Oz Story Magazine, No. 1

1995, first edition, from Hungry Tiger Press
David Maxine as Editor-in-Chief, Eric Shanower as Art Director
Oz Story Magazine, No. 1
Bought new for $14.95
Worn paperback
C+

Despite the title, this annual, which ran through 2000, is in the format of a tall paperback book of over 125 pages.  It includes contributions from Oz historians Baum, Thompson, and Cosgrove, as well as artwork by Denslow and Neill, although it also has more modern contributions, not just from Shanower of course but a not-bad comic page called The Pathetic Losers of Oz.  Overall, the pieces are uneven, with Baum's almost-50-pages-in-this-format Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea, a boys' adventure story, mostly forgettable (except for the unfortunate repeated use of the N-word).  I most enjoyed the reproductions of the comic strip The Wonderland of Oz by Sprouse, with new text by Shanower.

The decade tags represent when these works were originally published, which in some cases is in this issue.

Is Sex Necessary?: Why You Feel the Way You Do

1929, 1944 Blue Ribbon Books edition
James Thurber and E. B. White
Is Sex Necessary?: Why You Feel the Way You Do
Original price unknown, bought used for $4.00
Worn hardcover
B+

Still laugh-out-loud funny after all these years, from the opening of the Foreword onward:  "During the past year two factors in our civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly, neither diversion is entitled to the space it has been accorded."  I'm not sure if this book was written entirely by White, or if Thurber had a hand in the text as well as the typically odd illustrations.  Both men were already on the staff of The New Yorker, and this is definitely a very 1920s New-York-intellectual-humorist sort of book.


I'm using the "nonfiction" label*, although you won't learn whether sex is necessary, or much else from this parody of sexology.  It's definitely written for men, with women alternately too mysterious and too frank, as in the discussion of feminine types.  (It turns out that you don't have to watch the Quiet Ones.)  The "What Should Children Tell Parents" chapter could well have been written in the 1960s, but generally this is the product of the earlier sexual revolution.  It's not at all an explicit book.  It's sort of talking about talking about sex, rather than just talking about sex.  The scene where a bride, whose mumsy taught her that she'd have a three-year-old son if her husband "brought a pair of bluebirds into a room filled with lilies-of-the-valley," finally stops being coy and blurts out, "Sex-- if you want to know!", is about as direct as it gets.  And at that, his attempt to enlighten her doesn't get any further than him saying that women are "that way," meaning "the way you are...from me...that I am, I mean."


The authors are just as vague.  And that's where much of the humor comes from.  It's also funny how they give the history of sports and leisure, as alternatives to sex.  The glossary includes some of the best lines from the text, such as "loving" meaning "being confused by, or confusing some one."  It is odd to run into "Swastika" as something that men doodle, particularly considering the timing of this edition, but the world had changed a great deal in those intervening 15 years.


I'm not really sure what to say about Thurber's illustrations, beyond most of the people look either irritated or confused (understandable according to the text), and some of the pictures are almost abstract, just a few wavy lines.


This is a nice way to wrap up the 1920s.  I don't have any book for 1930, not even an Oz book, since I'm missing a couple Thompsons.  But 1931 will make up for this.

*Since changed to "humor."

Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz

1929, undated (see below) Reilly & Lee edition
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Illustrated by John R. Neill
Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz
Original price unknown, bought used for $20.00
Poor condition paperback, with broken spine, tears, and stains
B-

Peter returns from Philadelphia via a magic coin in his sack of pirate gold.  (Thompson by the way, in her introduction, lists her full West Philly address.  So here you go: RPT house  .)  Presumably two years have passed since Gnome King, although Peter's age isn't mentioned.  He again gets to be more heroic than Bob Up of Cowardly Lion, although Jack has his part to play in saving the day.

I like the setting of the red mountain baronies, including Baffleburg.  Baron Mogodore is a pretty good villain.  It is creepy, perhaps more creepy than intended, that this cruel, ugly, middle-aged man wants to marry teenaged princesses Shirley Sunshine and Ozma.  (Check out the two-page illustration of Mogodore leering at bound Ozma, pp. 216-17.)  Shirley is drawn as a more traditional-looking lady than Ozma, and it's interesting to compare the picture on p. 230 of them clasping hands with that on p. 207 of Road, where Ozma meets Polychrome.  Both times Ozma has an expression like "Yes, you are lovely, My Dear, but I am the most beautiful girl in the world," while the other girls humbly agree.

