Day 1 - Kittikut shows pearls in Inga - Rinkitink leaves Gilgad for Pingaree
Day 4 - Arrival of Rinkitink & Bilbil "a few days" after Inga
  first sees pearls.
  Time passes--"day after day and week after week" (assume a minimum
  of 3 weeks)
Day 25 - Fog - arrival of invaders from Regos & Coregos in early afternoon
Day 26 - The invaders leave Pingaree - Inga finds Rinkitink, Bilbil - night at
  lower end of island
Day 27 - They return to the palace in the AM - fix up a small room
Day 28 - They move the marble from the banquet hall - Inga retrieves the pearls
Day 29 - Inga consults the white pearl - storm in PM
Day 30 - Boat appears on shore in AM - Inga, Rinkitink & Bilbil leave Pingaree
Day 33 - Inga's party arrives at Regos - conquest of King Gos - Dorothy first
  reads about Inga in Glinda's Book of Records - Rinkitink throws shoe away in night
Day 34 - Nikobob finds Inga's shoes & defeats Choggenmugger
Day 35 - Queen Cor seizes Rinkitink, Inga - Zella harvests the honey
Day 37 - Zella takes the honey to Coregos - Inga conquers Coregos
Day 38 - Zella guides party in search of mines of Regos - Gos reaches mines in
  late PM - Inga's party spends night in boat after fruitless search
Day 39 - Inga invades mines, frees slaves - Gos & Cor take Kitticut, Garee
  hostage, flee to Nome Kingdom
Day 40 - Inga begins pursuit of fugitives - rows "hard and steadily for
  eight days" 
Day 46 - Gos & Cor complete their voyage "the morning of the eighth day"
Day 47 - Gos & Cor reach the Nome Kingdom 'the second day of their journey"
  - Kitticut & Garee released to Kaliko - Inga reaches the beach
Day 48 - Gos & Cor leave the Nome Kingdom - pass Inga's party en route to
  Nome Kingdom - Dorothy sees Inga in Magic Picture - Inga, Rinkitink spend night
  in Nome Kingdom
Day 49 - Inga faces the Three Trick Caverns - Dorothy & Wizard arrive - Kittikut
  & Garee released
Day 50 - Reception in Emerald City - disenchantment of Bilbil
  Inga's party "remained several weeks" in the EC before returning to Pingaree.
  Several more weeks pass before Pinkerbloo locates Rinkitink - he returns to Gilgad
  after 3 days of feasting

Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 13:00:02 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
A couple of questions on _Rinkitink_:
 
In the color plate facing p. 48 (Inga reading in his tree platform) there
are at least four faces hidden in the foliage, and the initials DGG (I
think) are written upside down at the top of the picture.  Does anyone know
if Neill was again encrypting--as in _Scarecrow_--images of family or
friends?  If not, perhaps the images simply represent fantasy pictures
conjured up in Inga's head as he reads.
 
On p. 42, Rinkitink says, "Oh, hoo-hoo-hoo!--how clever!  When I get back I
shall make the man who wrote that a royal hippolorum, for, beyond question,
he is the wisest man in my kingdom--as he has often told me himself."
Neither the unabridged Random House nor the OED give a definition for
"hippolorum."  Could this be Baum's own invention?  "Horse's mouth" in
Latin, with the medial l added to separate the two o's?
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Tue, 02 Jun 1998 10:49:06 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest - rinkitink comments
 
 
   Some comments on "Rinkitink": both Michael Riley's section on it in 
his "Beyond Oz" book and Phyllis Ann Karr's "Curious Case of King 
Kaliko" article discuss the point that "Rinkitink" was written 
considerably earlier (even earlier than Ozma), as a non-Oz story.  
Both point out that Kaliko is effectively the same character as the 
Roquat of "Ozma," a mostly selfish character, modified by a desire to 
avoid hurting others if he doesn't have to in getting what he wants.  
(The later Ruggedo is more wicked, wanting to hurt others for 
vengeance.)  As king, Kaliko is not the basically helpful, kindly 
steward of "Ozma" or "Little Wizard Stories."  (And, in consequence, 
Kaliko as king became a permanently mixed character in the later 
books, leaning more to wickedness, and not the nice guy of earlier 
stories.)  Both also comment that it is impossible to reconstruct how 
the story ended before it was rewritten to get in a little Oz 
involvement, except that Inga probably managed to solve his 
problems himself.  I think it might be possible to reconstruct the 
original ending a little more than that, at least as a probability.  There 
is a break in continuity when Inga comes back to Kaliko, Klik, 
Rinkitink, and Bilbo.  The first time, from Inga's point of view, Kaliko is 
grinning happily, and Klik is surprised.  The next chapter backtracks 
to tell what Rinkitink had been doing, and when the same plot 
moment is reached, Kaliko is the one described as surprised to see 
Inga.  The following chapter backtracks again to get Dorothy 
involved.  The break from Kaliko pleased to Kaliko surprised could be 
simply a mistake, of course, but it could be a hint of the re-writing.  
Perhaps Kaliko was grinning because he had received pleasant news, 
including the news that Inga was about to come through the door.  If 
so, the narrative might have continued with a mention that Kaliko 
started grinning when the Long Eared Hearer and the Lookout had 
come into the room and whispered something a moment before, and 
a conversation between Inga and Kaliko followed along these lines:

   "Give back my parents, or I'll use my strength to tear your kingdom 
down stone by stone."

   "I gave my word to Gos and Cor that I wouldn't.  Of course, if you 
insist -- "

   "I insist."

   "I thought you might.  Anyhow, one can't be held to a promise by 
someone who isn't around anymore, and the Long Eared Hearer and 
the Lookout just told me that Gos and Cor drowned.  Take your 
parents, and welcome.  By the way, goat, aren't you under a spell, 
and did you know that nome magic is good at shape-changing?"

   And so on through the restoration of Bobo and on to the end.
 
Taking the re-write on its own terms, I rather like the change in Kaliko 
from avuncular to ambivalent once he gets to be king.  His comments 
on the politics of what he has to do as king strike me as fairly 
plausible in explaining the difference in his behavior, and the 
uncertainty about which way Kaliko will jump at any time makes for 
some extra suspense and interest.  So I like the story a good deal 
once it gets to the Nome Kingdom.  I don't much care for the earlier 
parts, though, because Rinkitink's stereotype-jolly-lazy-fat-man humor 
gets rather tiresome.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 10:11:34 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest - more Rinkitink
 
The sharp-eyed Gordon Birrell asked about the four faces in the color plate 
of Inga in tree (opp. p. 48).  I think he's right in identifying the 
initials by one as DGG and would suggest that the initials must be Dorothy 
Gray Gruger, daughter of a friend of Neill's.  He put her full name into an 
illo of Princess Gloria in "Scarecrow," and Michael Patrick Hearn in his 
article on Neill "An Illustrator's Illustrator" ("Bugle," Spring 1994) 
suggested that she may have modeled for Gloria.  I tried comparing the 
illos of Gloria against the tree-face by the DGG, but the tree-face image 
is done so sketchily that I can't tell at all if they portray the same 
person.  MPH did not mention this illo in his article, but commented on 
some other personal references in the "Rinkitink" illos: p. 131 banquet 
illo has the name Virginia (but no face) hidden in a plate of fruit, and 
refers to Neill's niece Virginia Long; p. 313 swing illo has two faces 
hidden among the flowers, and one is labeled Sonny -- "Sonny" was one of 
Neill's nephews, Joseph Upton, Jr. (the other face isn't labeled, and MPH 
didn't venture a guess as to what person Neill had in mind, but it looks 
detailed enough to be clearly someone specific).
 
"Hippolorum" -- I suspect that the "lorum" ending is in the tradition of 
fake Greek/Latin (as in the folktale of "Master of all Masters" -- which 
includes cockolorum, I think, in its string of gibberish).  I think if Baum 
had really wanted to suggest a fancy word that would mean "horse's mouth," 
he would have stuck to one language and more plausible grammar than 
combining Greek hippo- with Latin os in a plural genitive form and then 
needing to add an extraneous letter in the middle.  Something like 
hippomastix would have served.  "Hippolorum" sounds more like something 
invented for the polysyllabic sound of it, and not for the meaning.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 12:36:52 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
Ruth Berman:
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on "hippolorum" and your clarification
of the hidden faces in the _Rinkitink_ plate facing p. 48.  I should have
recognized the initials DGG from your earlier posting on _Scarecrow_.  In
the meantime, I see that the illustration on p. 131 not only has the name
Virginia hidden amongst the fruit lower right, but also the name Eva up in
the larger bowl of fruit upper left.  Could Eva be Virginia Long's sister?
 
I also think you are absolutely correct in locating the break between the
original manuscript and the later one at the point where Inga emerges from
his trials to confront the grinning Kaliko/Roquat.  The subsequent stalemate
between Inga and Kaliko does seem badly motivated, since Inga clearly has
the means to destroy Kaliko's kingdom.  After all the courage and ingenuity
that Inga has demonstrated up to this point, it's grating that the
denouement depends on Dorothy's intervention with the old tried-and-true egg
threat, which was already getting a little stale in _Tik-Tok_.
 
King Gos and Queen Cor on their separate islands seem to me to be a
variation on a familiar Baum pattern:  the protagonist faces two rulers, one
male and the other female, both evil, corrupt, or otherwise ill-suited for
governance.  Think of _Ozma_, with Langwidere and Roquat; _Sky Island_, with
the Boolooroo and Tourmaline;  _Glinda_, with Coo-ee-oh and Su-dic; and the
pattern may be prefigured in _WWoO_, with the Wicked Witch of the West and
the Wizard, and even in _Land_ (both the Scarecrow and Jinjur are unsuitable
rulers).  I can imagine what the Freudian interpretation of this pattern
would be, but even with Bear safely out of the country I won't enlarge on
that interpretation here.  :)   
 
Here's another little mystery:  in the illustration on p. 305, Inga stands
in the prow of the boat with Kitticut and Garee behind him and Rinkitink and
Bobo farther back on either side of the boat.  But who is that sixth figure
who stands between Rinkitink and Bobo?
 
--Gordon Birrell  

Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 15:11:41 -0700
From: "Stephen J. Teller" <steller at pittstate.edu>
Subject: Ozzy stuff
 
Concerning the original ending of KING RINKITINK, since the MSS doesn't
exist we can only surmise how it would have ended, but I have always
felt that the current ending is a let down.  Inga performs all the
tasks, which is more than Ojo did in PATCHWORK GIRL, and then does not
get the reward himself.  As for the transformation of Bibbli into Prince
Bobo, this is really something of a disappointment, life the
transformation of the magnificent Beast into the insipid Prince in
Cocteau's LA BELLE ET LE BETE.
 
Steve T.

Date: Sun, 07 Jun 1998 23:21:59 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: RINKITINK IN OZ (or woz he?)
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Thanks to Gordon Birrell for pointing out the hidden faces and initials in
Neill's RINKITINK color art opposite page 88, and to Ruth Berman for
listing more examples of games Jno. R. Neill played. 

  Ruth wrote that the <<p. 131 banquet illo has the name Virginia (but no
face) hidden in a plate of fruit, and refers to Neill's niece Virginia
Long>>. In the same art, the Rinkitink-sized fruit bucket on the upper
right seems to contain the initials "EW." Eny Wun?

  Gordon's alert spurred me to look more closely at all the art in this
book. Under the Table of Contents [p. 15] Inga seems to be pushing *dope*
for Neill, though perhaps the prince is putting the *kibosh* on that
activity. In 1915, according to the OED, "dope" could mean both a thick
varnish or news (but already had its other meanings of a stupid person and
drugs). One of the definitions of "kibosh" was nonsense, but the Yiddish
phrase "I put the kibosh on..." seems to have been better known. You folks
with better sources on American slang may have stronger explanations to
offer.
 
