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The Marvelous Land of Oz
Jul. 4th, 2003 07:05 pmI'm currently reading Baum's sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz..
It's interesting to see the contrast. Land of Oz was published in 1904, four years after Wizard, which had obviously made Baum a huge celebrity, pretty much the J. K. Rowling of his day (and, judging from his dedication, Oz had already been a success on the stage as well). Land has a more sophisticated and knowing prose style, with more puns and wordplay and more use of dramatic irony; it feels written for slightly older children. More time is spent on each incident, which also makes the story somewhat less weird and psychedelic; there's not as much piling up of one crazy three-paragraph adventure after another (though there's still enough weirdness to fill several ordinary books). I wonder how much of this was Baum's development as a writer and how much of it was a reaction to the market.
Leaving out Dorothy and the Wizard was probably a mistake, one that Baum rectified in later volumes.
It's interesting to see the contrast. Land of Oz was published in 1904, four years after Wizard, which had obviously made Baum a huge celebrity, pretty much the J. K. Rowling of his day (and, judging from his dedication, Oz had already been a success on the stage as well). Land has a more sophisticated and knowing prose style, with more puns and wordplay and more use of dramatic irony; it feels written for slightly older children. More time is spent on each incident, which also makes the story somewhat less weird and psychedelic; there's not as much piling up of one crazy three-paragraph adventure after another (though there's still enough weirdness to fill several ordinary books). I wonder how much of this was Baum's development as a writer and how much of it was a reaction to the market.
Leaving out Dorothy and the Wizard was probably a mistake, one that Baum rectified in later volumes.