda do that?
 
On the other hand, it's certainly an amazing coincidence that Dorothy
would turn up in Ev less than 24 hours before Ozma's expedition arrived,
if there were no guiding intelligence involved. I'd be more inclined to
suspect Lurline than Glinda, though.
 
Bear:
What Ozma was doing was, except for the fact that it was done on land,
essentially the same thing as the classic "gunboat diplomacy" - which
was what it was called when the representatives of a country that
considered itself to have a higher set of moral standards used its
clearly higher military technology to punish the inhabitants of
countries who didn't share their moral views. The only problem was that
Ozma was pretty ineffective; her "gunboat" turned out to be more of a
canoe. Only a couple of amazing coincidences made the operation
successful. 
 
You may be right, of course, that if Billina hadn't happened to overhear
the conversation between Roquat and his steward, Glinda would have
rescued Ozma. But if Glinda had that much power, why didn't she just
liberate the Queen of Ev and her children without sending Ozma and her
ridiculous little "army" to Ev?
 
Melody:
Since I didn't read the Oz books in sequence my first time through, I
was more surprised when I finally read LAND (which was one of the last
few I read in my initial "read all I can get hold of" phase back in
1942-45) and saw she was a blonde in it. OZMA was another one that I
read relatively late in that phase, as far as that goes. (If anyone's
interested, the ones I didn't read in that phase, besides the ones that
hadn't been written yet, were CAPTAIN SALT, HANDY MANDY, WONDER CITY,
and SCALAWAGONS.)
 
>It is also interesting that Baum characterizes her [Langwidere's] most beautiful
>head as the meanest. 
 
I don't think this is strictly true. That is, he neither says that her
No. 17 head is her most beautiful one (just that it's particularly
beautiful) or that it's her meanest (just that it has a bad disposition
that causes her to do things while wearing it that she regretted with
wearing her other heads).
 
It seems unlikely that Langwidere got her heads from public executions.
Beautiful women are rarely executed. I would guess that she got them
from a fairy godmother or something of the sort. After all, when she
wanted Dorothy's head she was going to swap one of her other heads for
it.
 
Ken C.:
There's a classic 19th century book, though from the opposite end from
Baum, called CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER. De Quincey, or something
like that. I've never read it, but have seen quite a lot of references
to it. And I can remember my high school Latin teacher reminiscing about
being sent down to the drugstore by her next-door neighbor, when she was
a little girl, to pick up an ounce of opium. (I also remember a friend
of mine telling me about having tried smoking opium when he was in China
while in the Navy shortly after WW II. He said it gave him technicolor
daydreams, which were sort of neat, but it wasn't worth the hassle of
getting hold of it.)
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 19:49:28 -0400
From: Richard Bauman <RBauman at compuserve.com>
Subject: Today's Oz Growls
 
Oh no David!  You are not going to start the idea that Ozma is hooked on
her poppies?  I know that recreational drugs were not illegal in Baum's
time but surely not.  :)
 
Melody - I am amazed you characterize Ozma as "haughty."  She is an
immortal fairy and the ruler of Oz.  I thought her behavior was perfectly
consistant with her position.  Oz isn't some commune where everyone is
"equal."
 
Monarchically, Bear  (:<)

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 19:55:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron S. Adelman" <adelman at ymail.yu.edu>
Subject: Wierd Magical Properties in Oz
 
1) Barry et al., perhaps Glinda had nothing to do with Dorothy ending up
in Ev.  An anomalously large number of unusual events, many of them
magical, seem to happen in Dorothy's presence.  This can be explained in
one of two ways:  1) She is a favorite character of Oz writers.  2) She
has a property which makes her a virtual magnet for magical and improbable
events.  Undoubtedly the second is the correct explination.  (:  Other
characters which may have such a property are Trot, Cap'n Bill, the
Wizard, Peter, and Speedy, all of which travelled to enchanted countries
at least twice spontaneously; once is extremely rare, but what are the
chances for a repeat?  More study of this problem would be indicated.
 
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman
adelman at ymail.yu.edu         North Antozian Systems and The Martian Empire

Date: Thu, 01 May 1997 23:01:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kiex at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-30-97
 
Re Billina and role as eavesdropper/"narrator":
Many authors create characters such as that to expedite the telling of the
story.
 
Melody:
I don't think Ozma displays haughtiness in her comments,  <"Do you wish your
ruler to plead with this wicked Nome King?" she asked. "Shall Ozma of Oz
humble herself to a creature who lives in an underground kingdom?">
This is said for effect and to keep her followers following her, so to speak.
 Dramatic effect, not haughtiness!
 
Until next time,
 
Kiex (alias Jeremy Steadman)
 

Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 09:03:38 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Joyce:
I agree with Bear that Ozma's interventionism isn't really "gunboat
diplomacy":--I think of her group more as a human-rights delegation, though
it's true that she brings along an army to back her up, and the abused human
rights in question happen to be those of fellow royalty.  I find it
interesting that there is in fact so much discussion in the book of the
legal ramifications of Ozma's intervention, and it is primarily Tik-Tok, the
mechanical man, who argues along strictly legalistic lines with regard to
the contractual arrangements between Evoldo and the Nome King.  (Could Baum
have been making a comment on lawyers?)
 
I have always assumed, incidentally, that Evoldo had already reached his
decision to commit suicide by the time he locked Tik-Tok up--otherwise why
would he do such a thing to his useful and loyal servant?--and informed the
mechanical man of his intention to throw both himself and the key into the
sea.
 
Since there has been quite a bit of talk about BoW's discreet correction of
typographical errors, I'd like to report that as far as I can see, every one
of the typos from the first state are intact in the BoW edition ("Noma King"
on p. 112; "you re" on p. 208; "now useful" (for "how useful") on p. 118;
"it's next visitor" on p. 213; and a couple of others).  In other words,
this really does appear to be a true facsimile edition except for the
understandable omission of the ad page.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 10:24:20 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Melody Grandy: I don't think having a Gnome/Nome King in both
"Ozma" and "Zauberlinda" would undercut the sales of the earlier book,
but it seems plausible that "Zauberlinda" help alerted Baum to the idea
that gnomes could be fun to write about.  (As I discussed in my
Dunkiton pamphlet on gnomes, though, Baum would almost certainly
have also been familiar with the gnomes who were popular figures in
operetta throughout the 19th century.)

    How Languidere got heads -- perhaps she made artificial heads
(like the ones the Magical Monarch of Mo tried when the Purple
Dragon swallowed his) and paid women to swap?  If the heads
weren't any better than the Mo ones, the deals weren't very fair,
though.  (If the artificial heads were a lot better than the Mo heads,
Languidere herself might have been using artificial ones.  But her
intention of swapping with Dorothy implies that she'd done similar
deals before.)
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 02 May 97 12:52:51 (PDT)
From: Dave Hardenbrook <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
Subject: Ozzy Things
 
OZMA'S FIRST 100 DAYS:
Bear wrote:
>Oh no David!  You are not going to start the idea that Ozma is hooked on
>her poppies?
 
FWIW IMHO, one of the most un-Ozzy things in any Oz book is in _Healing
Power of Oz_, when one of the visiting Outside-World criminals attempts
to purloin Ozma's poppies in order to manufacture narcotics...But then,
I'm on record believing that it's OK to have "Un-Ozzy" behavior from an
Oz *villian*...
 
FWIW, Ozma *was* just starting out her rule in _Ozma_ and I think she acted
as she best knew how under the circumstances...The only time I really
fault her is in _Glinda_, because she knew better then!
 
Ozma: Sigh...Even *I* make mistakes...
 
Jellia: 
Actually, "Do you wish your ruler to humble herself to a creature who lives 
in an underground kingdom?" was only her for-the-record remark...Her off-the-
record remark was, "Do you wish your ruler to bring herself down to the
sub-human level of this vile, ruthless, smelly twerp of such sickening 
anti-social smeggy-ness that he lives underground away from decent, 
peaceloving souls?"  But she *does* believe in diplomacy, after all.
<Giggle, giggle!>
 
Ozma: Thank you, Jellia.  :) :)
 
                             -- Dave

Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 22:00:11 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-02-97
 
Aaron: One of our old threads in the DIGEST concerned the inordinate 
number of things that just seem to happen around some of the major Oz 
characters.  Many of us, IIRC, believe in what Robert Jordan calls the 
Ta'averen concept. In other words, as you guessed, these characters have 
properties that cause crossroads in the sequences of important events.
 
Robin O.

Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 11:26:17 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-02-97
 
Bear:
I didn't say Ozma was _hooked_ on her poppies; just that her actions in
OZMA aren't inconsistent with her being under the influence of something
that diminished her mental capacity. :-)
 
Aaron:
You could add Button-Bright to your list of those who traveled to
enchanted countries more than once - though I suppose that technically
his trips to Sky Island and Mo weren't "spontaneous", since he used the
magic umbrella. OTOH, by that argument Trot and Cap'n Bill probably
don't qualify either; their only "spontaneous" trip was in SCARECROW,
since both their earlier adventures were entered into with
premeditation.
 
David Hulan

Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 12:18:00 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Bear:
>Ozma is an immortal fairy. 
>She may have enjoyed a brief rest as an ornament.  She also has a friend,
>Glinda, with a magic book.  "Hmmm, I wonder where Ozma is?  Oops, there she
>is in the Gnome King's trinket collection."  As far as I'm concerned,
>Glinda can pin the Gnome King with one finger, assuming Ozma can't
>extricate herself, which isn't clear. 
This is the old deus-ex-machina problem again, i.e., "If you've got a
problem, why not go straight to Glinda?"  The way I see it, though, is that
it's anything but clear that Glinda *could* have reversed the ornament
spell.  She has considerable expertise in certain kinds of magic but is
thoroughly stumped, for instance, by Coo-ee-oh's spell in _Glinda_, and her
evident interest in holding on to the Magic Belt at the end of _Ozma_
indicates that the belt exercises magic powers that she doesn't already
possess.  On the other hand, Glinda might be able to "pin" Roquat and force
him to undo the spell himself, but is there any evidence that her powers
extend to the areas beyond the borders of Oz?  (And isn't that one of the
most extraordinary features of the Magic Belt--that its magic range extends
even into the "real" world?)
 
On collectable/collectible:
An antique dealer once informed me that "collectable" is an adjective and
"collectible" is a noun.
 
Speaking of collectibles, it strikes me that there are some intriguing
parallels between Roquat's underground rooms filled with ornaments and
Langwidere's inner chamber filled with heads in mirrored cupboards.  In some
ways Langwidere is turning herself into a living ornament by switching out
one decorative head for another.  What fascinates me here is that the idea
of a purely "ornamental" existence was very much in the air at the turn of
the century.  The dedication of one's life to the pursuit of beauty, the
rejection of "useful" activities, the attempt to make one's existence into a
work of art:  these ideas were familiar to a whole generation of poets and
aesthetes, from Rimbaud to Rilke and beyond.  Hofmannsthal, in the poem that
he wrote as an introduction to Schnitzler's _Anatol_, describes his
contemporaries as existing in a kind of enchanted garden behind heavy rusty
gates, perfumed voluptuaries reclining decorously and langorously, as
immobile and as artificial as the antique sculptures and topiary hedges that
adorn the garden.  I also think of Yeats, in "Sailing to Byzantium" (1927),
wishing himself "out of nature" and into a form of pure artifice "of
hammered gold and gold enameling . . .set upon a golden bough to sing / To
lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come."
Dorothy's reaction to the Nome King's subterranean palace could describe as
well the feelings of Americans encountering the hothouse atmosphere of
European Decadence:  "Yes, it was a beautiful place; but enchantments lurked
in every nook and corner, and she had not yet grown accustomed to the
wizardries of these fairy countries, so different from the quiet and
sensible common-places of her own native land."
 
--Gordon Birrell 

Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 18:02:26 -0700 (PDT)
From: Peter Hanff <phanff at library.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Enchanted Island of Yew
 
Hi Dave,
 
There has been sufficient discussion lately of the image of poppies worn
as ornaments by Ozma of Oz that I thought some readers might want to know
that the central fairy character of Baum's 1903 fantasy, _The Enchanted
Island of Yew_, sports a pair of poppies as well. Indeed the image was
fairly common in art-nouveau posters of the period, as well. The cover
image, drawn by Fanny Y Cory, is decidely art-nouveau in style. Alphonse
Mucha certainly used such an image in some of his posters. The diaphonous
garment of the fairy is stamped in pale coral, the petals of the iris (?)
are stamped in mauve, and the dazzling tip of the fairy's staff is stamped
in yellow. I'll attempt to attach a "tif" version of the first-edition
cover for those who are interested in seeing the image. The voluptuousness
of Fanny Cory's drawing is striking enough in 1997, but one wonders about
its impact in 1903. 
 
