The Lost Princess of Oz

1917, undated probably 1980s Contemporary Books edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Lost Princess of Oz
Bought new for $3.95
Paperback with stains and loose pages
B-

This is the second time Ozma is the title character, since she's again been kidnapped, this time by Ugu the Shoemaker.  The book has a number of plotholes and inconsistencies, most importantly that Ugu has learned some facts about Oz from the "books of his ancestors."  This magic includes that Ozma is the fairy ruler of Oz, that Glinda is the most powerful sorceress and owns the Great Book of Records, that the Wizard is Glinda's student, and that there's a magic dishpan in the Yip Country.  Only the last of these facts could've been recorded in a book owned even by Ugu's father, who abandoned the now middle-aged Ugu as a boy.  Ozma has clearly not been on the throne for decades.  (As for her being a fairy, that's a relatively recent development of Baum's, and somewhat inconsistent with her being changed into a boy who aged.)  Glinda has been around for decades, but I don't think she owned the Record Book before Ozma came to the throne, because in Land she spoke of her spies gathering knowledge about the Wizard, rather than of a book that automatically recorded significant events around the world.  And obviously, the Wizard hasn't been in training that long, only since the time of the fifth book at most, since he returned to Oz in the fourth and told of his apprenticeship in the sixth.

The two maps, one of Oz and the other showing the paths of the two main search parties, again put the Winkie Country in the West and right.  The second map is spoilery, being on p. 75 and showing Ugu's castle as the final destination.  But then this isn't really a mystery we're meant to solve.  It's a rather meandering quest, better than the search for Shaggy's brother, but less gripping than Ojo's hunt for magic ingredients.

Part of the problem is that there are too many characters.  Dorothy's group includes the other two little girls (Trot and Betsy), Button-Bright, the Wizard, the Patchwork Girl, the Cowardly Lion, the Woozy, the Sawhorse, Hank, and Toto, eleven total.  The other search parties (most of whom we don't follow) consist of two to four people.  I would've cut Dorothy's group down to her (since she wears the Magic Belt), Button-Bright (since he finds the peach that Ozma's hidden in), the Patchwork Girl (since she's clever and fun), the Cowardly Lion, the Woozy, and maybe Toto, five or six total.  Toto, by the way, talks more in this book, but since he's mostly whining about losing his growl, I'm inclined to agree with the other animals that he shouldn't talk so much.  The Cowardly Lion is as insightful as ever.

Baum still hasn't found a way to distinguish Trot and particularly Betsy as unique from Dorothy.  In the illustrations, Betsy has longer hair, as she did in Rinkitink.  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.

The other party we follow is the pair from Yip, Cayke the Cookie Cook (owner of the Dishpan) and the Frogman.  The latter is like the Wogglebug in that he thinks his size and education make him very wise and impressive, but he takes a humbling bath in the Truth Pond, which since its appearance in Road has gained a plaque explaining its purpose.  They're joined by two of the bears from Bear Center.  Eight years after Teddy Roosevelt left office, teddy bears are still popular enough to inspire a whole city of them.

Ugu thinks he's stolen all the magic of Oz, but he doesn't know about the Nome King's Magic Belt or the magic of the Bear King.  The Bear King can show you anything in the world, which leads to a great "infinity picture" of the united parties watching Ugu watch them watch him etc.  As for the Belt, Dorothy isn't sure how to work it, despite having used it a bit in Ozma.  She reveals that she's been practicing with it, a time when Baum should show not tell.  She finds that the Belt will only grant one wish a day by closing her right eye and wiggling her "left toe" (which one?), restrictions that did not exist in Ozma or Emerald City, and then she manages to perform at least three wishes in quick succession.

This book could definitely have used some revision, but it's still better than Road, with an actual villain and plot, and more interesting places to visit.  Of these, the City of Thi is probably best, with the diamond-shaped people who eat thistles, ride around in very slow auto-chariots pulled by dragons, and obey the man who's secretly their king.  There's an odd picture on p. 165 of the giants of Herku, all of whom are bearded and fierce, except for one clean-shaven, vain-looking man.  I suspect this was a caricature of someone Neill knew.

This is my 200th post (not counting the introduction), so let's see how things stack up since Vanity Fair. The breakdown was then
1 F
2 F+s
2 D-s
3 D's
7 D+s
6 C-s
12 C's
21 C+s
16 B-s
19 B's
9 B+s
2 A-s

There are the same number of F's and D-s, but there's another F+, another D, and another D+.  C-s have increased to 8, C's to 15, and C+s to 37.  B-s have tripled, with 53 now!  B's have more than doubled, with 43 total.  B+s have almost tripled, to 21.  And there are three more A-s.  So it's been a good seven decades.

I've also posted more this month than any of the five since I started, thanks to lots of children's books and short stories.  I'm going to be busier for awhile, so I'll probably slow down this spring, especially as I hit Sinclair Lewis and other novelists of the 1920s and '30s.

Come out of the Kitchen!

1916, original Century Co. edition
Alice Duer Miller
Illustrations by Paul Meylan
Come out of the Kitchen!: A Romance
Bought used (of course) for $3.50
Hardcover with broken spine and worn cover
B

I always want to add "And Live!" after the word "Kitchen."  Despite the melodramatic title, this is a fun, "modern" book.  At one point, Cora is supposed to be playing classical but breaks out into ragtime, and no one notices.  Some of the illustrations look like photographs, but in a silent-movie-still sort of way.  And the cavalier way the secondary romances are treated, as if it doesn't really matter who ends up with whom beyond Crane and the cook, is more refreshing than sloppy.  (After all, it says "a" romance, not "a bunch of overlapping romances.")  Light, frothy fun, although it does include a friendly debate about the Civil War and a rich hero who tries not to be prejudiced against people based on color, gender, or class.

Mrs. Beazley's Deeds

1916
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mrs. Beazley's Deeds
B

The last short story in this collection is one of the better ones, as a female lawyer helps a woman and her three kids escape jerky Mr. Beazley.  Of course there's a twist, as always, with the lawyer's profession not being immediately revealed.  I like that Gilman made things darker than usual, the male chauvinist pig more piggish, although still plausible.  It makes Mrs. Beazley's triumph that much better.

This collection definitely averages out to B-.  Like I said, Gilman generally stays on the pretty-good level.

Joan's Defender

1916
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Joan's Defender
B-

Young Joan is saved from her bullying brother and neglectful parents for a couple years, during which she stays with her awesome uncle and his awesome family.  He cuts her too long hair, teaches her jiu-jitsu, and generally lets her reach her potential.   She returns home and kicks her brother's butt.  I don't get why she couldn't have stayed at the ranch, but whatever.  A reasonably happy ending, even if her nuclear family still sucks.  (It's like if Harry Potter went to Hogwarts for a couple years and then had to stay with the Dursleys for the rest of his adolescence.)

Rinkitink in Oz

1916, undated probably 1970s Henry Regnery edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
Rinkitink in Oz
Bought new for $3.95
Somewhat worn paperback
B

I don't think this is the copy I had as a child, because that copy I read every summer floating on an inflatable raft in our pool.  It seemed appropriate for a story set on islands, and I suspect it got waterlogged over the years.  In any case, it was a big part of my childhood, connecting imagination and leisure.  I liked Inga for his bravery, loyalty, and ingenuity, and envied him the three magic pearls.  I liked Bilbil's sarcasm, but I don't think I cared very much for the title character, who wasn't as funny as the author thought.


The story is set mostly outside of Oz, but we get a map of Oz and some of the surrounding countries.  West and Winkies are on the right.  I've always been sort of dyslexic about left and right, in that I can't parse which is which immediately, and I'm terrible at giving street directions, so I wonder if I can blame Baum.  In any case, Pingaree is the island on the upper right.  Regos and Coregos (inspired by "regent" and "coregent"?) are off the map.

Some of the story takes place in the Nome Kingdom.  Baum originally wrote the story as a non-Oz book a decade before, so Kaliko acts more like Roquat than his usual self.  Interestingly, before agreeing to accept the King and Queen of Pingaree as his slaves, he makes sure that they aren't allies with Oz, because he doesn't want to annoy Ozma.  Does this mean that Ev was allied with Oz during Ozma?  If so, when was the treaty made?  During the Wizard's time?  Or is Ozma less interventionist these days, and so Kaliko is only worried if Ozma has a darned good reason to interfere?  In any case, Dorothy and the Wizard, although on foot, arrive in the nick of time to save the day.  It's too bad that Inga didn't get to rescue his parents himself.  (And it's too bad he has a name that, thanks to Three's Company among other things, would soon sound like that of a bosomy blonde Swedish girl.)

The reference to "Hottentots" I mentioned in the Patchwork Girl review is that when Glinda and the Wizard are trying to change Bilbil back to Prince Bobo, one of the transitional phases is "tottenhot," here defined as "a lower form of man."  Adding insult to injury, this is followed by a cross-eyed "mifket," which is "a great step in advance."

Back in Land, Glinda said she didn't deal in transformations, which are only for dishonest witches.  Maybe she's now willing to do unclean magic in a good cause.  The wizard figures out that Bilbil is enchanted because the goat can speak in the Nome Kingdom, never mind that Billina did as well.

Neill's artwork is his best in awhile, maybe helped by this being a more traditional fairytale.  He's generally successful with the three main characters, and of course the palaces are gorgeous, even when in ruins.  The most interesting image is that of the Regos soldier on p. 52.  This invader from the north has a spiked helmet and an eagle-headed axe.  Was this Neill's version of the "Hun" in WWI propaganda?

Anne of the Island

1915, 1992 Bantam edition
L. M. Montgomery
Anne of the Island
Bought new for $2.95
Good condition paperback
B

If you can put aside that for a book about Anne's four years at Redmond College there isn't really that much about college, like, oh, the courses she's taking, this is equal to the first two "Anne" books.  It's mostly about romances, Anne's own (including, if I counted correctly, five proposals), Diana's (she marries good old Fred and has Fred, Jr. by the end of the book), her friends', and some random middle-aged strangers that show up only so that Anne can matchmake them. 