I could've done without yet another rhyming character.  Yes, Baum would include poems and songs, but Thompson overdoes it.  At least this time the poet is an Iffin, a Griffin without the Gr.  I also have to note that I think this might be the first time that Thompson doesn't use her annoying "Don't you care," meaning roughly "Don't worry, be happy."

The typos are worse, the innuendo less, than usual.  And this line would have different connotations four decades later:  "'I am the King and the highest Swinger here.'"


The list of "The Famous Oz Books" confusingly only goes up to Grampa in Oz (1924).  So I'm not sure on the date of this copy.  It's probably not a first edition, since there are no color plates.  It could be a 1935 second edition, but it's in such terrible shape I probably won't keep it.

Dodsworth

1929, 1960 Laurel edition
Sinclair Lewis
Dodsworth
Original price unknown, bought used for $1.50
Poor condition paperback
B-

While the view of upper-middle-class Americans traveling through Europe in the 1920s is interesting, including an early look at both Italian Fascism and a German gay bar, I got tired of the Dodsworths' marriage long before Sam Dodsworth did.  Fran is so obviously a spoiled, hypocritical, hypercritical bitch that I couldn't see how it took Sam more than 20 years to see through her.  And at that, as the handwritten note on the back flap asks, "How do you account for last four words?", the book ending, "He was so confidently happy that he completely forgot Fran and he did not again yearn for her, for almost two days."  And this is after he's seemingly found his ideal woman.  As much as a Colette novel, this is a story of unhappily masochistic love.  Again, wife-beating is joked about, but it's Sam who's bullied verbally, while everyone who isn't a frivolous European tells Sam how wonderful he is. 

Not coincidentally, Lewis's first marriage broke up in 1925, and in '28 he married journalist Dorothy Thompson, whom this novel is dedicated to.  (No relation to Ruth Plumly, although RPT did have a sister named Dorothy.)

Passing

1929, from the same Rutgers University Press edition as Quicksand
Nella Larsen
Passing
B

Although this story is told in the third-person, the protagonist, Irene, does qualify as an unreliable narrator.  She imagines that she knows everyone's motives, even when it's things like imagining her unflirtatious husband having an affair with her friend Clare.  Irene apparently murders Clare by pushing her out a window, but she can't quite admit this to the reader or herself.

As the labels indicate, this short novel is notable in both African-American and LGBT literary history, although the latter is often missed by critics.  Hypocritical Irene passes as white in restaurants and theaters, but she disapproves of the level that one-quarter white Clare passes at, with Clare having married a bigoted white man who's so ignorant of her background that he affectionately nicknames her "Nig."  Clare and Irene run into each other after many years, and it starts a hunger in Clare for the company of blacks, particularly Irene.  She's playing with fire (Larsen uses fire imagery often), but sensible, safe Irene seems worried beyond sense.

Even if you don't buy that Irene has an unspoken desire for Clare, there is something off about her reactions to Clare.  In the quite good Introduction, Deborah E. McDowell points out the distance between what Irene says about everything, including her own motives, and what the reality is.  She also underscores passages where Irene is drawn to Clare's beauty.  McDowell argues that the entire novel is passing, pretending to be just a novel about pretending to be another race, while it's also a novel about pretending to be straight.  When I read the novel in a college course, taught by an awesome lesbian professor, I wrote a paper arguing that Irene is afraid of all passion and desire, and not just sexual.  She's also afraid of her husband's longing for Brazil.

In any case, Passing is an interesting read however you take it and, unlike with some of Woolf and Colette, the ambiguity enhances the story.

"Look!"

1929
Colette, translated by Enid McLeod
"Look!"
B-

A very short, well, look at how children see the world differently from adults.

"The Savages," from "Sido"

1929
Colette, translated by Enid McLeod
"The Savages" from Sido
B

In this excerpt from another book about Colette's mother, the focus is on the two elder brothers.  As always, I like these stories of her family in the country.  Here, she contrasts her brothers in adolescence with them as middle-aged or elderly men.  The younger brother tells her of a recent visit to their hometown and his surprise at all the changes after more than 40 years.  I also like the tale of how the boys reacted to the oldest sister's wedding.  Sido is more of a supporting character, although she of course has some funny moments, like her answer about who the groom is:  "Oh, some wretched upstart or other."

Orlando: A Biography

1928, 1960 Signet Classics edition
Virginia Woolf
Orlando: A Biography
Original price unknown, bought used for $1.95
Worn and waterlogged paperback
B-

This is a "biography" in the sense that there are elements of the life of Virginia's lover Vita Sackville-West, although Vita never changed her sex or lived in four different centuries.  The novel is lighter and more humourous than usual for Woolf, although still a bit too "artistic" (obscure and meandering, like Break of Day by Colette) for me.  I think that it generally improves as it goes along, and the description of the over-fecundity of Victorian England, where ivy grows everywhere and every woman has fifteen to eighteen children by age 30, is great.