About the rewriting of RINKITINK Ruth Berman analyzed:
<<I think it might be possible to reconstruct the original ending a little
more than that, at least as a probability.  There is a break in continuity
when Inga comes back to Kaliko, Klik, Rinkitink, and Bilbo.  The first
time, from Inga's point of view, Kaliko is grinning happily, and Klik is
surprised.  The next chapter backtracks to tell what Rinkitink had been
doing, and when the same plot moment is reached, Kaliko is the one
described as surprised to see Inga.  The following chapter backtracks again
to get Dorothy involved.>>
 
I also tried in this reading of RINKITINK to divine clues to the original
ending to KING RINKITINK, and also saw a clear break after Inga's return. I
didn't notice this continuity error, but rather the lapse in narrative
flow: Inga successfully navigates the Nome King's Three Trick Caverns
[aren't there *four* magical caverns--including the one with the
handcuffs?], Rinkitink and Bilbil survive Kaliko's other tricks, and they
get...nothing. No parents. No prize. No change in the nomes [281]. So they
have to wait for Dorothy. 

  For a more satisfying denouement I look to two things:
* any mention of Oz or information from Oz books [17, 226-8, 234,
239]--clearly these are new passages.
* the narrative pattern Baum followed in OZMA, his
next-written/first-published book about the Nome King.
In OZMA King Roquat made a deal with Ozma: if she and her party identify
the enchanted ornaments, he'll give up his captives and let her go. Perhaps
in KING RINKITINK the Nome King made a similar bargain: if Inga and
Rinkitink [ignoring Bilbil, just as Roquat disdains the animals from Oz]
survive for a full day in the palace, he promises to give up the king and
queen of Pingaree. If not--shudder!

  As in OZMA, the Nome King would have played the tricks up his sleeve. And
he might have tried to go back on that bargain after Inga's success,
requiring some final feats of pearly strength. But if the royals had made
such a bargain, Inga's return through the door would have been just as
annoying to this Nome King as the mass of Ozians whom Billina rescued in
OZMA were to Roquat.

  Another way Inga might have solved his own challenge: by finding his
parents in the many caverns of the Nome Kingdom. Inga and Rinkitink had
already explored those chambers more freely than any other visitor but the
Ugly One [250]. But they never asked the white pearl, which is good at
giving directions, where Kitticut and Garee are. Perhaps the white pearl's
mermaid magic isn't so reliable far from the sea. (Not only was KING
RINKITINK the first time Baum wrote about the nomes, it was probably the
first time he wrote about "the Mermaid Queen, a powerful fairy" [24].)

  (Inga rarely seems to ask the white pearl for advice during a struggle.
Does it talk too softly? Or does he need to figure things out himself? Baum
seems to writes approvingly of how Inga works out solutions [262] and Cor
improvises her actions [156]. Nevertheless, deciding on the fly has its
drawbacks: Inga loses his pearls, and Cor forgets her purse [191].)
  
Ruth Berman also imagined Kaliko saying:
<<"By the way, goat, aren't you under a spell, and did you know that nome
magic is good at shape-changing?"
   And so on through the restoration of Bobo and on to the end.>>
 
Did Bilbil the goat really need to be disenchanted? Wasn't he already
disenchanted by his life carrying Rinkitink?

  But seriously, I'm not completely convinced that Bilbil's transformation
came from KING RINKITINK. With the exception of the goat's ability to
speak, the book gives no hint that Bilbil has a secret past until the
Wizard is mentioned [283], which is clearly a new passage. The Wizard not
only sees the enchantment immediately [288], but also correctly guesses who
Bilbil is--robbing the whole episode of mystery and build-up. The
abruptness of this plot twist makes me suspect Baum might have added
Bilbil's disenchantment as a reason to bring the characters to Oz. 

  On the other hand, in creating the map of Oz and its surrounding
countries in TIK-TOK, Baum included Rinkitink, Pingaree, *and* Boboland. So
perhaps Boboland was part of the original KING RINKITINK manuscript. Or, in
the same way I've argued that Baum included a few "place-holder" names on
his Oz map and used them in later stories, Boboland might have simply been
a region in which to stash the DOROTHY & WIZARD sites, which Baum later
elevated into Bilbil's homeland. 
 
Dave Hardenbrook wrote: 
<<It is a pity I think that likable Kaliko should thus turn evil>>
 
I agree. I'm not convinced, as Ruth is, that <<the politics of what he has
to do as king strike me as fairly plausible in explaining the difference in
his behavior>>. Indeed, I'm not convinced this is Kaliko at all. My
reasons:

  1) I think of Kaliko as distinct enough in his personality that he
wouldn't have turned into another Roquat. He came to his throne after it
had been significantly weakened by his predecessor's mistakes, and he'd had
a lifetime of servility as a chamberlain (earning the best references, of
course). I thus see King Kaliko as fully capable of the bootlicking
treachery of WISHING HORSE, but not of these straightforward power plays.

  2) Kaliko would have had to put on a lot of weight since TIK-TOK to be as
fat as Rinkitink [243]. I admit that feasting as described on page 236
might have helped. That feast certainly allows Baum to hint at a reason for
Kaliko to be especially nasty to Inga: he was hung over [242].

  3) Just as this "King Kaliko" is clearly like OZMA's Roquat, so the
king's right-hand nome in this book, Klik, is a briefer version of
chamberlain Kaliko.

  4) Gos and Cor must have visited the Nome Kingdom in the mere two years
since TIK-TOK for them to recognize Kaliko as king [228-9], yet it seems
unlikely they would have made such a long voyage (sixteen days to and fro),
in the face of storms (such as that which kills them), when there's so much
plundering and tyrannizing to do. 

Thus, I'm not sure this "King Kaliko" is King Kaliko at all.

  In Oz-as-history I dislike veering from the order of Baum's own
publishing schedule. But RINKITINK is the one for which I might make an
exception. If Dorothy's rescue of Inga occurred between EMERALD CITY and
PATCHWORK GIRL, that would make King Kaliko into King Ruggedo and Klik back
into Kaliko. It would have given Ruggedo more reason to be rash and
reckless about Ozians in TIK-TOK. True, that would have meant the Royal
Historian fictionalized the appearances of Hank and Trot and others in the
Emerald City, as well as dragging the good [!] name of Kaliko through the
mud. But nomes like mud, don't they?
 
As for what Ruth calls <<Rinkitink's stereotype-jolly-lazy-fat-man humor
[which] gets rather tiresome>>, more on that RINKITINK theme next time. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Mon, 08 Jun 1998 14:15:56 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Dave Hardenbrook: Kaliko doesn't really become "evil" following 
"Rinkitink."  But he becomes ambiguous, sometimes friendly, sometimes not,
and the uncertainty about which way he'll jump in any given book where 
he appears makes for a good deal of interest, I think.
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 1998 13:49:44 -0500
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-03 & 06-98
 
6/6:
Ruth:
Actually, the Chief Steward in _Ozma_ (who may or may not be Kaliko; his
name isn't given) seems to be as wicked as Roquat if not more so. It's in
_Little Wizard Stories_ and _Tik-Tok_ that Kaliko turns out to be a good
guy. (In _Emerald City_, where he's first named, he doesn't seem to be
particularly good or bad; he just does his job, which as far as I recall
doesn't involve any moral judgments that we see.)
 
And of course, Baum didn't write about Kaliko after _Rinkitink_; his later
characterizations are due to Thompson and Neill.
 
I've used Kaliko in both the serials I've written for the _Emerald City
Mirror_; I treat him as somewhere between his characterizations in
_Tik-Tok_ and _Rinkitink_.
 
David Hulan

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 00:09:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: JOdel at aol.com
Subject: Rinkitink in Oz discussion
 
Okay. On to Rinkitink! 
 
This is one that I don't think I got hold of until I was well into my teens,
if not in college, but comming into it late did not cause it to be a
dissapointment. While I could have done without the songs (I could ALWAYS do
without the songs), I quite heartily enjoyed the story, and it remains on of
my favorites. It is certainly one of the best pure stories in the Baum 14, and
its origin as a non-Oz fantasy does the basic plot no disservice. In fact, the
rewritten ending is the source of at least some low-level frustration , as
well as some high-level curiosity. The effect of the rewrite is to make this
one of the more awkward books to get a satisfactory handle on the Oz-as-
history dynamics, since the Oz-as-literature side is so very much more visible
than is typical. 
 
The personality (as well as the physical description) shift in the case of
King Kaliko is, of course the most jarring. There is no way that the Nome King
herin described is Kaliko. Sorry. No. I flatly disbelieve it. And, equally "of
course" we all know it since this is well known to be an early story, in fact
the ORIGINAL story, of the  king of the Nomes, and, as such, is so obviously
the template for Roquat, that it is hardly worthwhile to argue against it.
Consequently, all the backbends might be better put to the purpose of
explaining why Baum deliberately went out of his way to try to convince us
otherwise. I'll come back to this one with a few possible suggestions.
 
A second main point of curiosity resulting from the rewrite is the question of
how Bilbil was rescued from his enchantment in the original version, since
there were no kindly Ozites to help him. Frankly, I am of the oppinion that in
the original version of this story, Bilbil wasn't under an enchantment. He
really WAS a talking goat. I'm pretty sure that Baum had written of other
talking animals before he wrote the first version of this book, and they were
not all in Oz. Indeed, while all the animals in Oz seem to be able to talk, it
does not necessarily follow that all talking animals are Ozian. I suspect that
Baum was late in adopting the view that only Ozian animals, or animals in Oz
can speak. In his earlier works, animals seemed to have about an even chance
of talking as soon as it was made clear that the story was in a country where
magic worked. 
 
As to the main debate, of why is Roquat masquerading, unconvincingly, under
Kaliko's name in this book, is one where there are all sorts of possible
explanations. And rather a lot of them might read very well. 
 
First, even though Ruggedo was expelled from the Nome kingdom three-quarters
of the way through Tik-Tok, by the last chapter of that book, he had managed
to worm his way back into the kingdom with Kaliko's grudging permission. The
next official sighting of him we get, at the begining of Magic, he is a
wealthy vagabond (in Noland, wasn't it?) with an axe to grind. Even though, at
the end of Tik-Tok, Betsy and Shaggy left the Nome kingdom agreeing between
themselves that Kaliko was going to have trouble from Ruggedo soon enough, we
never see what form this trouble takes, nor do either Ruggedo or Kaliko ever
talk about what brought about the final expulsion afterwards. This gives us
all sorts of possibilities to work with. 
 
Baum, however, seems to have forgotten that he left Ruggedo a common Nome in
Kaliko's kingdom at that book's ending. Tititihoochoo had said "out!", so
Ruggedo must have been out, musn't he? Well, no. Kaliko had let him back in
(strictly against Tititihoochoo's orders, btw). This is a missed opportunity
for storytelling. 
 
Another detail is that while Dorothy told Baum of her adventures, she did not
dictate the story to him. It was up to him to make a story out of it. And when
he felt like it, he changed things. He had told the readers that Ruggedo was
thrown out of his kingdom, so he wasn't going to say anything now that went
against it. If Ruggedo had somehow managed to turn the tables on Kaliko, it
wasn't during any time that there were Ozian witnesses, so the story wasn't
really one that the Ozites would have been qualified to tell, either. Changing
the names was unfair to Kaliko, certainly, but Kaliko was not likely to be in
any position to complain. 
 