There's thankfully less of Davy, although we are treated to the misadventures that ensue when he skips Sunday School, Dora the Dreary in tow.  (Anne is visiting nameless friends at Carmody, another town on the island.)  I totally forgot that Miss Lavendar's posse returns, twice, with Charlotta the Fourth now wearing a pompadour.  Miss Lavendar's stepson Paul has developed the amazing ability to age twice as fast as everyone else, so he's thirteen when he should be twelve, and sixteen when he should be fourteen.

The best new character is frivolous Philippa, who has a swarm of beaux but falls for an ugly minister.  I still can't remember much about Priscilla, other than her aunt is a writer.  And who was the other roommate again?  Not Aunt Jimsie, but the classmate.  Not too memorable.

Speaking of writers, Anne starts to pursue her professional writing career, helped along by Diana.  She's hoping to return to teaching-- now with a B.A.!-- but she wants to write, too.  When Gilbert almost dies, she realizes she loves him (although I read her as lesbian for the most part), and he proposes to her again.  She accepts, but they'll have to wait three years, as he gets his medical training. 

As for readers, well, they only had to wait two years for Anne's House of Dreams, although that would end up being Book 5.  More about that later....

Dr. Clair's Place

1915
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Dr. Clair's Place
B-

A depressed woman is saved from suicidal thoughts by visiting the title location, a benign sanitorium, where visitors perform positive, interesting tasks in a wholesome location somewhere in the Southern California hills.  The irony that Gilman would herself commit suicide twenty years later, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, is heart-breaking.  As Yellow Wallpaper shows, she knew that "rest cures" didn't always cure.  And there are some lives that may be too unbearable to continue.  Knitting and jigsaw puzzles are not enough.  But as a suggestion of reform for sanitoriums, it's still an insightful work.

By the way, there are now more posts for the 1910s than for any other decade.  This took awhile because most of the ones for the sixteenth century are from the 1590s.  There are still more posts for the nineteenth century than the twentieth, but we're well on our way.

Spoken To

1915
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Spoken To
B-

On the one hand, I applaud Lucille "Luke" Wright's bravado in going out in public alone, even as late as ten o'clock, despite warnings that she may be "spoken to."  On the other, it brings up all sorts of memories of times that men have yelled out rude things to me, and not "Hey, Baby!" but really crude, sometimes menacing things.  Once I didn't reply to a homeless man, so he called me a whore.  Sometimes I'll ignore it, sometimes I'll even yell things back, but there is always that fear, even after a lifetime as a pedestrian, that someday one of those men is going to attack me violently, that that group of young jerks yelling things out of a car as they pass are going to come back.  The worst that happens to Luke is in Paris she gets whispered to by the same cad who propositioned her aunt twenty years ago, and she puts him in his place with a smile.  She doesn't even get pinched like Claudine.

I remember Woody Allen, of all people, talking about how women who'd been young in New York City before World War II used to go out at night unescorted.  I think there was a time, of which this short story was probably at the beginning, when women were starting to exercise their freedom, even if just to go to lectures and the library, before fear of crime took some of that freedom away.  I've often gone out by myself at night, including in London, but I've never been as blithe about it as Luke.  So I think this is as dated in its very progressivism as Herland.

Herland

1915
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Herland
B-

Three modern men of various types, not unlike the suitors in A Mischievous Rudiment, discover a land populated solely by women.  Narrator Van is quietly realistic, while Jeff is chivalrous and Terry is macho.  Van is a sociologist, so he's particularly interested in how this society works.  Jeff puts women on pedestals, so he adapts fairly well, once he realizes that the women don't need his protection.  But Terry agrees with Wyndham that women need to be mastered.  The three men find brides among the Herlanders, but Terry's marriage is very unhappy, culminating in attempted marital rape.

For 2000 years, the women have been reproducing through parthenogenesis.  They're aware of sexual intercourse because of the animals they breed (Gilman is amusing about cats), but it's not part of their own lives.  When Elladora, Celis, and Alima get married, the whole nation is excited about the possibility of Fatherhood.  But sex is only seen as for reproduction, in a land where Motherhood is central.  This leads to difficulties even for the more understanding Van.  (Jeff and Celis soon decide to have a child.)

It's interesting to see what Gilman imagines a country without men would be like:  peaceful, crime-free, clean, well-fed, well-educated, and generally well-run.  There are also of course none of the limiting gender stereotypes, for men or women, that plagued her time.  However, how utopian is this utopia?  Besides the lack of sex (including lesbianism), it's a world where only women who are good enough, as defined by society, can have a child, with a few rare women ("Over Mothers") being allowed more than one.  Yet motherhood, in the sense of childbirth, is seen as the great act of a woman's life.  On the other hand, most women don't raise their children themselves, because that would be like, as Gilman says, practicing dentistry on your family when you don't have the training.

As utopias go, sure, I'd rather live here than in More's, although not as much as Oz.  At least I'd be able to have an interesting job and lots of friends, without having to confess my "sins" to my husband, as in More's land.  In Oz, I'd have to live where Ozma told me to, but I'd otherwise have some measure of freedom, and be surrounded by magic.  Ironically, magic aside, I think Oz is the most plausible utopia, or dystopia, I've examined so far.  Herland, in its isolation, with "savages" as the nearest neighbors, most resembles Erewhon.

This is a very dated novella but I think it'll be interesting to look back on when I get up to my "radical feminist" books of the 1970s.  And it's not a bad little story, without the dull patches of Erewhon, although none of the hm moments of that novel.

The Scarecrow of Oz

1915, undated probably 1970s Rand McNally edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Scarecrow of Oz
Bought new for $1.95
Waterlogged paperback
B-

Our old friend doesn't show up until the second half of this Oz book, although he sort of saves the day.  It could more accurately be called Orks in Oz, after the bird-like creatures that come to the rescue several times, but I suppose that wouldn't have sold as well.  Or it could've been Trot and Cap'n Bill in Oz, since those two find their way to the fairyland.  There are some references to their two earlier adventures, but the main thing you need to know is he's like her unofficial uncle.  (I think her father is dead, although her mother is mentioned, but forgotten later in the series.)  I think their pre-Oz journey, with concerns about running out of candles and food, is more interesting than what happens in Jinxland, another of the mini-kingdoms on the edges of Oz.  It is notable that there are still wicked witches, despite Ozma's decree.


Our favorite good witch is now back home in the Quadling Country, looking out for people with her Great Book of Records of course, but I still can't tell if she's ruling the South.  She sends the Scarecrow to Jinxland, with a spider-bridge reminiscent of one of the Mo adventures.


Speaking of Mo, Trot and Cap'n Bill spend a night in that land, Baum having forgotten that there is no night in Mo.  They meet the Bumpy Man and eat their way through a popcorn snowstorm, finding an old friend in a snowbank.

Button-Bright is back, having met Trot and Cap'n Bill in Sky Island.  He's older now and more articulate than in DatW, although he's also further developed his habit of getting lost.  The three of them permanently move to Oz, with no immigration debate, or concern for the families back home.  Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, by the way, now live in a cottage near the palace, allowing Dorothy to continue her aristocratic lifestyle.  Yet, she's still down to earth.  Betsy has undergone a personality change and is now shy, rather than Oklahomically frank.


Neill's best drawings this time are of the title character, in many moods, and Princess Gloria of Jinxland.  Ozma and Glinda are supposed to be more beautiful, but I like the way Neill does Gloria's hair.

If I Were a Man

1914
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
If I Were a Man
B-


The title is a bit misleading.  It sounds like it's going to be in first person, like When I Was a Witch.  And Mollie doesn't exactly become a man.  Her consciousness is submerged in that of her husband's, so she's reacting with double vision to his typical day.  An outright body switch story might've worked better, but Gilman does bring up some interesting points, including that women's hats are still as ridiculous as they were in the previous decade, and allows Mollie some empathy for men.

Maurice

1914, published posthumously 1971, this Norton edition 2006
E. M. Forster
Maurice
Bought new for $13.95
Very good condition paperback
B+

It's easy to see why this book wasn't published in Forster's lifetime.  Even in 1960, the time of his charming as ever "Terminal Note" (afterword), the year before Dirk Bogarde starred as Melville Farr in Victim, homosexual acts were still illegal in England.  This changed in 1967, with the Sexual Offenses Act.  And Forster knew that the most controversial part of this novel was the happy ending, that two men go off into the sunset together.  If you take a look at, for instance, mainstream movies or YA novels of the 1960s, you'll see that death or at least separation was the acceptable end for gay couples.

Not publishing the book in its time seems to have given Forster more freedom than usual.  It's seen in the profanity, as in the crude but insightful "You could call your cousin a shit if you liked, but not a eunuch."  And it's seen in the clear but not graphic contrast of Maurice's emotional but asexual relationship with Clive vs. his earthier and more honest relationship with Alec.  Clive is a hypocrite, but he's his own greatest victim.


The book is also about class, with the ironic suggestion that men can cross class lines more successfully than straight couples, if they're willing to risk everything.  Maurice learns, from his hypnotist, that homosexuals are tolerated much more in France and Italy.  Like Oscar Wilde, who's mentioned a few times as a type that Maurice sometimes fears to become, Maurice and his lover will find more acceptance in Paris.


The novel is also about education, from school and life.  Maurice and Clive meet at Cambridge, although their relationship indirectly causes Maurice to be expelled.  They have enough privacy in their rooms to flirt, but they do go off to the country on a motorcycle.  Forty-six years after finishing the novel, Forster saw the most dated aspect to be the disappearance of the "greenwood."  Miss Honeychurch could no longer be kissed among the violets, and Mr. Hall could no longer press his cheek against his lover's in a field.  The novel ends in 1912, and the older Forster knew that he couldn't have looked too far into the future, because the First World War was about to change everything.

I sort of like that Maurice and the other characters aren't exactly likable.  It makes him more heroic when he takes a stand.  Forster is quite blunt that Maurice and Clive are misogynists, especially towards their mothers and sisters.  (Poor Ada!)  Clive thinks he overcomes his homosexuality, so he marries, but the marriage is obviously as empty physically as his with Maurice, and without the deeper connection he has with Maurice.  I think of Alec as bisexual, but, unlike Clive, he isn't someone who cares about labels.  He can't even blackmail properly, so what's tragedy for Mr. Farr is comedy for Mr. Hall.