The book is of course most notable in the history of LGBT fiction.  (The Afterword by Elizabeth Bowen, understandably for that time period, doesn't dwell on this, beyond saying that the story was inspired by a "romantic friendship.")  Published the same month that copies of The Well of Loneliness were seized (with an obscenity trial the next month), it dares to show a character who, with no guilt and few repercussions, changes from male to female and then alternately assumes either identity through clothing.  Orlando also has affairs with both men and women throughout her long life.  (She's 16 in 1588, 36 in 1928.)  Perhaps because the novel is fantasy rather than reality, or perhaps because Woolf has more prestige, she and Orlando get away with it.

The Giant Horse of Oz

1928, undated but probably 1941 Reilly & Lee edition
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Giant Horse of Oz
Original price $1.75, bought used for unknown
Surprisingly good condition hardcover, although the dust jacket is frayed
B

I'll deal with the simpler question of chronology first.  The dust jacket says, "There are now thirty-four of the Delightful Stories of the Wonderful Land of Oz," but they omit Wizard, which I think was still owned by another publisher.  The last book on the list is [The] Scalawagons of Oz, which came out in '41, while Lucky Bucky was published in '42.  The end papers seem to be Scarecrow-era though, with a line of characters that includes Pon the Gardener's Boy but not Betsy.

As for the chronology within the book, I hope you're sitting down.  We're three books past Lost King, but only two years have passed.  And Kabumpo and Gnome King were five years apart.  Let's call this 1828 O.Z., since in Cowardly Lion we learned that it was seven centuries since 1120 O.Z.

1822 O.Z. Kabumpo
1826 Lost King
1827 Gnome King 
1828 Giant Horse

Now, within this story it seems that 25 years ago (1803 O.Z.), Orin was a "Princess of the North," daughter of King Gil of Gilkenny.  Gil ruled some of the northern land, but Mombi was the supreme ruler of all the North, while the nameless King of the Munchkins had a son named Cheeriobed, who fell in love with Orin.  Mombi later fell for Cheeriobed, who of course spurned her, so she swore revenge.  She waited three years though to kidnap Orin, by which point Cheeriobed and Orin were happily married, with a two-year-old son named Philador.  This was twenty years before our story begins, so Cheeriobed and Orin's engagement must've lasted a couple years. 

1803 O.Z. Cheeriobed meets Orin, and they fall in love
1805 They get married, infuriating Mombi
1806 Philador born
1808 Mombi kidnaps Orin
1828 "Present-day"

Philador is now "ten," but that's because it turns out that people can stay the same age as long as they want.  Trot is also ten now.  This means that she was no more ten when she arrived.  This is what I wrote on the subject for Lost Princess:   "Baum tells us that Betsy is a year older than Dorothy, who's a year older than Trot.  He hasn't yet explained that people have stopped aging in Oz, but it's starting to be implied.  Button-Bright is younger than Ojo, and we know he's younger than Trot and Dorothy.  In Road, he seemed to be about half Dorothy's age, say 4 or 5 to her 8 or 9.  He was half a head shorter than Trot in Scarecrow.  If I remember correctly, Thompson will make Trot 9, I think in Giant Horse, so when we get to that point, I'll try to approximate the other kids' ages."  Trot probably was nine at most, since she, like Philador, "likes being ten, so I've been ten for ever so long."  I don't think she could've been less than seven, if she was taller than Button-Bright.

To return to the Oz history, it sort of works for the North, with Mombi turning Orin into Tattypoo, the Good Witch of the North, who conquers Mombi and rules the Gillikins.  (I refuse to misspell that word like Thompson does.)  We still don't know what was up with the "King" of the Gillikins in Road, but that's not Thompson's problem.  The chronology here is more of a problem for the Munchkins, although at least their land is now back where it belongs, in the East.

The story opens on the Ozure Isles, in the Lost Lake of Orizon, definitely one of my favorite Thompsonian kingdoms.  The lake became lost after Mombi kidnapped Orin.  And yet, there's an "old history book" that tells of Ozma and "the three little mortal maids that have come to live in the Emerald City."  The book would have to be at least twenty years old, since the 1807 Ozurians have lost contact with the outside world.  But there is no way that more than twenty years have passed since Betsy and Trot arrived.  That would give us a chronology something like this:

1805 Mombi still rules the North
1806 Betsy arrives
1807 Trot arrives
1808 Ozure loses contact with outside world
1808 or later Tattypoo conquers Mombi
1809 or later Land of Oz is set
1828 "Present-Day"

Maybe the sea gulls brought the book from the mainland, but I'm still calling shenanigans.  My guess, Betsy, Trot, and even Dorothy arrived during the "lost time."  Of course, there's still the problem of the King of the Munchkins mentioned in Ozma and Road.  I'll go into this more when we get to Ojo.