Peter Hanff
 
Attachment Converted: "c:\Dave\Internet\Archive\merle.tif"

Date: Fri, 02 May 1997 22:19:12 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-02-97
To: "Dave L. Hardenbrook" <DaveH47 at delphi.com>
Content-disposition: inline
 
        Ozma in "Ozma" still sounds a bit prejudiced against people who
live underground. "Shall Ozma of Oz grovel to a wicked Nome who enslaves
innocent people?" would have sounded more like she wasn't simply
prejudiced, or thought she was better than, "creatures" who live in
underground kingdoms . :-)
 
        Sorry, Bear, but the words, "I am better than you," whether
explicit or implied, have been "fighting words!!" throughout history. In
the Bible, even God himself has been known to use the word, "Please," which
is how Dorothy persuaded the Nome King to give her friends an audience.
:-)  :-)  Hmmm. Baum sneaked in a lesson on good manners in that episode,
didn't he?
 
Graciously and egalitarianly yours,
 
Melody Grandy
 
        P.S. Baum also slipped in more fatherly advice for children earlier
in the book. In "Dorothy Opens the Dinner Pail," he says, after she eats,
"Dorothy packed the rest of the food back into the pail, so as not to be
wasteful of good things..." Baum doesn't badger and browbeat his reader; he
kindly passes on his advice and then goes on with the story.

Date: Sat, 03 May 1997 22:11:43 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-03-97
 
Gordon: As is frequently the case, there's good food for thought in your 
last post. Living for aesthetic pleasure...Baum just might have been 
playing with that. Langwidere does as little as possible. Roquat's 
extensive collection may be a dig at collectors, as well as at aesthetes. 
Baum says:"...the underground palace was quite a museum of rare and curious and costly 
objects." His description indicates that the collection was kept in a 
suite of rooms used exclusively to house it, not just scattered through 
palace rooms that had any other function other than to be beautiful and 
show off the collectibles.
--Robin

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 00:20:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
I can't buy the "manufactured storm" theory, but I CAN believe that the entry
in the Great Book that "Dorothy Gale of Kansas has been swept overboard in a
chicken coop in the South Pacific" showed up just about when Glinda, or
whoever she set to monitoring the progress of Ozma's expedition, took up
their watch. Locasta's kiss kept the coop afloat, and Billena's own
tenatiousness kept her on board. Glinda, remembering the child, MIGHT very
well have made the time/space shift to bring the coop from the Pacific into
the Nonectic, (as Ozma did in ROAD) placing it in Evian coastal waters, and
may have managed to send some sort of Ozian influence to grant her companion
the power of speech (and intellegence). 
 
If this is accepted, it may be assumed that Glinda, still monitoring the
progress, made sure that Billina woke up in time to hear the discussion
between Roquat and Kaliko that was going on over her head.

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 12:00:02 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-03-97
 
Gordon:
I don't know about the technical usages in the business world, but
generally speaking "-able" is a "live" suffix in English, which means it
can be attached to any verb or verb phrase, even new coinages. (E.g., a
"bootable" disk.) "-ible", on the other hand, isn't "live"; it's
properly used only with verbs appropriated fairly directly from the
Latin 3d and 4th declensions. However, since "collect" is such a verb,
either ending is linguistically acceptable. (At least, I've seen this
analysis in a linguistic publication, not specifically for "collect" but
for a similar verb. I'm not a professional in linguistics myself, and
the above may be disputed by those who are, for all I know.)
 
I think the attitude of living as an ornament that you speak of was
pretty common in the wealthy classes through most of history, especially
for the women. (It was OK for men to fight and be in politics, though
heaven forfend that they do anything useful.) The _fin de siecle_
decadence of a century ago wasn't particularly new; it's just that it
was the last flicker of a traditional way of life that was to largely
disappear in the 20th century. (It never struck very deep roots in
America.)
 
Peter H.:
Definitely that fairy on the cover of YEW is one sexy babe. Did Cory do
that one? The style looks very different from her interior
illustrations, besides which I know that I've seen that same
illustration on the cover of another book somewhere. I thought maybe
Bobbs-Merrill used it as a kind of stock cover for their fairy-tale
books.
 
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 12:42:17 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Dorothy:
Clearly, many usual thigns happen to Dorothy, but I'll lean to the theory
that it is either coincidence, or Dorothy being some kind of magent to
magical events. As David Hulan says, if Glinda has that much power, then
many things in Ozian history would be different.
 
Ozma and her Gunboats:
When Roquat originally balked, Ozma mentioned that "I am here with my friends
and my army to conquer your kingdom and oblige you to obey my wishes". While
Roquat did not seem threatened by this display of bravado, Ozma is indeed
close to the line of Gunboat diplomacy, if not across it.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 15:45:45 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 11-13-96
 
Upon first reading of Ozma of Oz, I instantly disliked the changes the
illustrator had wrought in both Ozma and Dorothy--changing Ozma's hair from
blonde to dark, and then his Dorothy--she didn't look like Dorothy to me,
but a rich relative who had been miscast in the part. And as it turned out,
that's exactly what Neill had done. A Baum Bugle article said he used a
couple of well-dressed girl relatives as models for Dorothy and Ozma. By
rights, he should have kept Ozma a blonde, and made Dorothy the brunette. 
 
Ruth:
 
        What kind of materials did the Monarch of Mo have his artificial
heads made out of? Alas, I no longer have a copy of "The Magical Monarch of
Mo" in my possession. Hmmm. If some of Languidere's heads WERE artificial,
wouldn't some of her subjects have noticed? As it was, they knew she
*could* change her appearance, but didn't know why. Her heads, even if some
are artificial, must look almost exactly like flesh and blood. 
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 18:47:17 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-04-97
 
Joyce:
I doubt Glinda has the power to shift Dorothy and her raft from the
Pacific to the Nonestic. Transportation spells in general don't seem to
be her forte. (She couldn't even transport Ozma and Dorothy out of the
Skeezer dome.) Can anyone think of a case where she actually transported
someone from one place to another by magic? She twisted the path from
Oogaboo so that it crossed the Deadly Desert instead of going into the
rest of Oz, but that's not quite the same thing.
 
Giving Billina the power of speech (and maybe intelligence, if she
didn't already have that), on the other hand, and waking Billina at the
appropriate moment to overhear Roquat and his steward talking, both seem
to be very possible applications of her power.
 
Melody:
If Neill's illustrations of Dorothy and Ozma were based on a couple of
Neill's relatives, I can understand why he made Ozma the brunette and
Dorothy the blonde. Dorothy, after all, was supposed to be rather
pretty, but not truly beautiful (according the Langwidere); Ozma, on the
other hand, was supposed to be extraordinarily beautiful. And looking at
his drawings, there's no doubt that his brunette relative was much more
beautiful than his blonde one. (I don't know how difficult it would be
for an artist to transpose the hair from one to the other, or just to
change the hair color of a model, not being at all artistic myself [at
least in the graphic-arts realm; I think I have some degree of artistry
with words].)
 
The King of Mo had heads of candy, dough, and wood before he regained
his proper one. (There's something of a parallel with King Fumbo in
GRAMPA, who had his head replaced with cabbage and dough, along with an
offer of an iron one. Don't know if Thompson was familiar with MO or
not.)
 
David Hulan

Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 22:20:39 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-04-97
 
About the Giant with the Hammer:
 
        In Oz-Wonderland War, the iron giant is given enough intelligence
to attempt the deliberate smashing of our heroes. The same was done in the
much earlier _Oz Encounter_ featuring Doc Phoenix and his ability to enter
people's mindscapes. The Oz of _Encounter_ was a little girl's mindscape,
and also one of the earliest dark visions of Oz that I remember being
written. 
 
        Ruth:
 
        Though perhaps Baum meant for his description fo be metaphorical
rather than literal, when our heroes return from the underground kingdom,
they find Princess Languidere: "admiring one of her handsomest heads--one
with rich chestnut hair, dreamy walnut eyes, and a shapely hickorynut
nose." :-) :-)
 
        Back before the turn of the century, women of the noble and wealthy
classes *were* expected to be ornamental and useless--proof of their or
their husbands' great wealth. One such woman, complaining to her seller
that her silk shoes had come apart at the first wearing, recieved the
reply, "But Madame, you must have *walked* in them!" :-) :-) Footbinding
was done to women in the Orient for similar reasons. 
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 11:30:59 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
David:
>The _fin de siecle_
>decadence of a century ago wasn't particularly new; it's just that it
>was the last flicker of a traditional way of life that was to largely
>disappear in the 20th century. (It never struck very deep roots in
>America.)
I hardly ever disagree with anything you say, but in this case I think
you're wrong.  Turn-of-the-century aestheticism (or "decadence," in the eyes
of the middle class) wasn't just the last flicker of a centuries-old
tradition of artistocratic self-indulgence, though that tradition received
various nostalgic tributes in fin-de-siecle culture (Hofmannsthal's garden,
in the poem, contains among other things a tapestry based on a Watteau
painting, and the whole atmsophere is described as evoking "das Wien von
Caneletto"; similar associations are present in _Der Rosenkavalier_).  What
is new here is a radicalized form of the Romantic dictum "truth is beauty;
beauty, truth":  art for the first time becomes the principal supplier of
the meaning of life, supplanting religion and/or science.  The artist
assumes a priestly function, mediating the mysteries of existence to the
less enlightened.  This is one of the principal points that Kandinsky made
in his 1912 treatise "On the Spiritual in Art," which set the stage for
twentieth-century abstraction.  In the new aestheticism, art declares its
independence from everyday reality, and it particularly declares its
independence from all notions of utility, pragmatical purpose, and moral
improvement. ("All art is quite useless," is the way Oscar Wilde put it,
proudly.)  What was also radically new here was that the devotees of
aesthetic culture were no longer primarily the traditionally idle
aristocrats, but a whole generation of upper-middle-class young people who
bought into the idea of cultivating the senses and making their lives into
refined works of art, retreating into an exquisite self-enclosed pleasure
garden, turning their backs on the courseness and philistinism of politics
and the business world.  Carl Schorske's _Fin-de-siecle Vienna_ gives a very
good overview of the socio-economic factors that led these offspring of
liberal bourgeois parents to embrace an "amoral cultivation of feelings." 
 
There's an enormous difference, in other words, between the conventional
pampered artistocrats, who still considered beauty an ornament of power, and
the likes of Sar Paladin and his circle who cultivated beauty for beauty's
sake.  I also think of the German poet Stefan George with his private park
in Munich, in which he sat resplendent in flowing white priestly raiments
while middle-class youths dressed in monastic black robes moved about at a
stately pace reading from George's slim, delicate volumes of verse.  There's
something of this in the description of Glinda among her maidens in the
opening chapter of _Glinda of Oz_, though Baum is careful to state that the
maidens are still involved in something marginally useful such as
embroidery; and Glinda's decorous group is certainly not inspired by the
George circle but no doubt from parallel images such as the paintings of
Puvis de Chavanne and his many imitators.
 
As for the idea that all of this largely disappeared in the modern world:
how nice it would be if the self-absorbed pursuit of sensory gratification
had *not* become an increasingly prominent factor in twentieth-century life.
 
(There will be a pop quiz on this material at the end of the hour.  :-)   )
 
Robin:
Good point that Baum was poking fun at obsessive collectors.  It's amusing
to think of the Nome King appearing (like Jane!) on a super-collector
segment of Personal FX, escorting a dazzled Ayo Haynes through his palatial
underground chambers.
 
Ayo:  Tell us, Roquat.  What piece got you started on your super-collection?
 
Roquat:  Well, Ayo, as a matter of fact it was this little ruby vase that I
picked up at a royal auction and tag sale at the castle in Ev.  Later I cut
a very good deal with King Evoldo to get a particularly nice set of
ornaments, but I'm afraid I won't be able to show you any of those.  A gang
of armed robbers made off with the entire set as well as a number of other
pieces, and I'm sorry to say that none of these items was insured. 
 
Ayo: That was really a tough break, Roquat.  I'm sure all of our viewers
will commiserate with you.  And now back to John and Clare in New York!
 