I think this book has more substance, more at stake, than Room with a View, but it's not as heavy and fatalistic as Howards End.  So it's better than both, but this is only my second reading, and I'm not sure how it'll stack up against A Passage to India (1924).  I do know it inspired the best Merchant Ivory adaptation of Forster I've seen, the 1987 film with Hugh Grant as Clive.  The movie isn't as good or as optimistic as the book-- with the Wilde-like Lord Risley being sentenced, a warning to the young couple-- but it's worth seeing.

The Old Lady and the Bear

1914
Colette, translated by Enid McLeod
The Old Lady and the Bear
C+

This is only three pages, but it still feels like it takes too long to get to the point, comparing political debates to the title characters in a folktale.

Tik-Tok of Oz

1914, undated probably 1970s Reilly & Lee edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
Tik-Tok of Oz
Bought new for $7.95
Mostly good condition hardcover but with slightly worn corners and a few stains
C+

This is based on the musical The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, which was based on Ozma of Oz and elements of DatW and Road.  So if you feel de ja vu, it's understandable.  For instance, Betsy plucks Rose Princess Ozga, like Dorothy picking a princess in the Vegetable Kingdom.  It gets a bit strange when the Shaggy Man and Polychrome don't remember meeting three books ago, especially when he offers himself as a beau to replace her lost bow.  In Road, Polly looked like she was Dorothy's age, although she seems to be a young lady here.


Perhaps due to the roots in a stage musical, there's also a romance between Ozga (Ozma's distant relative, I'm not sure how that works with plants and fairies) and Private Files, after he resigns from the army.  Queen Ann Soforth (one of the best punny names, and her sister Salye is decades before the comic Sally Forth), the ruler of the very small kingdom of Oogaboo, has decided to conquer the world.  Glinda, who's still living in the north, diverts her army, and so they meet up with Shaggy and friends near the Nome Kingdom.  Files is the only private in the army, similar to Ozma's army in the third book.  When he quits, she drafts Tik-Tok.  Again, Baum makes fun of the military, particularly the officers, here on the edge of WWI.  There's a moment when the Long-Eared Hearer tells the Nome King that there's a war somewhere in the world, and Ruggedo replies, "Bah! there's [sic] always a war!"


Roquat has changed his name but not his personality.  Thanks to the Water of Oblivion, he's forgotten what he was once called but somehow relearned all his wickedness.  He supposedly reforms by the end of the story, but I think his humility is feigned.  Kaliko is the new king, and seems like he'll be a vast improvement, although that will be debatable in Rinkitink.


Shaggy is looking for his long-lost brother, a prisoner of Ruggedo's for ten years, which means probably even at the time of the third book.  The army of Oogaboo joins Shaggy's mission to save his brother, though Shaggy hopes to win over the Nomes using his Love Magnet.  Even as a child, I thought there was something a bit, ahem, queer about the effect this Magnet has on the Royal Gardener, who dresses in pink and ribbons, and "dotes" on Shaggy, calling him a "lovely, lovely man."


(I've skimmed a bit of this early draft of The Tik-Tok Man of Oz, from when it was called Ozma of Oz, http://static.nypl.org/MOTM/Ozma/Ozma.txt , and "Gardy" not only tries to embrace Shaggy, but he offers him all the money from his pockets.)


What actually conquers Ruggedo is the adolescent dragon Quox, a 3056-year-old who's being sent by Tititi-Hoochoo as punishment for disrespect to his ancestor, the still living first dragon.  Ruggedo has the would-be invaders pushed through the redundantly named Hollow Tube, where they meet a land of powerful fairies ruled by a private citizen.  The travelers ride on Quox's back but dismiss his help in the conquest until it's almost too late.


Overall, the book is uneven, meandering despite the quest.  I do like some details, like the fog-breathing Rak who politely accepts the Oogaboo Army's previous engagement to conquer the world and doesn't kill them.  Shaggy gets away with breaking the fourth wall when he tells Betsy Bobbin, the Dorothy wannabe, that no one knows what's going to happen next, except the person writing the story.


Betsy was always my least favorite of the four recurring little girl characters.  (Trot is coming up.)  There's nothing wrong with her, but she just seemed redundant.  She of course moves to Oz, after a debate between Ozma, the Wizard, Tik-Tok, and Dorothy about immigration, and immediately becomes besties with Ozma and Dorothy.


Her mule, Hank, also emigrates, and suddenly finds he has the power of speech.  There's no explanation of why he didn't talk in the Nome Kingdom, as Billina did.  Perhaps he didn't know he could.  We do finally find out why Toto doesn't talk, when the Pink Kitten does.  He just doesn't want to, preferring to communicate nonverbally.  He finally says, "All right.  Here I go!"  As I recall, he talks quite a bit more in the eleventh book.


I'm using the "utopias" tag again, even though not much time is spent in Oz, since we learn that Oz "is a Land of Love, and here friendship outranks every quality."  That's debatable, but that's Ozma, whom in the previous book was said to enforce whether people lived in the city or the country.  She's a loving little control freak, our glorious leader is.


The final chapter is called "The Land of Love," and every previous chapter is alliterative, the best of these being "Ruggedo's Rage is Rash and Reckless."

Neill's artwork isn't particularly notable, except for the illustration that spans front cover, spine, and back cover, with a wagon hitched to a frightened-looking Hank.  The passengers are Shaggy, Tik-Tok, and the four main female characters: Polychrome, Betsy, Ozga, and Ann.  Three of these gals (all but Ann) kiss Shaggy's brother, to break the spell of ugliness Ruggedo has cast.  To my surprise, this was not in the musical, or at least not in that early draft.

Her Beauty

1913
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Her Beauty
C+


Rushed, under-developed story of a plain-Jane fashion designer whose first and only love chooses a prettier, shallower bride.  The twist ending is that he's now a widower, so they can finally be together.

On Tour

1913
Colette, translated by Anne-Marie Callimachi
On Tour, from Music-Hall Sidelights
C+

Although there are some nice details, I can't say I was particularly drawn into Colette's glimpses of backstage.  After her first divorce, she worked as a dancer, although at the time this was published, she was on her second marriage and I think had left the stage.  According to Wikipedia, in 1907 her onstage kiss with her girlfriend in Rêve d'Égypte almost caused a riot, which definitely would've made a more interesting tale than this one of weary performers in a "hick" town.

The Patchwork Girl of Oz

1913, undated probably 1970s Rand McNally edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Patchwork Girl of Oz
Bought new for $1.95
Paperback with stains and bent corners 
B+

Baum's "post-Oz" books didn't sell too well, and meanwhile his fans begged for more Oz books.  According to him, one of them suggested communicating with Oz by wireless telegraph.  Glinda found out and the Shaggy Man knew about telegraphs, so here we are, with a new Oz book.  And it's a good one.

The best thing about it is the new characters, starting with the title character.  The Patchwork Girl, or Scraps, as she comes to be known, is the first and probably best of the female constructed personages (Baumian for "people").  Like the Scarecrow, Jack Pumpkinhead, and to some degree the Tin Woodman, she's put together out of bits and pieces and then animated.  In fact, the Powder of Life is used on her, just like Jack.  (More about that later.)  When the Scarecrow meets her, he sees how much they have in common, and they become mutually infatuated.  In fact, if there's any truly canonical ship in the mostly prepubescent, pre-romance Oz, it's Scarecrow/Scraps.  Gilbert M. Sprague marries them off in The Patchwork Bride of Oz (1997), which I haven't read.

But it isn't just as a love interest for one of the favorite established characters that she's appealing.  Ojo secretly gives her extra doses of brains, and she uses them, from "Cleverness" to "Poesy" to "Bravery."  She's also very kind to Ojo because he's her friend, although she doesn't have a heart to make her sympathize with people she doesn't know.  The main quality she doesn't have is dignity, which she doesn't care for.  Baum's successor Ruth Plumly Thompson features Scraps more than some of his other characters, but I don't think she really gets Scraps, making her just goofy rather than also clever.

Ojo is the actual main character, with Scraps as his main sidekick.  He's somewhat reminiscent of Tip, but without the gender swap at the end of the story.  Like Tip, he has black hair and a mysterious background, and he lives all alone with a guardian.  Unc Nunkie is much kinder than Mombi, but because he speaks only one syllable at a time, Ojo hasn't grown up with much conversation.  As for the mysterious background, Unc Nunkie would be King of the Munchkins if "his people [hadn't] united with all the other countries of Oz in acknowledging Ozma as their sole ruler."  Was he the Munchkin king mentioned in the third and/or fourth Oz books?  What about the Tin Woodman still ruling all the Winkies?  What about all the little kingdoms that Baum and his successors will scatter through Oz, including in the very next book?  Thompson will try to sort out some of this in her books, including Ojo in Oz (1933), but there's probably no answer that can cover everything.

Ojo is called "the Unlucky," and he's more serious than Tip was, but, as I said, he does interfere with the creation of a creature who will be brought to life with the Powder.  And here again, we find Baum contradicting himself.  In Land, the Crooked Magician was called Dr. Nikidik, but here he's named Dr. Pipt.  Perhaps he's Nikidik Pipt, or Pipt Nikidik.  More importantly, in DatW, we were told that the Crooked Magician had died (this was before death became rare in Oz), and left the last of the Powder of Life to a distant relative, who used it on a bearskin rug.  Yet, here he is, stirring away at four kettles, making the Powder of Life.

The Powder takes six years to make.  That means it's been at least six years since the second book, which is plausible.  The earliest batch of the Powder was tried on the Glass Cat, another of the nifty new characters.  She's not exactly likable, with her conceit about her beauty and her brains ("you can see 'em work"), but she is fun.  If Scraps is the Jack Pumpkinhead to Tip's Ojo, then Bungle the useless cat is what he gets instead of the very useful Sawhorse.  Ojo is indeed unlucky.

The Powder brings to life one more creature, a phonograph named Victor Columbia Edison (a not very dated joke almost a century later).  In the 1909 Oz book, Dorothy said there couldn't be a phonograph in Oz.  (Only she pronounced "phonograph" in some cutesy Kansas way.)  But Dr. Pipt, who's been living a very isolated life for at least six years, owns a phonograph.  Maybe his wife, Margolotte, bought it, but it shows that Oz isn't entirely separate from the real world, or at least wasn't before Glinda cut it off at the end of Emerald City.  Vic, as Scraps nicknames him, is a minor character, just turning up so Baum can make fun of current musical genres.  When he meets the Shaggy Man, he plays a song about "coal-black Lulu," blues I guess.  This is borderline racist, although Baum's definition of a popular song remains pertinent and funny:  "One that the feeble-minded can remember the words of and those ignorant of music can whistle and sing."  (I like a lot of pop songs by the way, even the Spice Girls.)