As to the possibility of a substitution; there are problems in continuity
here, too. For one thing, Ruggedo had been deprived of his magic in Tik-Tok,
and the Nome King in this story was deffinitely a magic worker, even if he
might have commanded the services of others to further his ends. For another
thing, the Nome King here is the jolly, selfish, and casually cruel character
from Ozma -- he who prides himself on keeping the letter of his word in all
things -- rather than the bitter, violent character of escallating cruelties,
vendictiveness and impulsive lawlessness by the time Tititihoochoo took a hand
in matters. Somehow, this Nome King is just a bit too mild to be "Ruggedo",
even though he is clearly Roquat. Still, it is easier to accept him as
Ruggedo, than as Kaliko.
 
(And while we are on the subject of problems in continuity, what about that
comment when Dot and the Wiz head off for the Nome Kingdom, that "they both
had been there before several times." Oh, really? When? When did the Wizard
ever go to the Nome Kingdom? He was still off in an American exile when Dot
went there the first time. Unless he made a trip there during the sweeping-up
period after Emerald City, I don't know when he is likely to have been there,
unless he and Dot had made a habit of dropping in to check up on things
periodically. And somehow I doubt that.)
 
Okay, suppose, just suppose that since nomes are admitted to be earth spirits,
their magic is an ingrown part of their nature. Much as Polychrome's sky magic
is a part of hers. A part which she could ignore, but which grew rapidly once
she started applying it. One can nutralize a fairy's magic, but only
temporarily. Poly's magic didn't stay neutralized for long. She was able to
work small spells even when she had been transformed into a canary bird. Nome
magic is something that is part of being a nome. And so long as a nome is in
his place of power and truth, his magic will grow, if he wants it to. (Perhaps
that is why Tititihoochoo stipulated that Ruggedo was to be cast out to live
out his days on the upper earth. That way he would be cut off from his source
of strength.) Eventually, the forgetfullnes and confusion which had scrambled
Rug's ability to cast his spells cleared.
 
Secondly, the Nomes do not seem to be particularly loyal subjects to anyone,
and they do not seem to regard their rulers with anything like affection. They
uniformly hated Ruggedo by the end of his reign, but, while they might throw
down their tools and refuse to work, they never did anything which would have
led to his overthrow. They accepted Kaliko quite willingly, once he was
offered to them, but I think than none of them seem to have been willing to
fight for him except as a part of their job. Given this sort of background,
all Rug would have needed to do would be to overpower Kaliko, lock him up
somewhere, clap his crown back on his head and claim himself King again. I
doubt that the (disgruntled) nomes would even have made the effort to send a
message to anyone outside the kingdom, let alone do anything about it
themselves. In this case, it is difficult to imagine that Glinda would not
have sent word to Ozma that he was back in power, even if the absence of any
apparant effort to have Kaliko back on the part of the nomes themselves would
have made it difficult for them to make an excuse to get involved when there
were no apparant plans for another Ozian campaign on Ruggedo's part. 
 
(Hm, let me try an Imperialist view of the situation. Since Rug didn't want
Tititihoochoo on his tail again, he had himself announced as King Kaliko to
any outsiders, although the Nomes themselves were perfectly aware of who their
King was. He also had become uncharacteristcally careful to keep a low profile
and not attract attention from Oz. He was not aware that Ozma and Glinda knew
of his return, and that a watch was being kept to see if he did anything which
would give them reasonable cause to go in after him. The agreement to guard
Kitikut and Garee was just about enough by itself. Witholding them from their
son put it over the top and they made their move. 
 
Dorothy, of course, wasn't told of the watch on the Nome King, or even that
Kaliko had been overthrown. She found that out as soon as she got a glimpse of
him in the magic picture. As is usually the case whenever Dorothy is involved,
she discovered the situation at just about the same time Glinda (with all her
magic) did, and went immediatly to Ozma, just as Baum relates. Ozma agreed to
let her go in with the Wizard, to keep everything as small-scale as possible.
In fact, there was constant monitoring and considerable firepower at the ready
if anything had gone wrong. There was a little bit more business to be
conducted which Baum chose not to deal with. Kaliko was released from his
imprisonment, and reinstated as King (after being reamed out for letting the
situation get out of hand). Ruggedo was given a fortune in gems and finally
expelled. The Wizard had gone in with something to mute Rug's magic again, but
they could only hope that it would not return if they managed to keep him
above ground. This time it seems to have taken.
The rest of the rescue expedition and the aftermath went pretty much as
stated. 
 
Baum already had a very full, eventful story to tell out of this particular
adventure and did not want to have to deal with the antics of the renegade
Nome King as well. Particularly not when no one could say for sure when or how
the situation in the Nome kingdom had shifted in Ruggedo's favor, and the
whole go-round was likely to be confusing for his readers. So he did a patchy
rewrite and left it go at that. 
 
By the way. My copy of the story turns out to be a little bit defective. I
only have the e-text, and at some point, either the original transcriber or I
must have blinked, adn I do not have the heading of chapter 18. The text
appears to be otherwise intact. In any case, the story flows coherently, and
there are no obvious gaps. But I do not know where the chapter is supposed to
start. Could someone let me know what the last Paragraph of Chapter 17 is,(the
first sentance, maybe, you don't need to copy it all) the first paragraph of
Chapter 18 and the proper chapter title?

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 09:44:58 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
J.L. Bell:
Good sleuthwork on the original ending of _Rinkitink_ and the possibility
that Bilbil's disenchantment was included in the earlier version.  I've been
wondering if Baum might actually have devised the ornament-room sequence for
_King Rinkitink_ as Pinga's final test:  find your parents amidst all my
little treasures.  That would certainly explain his grin when Pinga emerges
unscathed from the three trick caverns.  (And obviously Baum couldn't pick
up that sequence in the later book after using it in _Ozma_.)  I envision a
scenario somewhat along the following lines:  both Pinga and Bilbil go into
the ornament room and get converted to ornaments (the white pearl's vague
advise doesn't provide Pinga with the very specific information regarding
color coding), and it is Rinkitink rather than Billina who overhears
Kaliko/Roquat confiding the secret to his chief steward.  The transformation
of Bilbil into an ornament undoes his previous enchantment, so that when he
is released from being an ornament he miraculously appears as Prince Bobo.
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 23:19:32 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: RINKITINK out of OZ
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Gordon Birrell wrote:
<<King Gos and Queen Cor on their separate islands seem to me to be a
variation on a familiar Baum pattern:  the protagonist faces two rulers, one
male and the other female, both evil, corrupt, or otherwise ill-suited for
governance.>>
 
Regos and Coregos also fit Baum's pattern of creating countries divided in
two: Hiland/Loland, Hoppers/Horners, Twi/Twi, and, as you mentioned, Sky
Island. 
 
Stephen Teller wrote:
<<As for the transformation of Bibbli into Prince Bobo, this is really
something of a disappointment, life the transformation of the magnificent
Beast into the insipid Prince in Cocteau's LA BELLE ET LE BETE.>>
 
If Baum had written more books about Bobo, I suspect he would have
regretted the "rescue" of such an entertainingly surly goat, just as he
seems to have reversed the reformation of the Glass Cat and Ruggedo.
 
And now my overly long analysis of the RINKITINK's main theme:

  RINKITINK is Baum's first book about a ruler-in-training. Inga knows
he'll become king of Pingaree, and starts the book in earnest preparation
for that day. In contrast, Tip/Ozma, Bud, and John Dough all come to their
thrones suddenly. There are many princes in MO, but they know they'll never
succeed to the crown, no matter how hard the Purple Dragon chews; yet we
can infer from statements by Nikobob [218], Dorothy [286], and Rinkitink
[311] that Kitticut will eventually die. 

  Inga feels his royal responsibility keenly. He studies his father's
manuscripts and thinks deeply on the news of the pearls. He's a dreadfully
serious, courtly boy, so much so that Baum feels a need to apologize for
him [46]. [That passage, ascribing Inga's seriousness to his realization of
responsibilities, is indirect evidence for the characterization of Ozma and
Jellia that I've been advancing--they become more serious when they take on
larger responsibilities to their society.]

  RINKITINK is thus the story of Prince Inga's learning how to be a
king--to secure his resources, rescue his subjects, subdue enemies, enrich
the country, forge alliances, choose able deputies, restore peaceful order.
Indeed, though he has some setbacks, Inga demonstrates that he's better at
being a king than any of the kings we see. 

  Kitticut is a flawed ruler: he freezes at the sight of warriors for the
crucial seconds that prevent him from reaching his pearls [49]. At the end
of the book, despite his nation's Regosian captivity, he still hasn't
learned to fetch the pearls, *then* go to the beach to watch the strange
new boat [307]. 

  And Rinkitink? Well, Rinkitink has even more to learn than Inga, as his
study of HOW TO BE GOOD shows [41]. He's run away from his subjects because
they demand he fulfill his royal responsibilities, which appear purely
symbolic [310]. Though Rinkitink provides Inga with some useful advice, and
a powerful goat, he's mostly concerned with his own ample skin (no surprise
he wants the pink pearl). 

  Rinkitink is thus the book's Falstaff figure: a fat, jolly, carousing,
feasting old man serving as "mentor" and drag on the young prince. His main
virtue is honesty about his own failings, and his main benefit is giving
the serious little boy some entertainment. This being a comedy, not a
history play, Prince Inga doesn't have to repudiate Rinkitink, as Prince
Hal banishes Falstaff. But Rinktink has to grow up, too.

  [We can even say the third member of RINKITINK's troup of heroes, Bilbil,
is also prepping to become royalty, or rather to regain his royal status as
Bobo. He, however, shows no interest in returning to his subjects.]

  The final responsibility of a king is, of course, to leave other kings to
follow him. Inga seems on his way to managing even that. He and Zella
certainly become close--close enough to hold hands [196]--in a very short
time. And as a Lord High Chamberlain's daughter, she'd be a worthy wife.
[On the other hand, the prince is going to have to stop bathing and
sleeping with Rinkitink.]

  Why is Inga's preparation for kingship so important? Because in the world
of RINKITINK, more than in most of Baum's societies, people believe in the
inherent importance of kings. Rinkitink demands special treatment [94].
Zella has learned how to respect rulers [200]. The Nome King apologizes for
not providing accommodations to royal standards [248]. The foreign trade of
Pingaree goes entirely through King Kitticut [19], and the rulers of Regos
and Coregos get half of all plunder [112]. 

  This notion of kings fits into the book's equally traditional view of the
natural world. On page 78 Inga says men are the highest of creatures. Faced
with Rinkitink, Bilbil responds by claiming to be part of a "superior race"
[99]. And, of course, there's the rhetoric of racial superiority in Baum's
portrayal of Bilbil's disenchantment. We've talked about that passage as a
parody of evolution, but the notion of superior and inferior life forms
goes back much farther, to the Great Chain of Being.  

  Not surprisingly, the world of RINKITINK is also one of Baum's most
technologically primitive. Except for the trips to Oz, it seems to take
place in a time as undeveloped as those of YEW and SANTA CLAUS. In Oz we've
encountered phonographs, overhead projectors, radium structures, and
electric lights, but the most advanced technology in Pingaree seems to be
matches [259]. [Nonetheless, in three pictures Neill provides a doorbell
for Gos and Cor's castles.] 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 15:16:07 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
Gordon Birrell and J.L. Bell: You're probably right in seeing another 
name in the Virginia illo, but I can't make out if Gordon's Eva or J.L.'s 
E.W. is the more likely reading.  It's even possible that those are just 
curly lines that accidentally came out looking like letters, I suppose.  I 
don't know if there's a Neill friend or relative who would fit the name 
or initials.  Neill's daughters sometimes attend the Munchkin con, 
don't they? -- maybe someone from this group attending could ask 
them about it if one of them is there this year.
 