The backstories, confusing though they are, do raise this above the average Thompson story.  There are as usual two parties trying to get to the Emerald City, this time Philador and the two friends he meets along the way, and Trot with the Scarecrow and an animated statue from Boston, this last character falling through the earth to Oz, where it's apparently day when it's night in Boston, lending support to the Oz = Australia theorists.  The two friends of Philador are the title character from Up Town (not to be confused with Down Town in Hungry Tiger), one of Thompson's better animals, and Herby the Medicine Man, who prescribes pills like they're candy.  So, yeah, this time we have drug abuse rather than innuendo, thanks, Plumly!

I'd remembered Neill as having more obviously 1920s illustrations than he does, but this is the book with "flapper Dorothy."  On p. 36, she's shown with feathers in her now dark bob.  (Neill, as you may've noticed by now, is pretty casual about hair color, sometimes changing it from light to dark and back for a character within one book, although he's usually consistent about Ozma, who's had black hair since the third book.)

The House at Pooh Corner

1928, 1970 Dell Yearling edition
A. A. Milne
"Decorations by Ernest H. Shepard"
The House at Pooh Corner
Original price $3.25, bought used for unknown
Very worn paperback
B

I didn't own the Pooh books as a child, although I think I read at least one.  I did watch the Disney movies though, and while I think they're good adaptations, there's something special about the surface simplicity of the original text and illustrations.  I especially like how sometimes a sentence will be split into parts, with illustrations in between.  The animals are recognizable types, such as Eeyore the pessimist, and it's fun to see them interact.  (I probably most identify with Piglet, small and fretful but loyal to my best friends.)  Christopher Robin, who in this book is beginning to go to school, is the "adult" here, kind and wise.  It's a gentle, cuddly but still stressful world, the Hundred Acre Wood.  Tigger is introduced in this book and Rabbit's plot to abandon and thus humble him seems cruel.  Luckily, Tigger is able to thrive as his vibrant self, unlike Helga Crane in Passing.

Quicksand

1928, 1994 Rutgers University Press edition, with Passing in the same volume
Nella Larsen
Quicksand
Original price unknown, bought used for $7.50
Worn paperback
B

Imagine if Carol Kennicott had been half Danish, half Negro.  Further imagine that instead of marrying a doctor who believes in birth control she had wed a preacher who believes that large families are sent by God.  And finally, imagine that she was less pretentious and more sensual.  Then you'd have the tragedy of Helga Crane, who fits in nowhere and eventually sinks into the quicksand of the place she's least suited for.  When I first read the book, I hoped that Helga would return to Denmark.  She's treated as an exotic there but at least she's closer to happiness than at the Naxos (anagram for "Saxon") school or in the upper-class Negro set in Harlem, let alone her final destination.  One of the bleakest final sentences in women's fiction is this one, after Helga's gone through a rough childbirth and wonders how she can escape her marriage without abandoning her children, as her father abandoned her:  "And hardly had she left her bed and become able to walk again without pain, hardly had the children returned from the homes of the neighbors, when she began to have her fifth child."

While it's clear that Helga's life is sad and wasted, Larsen, herself the daughter of a Danish mother and a black father, is tougher on her than Lewis was on Carol.  She's honest about it when Helga Crane (she often uses the full name) is vain, shallow, or inconsiderate.  The narrator doesn't have to say anything, but Helga's own thoughts accuse her.  I appreciate that Helga doesn't have to be a saint to be oppressed.  Whether it's bigotry, assimilationism, or Christianity, Larsen opposes the forces that want to mute Helga's vibrancy.

I think the thing that's most remarkable about this book is how it describes color, not just the wide range of "blackness," but the hues of clothing and furnishings.  The stages of Helga's life are shown in the colors she wears, with the bright hues of Denmark too loud for New York.  Ironically, her husband is named Pleasant Green.  And of course Helga must deal with being both black and white, and somehow neither.

Excerpt from "Break of Day"

1928
Colette, translated by Enid McLeod
Excerpt from Break of Day
B-

At 55, Colette looks back at how her romances have caused her friends and pets to think less of her, but she hopes she's getting to the stage where she can enjoy men as just friends.  (Spoiler, she'd marry her third husband in '35.)  Some of this excerpt is too vague and meandering.  I like the concrete details and the humor better.  And as always, her mother, even in just a brief letter, is a scene-stealer.