The phonograph gets the last of the Powder through an accident, the same accident that causes the Liquid of Petrifaction to fall on Unc Nunkie and Margolotte.  This Liquid is similar to what Mombi threatened to make Tip into a statue with, only she was brewing hers fresh.  Since there's no more Powder of Life, Dr. Pipt will have to spend six years stirring another batch, unless Ojo can gather together the ingredients for the antidote to the Liquid.  So this is a "quest" Oz book, rather than a "meandering" Oz book, which is a good thing.  In the "meandering" Oz books, there's no urgency.  The characters take us on a tour of Oz.  In the "quest" books, we still get to see weird people and creatures, but we're not just tourists.

Ojo's love for his uncle, and concern for Margolotte, carries him forward through frustration and sometimes danger.  He even breaks the law to gather a six-leaf clover.  We get another look at the legal system in Oz, which has changed since Eureka's arrest in DatW.  Nowadays, especially in the Emerald City, law-breaking is rare, but prisoners are treated as guests, except for how they have to wear a ghost-like (or Klan-like) white sheet in public.  This is meant to save them embarrassment, but it of course draws attention.

Ozma is cracking down on magic-makers.  Starting in Emerald City, Glinda is the only one allowed to perform magic, except for the Wizard, whom she's training.  Ozma herself will gradually stop performing magic, which makes you wonder why she doesn't just give the Magic Belt back to the Nome King.  She does allow Ojo to continue his quest, but when it dead-ends because of the Tin Woodman's kind-hearted but stern refusal to allow Ojo to take the wing of a yellow butterfly, she has the Wizard bring Nunkie and Margolotte back to life.  The Crooked Magician becomes no longer Crooked and no longer a Magician.

Another of the ingredients is three hairs from a Woozy's tail.  The Woozy is just adorable, made all of squares and cubes, with a far from terrifying roar and an impressive ability to shoot fire when he hears the words "Krizzle-Kroo!"  I always wished there was more of the Woozy in later books, but Baum does less with him than with the Glass Cat, who's very memorable in the penultimate Baum book.

Speaking of cats, Eureka is referred to but not seen.  No one explains how she got back to Oz, or why she's now pink, when she was only temporarily pink because of the underground suns in DatW.  Billina, by the way, has hatched out another baker's dozen of chicks since the Shaggy Man left the Emerald City, making about 7000 total.  It's not clear if this includes her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.

Another of the returning animals is the Wise Donkey, who was visiting from Mo (no explanation of how he crossed the Deadly Desert) at the time that Glinda cut Oz off from the rest of the world.

There's Mo-ish wordplay in the description of giant Mr. Yoop, e.g. "P.S. Don't feed the Giant yourself."  We'll meet Mrs. Yoop in Tin Woodman.

Less dangerous than the hungry giant, but more troublesome to a (mostly) grown-up (mostly) politically correct reader like yours truly, are the Tottenhots.  An obvious reversal of "Hottentots," they're dusky little savages.  They're more pleasant than some of the people that Ojo encounters, including the lazy (white) Quadling, but they are racistly depicted, in text and art, although there's a much more offensive reference to Hottentots in a later Baum book.  (I have mixed feelings about the Books of Wonder edition of Patchwork Girl, which tries to omit the racism, but I don't own it, so I'm not reviewing it here.)

This is also another Oz book with a man flirting with a little girl (like Dorothy's masher in the last book).  The Chief of the Horners has nineteen daughters, from a tiny child to an almost grown woman.  Diksey Horner winks at all of them.  They "demurely cast down their eyes because their father is looking."  The chief is bringing them up "according to rules and regulations laid down by a leading bachelor."  Scraps thinks the bachelor should be skinned alive because the girls aren't allowed to romp and be jolly, like she does.

The Horners are at war with the Hoppers, due to a misunderstood pun about understanding.  Scraps and Dorothy make peace.

Dorothy and the Scarecrow have joined Ojo's quest for the second half, Bungle and the Woozy waiting for them in the Emerald City.  With Scraps, they make an awesome four-person team, particularly in Neill's illustrations.

Neill's art is about as good as usual, but contains errors of the wrong characters at the wrong points of the story, e.g. the Shaggy Man by the Trick River.  Neill captures the Patchwork Girl's whimsical charm, and there's a delightful two-page illustration of the Scarecrow on one knee before her.  Some of the "meat people" look nothing like they did almost a decade before in Land, such as the Guardian of the Gates and Jinjur.  One of my favorite renditions of Dorothy ever is the full-page portrait on p. 211.  He's hit or miss with Ojo, but the final picture, of Ojo reuniting with his uncle, the words "THE END" under the OZ logo, is just right.


Altogether, it's the best Oz book since Land, and definitely one of the most interesting Oz books of all.  By no means perfect, but a very welcome return.

Mrs. Elder's Idea

1912
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mrs. Elder's Idea
B-

Like "old" Mrs. Crosley, not-yet-elderly Mrs. Elder is a middle-aged woman with grown children and nothing to do.  Her idea is more radical, since it involves not only a career as a personal shopper, but a partial separation from her husband.  He'll live in the country and she'll live in the city, visiting each other a season out of the year, rather than both living unhappily in the suburbs.  He, of course, resists the idea but gives in, of course, finding that "two half homes and half a happy wife" to be "really more satisfying than one whole home, and a whole unhappy wife."  She and their children, who've moved in with her to pursue their careers, thrive.

Only one hundred years of this blog to go!

A Mischievous Rudiment

1912
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A Mischievous Rudiment
B-

The reason why I keep giving Gilman B-s is that she hits a level of better than average but generally not amazing, and stays there.  Some of the time I think the stories would be better if they weren't so short.  This is an example of one that could've been expanded at least into a novella.  The ironically named heiress Miss Bland has many suitors but narrows it down to three.  One of them, Wyndham, is the title character, since his belief that women like to be mastered is becoming outdated, despite recent fiction.  Miss Bland's answer to "Do you like Kipling?" would probably be "I don't like to be Kipled."  She's attracted to Wyndham's strength but not his machismo.  The other suitors are a yes-man and an intelligent nice guy.  If D. H. Lawrence were writing this story, she'd of course end up with Wyndham.

A century later, there are still real and fictional men who believe "A woman-- a real woman-- needs to be mastered!  She likes it.  She loves the man who can make her love him-- against her will!"  But I think that, thanks to Gilman and her successors, women like Miss Bland and men like Mr. Weston dismiss the idea more easily.

Mary Midthorne

1911, Curtis Publishing edition
George Barr McCutcheon
Mary Midthorne
Bought used (of course) for unknown
Hardcover with stains, worn corners and broken spine
B-

This is the first and perhaps only time I've seen a book with the copyright on the front cover, under a picture of the title character.  Mary is not actually the main character, since that's her brother Eric.  The two orphans are brought up by their aunt and uncle, who are convinced that the young people bear the curse of heredity from their murderer father and adulteress mother.  Meanwhile, cousin Chetwynd is a lying, lecherous brute who makes the Midthornes' lives miserable.  Before the novel is half over, Eric accidentally kills Chetwynd, and covers it up, with the help of detective Adam Carr, who's got his own soap-opera subplot going.

Despite all the melodrama, the book has a surprising amount of humor, from the occasionally Lemony-Snicketish narration to the character of Uncle Jabe, with his tales of fighting pirates and his life of fighting squirrels.  Every time there's a bit about the mischievous "quadrapeds," I smile. 

Of course, the book is mostly about Eric's various moral struggles.  He's in love with Joan, the judge's daughter, but is afraid she'll find out he's a murderer.  Before the crime, the two spend an innocent night shipwrecked on a local reef, although some are scandalized that she took off her (drenched) shoes and stockings.  There's a scene in Automobile Girls Along the Hudson where the title characters go wading and then have to hide their naked feet when a boy comes along.  Even in a novel like Mary Midthorne, dealing surprisingly frankly with such subjects as adultery, murder, and illegitimacy, young ladies mustn't undress their feet in front of young gentlemen.

The story is about redemption, not just Eric's, but that of his uncle and aunt, and eventually the entire town.  It's a dated novel of course, but it also looks ahead to more tolerant times than those of the Victorian period that it begins in.  I won't be keeping it because of the condition, but it is back in print.

Making a Change

1911
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Making a Change
B

Better than average short story for Gilman, since this time there are two women who improve their lives, and the mother-in-law saves the daughter-in-law from suicide.  Also, it's an early sympathetic look at daycare.  As usual, the husband is disapproving at first, but is won over when he sees how everyone's life, including his own, is improved.  And, yes, there are details about how much things cost.

Turned

1911
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Turned
B-

The "wife" and the "other woman" team up when the latter, a naive 18-year-old Swedish housemaid, becomes pregnant by the husband.  I find it a bit implausible that he's away on business for months at a time, but it does give the wife a chance to mull things over.  Points for Mrs. Marroner having a Ph.D.

The story reminds me a bit of Lummox by Fannie Hurst, where the title character was a pregnant Scandinavian maid.  I used to own it but I think I got rid of it years ago because it was too depressing.  This has a more upbeat, though still dramatic, ending.

Old Mrs. Crosley

1911
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Old Mrs. Crosley
B-

The title character is in her early 50s, as Gilman was at the time.  Mrs. Crosley's children are grown and she doesn't know what to do with her time.  Despite the initial objections of her children and husband, she starts an employment agency, which is of course a success.  (Small businesses are always much more successful in Gilman's world than in real life.)  This is less of a how-to-start-your-own-business story and more about the initial restlessness.