* * *
 
Peter Hanff & Dave:
Thanks for making the cover to _Enchanted Island of Yew_ available to us
all.  I must say that's a fairly steamy image for the cover of a children's
book!
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 12:09:57 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-02-97
 
David Hulan,  _Confessions of an English Opium Eater_ was a
semi-autobiographical work by Thomas De Quincey.  It was later filmed by
MGM (without "English" in the title, and we know how that goes with MGM).
Among the cast was Yvonne Moray, one of the Lullaby Leaguers.  Thomas De
Quincey's _Suspiria de Profundis_ was the inspiration for Dario Argento's
modern classic horror-fantasies about witches, _Suspiria_ (1977), and
_Inferno_ (1980), which I highly reccommend to adult members of the digest
who don't mind being truly shocked by a film.  Dario Argento is quite an
artist.  Alec Wilder was one of four composers for _The Wonderful Land of
Oz_, and according to firefly (www.firefly.com), most of the songs in that
compilation were in that film, though some it says were exclusively by
Loonis McGlohon.  The other composers (who did the underscoring) were
George Linsenmann and Ralph Falco.  The price on my copy of the film has
been upped to forty dollars, but I haven't paid any yet.  Although this
would technically be considered a bootleg, the print is going to be
cleaned up and professionally processed.  The total cost is going to be
$55 dollars, byt since Scott Peters's Boston contact screwed it up the
first time, wityh an extremely bad transfer that I did not see, some of
the cost is coming out of his pocket, and I'm paying Scott what he paid
his friend for it.
 
Scott

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 15:57:59 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Gordon Birrell and Robin Olderman: Interesting comments on
Langwidere and Ruggedo and the ornamental life.  Coo-ee-oh's
contentment after she's been turned into a diamond swan ("Glinda"),
and the Lonesome Duck's enjoyment of its solitary artistry ("Magic")
might be considered as showing similar attitudes?
 
Melody Grandy: The heads in
"Monarch of Mo" were made out of candy, bread, and wood.  None of
these was very satisfactory, but they worked as heads.  As you say, if
any of Langwidere's heads are artificial, they'd have to be a lot more
convincing in appearance.  Still, perhaps Smith of Smith & Tinker had
the artistry to come up with some fully human-looking heads-to-go, if
he'd set himself to it?
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 21:53:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron S. Adelman" <adelman at ymail.yu.edu>
Subject: A Dog Yet to be Known as Prince in Oz?
 
On Billina:  After _Ozma_, she hatches out many children.  I take it for
granted that she needed a rooster to do this, even in Oz.  While there is
no reason Billina's mate need be a major character, not only does he never
appear on stage, he is never even mentioned.  The Emerald City chicken
colony could not even be the result of a single romantic encounter, as
Billina continues to have children after her first batch.  Therefore
Billina's mate must still be around!  Nice problem, huh?
 
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman                
adelman at ymail.yu.edu         North Antozian Systems and The Martian Empire

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 21:05:48 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-05-97
 
Gordon: To continue the silliness, can't you see Roquat on PBS's (I'm 
gonna probably get the name wrong here) _Antiques Road Show_? People
bring in their collectibles for appraisal.
 
Roquat, masquerading as an Iowa farmer, wearing bib overalls: "Well,
sonny, I got this here green piggy with the whistle as part 
of a gambling debt this gal owed me. It's silver, under the paint,
y'know."
 
Appraiser:"Sir, I'm afraid the *tin* pig is of little value other than as  
a curiosity, but I *do* want to examine your gold card receiver..."  
-----------------
David: I think you're right that Glinda is weak on transportation spells.
I can't think of a time when she used one of her own.
--Robin 

Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 22:07:50 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Glinda:
I cannot remember any incident where she transported something, except in the
non-FF _Oz and the Three Witches_, where she summoned her Pearl of Truth to
herself in the Emerald City. Since this is a magic item that belongs to her,
it may be different than actually transporting a living being.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 21:02:43 -0800 (PST)
From: w_baldwin at juno.com (Warren H Baldwin)
Subject: Oz and Evs
 
Digest of 5/1:
 
David, I really don't see the ubiquitous Ev as a problem. The map is not
the territory. The explanation is simple: Ev is split geographically,
though our Oz informants have not specifically said so. The United
States has two geographically far-flung states, not to mention various
"possessions"; why not Oz?
I must admit that I sometimes weary of the ability of those educated at
_good_ universities quickly to turn the discussion of any topic into
verbal quicksand. One wonders whether they are able (assuming they are
not also technically trained) ever to come to a definitive conclusion
about anything, except possibly contract terms, tenure, or perks.  :-)

Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 10:25:56 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-05-97
 
Gordon:
I guess we were talking at cross-purposes - I was aware (though I
obviously haven't studied it much) of the kind of aestheticism you had
in mind, and agree that it (as satirized in PATIENCE) was something new.
I am not, however, under the impression that it went very deep into the
culture of the day, but believe it was more of a fringe movement -
influential in artistic circles, but not elsewhere. (Like, say,
twelve-tone music.) I may be wrong about that, though; I wasn't around
at the time, and it's not a period that I've read a lot about. In any
case, I don't think Langwidere reflects the "high aesthetic line" nearly
as much as she does the very traditional upper-class avoidance of doing
anything useful, and I thought that was what we were talking about.
 
Loved your FX interview with Roquat!
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 11:52:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-05-97
 
Regarding decadence; This seems to be a concept which is highly attractive to
the human character. About every 30 years or so an outbreak takes place
somewhere. And, as stated, it was generally localized and taken up only by
the leisure class (or the as-yet-unemployed young of the nearest middle
class). But as communications improved through the 19th century these
outbreaks began to gain the capability of becomming more widespread. 
 
You're right, the influence of the Symbolists (which were the fin de seicle
crop of decadents) spread much farther than the earlier movements had _in
their own time_. Earlier movements (such as the Romantics, which made enough
of a splash to have left a template for just about all the later itterations
to adapt to fit) had had far-reaching effects and repercussions after the
movement itself petered out All such movements seem to have in common a love
for exaggerated dress, hedonistic behavior and the underlying theme of "we're
all doomed, what does anything matter? Gesture is everything." The Beats and
the punk rockers come immediately to mind. More than one of these movements
seem to have been preceded by another, equally exagerated in appearance, but
with an optimistic outlook, eventually determined by society as a whole as
being "mostly harmless", which may be what sets off the darker phase.
 
And you are quite right. Languidere is a figure right out of the Symbolist
arsenal (possibly Matterlink. Anyone here ever read The Blue Bird?). 

Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 16:18:05 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Melody Grandy: Hmm, yes, Langwidere does seem to have quite a
nutty head there.
 
Ruth Berman

L. Frank Baum, John R. Neill

Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 18:34:27 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-06-97
 
Aaron:
As for chickens, there are certainly chickens in the Emerald City in
WIZARD, so unless there was a sudden epizootic that killed them all off,
there would be chickens there when Billina arrived as well. Billina just
liked to put on airs.
 
Warren:
While I suppose it's theoretically possible for parts of Ev to lie on
both sides of Oz, the problem is that it seems to be the same part of Ev
- specifically, the part near the part of the Nome King's Dominions
where the Metal Monarch's throne room is located. I suppose that it's
conceivable that Roquat decided to leave his former headquarters east of
Oz behind after they were contaminated by eggs in OZMA, and moved to new
quarters west of Oz. Maybe Jinnicky is satrap of Ev West while Evardo
rules Ev East (sort of like East and West Pakistan, before the former
became Bangladesh). Although - we know in RINKITINK that Inga and
Rinkitink cross the Wheeler Country to get to the Nome Kingdom, and that
Dorothy and the Wizard cross the Winkie Country and the Deadly Desert to
join them. This would imply that the Wheelers had been transplanted as
well, or that there were Wheelers East and Wheelers West. And now we're
beginning to run into Occam's Razor; either there's a really complicated
political situation, or Baum and/or his informant got his directions
mixed up in OZMA.
 
>I must admit that I sometimes weary of the ability of those educated at
>_good_ universities quickly to turn the discussion of any topic into
>verbal quicksand. One wonders whether they are able (assuming they are
>not also technically trained) ever to come to a definitive conclusion
>about anything, except possibly contract terms, tenure, or perks.  :-)
 
I'm not quite sure what you're driving at there. Could you elucidate?
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 07:36:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: earlabbe at juno.com (Earl C. Abbe)
Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - How to Get Ahead
 
In the 5/2 Digest, Ruth Berman hypothesizes that Princess Langwidere
<made artificial heads ... and paid women to swap>.
 
In the 5/5 Digest, Melody notes an instance of Langwidere <"admiring one
of her handsomest heads--one with rich chestnut hair, dreamy walnut eyes,
and a shapely hickorynut nose.">
 
One would have to be crazy to accept the deal suggested, but clearly one of
Langwidere's heads was indeed nuts.
 
Earl Abbe

Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 20:09:08 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-05-97
 
David:
 
>(I don't know how difficult it would be
for an artist to transpose the hair from one to the other, or just to
change the hair color of a model, not being at all artistic myself [at
least in the graphic-arts realm; I think I have some degree of artistry
with words].)<
 
        In "Ozma," Ozma's hair looks like a coloring-book job done in black
ink. That would be simple even for a manually dexterous non-artistt--as
long as a good artist had drawn Ozma herself to begin with.
 
        I do admire Neill as an artist--which makes me cringe when he goofs
up on his illustrations. And he does it again and again! Baum says Head 17
has black hair--and Neill made it blonde. I liked his style in _Land of
Oz_. His later highly-detailed pictures look more technically  impressive,
but I think kids would be more put off by them. (At least I would be.)
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Wed, 07 May 1997 23:50:37 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-06-97
 
Aaron:
 
>On Billina:  After _Ozma_, she hatches out many children.  I take it for
granted that she needed a rooster to do this, even in Oz.  While there is
no reason Billina's mate need be a major character, not only does he never
appear on stage, he is never even mentioned.  The Emerald City chicken
colony could not even be the result of a single romantic encounter, as
Billina continues to have children after her first batch.  Therefore
Billina's mate must still be around!  Nice problem, huh?<
 
Baum apparently forgot that Dorothy was awakened by the crow of a green
rooster and the cackling of a green hen that had just laid an egg in
"Wizard." She was staying at the Palace at the time.
 
Bear:
 
 < You'll have to refresh me as to this "better than you" comment?<
 
It referred to Ozma's remark: "Shall Ozma of Oz humble herself to a
creature who lives in an underground kingdom?" Which implies surface
dwellers are better than underground dwellers. And if you know anything
that has caused more fights throughout history than the royal "I am better
than you" attitude , let me know. :-) :-)
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 10:07:27 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
It's interesting that some of us on the Digest think of Dorothy as the
principal heroine of _Ozma_ and others opt for Billina.  I got to thinking
about this when I was reading Brian Attebery's essay, "Oz", in Michael
Hearn's edition of _WWoO_ (Schocken Books, 1983).  Attebery sees the Dorothy
of the first book as representing not only a generic little girl but also a
specifically American type, namely the lively, resourceful, level-headed
frontier woman.  It occurs to me that in some ways Baum split the original
character of Dorothy into two separate figures in _Ozma_:  the new Dorothy
is much more a little girl who keeps getting into scrapes and needs to be
rescued (including that archetypal damsel-in-distress motif of being locked
in a tower) while Billina takes over much of the original Dorothy's
no-nonsense farm-woman pluckiness.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 17:26:47 -0400 (EDT)
Date-warning: Date header was inserted by delphi.com
From: dsparker at mail.utexas.edu (Douglass S. Parker)
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-97
 
  [a] I'm swamped by term-end, and haven't been only spottily keeping up
with OD since mid-April;
  [b] given the present climate of opinion, I'm chary of bringing this up at all...
 
BUT, since we won't be considering OZMA forever:
 
  Has anyone ever pointed out parallels between Langwidere and the
menstrual cycle? A man's idea, I'd say, including PMS: Thirty heads, one
for each day; one of the thirty [was it #17?] especially fiery, quick to
fly off the handle; admittance [not the word, but I'm packing] by a key
carved "from a single blood-red ruby."
 
  Maybe someone has, and I'm off the hook. But, otherwise...
 
  Exit, stage left, in considerable hurry.  Without a word about Billina
and eggses...
 
                      Doug Parker

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 19:19:59 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-97
 
Melody:
All I can say is that when I was a kid I loved Neill's illustrations,
and still do. Even though they're not very consistent with the text. 
 
Gordon:
Interesting theory on the Dorothy/Billina relationship. I don't really
think that Dorothy is that much less resourceful in OZMA than in WIZARD,
though. In the latter, aside from her burst of temper when she wiped out
the WWW, she mostly just follows the advice of her companions. In OZMA
she's considerably feistier than in WIZARD, I think.
 