The Gnome King of Oz

1927, 1985 Del Rey edition
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Gnome King of Oz
Bought newish for $5.95
Slightly worn paperback
B-

The title is interesting for a few reasons.  To begin with, Thompson is using the correct spelling of "gnome," with the G, as she usually does, unlike Baum trying to simplify things for the kiddies.  The king is "of" rather than "in" Oz, unlike Kabumpo and Grampa, even though they're Oz natives and Ruggedo is not.  He again hopes to conquer Oz, so he might become the king of Oz, but he of course fails.  The same number of years have passed in Oz as in the real world, so he's been on his island for the five years since Kabumpo.  He escapes thanks to an earthquake and a boy named Peter.

Peter is an all-American lad who plays baseball and would rather live in Philadelphia than Oz, unlike Button-Bright, who also hails from that city.  Neill draws Peter as more modern-looking than Button, or even than orphan Bob in Cowardly Lion.  He's nine years old, so we'll see how much he ages when he returns a couple books later.

The story doesn't get to Peter and Ruggedo till Chapter Four.  The first three chapters deal with the succession in Patch, which is the 705th small country within Oz.  The current population of the Emerald City is 57,318 "gay Ozites" and "nearly a hundred celebrities."  The 57,318 figure is identical to that in the sixth book, but Baum didn't count the celebrities separately.  Still, a pretty stable population. 

The new queen of Patch, which, like Ragbad and Kimbaloo, is another country with a very specific economy, appears to be Scraps.  Thompson does better with and by her this time, although Peter is the real hero of the book.  The two parties going to the Emerald City team up, as usual, although Ruggedo uses a magic cloak of invisibility and transport to go off on his own and try to conquer E.C.  Peter uses his baseball pitching skills to vanquish the gnome, who's again dunked in the Fountain of Oblivion and granted his freedom.  You'd think Ozma or somebody would know better by now, but this is one villain that the Royal Historians like to keep around.  As for Peter, he becomes a prince, like Dorothy becoming a princess long ago.

Unlike my other 1927 books, there are no lesbians in this story, unless you count bob-haired, short-skirted Queen Jazzma of Tune Town admiring Scraps's doggerel and serenading her, "Maiden stay, you are so gay, I'd like to look at you all day."  Actually, other than the recurring use of "gay," the main Plumly innuendo this time is "As for Peter, he was so excited over the adventure with Kuma's hand, he could think of nothing else."

Unnatural Death

1927, 1987 Perennial Library edition
Dorothy L. Sayers
Unnatural Death
Original price $4.95, bought used for 25 cents
Worn paperback
B-

I think I've only read this once before.  It's entertaining and reasonably plausible, but it didn't stick with me enough to reread it, or to search out other Peter Wimsey mysteries.  And yes, Lord Peter is whimsical, particularly with his literary quotes.

Continuing 1927 as the first Official Year of Lesbians in Straight Literature, we have two probably sapphic couples in this novel.  Two young women born in the 1850s decide to never marry and instead spend their lives together, which indeed happens.  The brother of one marries the sister of the other, and that couple has a granddaughter Mary, who ends up killing both great-aunts.  Mary also uses the crush, or schwärmerei (extreme enthusiasm), of an adoring younger woman, for her nefarious schemes.  I've read but don't own The Well of Loneliness, and it is notable that it didn't come out till the following year.  Clearly though, more sophisticated heterosexual writers were aware of, if not exactly tolerant of, lesbians.


Also notable is this sentence: "His jaw slackened, giving his long, narrow face a faintly foolish and hesitant look, reminiscent of the heroes of Mr. P. G. Wodehouse."  The Jeeves stories had been appearing for a decade at that point, although I won't be reviewing them till we get to 1931, for reasons I'll explain at that time.

But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes

1927, 1963 Curtis Books edition
Anita Loos
But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady
"Intimately Illustrated by Ralph Barton"
Original price $1.25, bought used for unknown
Worn paperback
B

This is obviously a sequel, from its clause title to its cover (an exact copy of GPB, except with brown hair instead of yellow).  Even the subtitle is the same as before, although it's not in diary format this time but just rambling chapters.  The chronology in GPB was muddled-- the March dates are screwy and Griffith's Intolerance came out in 1916, more than seven years before '25-- but for the most part it's pretty clear what happened when.  It's next to impossible to figure out where Dorothy's story fits in with Lorelei's, particularly the marriage to Lester.  That aside, it's another bubbly story about misfortune, with a happily-ever ending with the wrong man.  (At least Dorothy sort of loves Charlie, which is more than you can say about Lorelei and Henry.)