Gordon Birrell: The mysterious 6th figure in the boat is mysterious, all 
right.  Could Neill have changed his mind about where to place Bobo 
in the boat and how to draw him, and there are two Bobos?  Maybe 
Neill was supposing an un-named Ozite or Nome (Kaliko?) went 
along to visit Pingaree, even though not mentioned in the text (or 
maybe mentioned in a version of the text Neill saw and edited out 
later), although that seems unlikely, considering that Dorothy would 
be the Ozite most likely to go along, and the figure doesn't really look 
like her or like a Nome, either.  Maybe an un-mentioned Ev Royal 
along for the ride?
 
J.L. Bell: The dope illo -- besides being used as varnish, the thick 
gooey paste called dope is (or was when I took scene-design in 
college, and, I assume, was back in Neill's time) used as primer, to 
stiffen and smooth a canvas before you started painting on it.  
Considering that Inga is brandishing a brush, that's probably the 
meaning Neill intended in this case.  The pail of kibosh -- maybe Neill 
was punning on the sense of "put the kibosh on" and amusing 
himself with portraying kibosh as something that could literally be put 
on a canvas with a brush.

   Disenchanting Bilbil -- yes, I was assuming that that was part of the 
original manuscript because the "Tiktok" map showed Boboland next 
to Rinkitink.  You're right, of course, that "Boboland" could have been 
a fill-in-a-blank-spot name, and that Baum could have added the stuff 
about Bilbil as Prince Bobo as part of rewriting Rinkitink as an Oz 
book (and, as you and Stephen Teller both noted, that springing a 
disenchantment on the readers at the end is poor plotting).  But the 
naming similarities of King Rinkitink of Rinkitink and Prince Bobo of 
Boboland make it sound reasonably likely that those names were 
invented as a pair.  And also, of course, the fact that Bilbil can talk 
makes it likely that he has some kind of magic influencing him, as the 
animals in most of the Borderlands countries (apart from Mo) usually 
aren't able to talk.  I wonder, by the way, if Rinkitink and Bobo are 
dynastic names (like Oz) always given to the ruler, or if the kingdoms 
are nameless apart from being the kingdom or land of [ruler's name].  
I wonder also if Neill gave Bilbil human-style eyes by way of preparing 
readers to find out he was human, or if Neill just didn't like the look of 
goat eyes (horizontally rectangular pupils).

Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 17:42:41 -0700 (PDT)
From: VoVat Quetzalcoatlus <xornom at hotmail.com>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
This is Nathan DeHoff.  I'm currently taking summer classes at Indiana 
University of Pennsylvania.  I'm using a different e-mail account than 
usual, but I'm still the same person.
 
J. L. Bell:
Regarding Bilbil, you'll notice that Neill had Rinkitink accompanied by 
"a surly old goat" when he visited the Emerald City in _Lucky Bucky_.
 
Nathan Mulac DeHoff
xornom at hotmail.com (or DinnerBell at tmbg.org, or lnvf at grove.iup.edu, or 
vovat at geocities.com)

Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 21:20:04 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: tinkering with RINKITINK IN OZ
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Miscellaneous observations on RINKITINK:

  page 22--Pingaree is said to have its own language, though [shades of
Jellia Jamb] Rinkitink, Gos, Cor, Kaliko, and the Ozians from America all
understand it perfectly. 
  68--What's a cassa tree?
  89--Inga hides something in his "waist"--more likely a blousewaist than a
shirtwaist. 
  116--How does Inga know the pink pearl will protect those he touches as
well as himself? 
  181--Cor slaps Inga for not waving the fan properly. Wilma King's STOLEN
CHILDHOOD, about the antebellum enslavement of children in the U.S.,
relates a story of a real little boy punished for just this error. 
  214--Bringing gold and jewels to the Nome King seems to be like bringing
coal to Newcastle or, for that matter, bringing coal to the Nome King. But
presumably he likes to receives back what the mortals have taken. 
  229--With the Lookout on staff, why would the Nome King need the mighty
telescope of TIK-TOK? 
  270--How does Klik retrieve Bilbil from his room when the only entrance
was through Inga's, which has been rotated? Perhaps it's been turned back
by this time. Or Klik may know a secret entrance--though surely Bilbil
would complain loudly about such trickery.
  284--Slight typesetting glitch. Reilly & Britton used two different types
of italic on this one page. 
  290--Why didn't the Sawhorse accompany Dorothy and the Wizard across the
Deadly Desert? He went to the Nome Kingdom in OZMA, and proved himself
rather useful. 
  301--The Scarecrow more popular than Dorothy? I can't shake the suspicion
that Baum inserted this passage only because he'd forgotten to list the
Scarecrow among the guests at the feast a couple of pages before. 
 
On whether Bilbil was enchanted in the original manuscript, Joyce O'Dell wrote:
<<I'm pretty sure that Baum had written of other talking animals before he
wrote the first version of this book, and they were not all in Oz.>>
 
Animals speak in Phunniland/Mo, but not in Ix and Noland and on the Isle of
Phreex. Arriving on Oz's continent lets Billina, Jim, Eureka, and the tiny
piglets speak, but not Hank (unless he didn't try, as Toto didn't). In
Baum's first story of an enchanted goat, "The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie,"
the goat doesn't talk at all. So the rules are very flexible, if there are
rules at all. 

  The islanders' surprise that Bilbil can speak runs throughout RINKITINK,
however, so I suspect it was part of KING RINKITINK. Baum's rewriting of
this manuscript seems less thorough--i.e., it's easier to see the
seams--than in JOHN DOUGH, another book we know he reworked. 
 
In an intriguing Oz-as-history scenario, Joyce O'Dell wrote:
<<all Rug would have needed to do would be to overpower Kaliko, lock him up
somewhere, clap his crown back on his head and claim himself King again
[having] himself announced as King Kaliko>>
 
In GNOME KING Ruggedo does gnot even have to overpower his erstwhile
steward: he just gnotes, "I'm back--hand over the crown." 

  However, I see a weakness in your hypothesis in the small amount of
influence it grants to Tititi-hoochoo. The Great Jinjin's very name is
enough to make Ozians and Nomes quake. His judgment governs some of the
most powerful elemental fairies in the world. Yes, Ruggedo manages to sneak
back into the Nome Kingdom at the end of TIK-TOK, but I doubt that's going
to last. Especially if he takes over the kingdom again--and how could
merely hiding behind the name Kaliko fool the Great Jinjin? Having issued
his orders, Tititi-Hoochoo has invested his fearsome reputation in seeing
them carried out; he can no longer ignore the Nomes as a problem on the
other side of the world. 

  You describe a way in which Ruggedo could regain the magical powers we
see the Nome King exercise in RINKITINK: <<so long as a nome is in his
place of power and truth, his magic will grow, if he wants it to. (Perhaps
that is why Tititihoochoo stipulated that Ruggedo was to be cast out to
live out his days on the upper earth. That way he would be cut off from his
source of strength.)>> But a Nome's internal magic was precisely what
Tititi-Hoochoo took away; Ruggedo's perfectly able to use magic words and
tools, but he never again casts spells without such help. Also, since
Nomes' internal magic derives from their being fairies, that would be
within the Great Jinjin's purview. 

  Your shadow history is quite thought-provoking, nonetheless.
 
Joyce O'Dell wrote:
<<what about that comment when Dot and the Wiz head off for the Nome
Kingdom, that "they both had been there before several times." Oh, really?
When? When did the Wizard ever go to the Nome Kingdom?>>
 
There are other hints of these visits. Kaliko says, "Dorothy gets angry if
I do the least thing that is wicked, and tries to make me stop it" [283].
Dorothy tells Kaliko, "You must be more wicked than I thought you were"
[284], which implies some prior acquaintance. 

  I suspect that there are untold tales of Ozian interference in the Nome
Kingdom's affairs. Why hasn't Baum relayed them to us? Probably because
they're *boring.* Imagine RINKITINK if Inga hadn't had all those stirring
adventures before arriving at the Nome King's door: "The Wizard and I went
over to that wicked ol' Nome King, and showed him some eggs, and he gave up
his pris'ners and promised not to take anymore. But I don't trust him, Mr.
Baum, I don't!" No tension, no buildup--no Oz book.
 
Gordon Birrell wrote:
<<I've been wondering if Baum might actually have devised the ornament-room
sequence for _King Rinkitink_ as Pinga's [sic] final test:  find your
parents amidst all my little treasures. . . . The transformation of Bilbil
into an ornament undoes his previous enchantment, so that when he is
released from being an ornament he miraculously appears as Prince Bobo.>>
 
My musings went along very similar lines, except that Inga (rather than
Rinkitink) would have succeeded with the white pearl's help. If Bilbil were
disenchanted in KING RINKITINK, that action would somehow be tied into the
magical rescue of Inga's parents. 

  But there seem to be two problems with such scenarios. First, there's no
hint in RINKITINK that Kitticut and Garee are transformed, and it would
have been less work for Baum to have left in that detail. (Instead of
simply bringing out the couple, Kaliko would have disenchanted them.) 

  Second, the notions of a huge hall of ornaments, some of them enchanted,
and the sort of bargain Roquat makes with Ozma are really enough to fill a
whole book. They'd be too much for the last 4-5 chapters of KING RINKITINK.
But perhaps there was a rudimentary form of that plot which we haven't
thought of.
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 05:26:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ozmama at aol.com
Subject: Re:  Ozzy Digest
 
Ruth, did Michael or Phyllis note the discrepancy between the Land of the
Wheelers in _Rinkitink_, an apparently autonomous kingdom, and the "area" of
the Wheelers in _Ozma_?  That struck me as I reread _Rinkitink_ this time.
Also, Baum seemed more inclined to describe the Nomes in _Rinkitink_, taking
us on a tour, so to speak, as Inga and Rinki search for Inga's parents.  It is
clear that Baum hasn't developed the idea of transforming prisoners into
ornaments yet.  The one thing that keeps bugging me is that grin on the Nome
King's face when Inga returns from the trick caverns. Also-- and forgive me if
someone else has mentioned this but I missed it--I hated it as a kid that Baum
apparently goofs when he tells us first that Cor and Gos had previously
visited the Nome King, but that they had jaw-drop reactions of surprise at his
throne room during this visit.
 
Question: Cor & Gos for Coregos.  Prince Inga and Queen Garee for Pingaree.
Why not King Pinga and Queen Garee, or something like that?  I've always felt
that Baum was quietly laughing up his sleeve about avoiding the more obvious
set of names.  What do you all think?   --Robin

Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 13:25:17 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
J. L. Bell:
>  But there seem to be two problems with [the scenario of an ornament-room
>sequence in KING RINKITINK] . First, there's no hint in RINKITINK that
Kitticut >and Garee are transformed, and it would have been less work for
Baum to have >left in that detail. (Instead of simply bringing out the
couple, Kaliko would >have disenchanted them.) Second, the notions of a huge
hall of ornaments, some >of them enchanted, and the sort of bargain Roquat
makes with Ozma are really >enough to fill a whole book. They'd be too much
for the last 4-5 chapters of >KING RINKITINK. But perhaps there was a
rudimentary form of that plot which we >haven't thought of.
 
On the first point:  The material that would have had to be changed just
involves a couple of short passages from pp. 232-36.  And I think Baum had
good reason to delete any reference to the ornament room.  He had done more
than enough recycling of _Ozma_ material by the time he published _Tik-Tok_,
and the transformation of Kitticut and Garee into ornaments would surely
have elicited a "Oh no, here we go again" reaction from his readers.  (I
wonder, incidentally, whether any contemporary reviewers took Baum to task
for making _Tik-Tok_ a rewrite of _Ozma_?) 
 