David Hulan

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 20:27:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron S. Adelman" <adelman at ymail.yu.edu>
Subject: The Chickens of Oz
 
1) Ruth et al., hmm, OK, so the Emerald City chicken colony wasn't started
by Billina.  Dogs and horses, however, seem to be limited to small areas,
some of which may be purely nonhistorical.  View Halloo and the Dogwood,
for example, seem a little too one-track-minded to have come into
existence historically.  (Corabia, Corumbia, and the Hidden Valley do seem
more likely to be historical, though.)  High Boy the Giant Horse is almost
certainly nonhistorical, and if not, is certainly of magical origin.
 
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman
adelman at ymail.yu.edu         North Antozian Systems and The Martian Empire

Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 22:42:27 -0400 (EDT)
From: CrNoble at aol.com
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-97
 
Speaking of Neill's illustrations not matching the text... did anyone notice
that Baum says the magic carpet that carried Ozma and her army across the
Deadly Desert was green, but the color plate shows it as blue?  I seem to
remember reading somewhere (perhaps on the Ozzy Digest?) that Neill often
drew b&w illustrations that were colored by others.  If so, that could
explain the discrepancy.  (Pardon me if this has already been discussed.  I
was on vacation for a week and am only now catching up on my reading.)
 
-- Craig Noble

Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 11:31:52 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
More on _Ozma_:
Did anyone else notice the echo of the Wizard's famous self-characterization
("I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard") in the Hungry
Tiger's description of his divided nature:  "I am a good beast, perhaps, but
a disgracefully bad tiger"? What I find intriguing here is that the two
quotations are symmetrical.  The Wizard, anticipating R. D. Laing, proclaims
the priority of the essential self (the "good man") over the social role
(the "bad Wizard").  The Tiger, on the other hand, views the essential self
(his natural existence as a tiger) as all but obliterated by societal
constraints (the injunction not to eat fat babies).  I'm reminded of Freud's
_Civilization and Its Discontents_ and Nietzsche's designation of man as
"the sick animal":  the socialization process, which relies on the
installation of an active and vigilant conscience, always demands a
supression of natural drives and appetites.  The good (i.e., fully
socialized) beast exists at the expense of the natural beast (the tiger
self) and the result is neurosis, a perpetual and relentless state of
deferred gratification.  The Hungry Tiger's later comments on the size of
his appetite are an incredibly vivid description of the way desire may be
experienced as a force so large that it engulfs the body, so that we inhabit
our desire rather than the other way around:  "You can hardly imagine the
size of my appetite.  It seems to fill my whole body, from the end of my
throat to the tip of my tail.  I am very sure the appetite doesn't fit
me,and is too large for the size of my body."  (Lacan would have *loved*
that description!)
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 19:01:39 -0500
From: "David G. Hulan" <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-09-97
 
Aaron:
Regular chickens in the barnyard are entirely promiscuous, though if the
flock isn't too large one rooster usually dominates and does most of the
fertilizing. I've no idea how a sentient chicken would behave sexually,
but I know of no reason to believe that sentience would make much
difference. Many birds pair up for the breeding season, and some (swans,
for one) pair up for life, but chickens don't. The male chicken has no
role in bringing up the offspring. (Birds overall are more egalitarian
than mammals, though. In some species - phalaropes, for one - once the
female lays the eggs she disappears and the male incubates the eggs and
does all the rearing of the young.)
 
Craig:
I was the one who mentioned that I'd read that Neill was not responsible
for the color for any of his illustrations except the color plates in
DOTWIZ and EMERALD CITY. The others were colored by the printer. This
makes considerable sense when you think about it; in those days -
especially for the Baum books - it must have been quite difficult to
make good color separations so that a printer could match a color
painting. Panchromatic film wasn't even invented until the 1920s, as I
recall, and before that there was no photographic way of distinguishing
red from black. I wish I knew more about the techniques of color
printing in its early days. (I know, there's probably a book in the
library I could read. So little time, so many things I'd like to
know...)
 
David Hulan

Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 23:22:19 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-08-97
 
Doug: 
 
>  Has anyone ever pointed out parallels between Langwidere and the
>menstrual cycle? A man's idea, I'd say, including PMS: Thirty heads, one
>for each day; one of the thirty [was it #17?] especially fiery, quick to
>fly off the handle; admittance [not the word, but I'm packing] by a key
>carved "from a single blood-red ruby."
 
        You've got an interesting theory, there. That "blood-red"
description gave me pause, too--though executions by beheading, not
periods, came to my mind. By the way, I was so furious when I read in a
zoology book that only humans and certain species of great apes go through
that every month. Other mammals go through estrus--which supposedly
involves no monthly mess. How did we human women get so "lucky?" 
 
        In "Seven Blue Mountains of Oz," when Tip is made an honorary girl
by Truro and her tomboys, they sing, "A woman's a girl turned into a baby,
a woman's a girl whose doom has come--" The verse refers to one reason they
reject womanhood. Before my grandmother presented me with the Kotex books,
I had happily and naively assumed I was out of diapers forever. Wrong!
 
         And  PMS is no more fun for gals than it is for guys. I do not
enjoy the bad mood it sometimes brings on. And, yes, Doug, you have struck
on exactly how to handle a woman with PMS. Leave her alone! Exit, stage
right! You cannot talk or argue a person out of excess fluid on the brain,
which physical problem is supposed to be the reason why some women get
irritable that time of the month. Fortunately, PMS does not happen to all
of us. PMS affects me much more when I am stressed-out, whereas during
times of my life when I am happy and stress-free, it hardly affects me at
all.  :-) :-) 
 
Glinda's powers seem to include: conjuring tents and food (one of
the things the Wizard learned from her), micromorphosis (she gave the
Scarecrow a powder to shrink Blinkie), taking away a magic-worker's magical
powers (Blinkie and Mombi), causing wicked magic workers to forget their
knowledge of magic (Mombi) or EVERYTHING (the Fountain of Oblivion),
granting spiders temporary ability to spin incredibly stong webs, lowering
the water level of a lake (with help), diverting the course of small armies
(Ann-Soforth's army), spinning emeralds into cloth (her present to Ozma in
"Magic"), conjuring visions (to find Button-Bright in "Glinda of Oz"),
long-distance paralyzing spells (what she did to a couple of beasts about
to pounce Button-Bright in same book), and some untransformations (goat
into prince, stone into flesh), and making carpets that can enable travel
over the Deadly Desert and bridge chasms, and getting information magically
(which is how she learned more about the Skeezers and Flatheads). Her
personal code of ethics, rather than lack of ability, seems to prevent her
from learning the art of transformation ("no honest sorceress makes things
appear to be what they are not.")
 
        Zim: I learned the art of transformation before we magic-workers
decided that it was unethical. However, knowing how to perform them can be
helpful in figuring out how to undo them...
        Tip: Er, Zim, is that you? You better not be a REAL tyrannosaurus
rex...
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 02:30:57 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Glinda:
In _Tin Woodman_ Ozma says that Glinda's powers of transformation were not
all that great, although some years previous, she had broken then
transformation of then-Bilbil back to Bobo.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 23:42:16 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-10-97
 
        Here are some more Glinda abilities which came to mind: Creating
lassos with the power to break simple transformations and render the person
lassoed completely harmless (Mombi). (Rather similar to Wonder Woman's
magic lasso with its power to compel the lassoee to obey her.) She can undo
the simple version of the Switcheroo Spell with a gesture (Jellia and
Mombi). She completely sealed a tent with a magic gesture (Land). In
"Road," she grew a tree which supplied tamorna fruit to the audience. She
supplied the living paper for Miss Cuttenclip to make her live paper people
and animals. And so far that's just a list of the powers Baum gave her. All
in all, Glinda seems to be a versatile lady. 
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 10:18:43 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Melody:
To your useful list of Glinda's demonstrated skills I would add
tele-transporting, at least within the borders of Oz.  At the end of
_Cowardly Lion_ she uses magic to send everyone back from Mudge to the
Emerald City, without the aid of the Magic Belt.
 
I also am intrigued by Doug's ingenious detection of parallels between
Langwidere and the menstrual cycle.  This would explain the appeal of
Dorothy's pre-pubescent head, particularly when Langwidere is in the throes
of Head #17.  On the other hand, it needs to be pointed out that Langwidere
doesn't observe anything like a fixed cycle.   I.e., she doesn't go through
the heads in numerical order but chooses whatever one suits her fancy on any
given day; she leaps from #9 to #17, for instance.
 
David:
The technique of color separation in process printing had been worked out as
early as 1880, long before the invention of panchromatic film.  The
preparation of the printing plates could be done with b & w processes
shooting through color filters that could measure the exact amount of each
of the primary colors (magenta, cyan, yellow--or more familiarly red, blue,
yellow) in the original work.  The operative principle here is that a filter
composed of any two primaries will absorb the light of those two colors but
will let through the light of the third.  An orange filter (red and yellow)
will cause only blue light to reach the photographic plate; a violet filter
(red and blue) will allow through only yellow light; and a green filter
(blue and yellow) will let through only red.  Shooting three different
negatives of the original work through the filters gives an exact
distribution of the three primaries over the surface of the work, and these
negatives become the basis for the printing plates, which are inked with the
primary colors.  (In the three-color process, black was achieved, more or
less, by overprinting all three primaries.  As I understand it, the use of a
fourth printing plate for black in _WWoO_ was a particularly fine touch.)
Half-tones--variations in intensity of color--are achieved by adding to the
filters cross-line screens that produce the familiar tiny dots in the
finished color print.
 
For me, the unknown factor in all of this is the final preparation of the
metal printing plates.  I assume that the color prints in the Oz books were
made with relief blocks, but I don't have any idea what kind of stopping-out
process was used to etch away the portions of the plate that weren't to
carry color.  Would any of the experts on the Digest care to comment on
this?  Peter Hanff?  Herm?
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 10:01:47 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-10 & 12-97
 
5/10:
Melody:
Other Glinda powers that haven't been mentioned yet include building a
city from scratch by magic and providing its inhabitants with a
minifying spell and its antidote (Bunnybury, in EMERALD CITY).
 
5/12:
Gordon:
My reference to panchromatic film was based on the fact that in the
early days of photography, film wasn't in general sensitive to red light
(much like most b/w photographic paper even today - you can use a rather
bright red, or even yellow, safelight around photographic paper while
you're printing, unless it's the panchromatic type paper used for making
b/w prints from color negatives). So shooting through a color filter
that let through only red light would yield unexposed film. However, it
may be that for the specific purpose of doing color separations, they'd
come up with an emulsion that had at least some sensitivity to red
light, but that wasn't suitable for mixing into the other type of
emulsion to provide a true panchromatic film. As I said, I don't know a
lot about the history of printing, but I do know optics.
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 07:37:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: earlabbe at juno.com (Earl C. Abbe)
Subject: Ozzy Digest Submission - Dorothy's Speech
 
It has been pointed out that Dorothy's manner of talking deteriorated 
between _Wizard_ and _Ozma_.  Her speech in _Wizard_ is clear and
straightforward, but in the later books she speaks with many jarring
contractions, such as "orn'ments," "comfor'ble," "poss'bly," "ign'rant"
and "b'lieve."
  
Poss'bly the change is due to the influence of Dorothy's guardians.  I
b'lieve that however well intentioned, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were
ign'rant and not good speech pattern role models for a young child.  In
_Wizard_ Dorothy is still speaking as she learned to speak from her natural 
parents.  Some years later, in _Ozma_, she had adopt
speech of her foster parents. Later, after Dorothy becomes comfor'ble
and an orn'ment in the royal court of Oz, these annoying contractions
subside somewhat, under the influence of the cosmopolitan Emerald City
manner of speech. 
  
Earl Abbe

Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 21:36:06 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-13-97
 
Earl:
You may have a point about the deterioration of Dorothy's speech. Uncle
Henry and Aunt Em certainly didn't have good diction in EMERALD CITY,
which is the only place where they spoke much. But Dorothy's poor
diction doesn't seem to resemble theirs at all, which makes it hard to
understand why Dot acquired the accent she did. (Or why she criticized
Billina several times in OZMA for using slang, which "isn't at all
dign'fied".)
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 14 May 1997 11:41:36 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
David Hulan:
I can't claim any particular expertise in the history of printing either,
but I do know that the cross-lined color filters were widely used for color
separation.  Evidently the photo-sensitive materials used to map out the red
areas differed from those used on conventional photographic plates.
Typically the plates were coated with photo-sensitive gelatine which
hardened in the locations where it was exposed to light; the softer gelatine
could then be washed away leaving a raised imprint that was transferred to
the metal printing plate through double electrolyting.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 21:51:18 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
One last thing about _Ozma_:
At the end of the book, Billina was able to disenchant the Tin Woodman with
the "Ev" spell outside of the Nome King's dominions. This suggests that
the disenchanting magic comes from the objects rather than directly from
Roquat. As a child, I tried to disenchant objects around the house, but I
have met no Oz characters yet.
 
