#Ozathon24: More adventures outside Oz

As I make my way through the latter books of the Oz series, I notice how Baum kept trying to get outside the confines of Oz. Perhaps he realized that giving it an all-powerful and all-knowing ruler put something of a damper on conflict and adventure, or perhaps the land had been circumscribed in a way he found too limiting, with its four colored parts and surrounding Deadly Desert.

The eighth book, Tik-Tok of Oz, simply ignores that barrier — when an overbearing Queen forces her handful of subjects to turn soldier and set out to conquer the Emerald City, they are diverted by Glinda so they end up in a region outside Oz. (The Desert is never mentioned.) They then meet up with up with some other characters from Oz who are traveling outside for their own reasons, along with a new pair, Betsy Bobbin and Hank the mule, who have gotten there after the ship they are traveling on is lost in a storm.

If some of this sounds familiar, you are right: the shipwreck is from Ozma of Oz, the army a combination of the ones in that book and The Land of Oz. The rest of the tale also contains many mangled bits of other books: the Nome King is the enemy again, as in Ozma, having remembered his wicked ways, but this time the Shaggy Man (from The Road to Oz) wants to rescue his brother. Polychrome reappears, too, and Shaggy has mysteriously forgotten he ever met her. There are also dragons and vegetable people reminiscent of those in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and a journey through the center of the earth which also recalls that nightmarish installment.

It makes a bit more sense when you know that Baum had in the meantime produced a musical play called “The Tik-Tok Man of Oz” but mainly based on Ozma of Oz and elements from other books. He says in an introduction that “Tik-Tok” the play is not the same as the book, but it clearly was the basis. (Road was being written at the same time as the play, which accounts for the similarities there.) There are also significant changes. Betsy, a curiously character-less character, appears because copyright prevented Dorothy from being in the play. Hank is the Toto stand-in, meant to be played by a vaudeville comedy duo. The plant-based folk are roses rather than root vegetables, also more suitable for the stage, where choruses of pretty girls were required. And so on.

All in all Tik-Tok was readable, but not as memorable as some of the books from which it was derived. The part that stuck most with me from my childhood reading was when Betsy and Co. are in the land on the other side of the earth, waiting to learn what the Nome King’s punishment will be for sending them there. She stays with the lovely queen of light, attended by various kinds of personified illumination — Daylight, Starlight, Electra, and so on. More stage effects, but at the time it caught my imagination, especially the assertion that Electra had as honorable a pedigree as the others. It’s one of those touches of excitement about modern technology that Baum is often slipping in, among more traditional fairy-tale trappings.

The next book, The Scarecrow of Oz, starts with another couple of characters new to Oz, but previously introduced in some non-Oz books: the girl Trot and her older friend Cap’n Bill, who get sucked into a whirlpool off the California coast. I find these two to have more substance to them than Betsy and Hank, even though they are obviously a tie-in effort. Unfortunately they are examples of Baum’s attempt to transcribe childish speech patterns and seaman’s dialect, which I find irritating, but otherwise they’re not a bad pair of protagonists. Cap’n Bill is a very handy companion to have on an adventure, with his skills and knowledge from a lifetime at sea and pockets full of useful things; Trot is another plucky girl in the Dorothy mold.

Anyway, Trot and the Cap’n are saved from the whirlpool but then stuck in an cavern with no easy way to the outside, until another creature caught by the whirlpool appears, an Ork — one of those conglomerates Baum loved to dream up. Together the three make their way out of the cavern, and a series of adventures take them into the Land of Mo (another tie-in to an earlier book) and over the Deadly Desert (which has reappeared). Thus they do come at last into the Land of Oz, which is no longer invisible to outsiders, as Baum had to give up that way of stopping the Oz adventures.

However, since the little kingdom where they have arrived, Jinxland, is completely cut off from the rest of Oz by high mountains, we might as well still be somewhere else. Jinxland is ruled by King Krewl, whom you will not be surprised to learn is not a good ruler, and pays no homage to Ozma. It’s also infected with wicked witches, illegal in the rest of Oz. And Krewl is a usurper who wants to marry off the rightful ruler, Princess Gloria, to one of his cronies, severing her from her true love, Pon the gardener’s boy, and using some dreadful magic to bend her to his will.

Trot and Cap’n Bill, as well as Button Bright, who has randomly shown up again, get involved in the drama, but are no match for Krewl and the witches, until the Scarecrow finally appears. His name is in the title, but his role starts only late in the day when he’s sent by Glinda to rescue the outsiders she’s read of in her Magic Book, which records everything that happens. One wonders why she has not so far noticed the usurping, cruelty, and illegal magic going on in Jinxland, but never mind.

The Scarecrow, in fact, is no match for Krewl either, and really the Ork should get more credit for saving the day … but I suppose “An Outrageous Ork in Oz” was not considered a good title.

I’ve read that Baum’s wife Maud considered this the best of the Oz books, but I can’t agree. Though there’s some nicely vivid writing, exciting adventure, and memorable characters, the narrative is disjointed. The Jinxland section has a generic operetta sort of feel, and in fact was drawn from yet another Baum project: a film called “His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz.” It flopped, but was recycled into the requisite Oz book one year later, adding in the part about Trot, Cap’n Bill and the Ork.

These books go to show how Baum’s real love was the stage and film, at which he was an early pioneer who never became successful. He wanted to bring Oz onto the stage, but kept getting pulled back onto the page, with mixed results. But we have a few more books to go, and as far as I recall some of them are more successful.

Please visit The Book Stop for another excellent analysis of Tik-Tok of Oz, and be sure to share your thoughts if you’ve read these books.