Your second point is a good one, though, and I too had some misgivings along
those lines.  A quick check of the corresponding chapters in _Ozma_
indicates that the ornament-room sequence takes up a little over five
chapters (about 55 pages), including a number of passages that wouldn't have
had any counterpart in the original _King Rinkitink_, such as Dorothy's
successful trip through the ornament room, overnight conversations amongst
the Ozites, breakfast talk about fat babies, etc.  In _Rinkitink_, 35 pages
separate the point where Inga emerges from the caves and the triumphant
return to Pingaree.  A slightly scaled-down version of the ornament-room
sequence from _Ozma_ could fit into the book at this point without adding a
big new plot line at the denouement.  I also like to think of the color
coding of Kaliko/Roquat's ornaments as an interesting extension of the way
colors are assigned to the three pearls.
 
Incidentally, there were three reasons for my speculation that Inga was
transformed into an ornament rather than Rinkitink.  First of all, Inga's
use of the white pearl to uncover the secret would have been anticlimactic;
the white pearl would have taken on some of the deus-ex-machina functions
that we all have deplored in the Magic Belt.  Second, Rinkitink's discovery
of the secret would have given the jolly old man at least one clear triumph
in the book that carries his name.  Third, Inga and Ozma are comparable
figures in terms of heroic stature, and his transformation would have had
the same horrible shock effect that hers has:  I still remember shuddering
as a child at that sentence, "It was all that remained of Ozma of Oz."  With
the loss of the hero[ine] things look particularly black, and the miraculous
discovery of the secret is all the more gratifying.
 
>  301--The Scarecrow more popular than Dorothy? I can't shake the suspicion
>that Baum inserted this passage only because he'd forgotten to list the
>Scarecrow among the guests at the feast a couple of pages before.
 
I agree that this is the strangest and least motivated paragraph in the
whole book.
 
--Gordon Birrell  

Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 17:31:49 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: viewing RINKITINK IN OZ
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Nathan DeHoff wrote:
<<Regarding Bilbil, you'll notice that Neill had Rinkitink accompanied by
"a surly old goat" when he visited the Emerald City in _Lucky Bucky_.>>
 
This is page 108, folks. I can actually imagine Rinkitink writing to his
new friends in Oz, maybe even in rhyme, asking them to send him another
surly talking goat since he liked the first one so much. Of course, by 1942
the Rinkitink we know should be dead.

  Ruth Berman, interesting comment about goats' eyes. Would Neill have been
able to get close enough to a real surly goat to sketch its pupils?
 
Turning to Neill's art as a whole, RINKITINK definitely falls into what I
consider his lazy period (as opposed to his exquisite draftsmanship in
DOROTHY & WIZARD, ROAD, and EMERALD CITY). But in this book, for the first
time, I see that style working well for the story. 

  The dry simplicity of Neill's art makes Inga's battles on pages 119 and
125 feel more intense. Foregrounding the villains on page 213 delineates
their relationship wickedly. The color illustration of Inga whirling the
loosed chains, which I'd never seen before [opp. 206], is as powerful as
any abolitionist monument in the U.S. 

  What better way to show the horror of Inga's home being destroyed than
the image of Kitticut's palace reduced to geometric blocks, like a child's
toys [63, 82-3, 87]? That's more powerful than showing us a hazy sketch of
a building, as Neill does with the rebuilt palace page 305--a mere outline
of luxury. 

  [That's the same picture where Gordon Birrell asks: <<who is that sixth
figure who stands between Rinkitink and Bobo?>> I think this figure could
be any of the sailors aboard, presumably the man taking watch in the bow.
But the lack of care evident in the illustration makes it hard for me to
care.]

  RINKITINK is the first Oz book largely set on the Nonestic. Neill's love
of boating really comes through in the endpapers and other nautical art.
It's too bad he has to wait for Samuel Salt to sail in before he could draw
much more of that for the Oz series. 
 
A philosophical query prompted by RINKITINK: On page 275 Dorothy reads
about Inga in the Great Book of Records. On page 276 she follows the story
in the Magic Picture. [Dorothy must be mistaken on p. 286 when she says she
read about Gos and Cor drowning in the Book; by that time she had gone to
the Emerald City.] 

  These powers are reflected in the Nome King's Lookout and Long-Eared
Hearer, who can spy on visitors from many miles away, and to some extent
Prince Inga's white pearl, which knows where his parents are. They're all
powerful surveillance devices controlled by the ruling elite. 

  David Brin, author of EARTH and THE POSTMAN among other sci-fi, has a new
non-fiction book out in which he discusses this sort of surveillance
technology. In America today there's no Great Book of Records, but every
credit card transaction, every posting to Usenet, and every visit to Web
sites is recorded somewhere. There's no Magic Picture, but, as the NEW YORK
TIMES reported a few months ago, cameras for security and traffic control
can view people nearly everywhere they walk in lower Manhattan. (If you
live in a city, count the number of cameras you spot watching you in a
typical day.)

  Brin's argument in THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY is that further advances in
surveillance technology are inevitable, that it's human nature for some
people to take advantage of that technology, and therefore that laws to
restrict their use are doomed to falter. Instead, he advocates "reciprocal
transparency"--if you watch me, I can know you're watching and be able to
watch you back. 

  Obviously, the surveillance devices in RINKITINK aren't reciprocal.
Dorothy and the Lookout can watch us, but we can't watch them, or even know
that they might be watching us. And as for peeking in on Glinda--forget it!
 
  How would you feel about living in an Ozian world, where your ruler (or
anyone else with access to the Magic Picture) could watch your every move?
Would that make you more careful about what you do? Would you feel safer
about your neighbors knowing that, say, the shoemaker's secret experiments
might be observed by the authorities? Should the Magic Picture be cut up,
with small squares distributed to every town?
 
Steve Teller wrote:
<<Josette Day, who played Belle, is supposed to have said something like,
"Give me back my Beast.">>
 
In 5001 NIGHTS AT THE MOVIES Pauline Kael attributes this comment to Greta
Garbo.
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 22:47:14 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Sender: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
 
Ruth:
The practice of giving a ruler a hereditary or traditional name is quite
common in literature. It is not always the same name as the country, but it
is more common than changing the name of the country each time there is a
new ruler.
 
Of course, in Fairyland, people generally have longer lifetimes, so if this
was the case, the name would not change all that often.
 
The fact that Bobo is the Prince of Boboland seems to indicate that the
country has had that name longer than Bobo has, so it appears that at least
in that case, the ruler is simply always named Bobo.
 
John Bell:
I get the language reference on page 6 of my Rinkitink (halfway through
chapter 1). It mentions the "queer characters of the Pingarese Language".
It's possible that there is only one spoken language in all Fairyland, but
that some isolated places have their own written language.
 
Even though Inga may never have been specifically told that the Pink Pearl
has transitive powers (that is, it protects the bearer and all those in
physical contact with him), he knew the history of his own island and that
all of the people of Pingaree were procted, even though only the ruler was
actually touching the Pearl. Inga probably reasoned out the rest.
 
It's been mentioned in the FF that Nomes are angry when we surface worms
take "their" treasure. They probably regard bringing gifts as simply
returning that which we have stolen.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:30:31 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
David Hulan: Considering Roquat/Ruggedo's treatment of his 
servitors, and resultant job turnover, I suppose the odds might well be 
that the unnamed Chief Steward in "Ozma" is someone other than 
Kaliko.
 
Joyce Odell: The Wizard might have made a quick unreported trip to 
the Nome Kingdom following the events of "Emerald City" to check 
that there weren't any Nome generals trying to take over the throne 
and make another try at conquering Oz while Roq/Rug was too 
dememoried to care.  One visit still isn't "several," of course.  (For that 
matter, even if Dorothy goes along with him, that gives her only two 
visits, not "several.")  Although it makes good sense in terms of the 
story, it seems odd in terms of the world that the underground 
journey in "Dorothy and the Wizard" doesn't include any Nomes -- 
unless, of course, those faces outlined in the walls of the cavern in 
one of Neill's illos are actually Nomes jeering at them as they go by.
 
J.L. Bell: Nice discussions of "Rinkitink" as a study of kingship.

   Besides being the first book taking place mostly on or by the 
Nonestic Ocean, it's the first to use the name in the story (the earlier 
use was on the "Tik-Tok" map).
 
Robin Olderman: I don't think either Michael O's book or Phyllis K's 
article discussed discrepancy in Wheeler sovereignty (will try to 
remember to check), but I suspect that the kind of allegiance they 
pay to Ev might be ambiguous enough to justify both calling them an 
area and a kingdom.  (Alternatively -- the new king might have 
granted them more freedom when he came to the throne?)  
Discrepancy that Cor and Gos are astonished at Nome King's 
throneroom and yet had visited him before -- perhaps a spectacular 
redecoration job?
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 18:18:18 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: RINKITINK out of Oz
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Robin Olderman wrote:
<<Cor & Gos for Coregos.  Prince Inga and Queen Garee for Pingaree. Why not
King Pinga and Queen Garee, or something like that?  I've always felt that
Baum was quietly laughing up his sleeve about avoiding the more obvious set
of names.  What do you all think? >>
 
I also wondered why Kitticut was the only royal in RINKITINK not to have a
name aligned with his country's (besides Kaliko and Glinda, of course).
Since Kitticut is the *first* ruler introduced in the book [p. 19, 1st/BoW
edition], I suspect Baum didn't start to play with the shared syllables
until after he named Kitticut.

  One Oz-as-history speculation: Kitticut was his father's second
child/son, not originally intended for ruling and therefore given neither
the name nor the from-the-cradle training than Inga has. 
 
Robin Olderman wrote:
<<Baum apparently goofs when he tells us first that Cor and Gos had
previously visited the Nome King, but that they had jaw-drop reactions of
surprise at his throne room during this visit.>>
 
I agree this is a goof. On entering the throne room Gos and Cor probably
"drew long breaths...and opened their eyes as wide as they could" [232] out
of greed rather than "astonishment." Or their surprise came because the
domed chamber seemed even richer than they remembered. 

  There are certainly many indications of a rock-solid alliance between the
Nomes and Gos and Cor. The couple even feels able to tell Kaliko what to
do. Though the Nome King finally says, "I'll do as I please" [235], "the
next day they cautioned Kaliko not to release the prisoners under any
consideration without their orders" [236]. And the Nome King is genuinely
upset, "almost weeping with despair," over breaking his promise to them
[286].

  Yet Regos is full of mines, some of them very deep [202-4]. As Tyler
Jones points out, <<Nomes are angry when we surface worms take "their"
treasure>>; in TIK-TOK they've kidnapped the Shaggy Man's brother from a
mine in Colorado. Therefore, to keep his mines open Gos must have made some
ongoing accommodation with the Nomes. Perhaps the Nome King, smarting under
Ozian domination, vicariously enjoys Regos's conquests. 
 
In our speculations about the original ending of KING RINKITINK, Gordon
Birrell wrote:
<<the transformation of Kitticut and Garee into ornaments would surely
have elicited a "Oh no, here we go again" reaction from [Baum's] readers.>>
 
I'd see the *transformation* as characteristic of Nomes: Roquat enchants
the royal family of Ev, as many Ozians as he can, the Shaggy Man's brother
(face only), and two or three of the folks who invade his throne room in
TIK-TOK. I agree that an elaborate disenchantment bargain of the sort in
OZMA would indeed have been too similar for Baum to reuse. 

  But for Baum to have recycled KING RINKITINK's plot in OZMA would have
meant he gave up on publishing the earlier manuscript quite soon after he
wrote it. That doesn't strike me as likely. Putting Rinkitink and Pingaree
on the TIK-TOK map in 1914 implies Baum still hoped to see that old story
in print. And we know Baum didn't start 1916 with RINKITINK in mind: in his
preface for SCARECROW he'd written, "Dorothy has promised me that
Button-Bright and the three girls are sure to encounter, in the near
future, some marvelous adventures in the Land of Oz, which I hope to be
permitted to relate to you in the next Oz Book" [10]. He's still promising
that book (obviously LOST PRINCESS) on page 13 of RINKITINK. Therefore, I
conclude Baum's rewrite of KING RINKITINK was a last-minute decision, and
that its original ending fell by the wayside, not surviving anywhere.