Again, a comparison and contrast to Mr. Lewis is in order.  Both Gantry and BGMB mock "Sinclare," as Lorelei spells it.  In this story, he's one of the intellectuals who drink beer in Jersey.  In both novels, the hypocrisy of some pious men is pointed out, particularly how they like to seduce teenaged girls.  (Dorothy gets seduced when and by whom she wants to be, but it's a close call when she's 16 and living with the sheriff.)  One of the girls Gantry seduces is Lulu, and Dorothy meets a prostitute named Lulu.  (It's unclear if this is the same Lulu that was Lorelei's maid in GBP.)  

Both novels feature stereotypical homosexual characters, surprisingly more so in BGMB.  In Gantry, the schoolgirl crushes are mentioned in passing, and the pansies are effeminate but not necessarily gay.  In BGMB, Muriel Devanant definitely and Lorelei's sister-in-law probably are lesbians.  And Dorothy's first husband, after developing a cocaine habit, gets a boyfriend.  Lester's funeral has to be one of the queeniest in fiction.  (Hence the LGBT label, even if it's not sympathetic or central, it does affect the plot.)

A brief trip to Europe also appears in each novel.  Elmer travels in order to seem more sophisticated and to be able to say that the U.S. is superior, which is not unlike Lorelei and Dorothy's reasons for travel in GPB.  Here, Dorothy goes to France with a different friend, and mostly so she can get a Paris divorce.  Marriage definitely isn't sacred in either novel, but since Gantry is a prominent minister, he can't divorce his wife and instead hopes for her eventual death.

Dorothy obviously is a more likable character than Elmer, but I have issues with her always preferring men who treat her like dirt.  (Charlie has to not only quit drinking but start insulting her and ordering her around in order for her to be "intreeged.")  Yes, it's more pleasant than to read of Elmer's relationships, but a smart cookie like Dorothy should have more self-respect.  Still, there's more of a story here than in the earlier Loos novel, so, even though the illustrations sometimes have a cartoonish garishness that Barton didn't show in GPB, I'd put this sequel on about a level with the original.

Elmer Gantry

1927, 1967 Signet edition
Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry
Original price 95 cents, bought used for unknown
Paperback in terrible condition
B-

In this novel, Lewis presents one of the most unappealing protagonists in American fiction, so it's not exactly an enjoyable book.  I would argue the fact that Gantry is so horrible, without any redeeming feature, makes the novel also less well-written.  And it's not as if any of the other characters, except perhaps Frank Shallard, are drawn with any complexity.  It's mostly Lewis telling us of the havoc that Gantry wreaks across several denominations.  New Thought also comes in for satire, and even paganism isn't spared.  At least Voltaire allowed a moment of hope, a message to "cultivate our garden."  This is Lewis's bleakest book yet.

Babbitt again makes a guest shot, briefly, and his minister, Reverend John Jennison Drew, understandably gets more to do here than in the earlier novel.  There's also a sympathetic Christian character who mocks Main Street.  There's another non-Hispanic Juanita, after Mrs. Haydock in Main Street, this time the blonde that Gantry's involved with early on.

It feels strange to keep calling him Gantry, because more than with Babbitt and Arrowsmith, or with Dodsworth coming up, Lewis calls the main character by the first name.  Usually, this would suggest an intimacy and/or fondness, but clearly Lewis would not want to identify too closely with Elmer.  I do notice though that Carol, Martin, and Elmer all have black hair.  Lewis's own hair was red, but perhaps that seemed less heroic.

The Hungry Tiger of Oz

1926, 1985 Del Rey edition

Ruth Plumly Thompson

Illustrated by John R. Neill

The Hungry Tiger of Oz

Bought newish for $5.95

Slightly worn paperback

B-

Except for Ozma being kidnapped by an "airman" (balloon-like man from the sky), this story is mostly about how the title character, Betsy, and a man made out of vegetables help the young Prince of Rash regain his throne.  (Chapter 19 is called "Reddy Restored to the Throne," so this isn't much of a spoiler if you read the List of Chapters first.)  Rash is a small pink kingdom on the edge of Ev, and, yes, the name leads to lots of puns.

There are surprisingly few if any innuendos, but to make up for this, the Del Rey cover (by Michael Herring I've discovered via the Internet) looks like this:





An exciting ride for Betsy!