--Tyler Jones

L. Frank Baum, John R. Neill

Date: Fri, 16 May 1997 22:02:05 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-16-97
 
On Languidere's heads:
 
Momentarily, I thought changing heads might throw off Languidere's
biological rhythms, because they are controlled by the pituitary in the
brain, until I remembered that groups of women living together become
synchronized. So Languidere's heads in their little "dorm" are probably
synchronized as well.  I've also read that when a guy gets married, *his*
rhythms synchronize with his wife's.
 
In Languidere, Baum may have been satirizing something else besides useless
vanity. Not only do styles of clothes go in and out of fashion--certain
'looks' in women themselves go in and out of style as well--as if
trendsetters thought we could go to the store and buy 'the latest' in faces
and bodies. So Baum has given us a lady who can really keep up with facial
fashion! The effect is macabre, not glamorous.
 
         Don't know if anybody has mentioned it in the Digest yet, but in
his depiction of Languidere, Neill was satirizing the Gibson Girl. Charles
Gibson was an illustrator whose depictions of fashionable ladies were very
popular around the turn of the century. Looks like Neill was poking fun at
one of his artistic peers and his feminine creations as well. 
 
        "Rendering in Pen and Ink" has good things to say about Neill, plus
a very fine example of his work. Better paraphrase because this book is
still under copyright. It says the Neill drawing "can be found interesting
everywhere," and that in this one drawing one can find "samples of every
sort of line or tone a pen is capable of making," and it says that the
spotting of pure black is exceptionally well handled, and that the entire
drawing is marvelously well composed for so complex a subject. The Pic in
question is not an Oz one--it is called "The Cobbler" and depicts a
leprechaun pausing in his work to shoo away another elf, who has brought in
 two old shoes with soles coming off.  It *is* an excellent drawing. 
 
        When I first began collecting the Oz books, I enjoyed hunting for
Neill's miniature drawings-inside-of-drawings. 
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sun, 18 May 1997 02:29:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron S. Adelman" <adelman at ymail.yu.edu>
Subject: How Speedy Came to Oz
 
3) Just a thought on Langwidere:  Considering that she has 30 times the
amount of brain tissue of a normal human, how come she displays subnormal
intelligence?  Let's be realistic about this:  how come she hasn't become
inordinately bored from doing almost nothing but admiring her own faces
for a few years at least?  The only thing possibly creative she does is
play the mandolin, but as she seems pathologically fixated on her own
beauty, it seems doubtful she's paying enough attention to her music to
for it to come out any better than in the following plagiarized scene:
 
<Setting:  a meeting of the royal court of Ev.  Langwidere is sitting in a
corner plucking aimlesly at her mandolin.>
Nome ambassador:  Excuse me.  <grabs mandolin, smashes it against the way,
ruining it beyond hope, then hands it back to Langwidere.>  Sorry.
<exit Nome ambassador>
 
As such, what could Langwidere be possibly doing with all that gray
matter?
 
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman
adelman at ymail.yu.edu         North Antozian Systems and The Martian Empire

Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 12:26:34 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-19-97
 
Aaron: 
>>Just a thought on Langwidere:  Considering that she has 30 times the
amount of brain tissue of a normal human, how come she displays subnormal
intelligence?
 
Who said she had 30 times the amount of brain tissue from a "normal" human?
Maybe they were all cretins, too stupid to refuse the swap. BTW, this 
section of Baum contradicts the "beauty=good" hypothesis, doesn't it?
 
--Robin Olderman

Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 19:12:37 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-17 & 19-97
 
5/17:
Tyler:
It has always been my impression that the Nome King used his magic belt
to let the combination of touching and pronouncing the word "Ev"
disenchant the ornaments that had been members of the Evian royal family
and their would-be rescuers from Oz. After that, touching those objects
and saying the word would turn them into their original form.  (It
wasn't a case of his using the belt in each individual case to
disenchant the victim; if he'd known each time someone touched an
enchantee and said the word, he wouldn't have needed the bell. Aside
from the Tin Woodman's disenchantment later.) But this spell was
exclusive to that particular group of enchanted beings, and no others.
And since all of them were disenchanted in OZMA, it wouldn't work to
touch other objects and try to disenchant them.
 
OTOH, I know what you mean; I tried very, very hard to find the right
pronunciation of "pyrzqxgl" when I was a kid.
 
5/19:
Aaron:
Langwidere doesn't have 30 times the amount of brain tissue of a normal
human available to her at any one time. Based on what we see in OZMA,
any given head only had about 80% of the brain tissue of a normal human
being, but even if each head is fully normal she only has the use of one
of them at a time. And if you haven't recognized the truth of the saying
that the IQ of a group of humans is roughly the root-mean-square of
their individual IQs, you need to. (That's how one comes up with a camel
being a horse designed by a committee.) So if you get the cumulative
effect of all those heads, she's clearly going to be dumber than any
head by itself. :-)
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 20 May 1997 22:13:46 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
 
Aaron:
While the aggregate of Langwidere's brains may be 30 times the human average
(assuming that each of her heads had roughly one average human brain at a
time), she only uses one at a time. Of course, she seems to retain her
identity and memories from head to head, but I do not believe that she can
chain all these together and use them at the same time like a bunch of
Pentium computers.
 
David:
I don't mean to harp on this subject, but your analysis of Langwidere as a
committee-of-the-whole was remarkably Dilbert-like :-)
 
Get a large enough group of people together, and eventually they will produce
nothing.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 17:27:22 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-20-97
 
Robin:
>BTW, this  section of Baum contradicts the "beauty=good" hypothesis, doesn't it?
 
Beauty=good is a questionable hypothesis anyhow, imho. Especially in
Baum. Quite a few of his "good" characters are far from beautiful (the
GWN, Dyna, Aunt Em, Margalotte, Tollydiggle, and Cayke come to mind
fairly quickly), and quite a few of his "bad" (or at least, highly
flawed) characters are at least pretty (Jinjur, Langwidere, the Mangaboo
Princess, the roses of the Rose Kingdom, Queen Cor, Mrs. Yoop). Even
Thompson doesn't make the equation all that strongly, imho; Mrs.
Sew-and-Sew and Queen Rosa Merry are examples of non-beautiful good
characters, and Delva is a beautiful bad one. And these are just women;
homely men are often good, and handsome men bad, though that's less of
an issue on this board, at least.
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 22:11:55 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-20-97
 
On Roquat's ornament room:
 
With so many knicknacks, one would think he would have lots of purple
ornaments, green, gold, etc. in addition to the ones he made of Evardo's
and Ozma's group....
 
Billina: It's a good thing he didn't,  or  I'd be an ornament, too! Most of
his knicknacks were a mixture of colors, making it easy to spot the
one-colored ones.
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 09:37:17 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 05-23-97
 
Melody:
It's rather puzzling why Roquat didn't already have purple, green, or
gold ornaments in his ornament room, but when he and his steward (who
may or may not have been Kaliko in OZMA; he doesn't seem much like
Kaliko as we see him in EMERALD CITY or TIK-TOK) are discussing the
subject in Billina's hearing they definitely state that he didn't.
 
David Hulan

Date: Fri, 23 May 1997 10:24:52 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
It's intriguing that Langwidere is emerging from our discussions as the most
interesting character in _Ozma_.  I'm sorry that we're not discussing the
non-Oz Baum, since there are some facinating parallels between Langwidere
and Zixi, who also has a thing about mirrors and self-image.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 00:42:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron S. Adelman" <adelman at ymail.yu.edu>
 
3) Gordon, I hadn't thought of any parallels between Zixi and Langwidere
before.  On the other hand, Langwidere is extremely shallow and selfish;
Zixi approaches the ideal of what a queen should be, just going a little
crazy since she's deprived of doing something everyone else takes for
granted.
 
Aaron Solomon (ben Saul Joseph) Adelman
adelman at ymail.yu.edu         North Antozian Systems and The Martian Empire

Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 22:25:32 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 05-26-97
 
Gjordon:
 
>It's intriguing that Langwidere is emerging from our discussions as the most
interesting character in _Ozma_.<
 
_Ozma_ IS the only Oz book where she appears, so we're probably discussing
*her* while we're on this Oz book! :-) =
 
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 10:06:41 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Melody Grandy: "Ozma" is the only book where Langwidere appears, but she 
does get a brief mention in "Grampa" towards the end.  I must admit I don't 
remember the context, but that's what I have down in the Haff "Who's Who" 
Appendix.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 17:37:07 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-02-97
 
Ruth:
I imagine the reference to Langwidere in GRAMPA was Dorothy remembering
Langwidere during the discussion of Tatters' having two heads after he's
married to Pretty Good. I think I remember something of the sort.
 
David Hulan

Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 21:57:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: Robin Olderman <robino at tenet.edu>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-02-97
 
Ruth: I think the reference to Languidere in GRAMPA occurs when Dorothy 
first sees Fumbo's bodiless head. Fumbo makes some kind of comment that 
he's not like Languidere, IIRC. 
 
--Robin

Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 09:43:27 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Here are some thoughts on Langwidere and Zixi.  When I wrote, "It's a pity
that we're not including non-Oz books in the BCF's," it's not as if I
thought there were a prohibition on discussing non-BCF books (heaven
forbid!) but rather, as Ruth Berman correctly surmised, my hesitation was
that it would be more difficult to get a real discussion going if most
0people haven't re-read _Zixi_ recently.  In any event, for what it's worth,
here goes:
 
In the case of both Langwidere and Zixi, there is an obsessive concern with
self-image and a corresponding involvement with mirrors.  In both cases,
nobody knows what the person *really* looks like (cf. the Wheeler, p. 83:
"I cannot say [what she looks like], although I have seen her twenty times.
For the Princess Langwidere is a different person every time I see her.") In
both cases there is a discrepancy between the public and private self.
 
 
********************SPOILER FOR _QUEEN ZIXI OF IX_*****************************
 
In Zixi's case there are some interesting echoes of _Dorian Gray_, although
the ghastly true image doesn't reflect the record of a lifetime of evil
deeds but simply the disfiguring effects of extreme old age.  The mirror
that defeats the illusions of witchcraft also appears in folklore (vampires
have no reflections, as I recall) and notably also in Hawthorne's "Feathertop."
 
What I find interesting about Baum's treatment of the motif is the way he
connects it with feminine vanity.  And Zixi represents an extreme
psychological case in which a powerful sense of vanity contends with an
equally powerful and innate sense of truthfulness.  
 
Lacan talks about the "mirror stage" in human development:  the search for a
"reflection," literally one's own or figuratively an idealized, seemingly
intact and perfect external image. In either case the reflected image
enables one to construct a unified self-image.  In Zixi's case, the only
unified self-image she has access to can only reflect back what she herself
knows to be the truth.  The magic-maker is exempt from her own magic.  She
can see only the effects of her magically enhanced appearance on others,
never that appearance itself.
 
This horrifying rift between her projected image and her self-image is also,
I think, what makes her a truly magic being:  unlike any normal mortal, she
is utterly incapable of self-delusion.  (As Hawthorne puts it in the
climactic moment in "Feathertop" where the scarecrow sees his true image in
the mirror:  "Perchance the only time since this so often empty and
deceptive life of mortals began its course, an illusion had seen and fully
recognized itself.") Lulea, in denying Zixi the ability to bewitch her own
perception, argues from a legalistic standpoint (fairies don't support
witchcraft), but she is surely also right in a deeper sense:  Zixi's
inability to delude herself may perhaps be one of her greatest strengths as
a ruler.
 
Otherwise:  I agree with Aaron that Zixi, unlike Langwidere, is certainly a
wise, prudent, and generous ruler.  Nevertheless, in her desperate search
for the magic means to align her reflected (self-) image with the image she
projects to others, she descends to deceit, fraud, theft, armed aggression,
and finally abject self-abasement in the scene with Lulea. That she
ultimately resigns herself calmly and gracefully to the great rift in her
being attests to her stature as a wise monarch.
 