  I don't think <<Inga's use of the white pearl to uncover the secret would
have been anticlimactic>> in the same way as <<the deus-ex-machina
functions that we all have deplored in the Magic Belt>>, simply because the
pearl belongs to Inga. When I don't like the Magic Belt solving problems,
that's because Ozma is using it from afar to rescue the protagonist (e.g.,
DOROTHY & WIZARD). But the White Pearl is one of Inga's resources going
into this struggle. It even seems odd that he *doesn't* use it more often
underground. If the Nome King set up a mental challenge analogous to the
physical challenges Inga overcomes with the Blue Pearl (and Rinkitink with
the Pink), it's only fair that Inga could call on the White Pearl's power
to frustrate the metal monarch.

  But another possibility occurs to me as well, prompted by your thoughts
on a RINKITINK/OZMA parallel. In OZMA the lowly (well, short) chicken saves
the day by overhearing Roquat's convenient explanation of his plot. In KING
RINKITINK perhaps Bilbil was the savior. He never speaks in front of the
Nome King [243-8, 270-4]. In the original manuscript the Nomes may not have
been told of Bilbil's ability to speak; that revelation is tied into a
discussion of Oz, which has obviously been added [234-5]. If the Nomes
didn't know Bilbil could blab, they might have mentioned where they'd
hidden Inga's parents in front of him. [Another reason for supervillains to
learn that if you've got a really good evil plan, never stop what you're
doing to brag about it.] 

  Fun and insightful speculation from all sides, but we're probably all
still a way off from KING RINKITINK, much less confirming the right answer.
 
Tyler Jones wrote:
<<Even though Inga may never have been specifically told that the Pink
Pearl has transitive powers (that is, it protects the bearer and all those
in physical contact with him), he knew the history of his own island and
that all of the people of Pingaree were procted, even though only the ruler
was actually touching the Pearl. Inga probably reasoned out the rest.>>
 
For all the Pingarese to have been protected by the Pink Pearl, they'd have
had all to be touching--which could have left no hands free to wield the
"oyster rakes" Baum implies they used as weapons [20]. Perhaps Kitticut's
father let the Regos warriors exhaust their supply of missiles, as Inga did
in making his beachhead, and then Kitticut's father counterattacked alone.
Or they developed some "flying wedge" of pearl fishermen holding each
other's belts. However it happened, it does seem odd that Inga seems to
have heard no Pingarese rumors of his grandfather showing magical powers in
this battle. 
 
Apropos my question, "Would you like to live in a world with a Magic
Picture?", today's NY TIMES has a story about a CUNY grad student who found
a small camera pointed at a student meeting room from inside a smoke
detector. The university claimed it was there for protection against
burglars; since this meeting room has been used to plan some building
takeovers, the camera was obviously there for protection against protest.
Invasion of privacy? Legitimate surveillance? Who decides?
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 17:24:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: VoVat Quetzalcoatlus <xornom at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-17-98
 
Gordon:
>First of all, Inga's
>use of the white pearl to uncover the secret would have been 
>anticlimactic;
>the white pearl would have taken on some of the deus-ex-machina 
>functions
>that we all have deplored in the Magic Belt.
 
I'm not sure that this would have crossed Baum's mind, since _King 
Rinkitink_ was written before the Magic Belt had become overused.
>Of course, by 1942
>the Rinkitink we know should be dead.
 
Perhaps, although we really don't know how long the people of Rinkitink 
live.  I'm pretty sure they're mortal, but I don't know how mortal.  The 
Rinkitink who appeared in _Lucky Bucky_ might be a new King with the 
same name, though.
 
>Turning to Neill's art as a whole, RINKITINK definitely falls into 
>what I
>consider his lazy period (as opposed to his exquisite draftsmanship >in
>DOROTHY & WIZARD, ROAD, and EMERALD CITY).
 
Actually, I believe that Baum praised Neill's art for _Rinkitink_ above 
that for Oz books that Neill had illustrated in previous years.
 
Nathan Mulac DeHoff

Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 22:31:40 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Sender: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
 
John Bell:
It is not necessarily the case that Rinkitink is gone. While immortality is
almost non-existant (even in the non-Oz fairy countries), some authors have
hinted that these people have extended lifetimes. Thompson mentioned this
in reference to Captain Salt and King Ato, who were "liable to go on for
centuries".
 
RPT also gave immortality to the people of Ozamaland and Menankypoo, which
I always felt was a mistake, since this should have been a unique property
of the Land of Oz.
 
John Bell again:
If you want to read an excellent series about cameras on you all the time,
I suggest _Dayworld_, by Phillip Jose Farmer.
 
Ozma is perhaps the only person in the Multiverse I would trust with the
Magic Picture, and even then I would be a little nervous at times.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 22:54:50 -0400
From: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz
Sender: Tyler Jones <tnj at compuserve.com>
 
John Bell:
I guess the only rational explanation would be that the Pink Pearl has
ambient properties when the rightful ruler bears the Pearl on his island.
This is a bit of a stretch, though, and the super-huddle defense followed
the single-man attack is a bit more believeable.
 
--Tyler Jones

Date: Fri, 19 Jun 1998 12:14:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: VoVat Quetzalcoatlus <xornom at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-18-98
 
Ruth:  
>Discrepancy that Cor and Gos are astonished at Nome King's 
>throneroom and yet had visited him before -- perhaps a spectacular 
>redecoration job?
 
Perhaps, or the cavern might be like the Emerald City, which is 
sometimes said to cause awe even for the people who live there.
 
>RPT also gave immortality to the people of Ozamaland and Menankypoo, 
>which
>I always felt was a mistake, since this should have been a unique 
>property
>of the Land of Oz.
 
Well, Baum said that the people of Mo were immortal, although this was 
mentioned in a book not originally intended to be connected to Oz.  I 
don't think that there was any mention of the Momen's immortality in 
_Scarecrow_.  As for the Menankypoos, they were magical beings, and Baum 
often granted immortality to magical beings living outside of Oz (Nomes, 
Whimsies, etc.).
 
Nathan Mulac DeHoff

Date: Mon, 22 Jun 1998 19:02:35 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: WHO'S WHO is Oz?
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
<<David Hulan: Considering Roquat/Ruggedo's treatment of his servitors, and
resultant job turnover, I suppose the odds might well be that the unnamed
Chief Steward in "Ozma" is someone other than Kaliko.>>
 
When Dave mentioned this theory a while back, he prompted me to search my
brain for how I'd come to "know" Kaliko was OZMA's Chief Steward. I
realized one big impetus was that Jack Snow identified him as such in WHO'S
WHO. 

  Which leads to a question about the Oz canon: How authoritative is WHO'S
WHO? It was compiled by one of the Oz historians, and if Snow had said the
same thing about Kaliko in an Oz novel it would be "official." But of
course WHO'S WHO isn't a storybook, and by the time it was published there
was even a new Oz historian. WHO'S WHO also has errors--though no more than
many of the stories. 

  I had access to a library copy of WHO'S WHO before I read most of the
later books. Therefore it's always been an integral part of learning about
Oz for me. But it is a curious book, with no exact analogy I can think of
in any other literary series.
 
About RINKITINK Ruth Berman wrote:
<<Besides being the first book taking place mostly on or by the Nonestic
Ocean, it's the first to use the name in the story (the earlier use was on
the "Tik-Tok" map).>>
 
Very interesting point. This hints that the KING RINKITINK was the source
for the "Nonestic" name, as it was the source for "Rinkitink" and
"Pingaree" on that map.

  Gordon Birrell's comments prompted me to think about the parallels
between KING RINKITINK and QUEEN ZIXI OF IX. Both:
* take place in fairylands, but places unlike Oz because characters do die
and animals don't (usually) talk.
* follow a powerful magical gift from a fairy queen; partway through both
books that gift is lost and inadvertently used by people ignorant of its
power.
* are named after the ruler of a neighboring kingdom who serves as mentor
to the child-protagonist(s); this mentor is much older yet flawed in his or
her struggle to stay young, and must learn to grow up. 
* involve the rescue of the protagonist's kingdom from invaders. 
Baum wrote these fairy stories only a couple of years apart. ZIXI was first
published as a serial in SAINT NICHOLAS magazine. KING RINKITINK, with its
strong central plot but episodic rhythm, might have been conceived as a
serial as well.
 
About privacy in Oz Tyler Jones wrote:
<<Ozma is perhaps the only person in the Multiverse I would trust with the
Magic Picture, and even then I would be a little nervous at times.>>
 
Exactly. Just as we feel okay trusting Ozma and her circle with fairly
absolute governmental authority, so we're comfortable with her owning the
Picture. But, as with dictatorial powers, what if it falls into the wrong
hands? What if an evil wizard were to help Ruggedo get his grimy fingers on
the Magic Picture and Great Book of Records, and no well-armed young lady
happened along to summon help? What if some desert Duce or shoemaker or
Mimic were to control the Picture (it could happen)? Is it safe having such
surveillance technology at all if bad people can use it?

  On the other hand, how much do we have to be worried about? Does it
really matter if a camera sees us on a street or a computer tracks us on
the Internet? I played with this idea briefly in my Centennial Oz
manuscript, in which the Shaggy Man tells his brother [straight man of all
straight men] that he doesn't worry about being watched because, having
bathed in the Truth Pond, he's always true to his ideals. 

  That's a glib response, I know. It only covers two of the reasons we
object to being watched: being spotted doing something embarrassing, and
being spotted doing something wrong. It doesn't cover our vulnerability to
criminals and rivals. If someone somewhere had a Magic Picture, but I
couldn't know who, I'd want to have a Magic Belt (or Pink Pearl) to be sure
nothing bad could happen to me. 

  Most of the times we know Ozma uses the Magic Picture, her motive is to
look after Dorothy (every day between the end of OZMA and the start of
EMERALD CITY, and during some adventures thereafter). Since Dorothy can use
the Picture whenever she's in the palace, their arrangement is solely
beneficial, completely based on mutual consent, quite reciprocal--and
reserved for princesses. What about the rest of us?

  Dorothy gets into the habit of watching the Picture for entertainment,
which is more difficult to justify, even if she does occasionally stumble
onto Trot or Inga and is able to help them.

  Thanks for recommending Farmer's DAYWORLD on this topic.
 
Jeremy Steadman wrote:
<<Did Brin use Ozzy analogies in his book, or are you just applying what he
said to Oz?>>
 
David Brin's TRANSPARENT SOCIETY doesn't mention Oz; as non-fiction, it's
mostly concerned with real events and extrapolations from current
technologies. But when I heard about Brin's ideas a while back, I saw the
Magic Picture/Great Book of Records as an extreme hypothetical case:
extremely powerful surveillance, extremely good government, extremely evil
villains, extremely awful things that can happen to a person extremely
quickly. 

  Brin's now working on an extension of the Asimov universe, by the way.

  One recent non-fiction book that does discuss Oz is Marjorie Garber's
SYMPTOMS OF CULTURE (Routledge, $25). It was reviewed in last Wednesday's
NY TIMES, and specifically discusses the phrase, "I am Oz, the Great and
Terrible!" within a far-reaching meditation on "greatness." Looks like a
bad gift for anyone impatient with modern literary discourse.
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 17:55:46 -0500
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-10-98
 
6/10:
J.L.:
I'm pretty sure the "dope" in Inga's pail was intended to be the kind of
varnish that was, _inter alia_, used to seal the canvas on the aircraft of
the day. "Kibosh" baffles me, though.
 
