tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-281034552024-03-18T16:32:18.406-05:00Oz and EndsMusings about some of my favorite fantasy literature for young readers, comics old and new, the peculiar publishing industry, the future of books, kids today, and the writing process.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2891125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-17313486262481662242024-03-16T15:34:00.001-05:002024-03-18T15:51:09.213-05:00“Historic Children’s Voices” Coming from American Antiquarian Society<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://gigi.mwa.org/imagearchive/filename/477221_" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="300" src="https://www.americanantiquarian.org/images/childrensvoices/RideOnHog477221-300.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester will launch a <a href="https://www.americanantiquarian.org/childrens-voices">website on <b>“Historic Children’s Voices, 1799-1899.”</b></a> <br />
<br />
Its introductory page explains: “The holdings to be digitized are not children’s literature, i.e., works created BY adults FOR children, but rather are direct testimony as well as imaginative works created BY children. As such, they constitute an archive of historical evidence not previously accessible.”<br />
<br />
The materials to be digitized include diaries, letters, stories, poems, and the AAS’s “large amateur newspaper collection—most printed on home parlor presses.” There will be 15,000 pages of content in all. <br />
<br />
Those presses were very popular in the late 1800s. When L. Frank Baum issued the <i>Rose Lawn Home Journal</i> and later self-published works on stamp collecting and chicken farming, he was among thousands of young people working their own small presses.<br />
<br />
Accompanying the website, the AAS will host an <a href="https://www.americanantiquarian.org/historic-childrens-voices-programs">in-person and online symposium</a> on 2–3 May featuring panel discussions on “Authentic Children’s Voices,” “Archival Silences,” “Visual Culture of Children’s Production,” and “Hearing the Child’s Voice.”<br />
<br />
On 5–9 August, the AAS will host an <a href="https://www.americanantiquarian.org/2024-teacher-institute">institute for K-12 teachers</a> on the subject, with hands-on workshops using the collection and a field trip to Lowell National Historical Park.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-3733659454350399262024-01-19T15:52:00.000-05:002024-01-19T15:52:32.475-05:00Detecting Style <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.powells.com/book/-9781476762067?partnerid=33508" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" src="https://covers.powells.com/9781476762067.jpg" /></a></div>“Red Eye” is a short story by Michael Connelly and Dennis Lehane. It was published in <i>Face Off</i> and then in <i>The Best American Mystery Stories 2015</i>, where I read it. <br />
<br />
David Baldacci, the editor of <i>Face Off</i>, invited established crime writers to write short stories that brought their lead characters together. In “Red Eye,” Connolly’s L.A. police detective Harry Bosch meets Lehane’s Boston private eye Patrick Kenzie. <br />
<br />
It looks like Connolly and Lehane traded sections, Connolly writing those parts told by following Bosch and Lehane those tracking Kenzie. Usually Kenzie is the narrator of the novels that feature him, but to match Connolly Lehane wrote in the close third person. <br />
<br />
Even beyond the central characters, the sections are easily distinguished by the authors’ styles. Connolly is stripped down, short sentences and terse observations. <br />
<br />
Lehane’s sections, in contrast, are full of sentence fragments, aphroisms, metaphors. It’s still hard-boiled prose, but it’s not afraid of style.<br />
<br />
The contrast reminds me of the difference between Dashiell Hammett’s <i>The Maltese Falcon</i> and Raymond Chandler’s <i>The Big Sleep</i>. And I like a little more ornament in my prose. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-20315782278362252542023-11-27T11:25:00.002-05:002023-11-27T11:25:00.127-05:00The Man with a Butler Did ItThis month I read two British murder mysteries, published twenty years apart, in which the culprit turned out to be the local bigwig killing someone who was blackmailing him. <br />
<br>
(I’m withholding the names of those books to protect the dénouements.)<br>
<br />
Now I’m trying to figure out if that trope suggests an ingrained suspicion of privilege, showing that the local wealthy squire is not to be trusted. <br />
<br />
Or do those books reinforce social hierarchies, since both these murderers had risen from the lower classes to their high places in society through blackmailable methods? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-73652506572093370542023-11-25T09:58:00.003-05:002023-11-25T09:58:00.129-05:00“A society of men here called high-binders”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/mm/hb3k4002mm/files/hb3k4002mm-FID3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="536" src="https://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/mm/hb3k4002mm/files/hb3k4002mm-FID3.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>The California Gold Rush made San Francisco a boom town. It attracted Americans from the East Coast, of course, and also people from southern China. <br />
<br />
Within a couple of decades, some Americans of northern European backgrounds began to view Chinese immigration as a problem. In particular, they pointed to violent male criminals who trafficked young women and fought men from other organizations. <br />
<br />
To label that type of criminal, newspaper editors and government officials reached back several decades. <br />
<br />
The <i>Weekly Alta California</i> for 5 Feb 1870 referred to a ring of Chinese immigrants as “a gang of ‘Celestial highbinders’.” In this period “Celestial” was a codeword for Chinese, China being the “Celestial Empire.” <br />
<br />
On 2 May 1876, at a California state senate hearing on “The Social, Moral, and Political Effect of Chinese Immigration,” the Sacramento police officer Charles P. O’Neil testified:
<blockquote>On I Street there are from one hundred and fifty to two hundred of what we call “highbinders,” living off the houses of prostitution, and they are mixed up with the gamblers. You might call them hoodlums.</blockquote>