****************************END OF SPOILER*************************************
 
Langwidere strikes me, in contrast, as an eerie premonition of post-modern
character types.  It's not just that the public self and the private self
don't coalesce.  The private self doesn't even *exist* in any coherent
sense.  There is simply a succession of temporary selves, solipsistically
admired and restlessly traded out in an endless cycle.  The decision (was it
Neill's or the printer's?) to use nothing but cold blue tones in the color
plate depicting Langwidere in her "changing room" was an inspired one:
there is something icy and frighteningly remote, not to say frighteningly
familiar these days, in Langwidere's totally self-absorbed existence.  For
that matter:  the image of Langwidere playing the mandolin in the isolation
of her mirrored hall could be a vision straight out of a Fellini film.
 
--Gordon Birrell 

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 08:54:54 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Gordon Birrell: An interesting discussion of Zixi.  I'm not sure when you 
refer to post-modern character types what novels/writers are meant.  In 
some senses, fantasy literature has always been likely to reflect the 
feeling of not being an integrated self -- Ariel and Caliban are (partly) 
Prospero arguing with himself over who and what he is.  I'll look at the 
illustrations you discussed and think about the issues you raised here some 
more.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 12:36:51 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-04-97
 
Gordon--it's interesting that you mention Feathertop, as Jack Pumpkinhead
was probably inspired by him.  It's a good story, too...  Would you happen
to know if there was a particular Fellini film referenced by the song in
_The Brave Little Toaster_, a film by Jerry Rees produced by Winkie
Willard Carroll?
 
Scott

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 10:26:12 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-04-97
References: <01IJNPI4380Y91XK7G at delphi.com>
 
Gordon:
I think I've said this before, but my opinion is that in Zixi's case we
do know what she looks like - that is, the appearance she makes to her
subjects and other sentient beings is indeed the configuration of her
physical body. There is no "illusion" involved. Many things she does -
including walking all the way from Ix to Nole and back - would be
impossible if her body were really that of a 683-year-old woman, and her
appearance were an illusion. This is also consistent with the analogy to
"The Picture of Dorian Gray"; part of the point of that was that the
magic that transferred the ravages of Gray's debauchery to the picture
left his body healthy.
 
My theory - though this is speculation, and there are undoubtedly other
possible explanations - is that the spells Zixi used to prevent her body
from aging had the side effect of making her see in a mirror what would
have been if she had not used the spell. (Although presumably with
continued life; Baum doesn't say she sees a skeleton, and that's all
that would be left of an actual 683-year-old woman.) I don't think that
there was any particular magic in the mirror; there is no evidence that
if anyone else saw Zixi's reflection, it would have the appearance of an
ancient hag. (It's true that she had all mirrors banished from her
palace in Ix, but it seems highly unlikely that she never encountered a
mirror when she was in Nole, and surely someone would have noticed that
the pretty young woman's reflection wasn't what it should be.)
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 23:14:35 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-04-97
 
Gordon:
 
        Enjoyed your analysis of Zixi and Languidere. Zixi, the wise ruler
who learns from her mistakes, comes out a better lady than Languidere the
hopeless narcissist--who, like her mythological male counterpart, will
probably stay infatuated with  her faces in her mirrored room until she
dies.
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 10:18:08 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest - Phreex and Zixi
 
Gordon Birrell: I think you're right that the decision to use monochrome 
pale blue in the drawing of Langwidere in her room of heads gives an 
appropriately icy effect.  Incidentally, Richardson also has some 
monochrome pale blue drawings in "Zixi," but doesn't seem to use it to 
suggest sadness -- the monochrome color drawings (pale orange, pale red, 
pale green, pale blue) all seem to use the color simply as a warm accent.  
The drawing of Zixi confronting her other self, by contrast, is a 3-color 
plate, and so makes her appropriately a more complicated character 
chromatically than Langwidere.  (The Dover reprint gives some indication of 
this difference, even though it's in in b&w, because the 3-color plates 
come out in a pattern of complicated greys, whereas the drawings on the 
pages of text come out looking like plain line drawings.)  It's a nice 
touch that the angle in the plate is such that the reader does not see 
Zixi's reflection -- only Zixi herself does.  I wonder if Richardson saw 
Bernhardt on stage when he was in Paris.  His work as a whole generally 
reflects the influence of Art Nouveau, but his drawings of Zixi perhaps 
even more so.  His Zixi (especially in the adaptation of the drawing of 
Zixi looking in the pool which was stamped on the cover, where the 
simplification of the shades of color leaves the lines of the complicated 
curves emphasized) looks a good deal like Mucha's posters of Bernhardt, I 
think.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 16:31:16 -0400
From: Michael Turniansky <turnip at mail.bcpl.lib.md.us>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 04-28-97 --Ozma's poppies
 
On the subject of Ozma's poppies, I've always opined that they were 
left over when she mowed down the field of sleep-inducing poppies, in 
here "Emerald City Beautification" program.
 
           --Mike "Shaggy Man" Turniansky

Date: Fri, 06 Jun 1997 14:57:33 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Ruth Berman:
I also like your suggestion that Richardson might have been influenced by
Mucha's posters of Sarah Bernhardt in his rendering of Zixi. Given the heavy
stylization of the female figure in Art Nouveau, there are bound of course
to be some generic parallels.  On the other hand, Zixi and Bernhardt are
alike in other ways besides their good looks:  both are queenly figures, and
both are in some sense actresses, living in a world of representation and
projected beauty. 
 
The word "post-modern" has been bandied about so much that it can mean
practically anything one wants it to mean (which, in itself, could be
considered a post-modern procedure!), but the way I was using it derives
from the definitions that Linda Hutcheon provides in _A Poetics of
Postmodernism_ (Routledge, 1988):  that is, the tendency to shuttle back and
forth between available modes of constructing meaning.  Conventional
boundaries (disciplinary, characterological, aesthetic, gender, etc.) are
continually observed, transgressed, reinstated, supplanted.  As Hutcheon
sees it, the typical post-modern strategy is to install meaning while
simultaneously challenging it. I think there is something of this in
Langwidere's incessant trading out of one head (i.e., one mode of perception
and sensibility) for another.  This is quite different from the almost
universal sense that our essential self is not entirely intact, as
manifested in the traditional Doppelgaenger motif.  An early literary
example of post-modern character is _Waiting for Godot_, in which Vladimir
and Estragon continually try on one provisional personality type after
another, playing at being different people.  (The difference between
Gogo/Didi and Langwidere, of course, is that they, in a typically
post-modern way, are fully aware of the artifice and problematic nature of
what they are doing.)
 
David:
>I think I've said this before, but my opinion is that in Zixi's case we
>do know what she looks like - that is, the appearance she makes to her
>subjects and other sentient beings is indeed the configuration of her
>physical body. There is no "illusion" involved. Many things she does -
>including walking all the way from Ix to Nole and back - would be
>impossible if her body were really that of a 683-year-old woman, and her
>appearance were an illusion. 
> [snip!]
>My theory - though this is speculation, and there are undoubtedly other
>possible explanations - is that the spells Zixi used to prevent her body
>from aging had the side effect of making her see in a mirror what would
>have been if she had not used the spell. . . . I don't think that
>there was any particular magic in the mirror; there is no evidence that
>if anyone else saw Zixi's reflection, it would have the appearance of an
>ancient hag. (It's true that she had all mirrors banished from her
>palace in Ix, but it seems highly unlikely that she never encountered a
>mirror when she was in Nole, and surely someone would have noticed that
>the pretty young woman's reflection wasn't what it should be.)
 
This is an interesting and even seductive interpretation, but it is
difficult to square it with the text. Here is what Baum writes:  "Although
[Zixi] had been an adept at witchcraft for more than six hundred years, and
was able to retain her health and remain in appearance young and beautiful,
there was one thing her art was unable to deceive, and that one thing was a
mirror.  To mortal eyes Zixi was charming and attractive; yet her reflection
in a mirror showed to her an ugly old hag, bald of head, wrinkled, with
toothless gums and withered, sunken cheeks. [ . . .] Zixi wanted to admire
herself; and that was impossible as long as the cold mirrors showed her
reflection to be the old hag others would also have seen had not her arts of
witchcraft deceived them." The repeated use of the word "deceive" pretty
clearly establishes her beautiful appearance as an illusion, not a physical
reality.  As for her ability to walk all the way to Noland, that presumably
is covered in the first sentence (she "was able to retain her health").
It's true that someone in the castle in Noland might have noticed from
Zixi's reflection in a mirror that she wasn't what she should be--that's of
course what happens in "Feathertop."  But my reading of _Zixi_ is that the
witchcraft bewitches the perceptions of all of those who behold Zixi,
whether or not they are looking at her directly or in a mirror; it is only
*her* perception of herself which must remain utterly truthful.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 12:42:36 -0500 (EST)
From: sahutchi at cord.iupui.edu
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-06-97
 
While we're still on Ozma (I hope I can catch up on the Hitchcock
readings so I can reread DOTWIZ for the first time for our discussions.
I haven't read it, other than looking a few things up, since I was in
fourth grade, so I won't be much in the discussion otherwise,  Maybe I
should get off the computer and start reading) I was wondering what people
thought about the eggs.  It doesn't seem like it was mentioned much what
little effect the eggs had on Roquat when Scarecrow beaned him with them.
Could it be psychological, or would my mystery character's mandatory egg
breakfasts be lesws effective than she thinks...
 
Scott

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:27:49 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-09-97
 
Gordon:
I see what you're saying about Zixi, but, for instance, how could she be
physically toothless and still eat normal food? And yet there's no
indication that her banquets feature only purees and thin soups and the
like, and it wouldn't be a very good illusion if they had to. I think
Baum's "deceive" refers only to essence, and not to physical reality.
But there's no real way to know.
 
Scott H.:
Baum appears to get around the fact that Roquat was hit with a couple of
eggs and survived when he says in TIK-TOK that a nome has to say a
certain magic word, known to very few, very quickly after being touched
by the interior of an egg or he will wither up and blow away. Presumably
Roquat is one of the nomes who knows this word, so he was able to save
his life - but it was no doubt as traumatic an experience as, say,
having a bullet miss one's head by a quarter inch or so would be.
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 21:25:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
This may be a bit late since I got distracted by a project. A couple of last
comments regarding points of question in OZMA.
 
On Ruggedo-Roquat. My take on this is that Ruggedo was his personal name,
Roquat his reign name. The king of the Nomes that Sant Claus knew was also a
Roquat, I suspect that this was a dynastic identifier. When Ruggedo was
deposed and cast out, he was no longer the Roquat. Ozma, who knew so little
of Nome history and culture that she did not even understand the scope of the
Nomes' realms confused the two.
 
On Ruggedo and eggs. Eggs are deadly to Nomes. Period. That the Scarecrow
smacked him with a couple and did Rug no harm is elementary, when they hit
him, he was still wearing the magic belt. Protecting its wearer is what the
belt does. This has been established. Even when it is "drained" and can do no
other magic, it protects its wearer. Getting a couple of fresh eggs in his
face quite understandably threw him into a panic because eggs are deadly to
Nomes. Period. That this was enough to distract him while Dot got the belt
off of him is also understandable. Eggs are deadly to Nomes. That the egg in
the face did him no harm after the belt was removed, is probably because
THOSE eggs had already been rendered harmless. If the Scarecrow had had
another egg to throw there might have been one dead Nome. 

Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:11:00 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
David:
If you're going to insist, in defiance of Baum's own statements, that Zixi's
beauty is *not* a deception, then it seems to me that you are going to have
to build your case on more substantial evidence than her ability to eat
solid food at state banquets. :) Still, I'm prepared to accept the idea that
Zixi's magic actually does transform her physically (and not merely in the
eye of the beholder) while the mirror reveals her essential age.  Your
aversion, and Tyler's, to the conception of Zixi as a withered hag may be
partly a gender thing; I'd be interested in knowing what the women members
of the Digest think about this.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:38:33 -0400
From: "Melody G. Keller" <harmonyarts at compuserve.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest, 06-09-97
 
Scott:
 
>It doesn't seem like it was mentioned much what
little effect the eggs had on Roquat when Scarecrow beaned him with them.
Could it be psychological, or would my mystery character's mandatory egg
breakfasts be lesws effective than she thinks...<
 
The Nome horror of eggs could be A) A baseless Nome superstition like the
Real World's walking under ladders or having a black cat cross one's path
Or B) Baum did say in one book that touching or being touched by an egg can
make a Nome as subject to old age and death as any mortal. If the second is
true, such a change would only become obvious with time as the affected
Nome grew older while his fellow Nomes did not.
 