Secretary of Frivolous Affairs

1911, original Bobbs-Merrill edition
May Futrelle
Secretary of Frivolous Affairs
Bought used (of course) for $2.50
Hardcover with stains, worn corners and broken spine
B-


A generation after From 18 to 20, the seaside novel has started to consider the possibility of ladies working.  The title character here, Loulie Codman, grew up with servants and luxuries, but she and her elder sister Jo have fallen on comparatively hard times.  Jo might pursue teaching, which horrifies Loulie as much as it would a Jane Austen heroine a century earlier, but mostly because she thinks Jo is too beautiful to wear glasses.  Loulie decides to become a lady's companion, but a modern one who "speaks" French and baseball.  A wealthy widow, Mrs. Hazard, takes her on for that summer, at $3000.  The "frivolous affairs" are the social gatherings that Mrs. Hazard, her debutante daughter Laura, and her son Hap throw.


Hap, a football player at Harvard (he's an '09), is of course the love interest.  He's involved with an "older woman," Natalie, who's six years his senior.  Natalie seems to be the villain of the piece, apparently involved in insurance fraud over her missing jewellery, but she turns out to be all right in the end.  Not good enough for Hap of course.


Hap is a more developed character than either of the Charleses in From 18, but I can't say I like him.  Loulie swoons at his manly strength, but he seems a bit of a bully.  Every time he kisses her, she tries to be sensible and remind him of the class difference, but he kisses her into compliance.  The novel ends with her arm in a sling, an injury caused while she was trying to solve the tepid mystery, and she tells us, "There was no use struggling against a kiss.  I was on the injured list anyhow, and he was the best tackle Harvard ever had."  Hardy-har!


Meanwhile, Jo is going to marry Hap's uncle, because it's OK to marry a man 15 years older than you.  Besides, "'He would not have listened if I said no, so I didn't.'"  Yes, the girls love these men, but there's no reason to take away their consent.


If the book is this bad, why do I give it so much of a higher grade than From 18 to 20?  Well, I like the zippy narration and the posh setting.  It's nice how Mrs. Codman and more particularly her daughter are far from snobs.  I like seeing how the "fiends" (tennis, golf, automobile, etc.) are organized.  If there'd been more about the frivolous affairs, and less about the affairs of the heart, or if the mystery had been better done, I could see giving this a B.  As it is, I'm not keeping it anyway, due to the condition.


IMDB says this was made into a movie in 1915.  The star, May Allison, died in 1989, at 91.  As for the May who wrote this book, the year after it came out, she went for a ride on a certain boat called The Titanic.  She survived, and also died at 91, in 1967.

The Secret Garden

1911, 1978 Dell Yearling edition
Frances Hodgson Burnett
"Decorations" by Tasha Tudor
The Secret Garden
Bought new for $1.50
Very tattered paperback
B+

I don't know how many times I've read this book since I was 10, but I still fall under its spell.  On the surface, it's about a couple bratty kids who learn to garden, but it's so much more than that.  Burnett is able to make everything seem magical, particularly the robin who guides Mary, not just to the garden but to her better self.  The story starts with Mary in India and for the most part stays with her, but then her cousin Colin, who has a further way to go physically and emotionally, takes over.  And the last chapter belongs to his father, her uncle, who realises he should stop neglecting his son, even if his wife did die in childbirth.

I didn't quite get that death when I was young.  The branch broke, she had a baby, and she died.  I didn't get that she fell to the ground when she was very pregnant.  Her death is tragic, but her husband and son make it even more so, by giving up on life.  She's supposed to have been young, beautiful, and kind, so her death is sad, while Mary's mother is young, beautiful, and self-centred, so we're not supposed to care about her death.

There are some other disquieting things about the book, like its attitude towards the "blacks" of India:  strange and superstitious, yet still our "brothers."  The part about Bess Fettleworth causing her drunken husband to beat her by calling him a drunken brute, that bothered me even as a child.

Still, the book's heart is in the right place.  It shows that everyone can be redeemed.  Of course, some of the most enjoyable parts are while Mary and Colin are still bratty, especially their big fight in the middle of the night.  In fact, Colin remains "a young Rajah," and no one really objects, reminding me of the introduction to Howards End, describing how "young Charles Wilcox insults and browbeats an elderly station porter, and Forster notices that the porter gazes after the young snot admiringly."  Colin will remain a young snot, but at least he'll be healthier and a bit more empathetic.

Colin is one of the mysteries of Misselthwaite Manor, and it's interesting that Burnett sometimes compares his sobs to the "wuthering" of the wind.  Like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, this is set in Yorkshire, but a much sunnier Yorkshire, literally and figuratively.  Mr. Craven keeps a frail son locked away, rather than a mad wife like Mrs. Rochester.  Dickon is like Pan, rather than the satanic Heathcliff.  Mary Lennox is passionately angry, like fellow orphan Jane Eyre at ten, but much less sympathetic, at least at first.

Tasha Tudor's illustrations at the beginning of each chapter are almost perfect.  They show how Mary, and to a lesser degree Colin, become healthier and happier.  They also capture the robin's charm.  The decoration for the chapter called "Dickon" doesn't quite live up to the text, partly because his rusty hair is covered up by a hat.  The illustration of Mary first taking Dickon to the garden is much better.

Since I was the same age as Mary when I first read the story, and much like her in personality (shy and sour, with a dead mother), I shipped her with Dickon, who was much nicer than any boy I knew in real life, and most of the boys in fiction.  I never considered the class difference, or the fact that by the time they grew up, he'd have possibly died in World War I.

Which brings me to the 1987 TV-movie.  I was excited about a new adaptation of one of my favorite children's stories, and I was still only 19.  As I recall, it was OK, but then came the ending, where Dickon was dead in the war, and Mary and Colin got together.  They weren't related in this version, but it still bugged me a lot.  In the book, Mary adored Dickon, and he seemed charmed by her.  Amusingly, Adult Colin was played by his namesake, Colin Firth, whom I'd never heard of at the time.

The Devil's Dictionary

1911, undated possibly 1960s Dover edition
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary
Original price $2.50, purchase price unknown
Bent corners but otherwise good condition paperback
C+


I remember once reading some Steven Wright jokes online.  And they almost all fell flat, without his monotone and deadpan face.  There was another problem.  His dry, ironic sense of humor had become so mainstreamed in the intervening couple decades that it no longer stood out.  I think something similar has happened in the slightly over hundred years since this book was published, especially since the dictionary began in a newspaper in 1881.  Cynicism towards government, religion, and other aspects of society, including lexicography, is no longer startling or cutting-edge.  Even, perhaps especially, conservatives are snarky.  Not that Bierce was a liberal.  He at least certainly wasn't a feminist.  He seems to have been more of an iconoclast and, as he defines it, an iconoclast isn't interested in setting up new icons.  He just wants to smash.


So what are we left with?  Let's take p. 70 as an example.  The definition of "intimacy" as "a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction" is not dated, although the poem that follows has lost its point unless you know what Seidlitz powder is.  (I don't, and it's one time I'm not going to Google it.)  The definition of "introduction," in the sense of social introduction, is dated but mildly amusing.  An inventor as "a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization," sounds very steam-punk.  The definition of "irreligion" as "the principal one of the great faiths of the world" is neither shocking nor accurate, considering there is probably more religion, and religions, in the world than in 1911.  And I'm baffled by "itch" meaning "the patriotism of a Scotchman," since the only stereotypes I know about the Scottish are cheapness and bagpipes. 


I think I laughed out loud once, and there are occasional definitions that are worth quoting aloud.  But mostly, it's kind of tedious to read a dictionary, even one with clever wordplay.

Making a Living

1910
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Making a Living
B-

This time it's a how-to for a man, a poet who starts Hill Mill Meal, with the help of inherited land and some hard-working Italians.  His father thinks he should make as much money as he can, like his younger brother, but he just wants to make enough of a living to support a wife.  The story is as much about the quality of life and true success as it is about how to get consumers hooked on eating chestnuts.  And it includes an electric car.

The Boys and the Butter

1910
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Boys and the Butter
B-

A change of pace for Gilman, a story having nothing to do with feminism and set vaguely in the past.  (Mid 1800s?)  A great-aunt promises to reward two little boys with $50 each, which "at the time was like five hundred today," if they'll give up butter for a year.  Yes, Julia Child would shudder, and I know I couldn't make the sacrifice.  The aptly named Holdfast brothers meet the challenge, only to find out that Aunt Jane has made donations of $50 each in their names to the Missionary Society.  The boys are disillusioned and their parents angry on their behalf.  Luckily, the visiting missionary refuses the tainted donation, humiliates Aunt Jane, without using her name but everyone in town knows about the bet, and returns the money to its "rightful owners."

Martha's Mother

1910
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Martha's Mother
B-

Martha's mom comes to town to run a boarding-house for Martha and other hard-working single gals.  Again, we're given a how-to, but most of us won't have country connections who can send us cheap produce.  Still, the talk about how much things cost and other details are fun.  The story ends with Martha's mother sending away Martha's sexually harassing boss.  (Presumably, Martha doesn't lose her job.)

When I Was a Witch

1910
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
When I Was a Witch
B-

A New York woman tells of how she's granted the power to make some of her wishes come true, wishes to reform society, like stopping animal abuse and curbing the dishonest sensational press.  When she wishes "white" magic, wanting women to be freed to mother the world, she loses her power.  All of her other wishes are undone, which is why nowadays you still might see a dog wearing clothes and a bracelet, although not necessarily a pocket-handkerchief.

Her Housekeeper

1910
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Her Housekeeper
B-

The title character courts a widowed young actress, but this house is being kept (both owned and operated) by a real-estate man.  She has no desire to marry again, and lists the reasons why.  He has a rebuttal to all of them and wins her over, partly by winning over her small son.  (I like the detail of "making country" with clay and bits of looking-glass.)  Points for the discreet reference to orgasm in the last line:  " 'I never had any idea,' she ventured after a while, 'that it could be-- like this.' "  (OK, they may just be kissing, but there is a skipped line after they talk about kissing.)  In any case, they're the first believably happy couple in this Gilman collection.

Howards End

1910, 1992 Signet edition
E. M. Forster
Howards End
Bought new for $4.50
Tattered paperback
B

This edition has movie tie-in front and back covers.  I remember attempting to watch a Merchant Ivory version of E.M. Forster, but I couldn't tell you if it was A Room with a View or Howards End.  I might've even tried both.  All I remember is being bored despite the excellent cast and shutting off the TV after about 15 minutes.  Perhaps I was unjust, but I don't remember Merchant Ivory capturing Forster's wit and complexity.