>  2) Kaliko would have had to put on a lot of weight since TIK-TOK to be as
>fat as Rinkitink [243].
 
Neill draws Kaliko as rather skinny in _Tik-Tok_, but I don't think the
text says that he is. At least, I've skimmed all the chapters Kaliko is in
and don't see a reference to his weight.
 
>  4) Gos and Cor must have visited the Nome Kingdom in the mere two years
>since TIK-TOK for them to recognize Kaliko as king [228-9], yet it seems
>unlikely they would have made such a long voyage (sixteen days to and fro),
>in the face of storms (such as that which kills them), when there's so much
>plundering and tyrannizing to do.
 
We don't really know that there's only two years between the events of
_Tik-Tok_ and _Rinkitink_. We know the latter takes place after
_Scarecrow_, since Trot is present in the EC, but considering
Button-Bright's apparent ages in _Road_ and _Scarecrow_, and Dorothy's in
_Wizard_ and _Road_, the most plausible dating for _Scarecrow_ is about
1908; _Rinkitink_ could be taking place as late as 1916 when it was
published, though probably a year earlier. This, of course, is
Oz-as-history; from the Oz-as-literature POV I think you're quite right
that "Kaliko" is really Roquat.
 
6/11:
Joyce:
Very true that Baum had talking animals in other non-Oz books before he
wrote _King Rinkitink_. Animals could talk in Mo and Merryland, and Santa
Claus could talk with animals although I'm not sure whether this was
because the animals in Burzee and Hohaho can speak human language or
because Santa can speak the animal languages. (Zixi talks with animals, but
Baum specifies that this is because she knows their languages.) There would
have been nothing inconsistent with Baum's earlier work in Bilbil's being a
talking goat, rather than an enchanted prince. And the transformation of
Bilbil into Bobo is a weak part of _Rinkitink in Oz_, like the rest of the
ending. That disenchantment is really the only IE in _Rinkitink_, which
distinguishes it from all Baum's other Oz books with the possible exception
of _Ozma_. (The Langwidere episode is arguably irrelevant - the story would
have worked just as well without it - but it's better integrated into the
plot than, e.g., the Dainty China Country or the Jackdaws' Nest or
Bunnybury.)
 
Chapter 17 ends with "...the King and Queen of Regos and Coregos left the
caverns of the nomes to return to the shore of the ocean where they had
left their boat." The title of Chapter 18 is "Inga Parts with His Pink
Pearl," and it begins, "The White Pearl guided Inga truly in his pursuit of
the boat of King Gos..."
 
6/14:
Ruth:
The foxes of Foxville and the donkeys of Dunkiton can talk, and they're
outside Oz. It seems to me that animals on the Oz continent, whatever one
cares to call it, are about as likely to talk as not. Birds, in fact, seem
to be able to talk everywhere on the continent (we have Billina talking in
Ev, and also a sparrow in _Magic_; Kiki Aru can speak as a bird in Noland,
though that may just be because he's from Oz); mammals seem more limited,
since Hank apparently can't speak until he gets to Oz.
 
J.L.:
I think the Pingaree language just has its own alphabet, but is at most a
dialect of General Ozish. In Burroughs' Mars books everyone on Mars speaks
the same language, but every country writes it in its own way. This is
unusual in our world but not unheard of; Serbian and Croatian are no more
different than American and British English, but the Serbs use the Cyrillic
and the Croats the Roman alphabet. And Yiddish is a dialect of German
that's no more different from standard German than many other dialects that
are still considered German, but it's written in the Hebrew alphabet.
 
>229--With the Lookout on staff, why would the Nome King need the mighty
>telescope of TIK-TOK?
 
Apparently the Lookout came along after _Tik-Tok_. (Or, if we're right that
this Nome King was Roquat and the story antedates _Tik-Tok_, maybe he was
successful when he threw his scepter at the Lookout at some point when he
saw something Roquat didn't want to hear about.)
 
6/17:
Robin:
Perhaps Kaliko had received Cor and Gos in an informal drawing-room on
their previous visit(s), so they hadn't been in the throne room before.
Maybe the interior decorators were working on the throne room? I never had
any problem with that when I was a kid, or later. Maybe because in the part
of the country where I lived in the days when I first read the Oz books
(Tennessee) most people who could afford it had a "parlor" and a "living
room", the former being reserved for only the most formal entertaining,
whereas the latter (more like what we now call a "family room") was where
you entertained your friends and family (and spent your time when you had
no company). So if Cor and Gos had been visiting in order to trade with the
Nomes, say, they probably wouldn't have gone to the throne room; that would
be reserved for something involving full diplomatic protocol. Well, it
worked for me.
 
J.L.:
It seems likely that Rinkitink, Inga, and other denizens of the Ozian
continent outside Oz age and die eventually, but my feeling is that it's at
a much slower rate than people do in our world, and that there's probably
no disease to shorten lives prematurely. I'd guess that aging in Nonestica
outside Oz goes at maybe 1/10 the rate it does in our world. That would
mean that if Rinkitink was, say, 55 at the time of his book (let's say in
1915) then in 1942 he'd only be 58, and today he'd be 63. Inga was probably
11 or 12, so he'd be around 19-20 now (which is why I have him getting
married in the current _Emerald City Mirror_ serial).
 
Neill wouldn't have had to get close to a real surly goat to sketch its
pupils - in the first place, there are plenty of photos of goats' eyes he
could have copied from; alternatively, amiable goats have the same kind of
eyes as surly ones and he could easily have found one of those and gotten
close to it.
 
The possibility of being watched at any time by Ozma or one of her close
friends would tend to have a chilling effect on some activities that one
would rather not have observed - especially by little girls - even though
they're quite legitimate. I expect one would have to just put the
possibility out of one's mind; it's not _likely_ that Ozma or Dorothy or
someone would happen to look at you at any given time, and presumably it
would be an unwritten rule to quickly look away and tell the picture to
show them something else - and not to mention what they'd seen to anyone.
 
The Brin argument in _The Transparent Society_ is hardly new, though his
prediction that we're getting close to that point probably is. It's one of
the premises of _1984_, for one thing, and John W. Campbell, Jr. talked
about it frequently in his editorials in _Astounding/Analog_. One of the
analogies he (and I) liked best is that life now is like poker - you don't
know what your opponents have in their hands, but can only infer it from
what they're doing in the area you can see. In a transparent society, life
would be like chess - you know exactly what your opponent is doing at all
times; the only thing you don't know is why he's doing it.
 
6/18:
Ruth:
>Considering Roquat/Ruggedo's treatment of his
>servitors, and resultant job turnover, I suppose the odds might well be
>that the unnamed Chief Steward in "Ozma" is someone other than
>Kaliko.
 
My point exactly.
 
The relationship of the Wheeler Country to Ev might be much the same as,
say, Ragbad to Oz - it's a kingdom, but its ruler and people are
subordinate to the ruler of the larger kingdom it's part of.
 
J.L.:
>I'd see the *transformation* as characteristic of Nomes: Roquat enchants
>the royal family of Ev, as many Ozians as he can, the Shaggy Man's brother
>(face only), and two or three of the folks who invade his throne room in
>TIK-TOK.
 
I see the transformations as characteristic of Roquat/Ruggedo more than of
Nomes in general. I don't recall that Kaliko ever dabbled in
transformations (even with the aid of his wizard); on the other hand,
Ruggedo was hot on transformations in _Pirates_ at least, and I think in
_Handy Mandy_ as well, even after he wasn't Nome King any more.
 
David Hulan

Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 08:52:15 -0500
From: Gordon Birrell <gbirrell at post.cis.smu.edu>
Subject: Ozzy Digest
 
J. L. Bell:
>Just as we feel okay trusting Ozma and her circle with fairly
>absolute governmental authority, so we're comfortable with her owning the
>Picture. But, as with dictatorial powers, what if it falls into the wrong
>hands? What if an evil wizard were to help Ruggedo get his grimy fingers on
>the Magic Picture and Great Book of Records, and no well-armed young lady
>happened along to summon help? What if some desert Duce or shoemaker or
>Mimic were to control the Picture (it could happen)? Is it safe having such
>surveillance technology at all if bad people can use it?
 
Baum himself was evidently very much aware of the potential abuse of
surveillance technology.  In _The Master Key_ the Automatic Record of
Events, a sort of laptop combination of the Magic Picture and the Great Book
of Records, proves to be of great benefit to the political well-being of
England and France but also attracts the evil interest of a couple of
power-hungry villains.  As for the Demon's decision to return with his gifts
in a hundred years (in 2001, of all years!) when human beings might be
better prepared to deal with the ethics of technology:  all things
considered he'd better wait another hundred, though we've already reached
the point where many of the wonders of this "electric fairy tale" are either
available for purchase or under development. 
 
--Gordon Birrell

Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 12:42:52 -0700 (PDT)
From: VoVat Quetzalcoatlus <xornom at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-25-98 (RE-SEND)
 
David:
>Neill draws Kaliko as rather skinny in _Tik-Tok_, but I don't think 
>the
>text says that he is. At least, I've skimmed all the chapters Kaliko 
>is in
>and don't see a reference to his weight.
 
In _Emerald City_, I believe that Baum refers to Kaliko as being rather 
stout.  I think that the first textual reference to Kaliko being thin is 
in _Gnome King_.
 
>It seems likely that Rinkitink, Inga, and other denizens of the Ozian
>continent outside Oz age and die eventually, but my feeling is that 
>it's at
>a much slower rate than people do in our world, and that there's 
>probably
>no disease to shorten lives prematurely. I'd guess that aging in 
>Nonestica
>outside Oz goes at maybe 1/10 the rate it does in our world. That 
>would
>mean that if Rinkitink was, say, 55 at the time of his book (let's >say 
in
>1915) then in 1942 he'd only be 58, and today he'd be 63. Inga was 
>probably
>11 or 12, so he'd be around 19-20 now (which is why I have him >getting
>married in the current _Emerald City Mirror_ serial).
 
Note that Dorothy refers to Evardo as "a boy king" in _Wishing Horse_, 
when he was 15 in _Ozma_.  Also, at the time of _Pirates_, King Ato is 
around 1000 years old.  People on the Silver Island seem to age at about 
the same rate that we do, since 87 is considered old there.
 
 
>I see the transformations as characteristic of Roquat/Ruggedo more 
>than of
>Nomes in general. I don't recall that Kaliko ever dabbled in
>transformations (even with the aid of his wizard); on the other hand,
>Ruggedo was hot on transformations in _Pirates_ at least, and I >think 
in
>_Handy Mandy_ as well, even after he wasn't Nome King any more.
 
Ruggedo doesn't actually work any transformations in _Handy Mandy_, but 
he tells Wutz that he (Ruggedo) will help him (Wutz) turn the Ozian 
celebrities into rocks and rubble.  Also, in _Kabumpo_, Rug wants to 
turn the Ozites into moldy muffins.
 
Nathan Mulac DeHoff

Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 15:50:05 -0600 (CST)
From: Ruth Berman <berma005 at maroon.tc.umn.edu>
Subject: ozzy digest
 
J.L. Bell & David Hulan & Bear: I think in the dope & kibosh illo, Neill 
was punning on the sense of "put the kibosh on" and amusing 
himself with portraying kibosh as something that could literally be put 
on a canvas with a brush.  In fact, maybe the illo should be read as 
Neill's answer to the question, "Mr. Neill, all this pen-and-ink 
commercial work is all very well, but don't you ever feel like tackling a 
big ambitious oil painting?"  (Answer: "Yes.  First I put the dope on 
the canvas....")