 



Ahem.  Moving on, there are also a couple of egregious typos.  I haven't commented on this I believe, but nearly every Oz book contains some typos, no matter what edition.  Usually I ignore them, but this time we've got "shudddered" with three D's and a chapter called "The Vegetable Man of Ox."

Neill's work continues to be mostly unimpressive in the 1920s.  He misses chances to offer the Rash palace, or much of Down Town, the place run by King Dad and Queen Fi Nance.  With the latter, I kept thinking how this is three years before the Great Crash.





I do have to say that the androgyny of the illustrations of the child characters has reached a new height.  For over 20 years, Neill has been drawing most of the boys and many of the girls with that same Prince-Valiant-ish hairdo, so Dorothy and the rest have transitioned well into the 1920s.  But here Betsy, whom he used to show with long blonde hair, to help distinguish her from Dorothy's blonde bob, is also sporting a blonde bob.  The problem is, Prince Reddy is as well.  This leads to the picture on p. 191, where it looks like a tiny Betsy is standing on a giant Betsy's shoulder.  In fact, Reddy should be wearing one of the big wigs.  On p. 207, it looks like Betsy is at the coronation of her older sister, when it's Reddy in his crown.  Not only their hair but their eyes, noses, and mouths are similar.



Excerpt from "The Last of Chéri"

1926
Colette, translated by Roger Senhouse
Excerpt from The Last of Chéri
B-

This is one of the later chapters of the sequel to Chéri (1920), which I haven't read.  In isolation, it tells of the reunion of two lovers after five years, he having lived through the Great War and a loveless marriage, she having happily surrendered to an old age of fat and wrinkles.  He expects her to be unchanged, while she's much more realistic.  As a dual character study, it's pretty good, but not enough to make me want to read more.  (And from the Wikipedia description of the first novel and its 2009 movie version, I suspect that it's Claudine-level twisted sexuality.)

The Lost King of Oz

1925, 1985 Del Rey edition
Ruth Plumly Thompson
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Lost King of Oz
Bought newish for $5.95
Slightly worn paperback
B

This is Thompson's best so far.  The main plot deals with pre-wizard history, as she tries to resolve a loose end that Baum left.  That she doesn't do so completely satisfactorily is not entirely her fault, since, as we know, Baum contradicted himself.   In DatW, Ozma had claimed that both Ozma's nameless grandfather and Ozma's father were prisoners of Mombi, and then "When I was born she transformed me into a boy."  Baum had named Ozma's father Pastoria for the 1902 musical of The Wizard of Oz, which carried over to the book of Land, where Mombi confessed that the Wizard gave her the baby princess.

In Thompson's version, it's not only acknowledged that the Wizard helped Mombi, which Baum ignored after the Wizard's return to Oz, but the Wizard shows genuine remorse.  Thompson does, however, have Ozma remember her father and their old hunting lodge, implying that Ozma was older than a baby.  Thompson doesn't reconcile how Ozma is descended from both a long line of fairies and Pastoria, although she does mention the fairy queen Lurline.  Perhaps Ozma's mother was queen, and Pastoria the consort and then regent.  (I loathed Wicked, so I haven't read Son of a Witch, but I will admit that the theory, as described in Wikipedia, sounds plausible.)  After all, Ozma says in DatW, that all rulers of Oz once it became a fairyland were named Oz if male, Ozma if female, and "Pastoria" doesn't fit that.

In any case, the lost king is found but he abdicates so he can continue his career as tailor.  There's no long-range impact, other than an old mystery being cleared up.  And we do get to see Mombi again, before she's wiped out by water.  She's lost her magic because of Glinda, but she's still a mean old broad.  I like how Neill draws her Gillikin ex-witch costume to look old-fashioned among the simpler fashions around her.

Mombi journeys to the Emerald City accompanied by a goose she was going to cook for dinner (she's had to become a cook) and Snip, a button-boy of Kimbaloo.  The goose is actually the Prime Minister Pajuka.  (I kept thinking of the song "Paducah" from 1943's The Gang's All Here.)  She transformed him years ago and he demands to know what she did with the king, but she lost much of her memory when she lost her magic.  The three travelers pass through Catty Corners, so of course Thompson uses the word "pussy."  Then Snip finds Tora the Tired Tailor, who's also lost his memory, and no one yet realizes he's Pastoria.

The Dorothy subplot this time isn't as pointless as usual, for two reasons.  When she accidentally wishes herself to Hollywood, California, she ages all the years she's been in Oz, and then this is reversed when she returns to Oz, which resolves a bit the question of aging in Oz.  (Not entirely, since Thompson will add a proviso to this later.)  More importantly, Dorothy discovers a moving-picture stunt dummy that she brings to life, and his robe has a clue that helps restore Pastoria.