This novel is very funny, although as Benjamin DeMott points out in the introduction, it's a painful humour.  Helen Schlegel can joke about stealing umbrellas because she's too well off to worry about it, yet everything she says cuts into Leonard Bast.  While in the world of The Automobile Girls, anarchists' resentment of the class system is madness, and a talented Gypsy girl can become civilized, Forster shows that there are no easy solutions, or even clear questions, for the current economic situation.  The Wilcoxes, particularly Charles, think that money solves everything, even the deaths of a cat and a man, but money also creates problems, the possession of it in a different way than its lack.  The title "character" is a house that's owned by possessive people who don't want it to go to people who would appreciate it more than they do.


The Wilcoxes are unlikable, probably more than Forster intended, but I think the Schlegels are meant to be seen, by the reader as well as the other characters, as impractical dreamers.  Looking back over a century later, in which both sides have won and lost-- money is still king but liberalism has made a difference; the "lower classes" have access to education but nobody on the Internet can spell-- all I know is I can't forgive Charles, and Margaret Schlegel is the most reasonable person around.  As for the Basts, it's hard to buy Jacky as Leonard's wife, harder to believe she was Henry Wilcox's "mistress."  A one-night stand, maybe.  I can sort of see Leonard and Helen's one-night stand, although their thread wasn't developed enough and his tragic ending a bit contrived.


For a "modern" book, it's very fatalistic.  At the tail end of the Edwardian period, things still feel very Victorian, but with motorcars.  My favorite character, the first Mrs. Wilcox, is deliberately anachronistic, a relic of a genteeler, more rural time.  Aunt Juley is like Charlotte Bartlett in Room with a View, an interfering older relative, and so it was startling to realize that she's a "Mrs." and not an old maid.  And yet, there is a sense of what lies around the corner, with a line about "the remark, 'England and Germany are bound to fight,' renders war a little more likely each time that it is made, and is therefore made the more readily by the gutter press of either nation."

The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson

1910, undated 1920s Henry Altemus edition
Laura Dent Crane
Illustrated by unknown
The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, or Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow
Original price probably $1.00, purchase price $4.50
Hardcover with broken spine and worn corners 
C+

This is definitely a period piece, from its title to its characters, ranging from Gypsies to a Civil War major.  Crane hits every stereotype about Gypsies, including their dislike of bathing and school, and their fondness for fortune-telling and theft.  To her credit, most of these stereotypes are voiced by cranky Aunt Sallie, and to some degree disproved.  However, one of the Gypsies tries to kill his half-brother, and there are Spanish stereotypes there.  As for the major, by my math he'd have to be about 70, although he comes across as younger.


This story was third in a series of six, and includes plugs for the first two stories on p. 9 and for the fourth on the last page.  The most interesting thing about the book is the advertising of series, including this one, in the back.  Some of the series are about school but others are about young people fighting "the Huns" in the recent Great War.  In the case of Grace Harlowe, you can follow her from her plebe (freshman) year of high school to college, and then overseas to "aid the American fighting forces," before finally "returning from service in France" to work as an Overland Rider in state parks.  There's also a what-if "Conquest of the United States" series, At the Defense of Pittsburgh being one title. 

Besides all the pro-war propaganda, there's some pro-business propaganda.  "Do you know, for instance, that from $10,000 to $12,000 a year is very common pay for the foremen of the great wheat ranches in Kansas?"  The blurb for "The Boys of Steel" series tells us that "The steel industry today offers a splendid field for the efforts of really bright American youths."  And Automobile Girls Along the Hudson shows how insane and violent anarchists are.


Suffragettes come off  better, the subject of harmless jokes.  This series, and other series from this publisher, do feature intelligent, brave, independent girls, like Bab (short for Barbara), the unofficial heroine of this book.  I have to admit that I can't figure out the point of the character Grace.  Maybe she's featured more in other adventures, but I could barely distinguish her from Bab's sister Mollie.  Yes, half a century after An Old-Fashioned Girl, names that end with "ie" are still popular.  There's even a boy named "Jimmie."


Besides the boys' and girls' series, Altemus offers "wee books for wee folks."  Many of these have laugh-out-loud titles, among my favorites:  Grunty Grunts and Smiley Smile--Indoors; Grunty Grunts and Smiley Smile--Outdoors; I Don't Want to Wear Coats and Things; The Mud Wumps of the Sunshine and Shadow Forest; Peter Rabbit, Jack-the-Jumper and the Tinybits; and the entire "Little Bunnie Bunniekin" series, whose titles are all along those lines, like Little Squirrelie Squirreliekin, until you get to Old Red Reynard the Fox.

Due to condition, I won't be keeping this book, but the text is online.  And so is Little Bunnie Bunniekin.

The Emerald City of Oz

1910, undated Reilly & Lee edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Emerald City of Oz
Original and purchase price unknown
Hardcover with stains
B

Baum intended this to be the last Oz story.  He wanted to write other books, and since he couldn't toss all the characters into Reichenbach Falls, or a well, he decided to have Glinda make the entire country invisible to outsiders.  It didn't work, for him or Glinda, but that's why there are illustrations of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman crying.  And that's why the last chapter is called "How the Story of Oz Came to an End."

Not only isn't this the last Oz book, but it's the first Oz book to have creative chapter titles, in this case all starting with the word "how."  It also has a dual storyline, one thread being about how Dorothy, her aunt, and her uncle move to Oz and travel around to odd little towns and villages, the other being about how the Nome King and his general plot to conquer Oz.  Not all that much of the story is set in the Emerald City, although it is the first book since Land to be set mostly in Oz.  It's also an improvement on the previous two Oz books.  We see how charming Oz is and what a loss it would be if the Nomes and their allies laid it to waste.

Chapter Three begins with a description of the Emerald City, including population (57,318 people in 9654 buildings).  Then we're told of the surrounding countryside, and that there are more than half a million people in the Land of Oz, "although some of them, as you will soon learn, were not made of flesh and blood as we are." 

What follows is Baum's first explicitly utopian description of Oz.  Death is rare and poverty unknown.  "All property of every sort belonged to the Ruler," i.e. Ozma.  "The people were her children, and she cared for them."  Everyone shares what they make, whether grain or jewellery.  People work half the time and play half the time.  So basically, this is utopian socialism with a monarchist twist, which I found very appealing as a child and even into my 20s, although now much less so.  Baum says, "I do not suppose such an arrangement would be practical with us," but I wonder if this is one reason the Oz books took so long to be accepted in public libraries.  (The official reason was that librarians didn't want to collect series, an unfathomable thought these days.)

Baum claims that there are no evil Ozites, or even ones "who possess a selfish or violent nature."  Then he admits that there are exceptions, in the remote parts of the land.  "I suppose every country has some drawbacks, so even this almost perfect fairyland could not be quite perfect."  It would be a pretty boring series if it were.

This is the book where Dorothy goes Bunburying, in a more innocent way than Algernon Moncrieff.  She visits a town called Bunbury, entirely composed of baked goods.  Here, and in Utensia, a town entirely composed of utensils and other kitchen aids, Baum lets loose with the puns in a way he probably hasn't since Mo.  Most of them are still accessible, although I think it's been many decades since a masher meant "a man who makes unwelcome sexual advances, often in public places and typically to women he does not know."  He winks at Dorothy "somewhat impertinently" and says, "I'm fond of little girls myself."  Um, yeah.

She also travels to Bunnybury, where she teaches the king to appreciate what he's got, and to towns populated by paper dolls and jigsaw puzzles.  There are also two places, Flutterbudget Center and Rigmarole Town, which are "the Defensive Settlements of Oz," since they house, respectively, people who worry too much and people who talk too much.  Additionally, although not strictly speaking a town, they also visit the Athletic College, where the students acquire knowledge through pills, so they have more time to devote to sports.  All of these places are more interesting than anywhere Dorothy went in the fourth or fifth books.

As for the other main plot, the very first chapter is "How the Nome King Became Angry."  Roquat is upset because he's thinking about how Ozma, Dorothy, and the rest stole his "slaves" (the Evian royal family) and his Magic Belt.  He wants revenge, but his sarcastic servant Kaliko (another of my favorite minor characters) reminds him that he can't cross the deadly desert surrounding Oz.  His new general, Guph, suggests a tunnel, which makes sense since the Nomes are miners.  Guph gets the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and Phanfasms to help, although everyone is planning to sell the others out, including Guph.

Despite going to the rescue of the Evian royals three books ago, Ozma now won't even defend her own country, because war is bad.  Yes, even a war of defense.  She's suddenly become an extreme pacifist.  Of course, she and the other Oz natives probably won't die, but Dorothy and the other immigrants could.  At the least, everyone is going to be enslaved and the country turned into a desert.

Luckily, the Scarecrow, "probably the wisest man in all Oz," comes up with a plan.  He has Ozma use the Magic Belt to fill the tunnel with dust, so that when the warriors emerge, they'll have to slake their thirst in the Forbidden Fountain, whose Water of Oblivion will wipe clean their memories.  This is a fountain that Dorothy has seen on every visit but never mentioned to us before.  It will return, as will the Nome King, but more about that later.

Glinda, who has a Magic Record Book that records all events in the world, knows all that's going on, so she comes up with the invisibility plan.  She doesn't do anything to prevent the invasion, but maybe she trusts the Scarecrow to save them.  For some reason, her castle is now located in the north, but I think this is the beginning of the geographical confusion that plagues the series.  Baum apparently misread a map slide from his traveling show, tried to fix things, and it all got very muddled.  Usually it's east and west that are mixed up, not only with each other but with left and right, and with Munchkin and Winkie.  This also affects the lands outside Oz, so that the Nome Country was closest to the Munchkins in Ozma but is now closest to the Winkies.

Speaking of travel, there's not much point to the Shaggy Man being on the expedition (or Omby Amby for that matter), but he does get the funny line, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries."  The Wizard chimes in that he's "been to Europe and Ireland."

Dorothy is also accompanied by Billina and Toto, who fought in the previous book but now have made peace.  Billina supposedly is the first chicken in Oz, which doesn't explain how she's managed to have a dozen chicks, all named either Dorothy or Daniel.  Her brood first appeared in Road, but they're already grown up at the beginning of this story, with 86 children and over 300 grandchildren.  In fact, there are two Emerald City chickens in Wizard, and there's an illustration of a Gillikin rooster in Land.  Since no one's allowed to eat or even kill chickens in Oz, their fate is a mystery.