Melody Grandy

Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 14:06:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Re; Nomes, eggs and magic protective words.
<<sigh>> I had completely forgotten Baum's "magic word" explanation. Probably
accidentally on purpose. The more I reread Baum's Oz books, the more I come
to the conclusion that he was the storyteller's equivalent of the film
industry's "one-take wonder". When left alone to invent he would come up with
wonderful, fresh ideas which worked smoothly in whatever context he was
exploring at the time, but if he went back to tie off a loose end, his
explanations tended to get more tangled, full of logic holes, unconvincing
and generally lame than the original gap was. Obviously, from an
Oz-as-literature standpoint, he had simply forgotten about the Magic Belt.
Again.

Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 15:47:10 +0000
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-14-97
 
Joyce:
The Gnome King in SANTA CLAUS isn't named, so I'm assuming that you're
postulating that his name was also Roquat? Could be, though there's no
particular evidence of it, and when Kaliko became king of the Nomes he
didn't adopt "Roquat" as his name, as far as we can tell. For that
matter Roquat is "Roquat of the Rocks" in OZMA and "Roquat the Red" in
EMERALD CITY (or maybe the other way round, but that's how I recall it),
but in those cases we know it's the same individual.
 
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.)
 
Melody:
The effect of eggs on nomes is described differently in almost every
book where it's mentioned. Someday I should probably compile this,
mumble mumble. Unless someone already has?
 
David Hulan

From: dfabi at ...
Date: Tue Nov 21, 2000  10:31 pm
Subject: HOW MANY GUESSES??? Amended

I REVIEWED MY PREVIOUS POST, AND THE SCARECROW WAS ENTITLED TO 40
GUESSES, NOT 41, IN THE "MORE INTERESTING VERSION".....HERE IS THE
AMENDED VERSION OF MY PREVIOUS POST.
 
-D. Fabi
 
Being mathematically inclined, and re-reading "Ozma," I saw an
interesting challenge.  Exactly HOW MANY GUESSES TOTAL did the Ozian
party make in the Nome King's ornament rooms???  Well, it depends on
how you read the book (as the following will show), but I had a lot
of fun with this one.  I urge everyone on Nonestica to print this
message out and take a look.
 
Alternate Version:
         I call this the alternate version, because Baum isn't
specific on how many guesses are given to each person.  After Ozma
made her 11 guesses, the Nome King gives the Tin Woodman 12 guesses
(since Ozma was just enchanted, making a total of 12 people enchanted
(the Queen of Ev + her 10 children + Ozma)).  So, after the Woodman
makes his guesses, everyone after that receives 12 guesses.  This
version is assuming that the Nome King was really stingy on giving
guesses, and after giving the Tin Woodman an extra guess (since Ozma
was enchanted), he gives everyone else 12 guesses.  This version also
assumes that if the person is guessing correctly, they may continue
guessing until they make a mistake (hence Billina's huge triumph at
the end).  Here it is:
 
Ozma:  11
Tin Woodman:  12
General:  12
Colonel:  12
Officers remaining:  24 x 12 = 288
Private:  12
Tik-Tok:  12
Dorothy:  12  (she guesses correctly; disenchants Prince Evring)
Scarecrow:  12
Billina:  10 + 27 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 41  (remaining family of Ev +
Ozian army + Ozma + Scarecrow + Tik-Tok + Tin Woodman; Woodman
disenchanted outside caverns later)
 
Added all together makes a TOTAL OF 424 GUESSES
 
More Interesting Version:
         Baum really wasn't specific in telling the reader how many
guesses were given to each of the Ozian party.  After the Tin Woodman
is given 12 guesses (one guess for each person enchanted), Baum
doesn't say if everyone after that receives the same number of
guesses for the total people enchanted.  However, since Dorothy and
others had to wait in the Nome King's throne room for almost the
whole day (in fact, Dorothy, the Hungry Tiger, the Cowardly Lion, and
Billina ended up sleeping over in the Nome King's sleeping rooms to
guess the next day in the morning, after the Nome King says "Why, it
..and that strikes me as being late enough."), it
really seems that everyone of the party was given more than 12
guesses as per the alternate version above.  But yet again, the book
doesn't say anything about this.  Baum remains unspecific, but I
highly think it more interesting and logical that each person would
be given the same amount of guesses for the same amount of people
enchanted.  Plus, the Nome King sounded really playful and into the
game.  Here it is:
 
Ozma:  11
Tin Woodman:  12
General:  13
Colonel:  14
Officer #1: 15, #2: 16, #3: 17, #4: 18, #5: 19, #6: 20, #7: 21, #8:
22, #9: 23, #10: 24, #11: 25, #12: 26, #13: 27, #14: 28, #15: 29,
#16: 30, #17: 31, #18: 32, #19: 33, #20: 34, #21: 35, #22: 36, #23:
37, #24: 38    (24 officers)
Private:  39
Tik-Tok:  40
Dorothy:  41  (she guesses correctly; disenchants Prince Evring)
Scarecrow:  40 (now there are 40 people still enchanted)
Billina:  41  (Billina disenchants all;  remaining family of Ev +
Ozian army + Ozma + Scarecrow + Tik-Tok + Tin Woodman; Woodman
disenchanted outside caverns later)
 
Before I state the total, I would like to comment on something
extraordinary in the book, and crucial to calculating the total
number of guesses made.  Baum actually MAKES A MISTAKE.  It is kind
of unclear how many people are in the Ozian army.  Chapter 7, in
which Dorothy peers from Langwidere's tower towards the Deadly
Desert, sees the Ozian party approaching on the Magic Carpet.  There,
she sees that the Ozian army bringing up the rear is 27 people.
However, at the end of Chapter 16, Baum states that the army consists
of 28 people!!  Here is the exact sentence by Baum from Ch. 16: "The
twenty-seven officers and the private brought up the rear."
Everywhere else in the book, including the crucial Giant with the
Hammer chapter, there are 27 in the army.  Has anyone else noticed
this mistake?  Or maybe some strange enchantment happened during
Billina's guesses and magically added to the army's total number of
persons? :-)
 
In spite of Baum's "mistake," I kept the army to a total of 27, as
per the rest of the book.  Therefore, added all together, the more
interesting version sums to a TOTAL OF 887 GUESSES
 
887 guesses!  Still a strange number!
 
887 guesses implies that there were probably thousands of ornaments
and bric-a-brac in the Nome King's rooms (extrapolating from common
sense and probability theory), since only Dorothy could guess
correctly due to chance (Billina knew the secret, so her guesses were
not due to pure chance).  This makes only a 1 in 846 chance of
guessing correctly (1, since Dorothy's was the only correct guess due
to pure chance, and 846, since Billina's guesses are excluded, and
this is the total number of guesses made on chance (e.g. all guesses
made up to Billina's turn, including the Scarecrow`s guesses).
Therefore, there is a 0.001182033096926713947 chance to guess
correctly in the Nome King's rooms, or one-tenth of one percent =
0.1%.  Another strange number!  0.1% implies thousands upon thousands
of ornaments (or that Dorothy Gale really is a magical child and
looked after by all the fairies :-).
 
I'd like to hear what people think about this.
 
-Dexter Fabi dfabi at ...

From: Tyler Jones <tyler.jones at ...>
Date: Wed Nov 22, 2000  11:35 am
Subject: RE: [Nonestica] HOW MANY GUESSES???????

D. Fabi wrote:
> A fascinating piece about guessing in the Nome King's palace.
Wow! Pretty cool! I myself am also mathmatically/numerically inclined,
but I never thought about calculating the total number of guesses
made in that story.

It is reasonable to assume that each person would get to make as many
guesses as there are people enchanted. You can also assume that Roquat
(to use his original name) had thousands of ornaments in his palace, so
that the odds clearly favored him. I suggest that Roquat himself was
fairly knowledgeable about statistics and probability theory.

Assuming that there are 1000 total ornaments in the palace, 11 of which
are enchanted, and Ozma has 11 guesses, then she has a 12% chance of getting
at least one correct (if my math is up to par today), and there were
probably more than that...

As far as the army, I lean to the total size of 27. In chapter 8, the
Tin Woodman says:

"I have in my Army eight Generals, six Colonels, seven Majors and five
Captains, besides one private for them to command."

If you think of the Tin Woodman as the 28th, sort of a civilian commander,
then it gets closer, although Baum clearly did not mean to include him
when he said 27 officers and the private. This of course does not include
the other two privates back in Oz, mentioned by Omby Amby, then never
heard from again.

In an aside, Baum does not seem to care for lieutenants. There are none in
this army, and Queen Ann decides against having them in her own army in
_Tik-Tok_, mainly to preserver symmetry.

I wonder if Baum also made a mistake in the enumerating of the officers, and
perhaps meant 8 Generals, 7 Colonels, 6 Majors and 5 Captains. This could be
extended, if he had wished, to 4 lieutenants, 3 sargeants, 2 corporals and
finally 1 private.

Overall, the number of 888 is probably fairly correct.

Tyler Jones

From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at ...>
Date: Thu Nov 23, 2000  11:02 am
Subject: How many guesses?

Diligent analysis of the OZMA guessing game, D. Fabi! I suspect Roquat sets
up his bargain so that each guesser can mathematically free everyone who
has gone before. In other words, a person's number of guesses equals the
number of enslaved ornaments when he or she starts guessing. That system
allows every visitor to win big as Billina does, guessing so perfectly that
she has one left over for the tin pig.
         But Roquat's game also offers a more achievable level of reward,
based on guessing correctly just once. That possibility is clearly
necessary to entice Ozma:
         "But I shall have eleven guesses," answered
         Ozma. "Surely I ought to guess one object
         in eleven correctly; and, if I do, I shall rescue
         one of the royal family and be safe myself."
As the folks who run lotteries [your governments at work] have learned, the
games of chance that attract the most people offer both a big jackpot at
long odds and smaller rewards at shorter odds.
 
<<I would like to comment on something extraordinary in the book, and
crucial to calculating the total number of guesses made.  Baum actually
MAKES A MISTAKE.>>
 
A mistake extraordinary for Baum? Based on his level of exactitude and
consistency in the Oz series, it would strike me as more unusual if he
HAD'NT mixed up Ozma's "twenty-seven soldiers" and "twenty-six officers and
the private" once in the many times he uses those phrases.

         It would also surprise me if there were any evidence Baum
calculated how many guesses Dorothy or Billina had. More likely, I suspect,
he quickly recognized that the numbers would add up to a big bother, so he
left out all specifics after the Tin Woodman. He could have added some
suspense to Dorothy's guessing by telling us exactly how many guesses she
had taken and how many she had left. But instead he becomes vague about
numbers as soon as Evring appears.
 
<<0.1% implies thousands upon thousands of ornaments (or that Dorothy Gale
really is a magical child and looked after by all the fairies)>>
 
As is always the case when we deal with probabilities, there doesn't need
to be magic or conspiracy involved, just luck. Let's assume there are
100,000 ornaments in the palace to begin with, of which 11 are enchanted.
For each of Ozma's 11 guesses, she has an 11/100,000 chance of guessing
correctly. The Tin Woodman has 12 guesses, each at the chance of
12/100,001. (We can assume that no individual guesses the same ornament
twice.) Eventually Dorothy has 41 guesses at 41/100,030 probability
(actually 41/100,029 because she sees Tik-Tok guess incorrectly on the
yellow vase).

         To my surprise, that analysis says the game becomes significantly
EASIER as it goes on. The odds of any one guess being right change only
infinitesimally, but the additional guesses make a big difference. With
100,000 ornaments, Ozma has a .00121 chance of survival, while Dorothy
(31st in line) has a .0168 chance, or more than ten times better (though
still less than 1 in 50).

         Furthermore, the likelihood of NOBODY through Dorothy finding even
one enchanted ornament is produced by this series:
(1-11*11/100,000)*(1-12*12/100,001)*...*(1-40*40/100,029)*(1-41*41/100,029)
. That yields a 3% chance that Dorothy or someone before her takes an
ornament from the Nome King--steep odds, but quite possibly better than
Roquat really meant to allow.

         Of course, he could have many more than 100,000 ornaments. And even
if there were half that many, Dorothy clearly has luck on her side.

