Finding Oz

I have read through Evan I. Schwartz's Finding Oz, a second biography of L. Frank Baum -- and since I commented briefly here on Loncraine's biography, I should note that I find this one more satisfying in terms of its documentation of sources ... although still frustrating in some areas. I wanted to know the page number for a citation of a particular newspaper publication of Baum's, for instance: but Schwartz's documentation tends to be of the general pointing-toward sort, and fails to extend to the level of page numbers -- at least in this one case where that was the very thing I wanted to know.

The informality of language of the book also puts the researcher in me on guard. I jotted down a sentence, at one point, as an example of his frequent imposition of interpretation upon factual narrative. It also displays questionable language-use. "When a good person like Frank Baum performs a deed this bad, he is often overtaken by shadow forces, personal demons mixed with archetypal emotions, the set of primal impulses and instincts that one inherits as a part of being human" (p. 184). Can emotions be archetypal? Reading a phrase such as "performs a deed this bad" stirs up an internal red-penciling editor who jots in: "When people misstep so severely, second thoughts often bedevil them." Or somesuch. As in the case of the other biography, some words seem to appear in this biography because they sound right, not because they are. Is there something about Baum as a subject that provokes people to sprinkle flowers in their language, or to render his story into mythic terms? Baum himself, in my reading experiences and reading memory, wrote in a relatively straightforward manner. What was remarkable was the power of his symbolic imagination -- over which he did seem to have a certain amount of intellectual control.

Schwartz did extremely well in tracing and underlining many sources for Oz symbolism ... although he engages in the rhetorical device of drawing on the MGM Wizard of Oz movie for references -- inappropriately, to my mind -- in speaking of Baum's life and circumstances. (Any such references to the movie could have been reserved for his catch-all afterword.) Where Schwartz is at his best is in his depiction of mother-in-law Matilda Gage, a suffragist and Theosophist. His efforts in this area are laudable in the extreme.

With a little reining-in and reordering of the text, this might have been quite notable. It is certainly a worthy work that ably illuminates a variety of historical crosscurrents.

Shortly after putting down the Schwartz I picked up a recent popular-audience biography of Henry Ford and his motor company ... and rejoiced to find actual footnote numbers sprinkled into the text. How lovely.

Cheers ...

The Real Wizard of Oz

I have read Rebecca Loncraine's The Real Wizard of Oz -- the first biography of L. Frank Baum I have had the pleasure of taking in. The book offers a great deal of information and some quite valuable and insightful perspective. The difficulty it presents, however, is its occasional imprecise language (some effort seems to have been expended in making passages poetic and evocative), and its lack of footnotes. I am in the position of wanting to cite a book on this subject and am feeling a bit irritated that it is impossible to know where exactly the various facts (or "facts") in the book were found, and whether the insightful perspectives were suggested by other Ozmaticians -- there must be legions -- or were the insights of Loncraine herself.

The book does end with a few pages of general notes on sources. (As did I for the Kornbluth biography, Loncraine spent time in Syracuse for this one. She, however, had grant support.) While the notes she provides are helpful, they still are of almost zero value in establishing where any particular bit of say-so came from.

Several lines toward the end of the book echo with the stated purpose of this "Vines, Wines and Lines" blog: "His writing became inextricably linked to gardening at Ozcot, the process of tending and pruning plants mapped onto the process of telling stories" (p. 266); and "Digging about in the garden, hat on and cigar in mouth, strangely mirrored Baum's writing process, in which he dug about in the turf of his own mind. And for Baum, both writing and gardening were an essentially intuitive process" (p. 267).

I am puzzled at a "process" being "mapped onto" another "process" -- which seems at least fuzzy in its expression; but I am not at all satisfied with "turf" in the second quotation. The garden-pottering Baum would have been digging about in soil or dirt or such. He might have been alarmed to think he had turf in his mind, as a dedicated flower grower.

What a minor quibble -- yet if examples of hazy language were not somewhat common in the book it might have gone unnoticed ... or if yet more questions were not being stimulated within the same passage. Why "strangely" mirrored? And should the second sentence not read, "For Baum, both writing and gardening were essentially intuitive processes" -- ?

Cheers ...

Broad Green Husk

Since I have been talking here about bits of writing and the products of fermentation taking their own sweet time -- or their own dry time -- I was amused last night when reading about Jo Files, a character who happens to have sprouted from the idea-tree of L. Frank Baum nearly a century ago.

Files, Baum tells us, "had nine book-trees, on which grew a choice selection of story-books. In case you have never seen books growing upon trees, I will explain that those in Jo Files' orchard were enclosed in broad green husks which, when fully ripe, turned a deep red color. Then the books were picked and husked and were ready to read. If they were picked too soon, the stories were found to be confused and uninteresting and the spelling bad. However, if allowed to ripen perfectly, the stories were fine reading and the spelling and grammar excellent."

Jo Files, according to Baum, had to read most of the books himself, before they spoiled, since the people of Oogaboo cared little for reading. How like a writer's fate.

The broad green husk of an unripened book: I am wrapped up in one. (Actually, today it was in a red-ripening husk of a minor deadline project.)

Cheers ...