The illustrations are good, with Neill representing nearly every type of the many creatures mentioned.  (There's no view of the Fuddles, but I remember seeing them in a reproduction of a color plate from the first edition.)  There are no particular standouts, although I like the stately columns of the college.

It would be three years before Baum returned to Oz, shorter than the interval between the first and second books, but it wasn't yet a series then.  Meanwhile, he wrote a couple books about Trot and Cap'n Bill, which I've read but don't own.  The Sea Fairies and Sky Island are still in print, although I'm not sure if they contain the Neill illustrations.

Anne of Avonlea

1909, 1988 Bantam Classic edition
L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Avonlea
Original price $2.95, purchase price $1.75
OK condition paperback
B

The second "Anne" book is just as good as the first.  It covers the two years in which Anne teaches at her old school, and learns a few things herself.  The school parts are fine, but I prefer to read about the AVIS campaign to beautify Avonlea and Miss Lavendar's middle-aged romance.  Anne is 16 to 18 in this story, so she's more grown-up but still getting into scrapes.  She helps Marilla raise twins that a distant relative has left, bratty Davy and boring Dora.  I could've done without this thread, but I guess Montgomery felt that there wasn't enough of children saying the darnedest things.  Fourteen-year-old Charlotta the Fourth is my favorite new character, but I don't think she comes back.  The Mr. and Mrs. Harrison thread is pretty good, although I was surprised that Ginger the parrot is killed off so soon.  There are more references to Canadian politics than usual, and confusingly Mrs. Lynde, who doesn't believe in higher education for women, is a Liberal.

The book ends with Miss Lavendar's wedding, as Anne and Gilbert prepare to go off to Redmond College.  He's been carrying a torch for her for years, but she only gets a sense of it now.  Despite her romantic imagination, she doesn't seem to see what's right in front of her.  She's quicker to spot Diana & Fred.  I don't remember Fred in the first book, but suddenly he's there as part of the gang.  Anne's sad to lose her best friend to marriage, but at least it'll be a long engagement.  Not only does Mrs. Barry want Diana wait till she's 21, but the third Anne book must wait till 1915....

Three Thanksgivings

1909
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Three Thanksgivings
B-

This is the first story in the collection where Gilman offers a how-to for economic independence.  Not that that many women are lucky enough to be the daughters of popular senators and/or the wives of popular ministers, with a big old house in good condition, but Gilman does offer a plausible method for Mrs. Morrison, a 50-year-old widow, to clear her mortgage and thus dismiss an unwanted suitor and avoid living with her grown-up children.  No twist ending here, just an inevitable and satisfying conclusion.

Caricature: The Wit & Humor of a Nation

1909ish (see below), Judge Company publisher
Caricature: The Wit & Humor of a Nation in Picture, Song & Story
Original price unknown, purchase price $5.50
Worn hardcover
D


My apologies to From 18 to 20.  That was not the worst book I own.  This is.  (I think.  Maybe I've blocked out the worst books.)  The reason why I bought it and have kept it is because it is such a product of its time and place.  Apparently a collection of the humor magazine Judge, covering a little bit over a year's worth of issues, it tells of an America where cars and airplanes are dangerous novelties, especially for bystanders, and where couples court in canoes.  The most notable cartoon is labeled "Fame (in 1957)," where a mother and little girl, still dressed vintage turn-of-the-century, have the following exchange:
"Say, ma, what does the word Carnegie mean?"
"Why, my dear, it was a certain kind of free public library they used to build."


The illustrations, ranging from pretty good to pretty awful, show what fashions and furnishings looked like.  (Not so much architecture, although there are some tenements.)  The text preserves slang and dialect.  Which brings me to one of the reasons this book is so bad.  Decades before political correctness, it was apparently perfectly acceptable to present ethnic humor with no nuance or irony.  Blacks, occasionally called "colored," but more often more derogatory terms, suffer the worst portrayals, both visually and verbally.  One cartoon shows two foppishly dressed "darkies," having this conversation:
"Ah'm told yo' Souf Carolinian delegates will be uninstructed."
" 'Deed, yas, sah.  We am free as air jes' so long as we do wot Mistah Cortelyou tells us."
George Cortelyou was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, and the implication here is that black delegates couldn't think for themselves.


Yes, I'm explaining a joke.  But then the jokes keep explaining themselves.  Every single one of them has a title, which often gives away the punchline.  In one case, the joke is also written in the illustration.  For a "humor" magazine, there's not much that's funny here.  Yes, it's over a century old, but Twain and much older writers are still funny.  In fact, the closest I came to cracking a smile was at some of the jokes I recognized from MAD and Reader's Digest recycling them.  (Punchline, "My feet smell and my nose runs," ha ha.)


Some of the jokes are submitted by readers, yes, like in Reader's Digest.  That's where many but by no means all of the ethnic jokes come from.  And while the blacks are shown as the worst, at times barely human, it is the Irish who are the go-to group for mockery, with sometimes three "Oirish" jokes in a row.  Surprisingly, considering the magazine was published in New York City, there aren't that many jokes about Eastern or Southern Europeans, except of course for Jews.  The Japanese are made fun of a few times, but more because of the Russo-Japanese War.


There is some political humor, even if it's most often a joke about teddy bears.  The front page lists 1909 as the publishing date but 1908 as the copyright date.  Since Taft is referred to as President in the later pages, I'm going with '09.


There's a little bit about suffragettes, but mostly women are shown as two general types, each with a subtype:  single and looking for a husband, whether desperately as a homely spinster, or cynically as an attractive Gibson girl; or married, either hen-pecking or calmly discussing divorce.  Few men are happily married, and the bachelors are too stupid to know how good they have it.  The stories in the book usually don't run past a page or two, but there's a two-parter about a man named "Twiggy" (yes, I know) whose friends get him into a fix with too many fiancees.


At the moment, eBay has a copy of the 1907 edition of Caricature going for $59.99.  I can't justify keeping this book, but I also find myself reluctant to part with it, because it is sort of fascinating in its awfulness and turn-of-the-century-ness.  Luckily, my boyfriend wants to add it to his collection of bound magazines, like 1850s Harper's.  So if I develop a craving to see ducks dressed as doctors, or read Bowery kids talking about romance, I know where to look.

The Road to Oz

1909, two copies, one a paperback Rand McNally, the other a hardcover Reilly & Lee, both undated but purchased in the mid-1970s
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
The Road to Oz
Paperback $1.95, hardcover $3.00
Paperback stained with bent covers, hardcover pretty good condition
C+

This is possibly Baum's weakest Oz book.  The journey on the road to Oz is mostly forgettable.  Foxville and Dunkiton are among the more boring "animal" lands.  The Scoodlers are the highlight, sort of like The Hammerheads in Wizard, but their heads are detachable.  Neill has fun decorating them with things like clubs and spades, pawnbrokers' balls and symbols of currency.


All three of Dorothy's traveling companions come off better in other books.  The Shaggy Man is wittier later, and he won't set off Stranger Danger vibes.  (As a child, it bothered me less that Dorothy goes wandering off with a stranger, since she makes a habit of that, than that he puts Toto in his pocket to guard the apples he's stolen.)  Button-Bright will have more to say than, "Don't know."  And even Polychrome will be a more developed personality, although I was fond enough of her after this book to name my calico kitten after her.


Since this is the book where Baum refers to just about every one of his non-Oz books to that point (no sign of the Magical Monarch of Mo), Neill has a chance to draw John Dough, Santa Claus, the Queen of Merryland, and so on.  I think his Zixi is as good as Richardson's, better facially but not as beautifully gowned.  Neill also gets his first try at Toto, and as I said, I prefer Denslow's.  There is a great picture of Dorothy and Toto looking at tin statues of themselves as they "first appeared in the Land of Oz."  (Look for Denslow's hippocampi on the pedestals.)  As always, Neill shines with the castles and palaces, not just the Tin Woodman's tin castle, but the glimpses of Ozma's palace, particularly the one of Jellia Jamb running down the grand front steps to greet Dorothy.  Neill's style is less detailed than in Land, but once again there are some illustrations worth poring over.  (The ones in Ozma and DatW are plainer.)


We get to Oz at an earlier point than in the third and fourth books, just past halfway, which is probably just as well.  Most of the second half is taken up with Ozma's birthday party, including the anticipation.  Ozma has the same birthday as my ex-husband, August 21st, and as I mentioned earlier, you can make a chronology using clues from the "tombstones" for Jack's pumpkin-heads.


This is the first Oz book to set up the utopian features that will be expanded on later, although I won't tag the series with "utopias" just yet, since it's not fully integrated.  The Tin Woodman, who in the second book was going to make the temporarily money-stuffed Scarecrow his Royal Treasurer, and who in the third book owed six weeks of back pay to one of the soldiers, is now horrified by the idea of "using money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another."  Also, when Dorothy thinks Jack has died, she says, "But I thought nobody ever died in Oz," even though her kitten was threatened with the death penalty nine times, as recently as the previous book.  It's as if Baum has switched the rules on us and then pretends that they've always been like this.  Maybe Ozma, as the rightful ruler, had to be on her throne long enough for the rules to change, and maybe Baum/Ozma/Glinda/??? has again Orwellianly rewritten history and hopes we won't notice.

Well, it probably wasn't Glinda.  In the big birthday parade, the nameless King of the Quadlings marches with Nick and the other quadrant-rulers, but Glinda is marching with the Good Witch of the North.  I can't remember when Glinda will get her throne back, but I assure you that when she does, there'll be no mention of her ever being off it.

I've decided to keep the paperback copy, even though it's in worse condition, because the hardcover doesn't haven't any outside illustrations, except the spine.  The paperback has the visit to Jack's house on the front cover, and Ozma and Dorothy almost kissing on the back.  (It's more innocent than it sounds.)