   On why the Nome King would want a magic telescope when the 
Lookout is already on the staffer -- well, perhaps to get a look for 
himself when the Lookout has reported, rather than trusting entirely to 
the Lookout's interpretation/description.

   I tend to think of Snow's "Who's Who" identifications as sort-of-
authoritative -- i.e., if it sounds plausible (as with Jellia Jamb and 
Hungry Tiger in "Wizard," and probably also Kaliko as serving in 
"Ozma") most take it as "true," although if it's clearly incorrect (as with 
identification of Soldier with the Green Whiskers with the Guardian of 
the Gate) most ignore it.

   There have been other compilations like Snow's "Who's Who," but 
not many, and most of them (for instance, the Foster index to 
Tolkien's characters) done later than Snow's.  Edgar W. Smith's who-
listing of the Sherlock Holmes characters a little ahead of Snow's 
WW, but only a few years.  It's unusual, too, in being the work of an 
author of the series involved, rather than the work of a fan.  (Of 
course, Snow was a fan who'd worked his way up, so to speak.  Oz 
is also unusual in being a series of many authors.  The Arthurian 
stories and such like expanded mythoses aren't really serieses in 
quite the same sense.  And a series that has many authors but all 
under one pseudonym, like the Nancy Drews or Hardy Boys, is 
different again.)
 
Ruth Berman

Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 18:53:55 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: watching the witches in Oz
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
I agree with folks that it would be pleasant if the characters in RINKITINK
and other Baum stories set outside Oz lived longer than ordinary humans.
But did Baum write a word about this possibility? Without an explicit
statement, I think he expected readers to assume those characters aged and
died as we do. Indeed, in emphasizing Zixi's age/appearance, he was using
our measurement of time; that passage would have been meaningless if in Ix
17 years could look like 3 and 683 could be 54. I don't want to negate this
idea, just to file it in the ILTT category.
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<I see the transformations as characteristic of Roquat/Ruggedo more than
of Nomes in general.>>
 
I agree. I was guessing at my reaction if "Kaliko" in RINKITINK had
performed transformations, which is why I wrote in the conditional. I meant
merely that I wouldn't have seen that act alone as a sad cribbing of OZMA,
but would have accepted it as part of Nome culture.

  In addition to the transformations you cite, Ruggedo also enjoys using
*that word* in MAGIC. Wanting to transform people does seem to be a key to
his psychology.
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<The Brin argument in _The Transparent Society_ is hardly new, though his
prediction that we're getting close to that point probably is. It's one of
the premises of _1984_, for one thing, and John W. Campbell, Jr. talked
about it frequently in his editorials in _Astounding/Analog_. One of the
analogies he (and I) liked best is that life now is like poker - you don't
know what your opponents have in their hands, but can only infer it from
what they're doing in the area you can see. In a transparent society, life
would be like chess - you know exactly what your opponent is doing at all
times; the only thing you don't know is why he's doing it.>>
 
Another new element in Brin's scenarios is the possibility of reciprocity.
There's a parallel with how none of this century's science fiction
envisioned the personal computer; everyone assumed that computers would
remain behemoths in the hands of the authorities. (Maybe one short story
went the other way.) Now people like *us* have our own computers on our own
desks, and those computers have actually displaced the behemoths from
certain tasks.

  Similarly, though Orwell and Baum and others wrote about a society in
which the authorities could watch all we do, no one that I know of
considered a society where practically everyone can watch everyone else.
Instead of worrying about Big Brother, we can also worry about the little
kid two houses away--yet we can (if we have the combination of money and
technical expertise) watch Big Brother and the little kid back. 

  I agree that <<The possibility of being watched at any time by Ozma or
one of her close friends would tend to have a chilling effect on some
activities that one would rather not have observed - especially by little
girls - even though they're quite legitimate.>> I wouldn't, say, clip my
nose hair so comfortably in a world with a Magic Picture. On the other
hand, my embarrassment might go away when surveillance exposes just how
many people over 30 deal with nose hair. There's an analogy to the
gay-liberation movement, which discovered much better security now that
homosexuality is acknowledged in nearly all walks of life than when it was
deep in the closet. 

  I do also hope that <<it would be an unwritten rule to quickly look away
and tell the picture to show them something else - and not to mention what
they'd seen to anyone.>> David Brin argues that as long as there's still
shame attached to being considered a peeping Tom, people will be reluctant
to watch and tell all they can--especially if reciprocal transparency means
the people they watch can catch them watching. 

  And speaking of all this watching, King Kaliko is back to using a magic
telescope in SILVER PRINCESS, so the Lookout doesn't last. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 23:25:14 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: Oz trivia answer CORRECT!
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Gordon Birrell wrote:
<<Baum himself was evidently very much aware of the potential abuse of
surveillance technology.  In _The Master Key_ the Automatic Record of
Events, a sort of laptop combination of the Magic Picture and the Great
Book of Records, proves to be of great benefit to the political well-being
of England and France but also attracts the evil interest of a couple of
power-hungry villains.>>
 
Excellent point! MASTER KEY was Baum's fantasy most seriously set in the
real world, so we might consider its views as his most realistic and least
wishful. Of course, it wasn't just surveillance aids Rob didn't trust
people with--it's all the high-tech electro-goodies.
 
A coupla clarifications:

  In discussing whether Baum's characters from outside Oz aged and died, I
don't mean to dismiss Thompson's writing. I addressed our evidence of what
Baum had in mind. Indeed I'd like to think that humans in the borderlands
live long; that gives me hope that the golden reign of King Bud still goes
on. [One odd bit of aging: Chick the Cherub is clearly said to have grown
up to (wo)manhood at the end of JOHN DOUGH yet is as young as ever in
ROAD.]

  When I wrote that WHO'S WHO IN OZ has "no exact analogy" elsewhere, I
didn't mean that other fiction series (Middle Earth, Holmes, Superman,
etc.) hadn't attracted their own reference books. I meant that to my
knowledge no author besides Snow has both helped to shape the fantasy-world
and catalogued it, so none of those references other can be arguably
canonical. 
 
Ruth Berman wrote:
<<I think in the dope & kibosh illo, Neill was punning on the sense of "put
the kibosh on" and amusing  himself with portraying kibosh as something
that could literally be put on a canvas with a brush.>>
 
Ruth, I think you've got the dope on Inga's artwork!
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 09:56:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: VoVat Quetzalcoatlus <xornom at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-27-98
 
J. L. Bell:
>I agree with folks that it would be pleasant if the characters in 
>RINKITINK
>and other Baum stories set outside Oz lived longer than ordinary 
>humans.
>But did Baum write a word about this possibility?
 
I don't think he did.  Thompson, however, tended to give extended 
lifespans (and sometimes even immortality) to Nonesticans living outside 
of Oz.
 
>  And speaking of all this watching, King Kaliko is back to using a 
>magic
>telescope in SILVER PRINCESS, so the Lookout doesn't last. 
 
I assume you mean _Wishing Horse_, since Kaliko did not appear in 
_Silver Princess_.  The telescope was used to locate the missing rulers 
of Oz.  Even if the Lookout were still on staff, the Nomes probably 
would have used the telescope in this situation, since the Lookout might 
well have to look all over the place before he found the Ozites, while 
the telescope's magic enabled it to zero in on the prisoners in Thunder 
Mountain.
 
On the Magic Picture:
Perhaps the Picture has a feature that stops it from showing Ozma things 
that are too private, or that she does not want to see (sort of like a 
magical V-chip).
 
 
Nathan Mulac DeHoff

Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 21:34:39 -0500
From: David Hulan <davidhulan at ntsource.com>
Subject: Re: Ozzy Digest, 06-25 & 27-98
 
J.L.:
 
I don't think WHO'S WHO is authoritative, though it's "good" apocrypha as
opposed to books by modern authors (including myself) who've gotten
published but don't have any real cachet at all as Royal Historians of Oz.
(And much as I like Gina Wickwar, having met her at Ozmopolitan a week or
two ago, I can't really consider her work as even "good" apocrypha whatever
title the IWOC conveys on her.)
 
Interesting parallels between ZIXI and RINKITINK. Though I think that any
association was purely in the mind of Baum as he wrote the two books in
close chronological proximity; I don't think he intended them to be similar.
 
As you say later, and I said in my last post, there are many thing that one
would be embarrassed to have someone else (at least, certain others) see in
the Magic Picture or through the Nome King's Spyglass or however that are
not only not wrong, but that are necessary to survival.
 
6/27:
Robin:
David:<<The possibility of being watched at any time by Ozma or one of her
close friends would tend to have a chilling effect on some activities that one
would rather not have observed - especially by little girls - even though
they're quite legitimate.>>
 
>What've you got against little girls, old fella?  Huh?  But seriously,
>folk, what
>was the thrust of that comment?  Why girls?  Why not children in general?  Or
>little boys?
 
I was thinking of certain basic elimination functions which males of the
species, of whatever age, are accustomed to seeing other males performing,
but which few are accustomed to performing in front of females of the
species, especially those of tender years.
 
J.L.:
It's true that there's no consistent evidence that Nonesticans outside Oz
live longer than we of the Outside World. It seems to vary from country to
country, actually; in Mo they live forever, in Noland and Ix they have our
life-spans, and in other countries they're somewhere in between. I agree
that giving Inga and Rinkitink long lives are ILTT's, but there's nothing
to contradict that in the canon.
 
Ruggedo wanted to use *that word* in _Magic_, but he never succeeded in
using it.
 
Have you ever read T.L. Sherred's classic "E for Effort"? One of my
all-time favorite SF stories (from about 1948 or 1949), which posed exactly
the question of what happens if someone develops a technology that lets
anyone see what anyone has done in the past (up to a nanosecond ago). It
doesn't develop the society where this is the case, because it makes the
very plausible case that if anyone came up with such an invention it would
be suppressed by governments at almost any cost.
 
David Hulan

Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 13:24:24 -0400
From: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
Subject: history of Oz
Sender: "J. L. Bell" <JnoLBell at compuserve.com>
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<In a transparent society, life would be like chess - you know exactly
what your opponent is doing at all times; the only thing you don't know is
why he's doing it.>>
 
This is how Glinda's surveillance of the Wizard worked out: she knew the
man had visited Mombi, but she had no idea why. Other times, it seems,
Glinda and Ozma can discern or deduce motives from what they see in their
Book and Picture: Ann Soforth's intentions, for instance. 

  Finishing Melody Grandy's DISENCHANTED PRINCESS last night, I saw that
the Valley of Voe from DOROTHY & WIZARD provides a different take on the
dangers of surveillance: the Dama Solution. Everyone--hunters and
hunted--becomes invisible; thus everyone's sure of not being watched. As
David Brin's TRANSPARENT SOCIETY points out repeatedly [but in non-Oz
terms], that's even more of a fantasy today than a Magic Picture.

  Thanks for recommending T.L. Sherred's "E for Effort"--sounds nifty. And
a short story I can definitely fit in.
 
Nathan DeHoff wrote:
<<I assume you mean _Wishing Horse_, since Kaliko did not appear in 
_Silver Princess_.>>
 
Yes, thank you. Perhaps because these books sit next to each other, I keep
writing one title while thinking of the other. I recently received the Club
edition of [let's see now] WISHING HORSE, to supplement my late-model R&L
copy, and saw the color plate of Shoofenwaller peering in the magic
telescope for the first time in 20 years.
 
Dave Hulan wrote:
<<Ruggedo wanted to use *that word* in _Magic_, but he never succeeded in
using it.>>
 
I was thinking of how Rug advises Kiki on how to use the magic word with
all the passion of an interior decorator working on an unlimited budget
["And we'll add a touch of wild ass!"]. 
 
J. L. Bell                  JnoLBell at compuserve.com

Date: Fri, 0