She and the dummy, whom she's named Humpy (oh dear), run into Kabumpo, whom I still don't like, even if Thompson assures us he's kind under his gruffness.  Kabumpo says that Kimbaloo is near Pumperdink, but that's not how it looks on the map.  (Kimbaloo by the way has an economy built on buttons and bouquets, and they seem to be doing better than Ragbad in these post-utopian times.)  The two parties who are going to the Emerald City team up.

Meanwhile Ozma and some of her friends have gone to Morrow, today.  This is mainly so Ozma can remember her father, and be away when he returns.  It also leads to what may well be the worst Scraps-bashing.  Ozma hushes her, Trot calls her a goose, Sir Hokus commands, "Silence, wench!", Betsy "looks shocked at the Patch Work Girl's heartless speech," and I think there's even a moment when the Scarecrow gets annoyed with her, although I can't find it now.

Still, flaws and all, this is an improvement on the first four Thompsons, and luckily not the last time she'll delve into Ozian pre-history.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

1925, 1963 Curtis Books edition
Anita Loos
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady
"Intimately Illustrated by Ralph Barton"
Original price $1.25, bought used for unknown
Worn paperback
B

First of all, the book has almost no resemblance to the 1950s movie.  (I don't know about the 1920s movie.)  Some of the names and personalities, and the general going-to-Europe plot, are the same, but this diary includes much more of Lorelei's thoughts, and, yes, I'm using that term for lack of a better.

Intellectuals loved this book when it came out-- the back cover quotes Mencken, James Joyce, Santayana, and Wharton-- and it was generally popular.  I've read it countless times, partly because it's so light and short.  If I can't rate it higher, it's probably because the originality has worn off and I do get a bit tired of the constant lookism.  Yes, it's funny when Dorothy tells Lady Beekman, "You have got to be the Queen of England to get away with a hat like that," but after awhile I'm sick of hearing how ugly most of the women other than Lorelei and Dorothy are, particularly Lorelei's future mother-in-law.

It's amusing to compare this to a Lewis novel.  (I don't know, but I'm guessing that Lewis enjoyed the writing of his almost-namesake, if Mencken and Wharton did.)  Unlike Carol Kennicott, Lorelei triumphs over her society, getting everything she wants and, as "Dr. Froyd" observes, having no inhibitions.  Although Mencken told Loos, "Little girl, you're making fun of sex and that's never been done in the U.S.A. before," I'd argue that Lewis had made fun of sex in Babbitt, although certainly not to the extent that Loos does.  Of course, all the Loos sex is implied, but we're meant to take "professional lady" as a double entendre.

One surprisingly similar aspect of both L-writers is that both Arrowsmith and Lorelei try to read Joseph Conrad as part of a doomed attempt at education.  In her case, she always gives books to her maid to read and report back on.  She almost makes a mistake and gives Lulu the wrong Conrad novel, The Nigger of the Narcissus.  The N-word has also appeared in Lewis, as well as A Passage to India, and of course Mark Twain.  It's outside the purpose of this blog to trace its usage in fiction, but, yes, I am aware of it, as I am of swear-words, although I'll only comment on it if I feel it's noteworthy.  Suffice to say, I'm decades before the time of political correctness, and some 1920s (and earlier) authors use ethnic slurs with awareness and sensitivity, and some (hello, Caricature) don't.

I do want to comment on gay stereotypes though.  In her introduction, Loos tells of a recent television interview, where she was asked what her new theme would be, if she was writing the story almost forty years later.  She answered, "Gentlemen Prefer Gentlemen."  Perhaps because of her long involvement in show biz, Loos seems pretty relaxed about homosexuality, and so she can joke about it as comfortably as she can about heterosexuality.  This will come up more in Gentleman's 1927 sequel, but even here she makes jokes about men who "batik" (since gay men are artistic) and women who dress like men and love cars.

Loos's introduction also tells of how seriously her first novel was taken in Russia.  There are some heavy issues in it, including attempted murder, but Loos's tone throughout is both light and sardonic, and always mischievous.  She's more Dorothy than Lorelei-- the novel was inspired by an incident where hair color mattered-- but there's no question that Lorelei has her grudging admiration.

The illustrations add to the fun, sometimes literally showing what the text conveys and other times undercutting it.  The second-most famous real-life person mentioned is the Prince of Wales, and Barton draws him, as well as somehow nude "Foley Bergere" dancers without actually showing any nudity.  And he perfectly conveys Dorothy and Lorelei's personalities.