Anne of Green Gables

1908, undated 1980s Bantam Seal edition (see below)
L. M. Montgomery
Anne of Green Gables
Original price $3.95, purchase price $2.08
OK condition paperback
B


Judging from the bookstore stamp in the front, I didn't read this series till my early 20s.  Oddly enough, much of the book is from the perspective of adults, 50-something Marilla in particular.  Even more than with Tom Sawyer, we see Anne from the outside.  So we're well aware of how unique she is.  Never mind that she seems like a more interesting version of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and that some of her mishaps sound like variations of Jo March's mishaps.  Oddly enough, a lot of these mishaps are Marilla's fault, usually due to mislabeling liquids.  Anne will suffer, sometimes get punished, and then Marilla will realize what happened and sort of apologize.  Maybe this book is actually about Marilla, despite the title.  Certainly, she's more transformed than Anne by the end, becoming kinder and generally more emotional.


I don't like how the second half of the book just rushes through four years, after spending the first half on Anne's first year at Green Gables.  (The first quarter covers a couple weeks.)  I understand that Montgomery would want to include (spoilers) Matthew's death, Marilla's eyes, and Anne's decision to not go to college, but I would prefer that she either make the book longer, maybe the length of Little Women, or just split it into two, with this book going up to perhaps "Where the Brook and River Meet," where Anne spends her last summer as "a little girl," and tell us more about her early teens, and then the sequel could cover her last year at the Avonlea school and her year at Queen's.  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm had this problem, too, but I was less invested in the characters.  Even the best friend, Diana, is much more of an individual here.

It's never explicitly said when the story is set, although there are electric lights in town and puffed sleeves even in the country.  If you don't mind more spoilers, check out this link that's worked out the dates of the series:  http://avonlea.hu/cd/websites/hendricks_paul/kindreds/chronology.html .  I agree with their calculations, and think this book covers 1876 to 1881.  Montgomery herself wasn't born till 1874, but there are definitely autobiographical elements.

I remember watching the quite good 1985 series, starring Megan Follows as Anne.  I probably saw it on cable a few years after it came out.  This Bantam edition shows Megan on the cover, perfectly fitting the first physical description of Anne, and the back says that it's "now a major television miniseries."  I think I watched the show and then bought a couple of the books.  I can't remember if I watched the sequels.

A Room with a View

1908, 1988 Bantam edition
E. M. Forster
A Room with a View
Bought new for $4.50
Somewhat tattered paperback
B


Forster's first successful novel remains both quaint and modern.  As the equally charming introduction by Mona Simpson notes, it's a world with automobiles and bicycles, and yet the characters would feel right at home in the novels of Eliot or Austen, or even Henry Fielding.  Forster was born in 1879 but is the first of the authors I'm reviewing to live into my lifetime, dying in 1970.  This book is very Edwardian and gently mocks both Victorianism and modernism.


Unlike the later Forster books I own, it doesn't seem to have any serious meaning.  It's just about a girl who is kissed by one man, becomes engaged to another, and then has to decide between the two.  (She does briefly consider independence, but her mother dismisses this as typewriters, latch-keys, and bad food.)  There's a vague suggestion of Paganism, from kisses among the violets to a skinny-dipping minister, but it's all very genteel.  Even the "cad" who kisses her is very polite.


I think Forster was mostly just being playful, as shown in his chapter titles, ranging from the perfunctory "Fourth Chapter" to the very wordy sixth chapter, "The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them."  The book is the literary equivalent of bumble-puppy, where the rules don't matter as much as the fun, and you never play when Cecil is around.

Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz

1908, 1970s Rand McNally edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
Bought new for $1.95
Paperback with stains and amusingly a page torn by my cat of the time
B-

The Wizard's back!  You know, the ruler who seldom showed himself to his people.  The humbug swindler who abandoned Dorothy.  And, oh yeah, the guy who gave baby Ozma to Mombi.  Yay, the Wizard's back!  Let's have a parade!

Well, as Baum says in his introduction, "It seems the jolly old fellow made hosts of friends in the first Oz book."  So let's just ignore what we learned about him in the second book, and have Dorothy and the Ozites remember him fondly.  Still, wouldn't you love to be in the room to ask a few uncomfortable questions when Ozma tells the Wizard how Mombi kidnapped Ozma's grandfather, imprisoning him and then later Ozma's father?  "When I was born she transformed me into a boy."  There's no explanation of how Mombi managed to be the jailor of three generations of the royal family without Glinda or somebody putting a stop to it.  And it's not clear who rewrote history-- Ozma, her tutor the Wogglebug (now President of the Royal College of Scientific Athletics, part of Baum's satire of academia), Glinda, or our sometimes forgetful author?

Baum is starting to move towards a utopia, with Eureka's murder trial a rarity in a land where the people are "generally so well-behaved" that they don't have any lawyers.  Baum gets to satirize law, too, and it's funny that no one minds that the Wizard and the soft-hearted Tin Woodman defraud the court by claiming one of the other nine piglets is the recovered victim.

Two-thirds of the book is set in other lands than Oz, ones that are less appealing than Ev or the Nome Country.  I appreciate the ingenuity of Dorothy, the Wizard, and their new friends, but then there are moments like when I wonder, "Why don't they use the Braided Man's Flutters and Rustles to scare the noise-hating Gargoyles?"  The story literally dead-ends in a cave, and there's no Vernean volcano to save them.  Instead, Dorothy reveals that Ozma has been checking in on her every day at 4 o'clock.  (In Ozma they decide on every Saturday, but maybe that wasn't often enough and Dorothy communicated this visually.)  So Ozma uses the Magic Belt, which Dorothy took from the Nome King and left with Ozma, to rescue Dorothy and friends.

In the end, Dorothy and Eureka go to Kansas, although Eureka will be back in Oz without explanation later.  "Cousin" Zeb and his horse Jim get sent back to California.  Oh yeah, did I mention the earthquake?  This book may or may not be set in 1906.  I've seen a chronology for the first few Oz books, using the dates of Jack's pumpkin heads in Road to Oz and assuming this fourth book is set during the Great Quake in San Francisco.  You can also roughly figure out Dorothy's age, based on clues from later books.  You're not going to get an answer that will cover all contingencies, but it's convincing enough.

Unlike the rehabilitation of the Wizard.  Still, remember, the Wizard is a good guy now.  And Oceania has always been at war with Easteasia.

Oh, I suppose I should say something about Neill's illustrations.  They're not very remarkable in this or Ozma.  They get the job done but they're forgettable compared to the ones in the second and fifth books.  I do like how he does castles, like the glass one on p. 24.  I find it odd that he usually draws Eureka in white tie and tails, particularly since Eureka is a female kitten.  Dorothy's wardrobe is more suited to her than in Ozma, being both simpler and more modern.  His version of the Wizard plays up the Wizard's skullduggery, I mean charm.

Ozma of Oz

1907, 1970s Regnery edition
L. Frank Baum
Illustrated by John R. Neill
Ozma of Oz
Bought new for $3.95
Paperback with stains and worn corners 
B


The Gales don't seem to be doing too badly financially at this point.  Not only is Dorothy illustrated with a pearl necklace, but Henry can afford to take the two of them to Australia when his health is poor.  She ends up in a different "Oz" of course, thanks to a shipwreck.  Most of the book though takes place in Ev, another of Baum's two-letter countries.  Some time before the story starts, the wicked King of Ev sells his wife and ten children to the Nome King in exchange for a long life, which he throws away when he commits suicide in remorse.  Ozma decides to go rescue the Evian royal family.  She's accompanied by Dorothy's old friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, as well as the 27-man army and the Lion's friend the Hungry Tiger. 


Baum tends to be satirical towards the military, presenting them as more cowardly than the lion, and with a taste for finery.  Confusingly, the Soldier with the Green Whiskers of the first two books is now a private named Omby Amby, rather than the entire army, as he was in Land.  He gets promoted to Captain General at the end of this book, because he's braver than the 26 officers.


Baum also gently mocks royalty in this book.  The tragedy of Ev is softened by the humor of the interim ruler, the king's niece, Langwidere.  This languid and vain young lady has 30 heads, all very Gibson-girlish.  The Nome King, Roquat the Red, is the main ruler we see and he's complex, in a different way than Zixi.  Tiktok, the Machine Man, says that the Nome King is kind, and we know that Tiktok can't lie, but Tiktok knows nothing of Machiavellian politics.  The Nome King is jovial, Santa-Claus-like, when things are going his way, but he has a huge army of nomes and a Magic Belt.  He also has cunning, and he tricks Ozma and her companions into thinking that it'll be a simple task to free the Ev royals.


As a child, the ornament-guessing game was my favorite part, along with the lunch-boxes and dinner-pails that grow on trees.  Once again, lives and a country's future are at stake, but the game also works as a puzzle.  I was happy for Dorothy when she found the youngest prince, and I liked that saucy hen Billina outsmarted the Nome King.  Baum's first published book, in 1886, was about raising chickens, so it's not too surprising that a chicken is the true heroine of this story.


And what of Ozma in the book that bears her name?  I remember reading years ago a speculation that her uncharacteristic behavior in this tale, compared to the mostly serene, stay-at-home ruler of the later books, is due to testosterone poisoning, as if she hasn't quite adjusted to being a girl yet, and so feels the need to invade other lands and interfere with their governments.  Considering Margaret Thatcher among others, I don't think you have to be male to be interventionist.  However, whatever the reason, this is a more aggressive Ozma than we usually see.  An interesting character moment is when Ozma first demands that the Nome King appear, and Tiktok reminds her that she doesn't rule Roquat.  She changes her command to a request, but he still doesn't appear.  Tiktok advises entreaty, but she and her followers don't think she should "humble" herself.  So Dorothy says, "I'm not afraid to plead with him.  I'm only a little girl from Kansas, and we've got more dignity at home than we know what to do with."  This is one of the reasons I've always much preferred Dorothy to Ozma.


Dorothy has changed though since we last saw her.  Not only is Neill dressing her more fashionably than Denslow did (wait till we get to the 1920s!), but Baum has started using a slightly annoying dialect for her, to emphasize her age and/or Kansas-ness.  She corrects Billina's grammar but herself says things like "zactly" and "comfor'ble."  She also tries to improve Billina's manners, but she is just as mouthy to Langwidere.


We don't get to Oz until the last two chapters, but it's the beginning of retcon.  Green spectacles are no longer needed in the Emerald City, whether to make you think that there are real emeralds (as in Wizard) or to protect your eyes from the glare of emeralds (as in Land).  There's a mention of the "kings" of the four countries, although Glinda still rules the Quadlings.  The next book will have more dramatic and more important revisions....