Volume 24, Number 16 · October 13, 1977
On Rereading the Oz Books
By Gore Vidal
BOOKS DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Marvelous Land of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
Ozma of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Road to Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Emerald City of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Lost Princess of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Tin Woodman of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
(These books are available in numerous editions, including those of
Glinda of Oz
by L. Frank Baum
The Making of the Wizard of Oz
by Aljean Harmetz
Knopf, 320, 115 illus pp., $12.95
In the preface to The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum says that he would like to create modern fairy tales by departing from Grimm and Andersen and 'all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised' by such authors 'to point a fearsome moral.' Baum then makes the disingenuous point that 'Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wondertales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.' Yet there is a certain amount of explicit as well as implicit moralizing in the Oz books; there are also 'disagreeable incidents,' and people do, somehow, die even though death and illness are not supposed to exist in Oz.
Review, 6917 words
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