         But  we know Dorothy's lucky from other moments at which odds are
easy to calculate. In DOROTHY & WIZARD, she and her party face a 50% chance
of meeting a dragon and being devoured; they survive. In LOST PRINCESS,
four search parties set out to find Ozma; is there ever any doubt that the
successful one would be Dorothy's? Button-Bright may be the only Oz
character who rivals Dorothy for good fortune.
         That history may imply attendant fairies, but I think it's
uncertain. Baum gives much broader hints about fairies watching over Trot,
in both SEA FAIRIES and SCARECROW. In the course of many more books, he
never says as much for Dorothy.
 
J. L. Bell  JnoLBell at ...

From: Scott Andrew Hutchins <scottandrewh at ...> 
Date: Fri Nov 24, 2000  1:26 pm 
Subject: Re: [Nonestica] Digest Number 102

> As is always the case when we deal with probabilities, there doesn't need
> to be magic or conspiracy involved, just luck. Let's assume there are
> 100,000 ornaments in the palace to begin with, of which 11 are enchanted.
> For each of Ozma's 11 guesses, she has an 11/100,000 chance of guessing
> correctly. The Tin Woodman has 12 guesses, each at the chance of
> 12/100,001. (We can assume that no individual guesses the same ornament
> twice.) Eventually Dorothy has 41 guesses at 41/100,030 probability
> (actually 41/100,029 because she sees Tik-Tok guess incorrectly on the
> yellow vase).

>         To my surprise, that analysis says the game becomes significantly
> EASIER as it goes on. The odds of any one guess being right change only
> infinitesimally, but the additional guesses make a big difference. With
> 100,000 ornaments, Ozma has a .00121 chance of survival, while Dorothy
> (31st in line) has a .0168 chance, or more than ten times better (though
> still less than 1 in 50).

>         Furthermore, the likelihood of NOBODY through Dorothy finding even
> one enchanted ornament is produced by this series:
> (1-11*11/100,000)*(1-12*12/100,001)*...*(1-40*40/100,029)*(1-41*41/100,029)
> . That yields a 3% chance that Dorothy or someone before her takes an
> ornament from the Nome King--steep odds, but quite possibly better than
> Roquat really meant to allow.

How do we know that the same unenchanted ornament wasn't selected multiple times
by different people?  I'm not sure that the game would be any easier, even
thoguh their are more possibilities of a correct response, it's still needle in
a haystack phenomenon, since nobody sees what each other person guesses.

Scott

From: "D. Fabi" <dfabi at ...> 
Date: Fri Nov 24, 2000  4:50 pm 
Subject: HOW MANY GUESSES??? or, Roquat's Game

It looks like so far people are agreeing with the "More Interesting
Version," in which the # of guesses = the number of people enchanted.
I have read some incredibly fascinating responses so far!  I highly
suggest people read those posts.

And I presume everyone is agreeing so far that there were only 27
people in the Ozian army which goes to Ev.  Tyler Jones wrote about
the sentence from Chapter 8: "I have in my Army eight Generals,
six Colonels, seven Majors and five Captains, besides one private for
them to command."  This sums to 27 people in the army, and the
Tin Woodman says this.

Yes, Baum does make mistakes from time to time in the texts, as
I'm sure most Baum Oz fans know.  For instance, the problem with the
whole geography of Oz and Nonestica changing after a few Oz books
(i.e. the Munchkin country moving from the West of the Emerald City
to the East of the Emerald City).  Though I did read in an earlier
post a gorgeous explanation for this (something to do with
Roquat's Magic Belt).  But, Baum does make mistakes, as most authors.  And
these mistakes about Oz, I think, are wonderful...they allow us to
apply our imaginations and explain them.

As for Baum pre-planning or making graphs/charts and analyses about
Roquat's game, I doubt it.  But if Baum were alive today, I would
have loved to have shown him all these numbers!

And a FASCINATING FIND from J. L. Bell (check out the post!!), who
discovered that the guessing game gets easier as it goes on. (So my
earlier stated overall 0.1% chance of guessing correctly is amiss;
the odds change).  Bell assumed that there were 100,000 ornaments.
Ozma's chance per guess of disenchanting the Evian family would
be 11/100,000 = 0.00011 chance.  Then the Tin Woodman, 12/100,001 =
0.000119998.  The odds improve slightly as they go along, but it
snowballs, and the chances get bigger and bigger of releasing
someone.  So, the # of guesses makes a big difference.  Bell
writes:  "...Dorothy (31st in line) has a 0.0168 chance, or more
than ten times better (though still less than 1 in 50)."  I really
would like to see the odds all graphed out!!  Anyone up for this?

Also check out the series he wrote!!!  WOW!!!

(I wonder if one of Roquat's ornaments happened to be an abacus,
calculator, or slide rule :-)  There probably wouldn't be a
calculator there, since it would have been an anachronism for
Dorothy, who would have asked what it was.

-Dexter Fabi

From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at ...>
Date: Sat Nov 25, 2000  4:08 pm
Subject: How many officers?

Dexter Fabi wrote:
<<I presume everyone is agreeing so far that there were only 27 people in
the Ozian army which goes to Ev.  Tyler Jones wrote about the sentence from
Chapter 8: "I have in my Army eight Generals,six Colonels, seven Majors and
five Captains, besides one private for them to command."  This sums to 27
people in the army, and theTin Woodman says this.>>
 
The Gutenberg Project e-text of OZMA allows me to report that Baum wrote
six times of "twenty-seven soldiers," eight times of "twenty-six officers"
(usually mentioning the private nearby), and only once of "twenty-seven
officers and one private." So almost all indications agree.
 
J. L. Bell    JnoLBell at ...

From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at ...>
Date: Sat Nov 25, 2000  4:08 pm
Subject: How many guesses?

Scott Hutchins wrote:
<<How do we know that the same unenchanted ornament wasn't selected
multiple times by different people?  I'm not sure that the game would be
any easier, even thoguh their are more possibilities of a correct response,
it's still needle in a haystack phenomenon, since nobody sees what each
other person guesses.>>
 
Each Ozian may indeed select ornaments previously guessed by others; the
calculations we've been working with assume that. In probabilistic terms,
their guesses are independent. The one assumption we can make is that when
someone knows an object is not enchanted--because he or she has tried it
already, or in Dorothy's case because she sees Tik-Tok try it--that person
would not guess the same object again. So those guesses are dependent, and
we can treat each individual's guesses as a set.
 
J. L. Bell    JnoLBell at ...

From: "Dexter Fabi" <dexter101 at ...>
Date: Mon Jul 21, 2003  2:12 pm 
Subject: Roquat's game revisited

Greetings All, I wrote this back in Nov. 2000, with some new
questions posed below:

Exactly HOW MANY GUESSES TOTAL did the Ozian party make in the Nome
King's ornament rooms in Ozma of Oz??? Well, it depends on how you
read the book (as the following will show), but I had a lot of fun
with this one.

Alternate Version:
I call this the alternate version, because Baum isn't specific on how
many guesses are given to each person. After Ozma made her 11
guesses, the Nome King gives the Tin Woodman 12 guesses (since Ozma
was just enchanted, making a total of 12 people enchanted (the Queen
of Ev + her 10 children + Ozma)). So, after the Woodman makes his
guesses, everyone after that receives 12 guesses. This version is
assuming that the Nome King was really stingy on giving guesses, and
after giving the Tin Woodman an extra guess (since Ozma was
enchanted), he gives everyone else 12 guesses. This version also
assumes that if the person is guessing correctly, they may continue
guessing until they make a mistake (hence Billina's huge triumph at
the end). Here it is:

Ozma: 11
Tin Woodman: 12
General: 12
Colonel: 12
Officers remaining: 24 x 12 = 288
Private: 12
Tik-Tok: 12
Dorothy: 12 (she guesses correctly; disenchants Prince Evring)
Scarecrow: 12
Billina: 10 + 27 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 41 (remaining family of Ev +
Ozian army + Ozma + Scarecrow + Tik-Tok + Tin Woodman; Woodman
disenchanted outside caverns later)

Added all together makes a TOTAL OF 424 GUESSES.

More Interesting Version:
Baum really wasn't specific in telling the reader how many guesses
were given to each of the Ozian party. After the Tin Woodman is given
12 guesses (one guess for each person enchanted), Baum doesn't say if
everyone after that receives the same number of guesses for the total
people enchanted. However, since Dorothy and others had to wait in
the Nome King's throne room for almost the whole day (in fact,
Dorothy, the Hungry Tiger, the Cowardly Lion, and Billina ended up
sleeping over in the Nome King's sleeping rooms to guess the next day
in the morning, after the Nome King says "Why, it is after
midnight....and that strikes me as being late enough."), it
really seems that everyone of the party was given more than 12
guesses as per the alternate version above. But yet again, the book
doesn't say anything about this. Baum remains unspecific, but I
highly think it more interesting and logical that each person would
be given the same amount of guesses for the same amount of people
enchanted. Plus, the Nome King sounded really playful and into the
game. Here it is:

Ozma: 11
Tin Woodman: 12
General: 13
Colonel: 14
Officer #1: 15, #2: 16, #3: 17, #4: 18, #5: 19, #6: 20, #7: 21, #8:
22, #9: 23, #10: 24, #11: 25, #12: 26, #13: 27, #14: 28, #15: 29,
#16: 30, #17: 31, #18: 32, #19: 33, #20: 34, #21: 35, #22: 36, #23:
37, #24: 38 (24 officers)
Private: 39
Tik-Tok: 40
Dorothy: 41 (she guesses correctly; disenchants Prince Evring)
Scarecrow: 40 (now there are 40 people still enchanted)
Billina: 41 (Billina disenchants all; remaining family of Ev +
Ozian army + Ozma + Scarecrow + Tik-Tok + Tin Woodman; Woodman
disenchanted outside caverns later)

Before I state the total, I would like to comment on something
extraordinary in the book, and crucial to calculating the total
number of guesses made. Baum actually MAKES A MISTAKE. It is kind
of unclear how many people are in the Ozian army. Chapter 7, in
which Dorothy peers from Langwidere's tower towards the Deadly
Desert, sees the Ozian party approaching on the Magic Carpet. There,
she sees that the Ozian army bringing up the rear is 27 people.
However, at the end of Chapter 16, Baum states that the army consists
of 28 people!! Here is the exact sentence by Baum from Ch. 16:
"The twenty-seven officers and the private brought up the rear."
Everywhere else in the book, including the crucial Giant with the
Hammer chapter, there are 27 in the army. Has anyone else noticed
this mistake? Or maybe some strange enchantment happened during
Billina's guesses and magically added to the army's total number of
persons? :-)

In spite of Baum's "mistake," I kept the army to a total of 27, as
per the rest of the book. Therefore, added all together, the more
interesting version sums to a TOTAL OF 887 GUESSES.

887 guesses implies that there were probably thousands of ornaments
and bric-a-brac in the Nome King's rooms (extrapolating from
common sense and probability theory), since only Dorothy could guess
correctly due to chance (Billina knew the secret, so her guesses were
not due to pure chance). This makes only a 1 in 846 chance of
guessing correctly (1, since Dorothy's was the only correct guess due
to pure chance, and 846, since Billina's guesses are excluded, and
this is the total number of guesses made on chance (e.g. all guesses
made up to Billina's turn, including the Scarecrow`s guesses).
Therefore, there is a 0.001182033096926713947 chance to guess
correctly in the Nome King's rooms, or one-tenth of one percent =
0.1%. Another strange number! 0.1% implies thousands upon thousands
of ornaments (or that Dorothy Gale really is a magical child and
looked after by all the fairies :-).

             Now my questions for this year (2003):

If there were that many ornaments in the Nome King's rooms, thousands
of them, and only a tiny few of them were purple (Ev people) or green
(Oz people), why didn't anyone think of the color key earlier?
Imagine seeing all these ornaments everywhere you look, and only a
tiny few out of hundreds, maybe thousands of them being purple or
green--kinda obvious.  Why didn't anyone catch on when Dorothy
disenchanted the purple kitten into Evring?  I'm surprised Ozma
didn't catch on, especially the Scarecrow.  The Scarecrow's turn is
immediately right after Dorothy's, and she just disenchanted Evring
from the purple kitten.  I just can't see him wandering all those
rooms guessing on the non-purple objects, and then getting turned
into an ornament himself.

   Also, another question.  Which version of the game above did you
think Baum intended?  Or did he intend neither of them?  Anyone have
a third version?

   Billina really was the key and heroine to the whole Ev endeavour in
Ozma of Oz.  She disenchanted everyone else, and even layed an egg
for the Nome King. :)  Maybe Baum was trying to make up for all those
Oz fans in the future who bought The Book of the Hamburgs and read it.

-Dexter Fabi