The U.S. Congress formed a Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, and in the fall of 1876 China trader Thomas H. King testified about “the large force of the six companies’ high-binders, who can always be seen guarding [contract laborers].” <br />
<br />
A senator asked: “What do you mean by ‘highbinders’?” <br />
<br />
King replied: “I mean men who are employed by these companies here to hound and spy on these Chinese and pursue them if they do not comply with their contract as they see fit to judge it.” <br />
<br />
“It is a term to express Chinese persons who act in that capacity?” <br />
<br />
“I have often heard the term applied to designate bad men. It is an English term, I believe.” <br />
<br />
Later the Rev. Augustus W. Loomis, a Presbyterian missionary, objected to King’s claim:
<blockquote>…he expatiates about the high-binders, hired assassins, kept by the six companies to intimidate the coolies. These are simply assertions without proof. . . . I have heard the papers speak of them. I do not know of any such people. </blockquote>
But even Loomis acknowledged people were using the term. <br />
<br />
At those same hearings, San Francisco police officer Michael A. Smith said:
<blockquote>There is also a society of men here called high-binders, or hatchet-men. . . . A great many of them carry a hatchet with the handle cut off; it may be about six inches long, with a handle and a hole cut in it; they have the handle sawed off a little, leaving just enough to keep a good hold.</blockquote>
Since “high-binders” had fallen out of use as a general term for hoodlums, Californians could seize on it to mean Chinese hoodlums in particular. In 1877, O. Gibson’s <i>The Chinese in America</i> stated:
<blockquote>…associations of Chinese villains and cut-throats have been formed for the purpose of protecting the owners of women and girls in their property rights, and of doing any other villainous business that comes to hand. <br />
<br />
The San Francisco press know these men by the term of “Highbinders.”</blockquote>
In <i>The Hatchet Men: The Story of the Tong Wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown</i> (1962), Richard H. Dillon wrote:
<blockquote>While giving testimony during the 1870’s in regard to evildoing in Chinatown, Special Officer Delos Woodruff answered a question from the bench by saying, “A lot of highbinders came to the place—” <br />
<br />
The judge interrupted him with a gesture of his hand. “What do you mean by ‘highbinders’?” His honor queried. <br />
<br />
“Why,” replied Woodruff, “a lot of Chinese hoodlums.” <br />
<br />
The judge persisted, “And that’s the term you apply to Chinese hoodlums, is it?” <br />
<br />
“That’s what <i>I</i> call them,” responded Woodruff.</blockquote>
The source for this exchange is almost certainly an item in the 19 Mar 1893 (San Francisco) <i>Morning Call</i>, thus a recollection or reconstruction rather than a contemporaneous record. Woodruff resigned from the San Francisco police in 1874 after testifying that he had kicked back $25 per month to a friend of the police chief for his lucrative beat, and then suddenly moved out of state when that man came to trial. Despite that pedigree, other authors cite the exchange from Dillon’s book as establishing the term “highbinders.” But there are less impeachable examples from the 1870s.<br />
<br />“Highbinders” remained in near-constant use for the next several decades, losing its scare-quotes, its hyphen, and its initial capital. Even today, the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of the word notes the specific link to Chinese criminals. But, as I <a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-first-high-binders.html">discussed earlier</a>, it actually came from the opposite coast, and an earlier conflict between natives and immigrants.<br />
<br>
(The picture above is a <a href="https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb3k4002mm/">page from Harper’s Weekly in 1886</a> showing “The Chinese Highbinders in San Francisco” and their “Favorite Weapons.”)
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-80101943487200566962023-11-24T20:45:00.004-05:002023-11-24T20:47:18.048-05:00“High-binders” Escape from New York<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan#/media/File:The_Five_Points_MET_DP265419_altered.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="478" data-original-width="640" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/46/The_Five_Points_MET_DP265419_altered.jpg/640px-The_Five_Points_MET_DP265419_altered.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>As I <a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-first-high-binders.html">recounted here</a>, the term “High-binder” or “hide-binder” appeared in the New York press in late 1806 and early 1807 after disturbances in the streets around Christmas. <br />
<br />
At first it referred to a particular set of anti-Catholic rowdies. Soon it was being slapped on working-class Catholics instead.<br />
<br />
In subsequent newspaper items, we can see the term spread outside of New York, though still tied to that place of origin. The 28 Apr 1813 <i>Tickler</i> of Philadelphia described the neighborhood of “Gotham, (New York,)” as: “Here the sailor, the ropemaker, the cookey boys and hide-binders resort to enjoy the jollifications…” <br />
<br />
By the 1830s, “high-binder” had become the standard form, and the word was one of many labels for criminals:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
“among the thieves and high-binders of the world” (<i>Philadelphia Daily Chronicle</i>, 19 Apr 1832)</li><li>
“a posse of high-binders” (<i>Newburyport Herald</i>, 4 Aug 1835)</li><li>
“a gang of high-binders, so called” (<i>New-York Daily Express</i>, 6 Jul 1837) </li><li>
“the most desperate high-binders that ever graced a drunken revel upon the ‘Five Points’” (<i>Hudson River Chronicle</i> of Ossining, 27 Mar 1838)</li><li>
“a set of ‘high-binders’” (<i>Baltimore Sun</i>, 16 Sept 1839)</li></ul>
Most newspaper editors were still setting the word off in some way to acknowledge it could be unfamiliar to readers. <br />
<br />
In 1839, one newspaper near the Mason-Dixon Line used the term to headline an article about gamblers, both black and white (<i>Baltimore Sun</i>, 31 October). Another claimed that New York’s political “ultras” were adopting that label among others to seem even more scruffy and democratic (<i>Alexandria Gazette</i>, 5 November). <br />
<br />Over the following decade, Americans began using the word for corrupt politicians, not just street-level criminals. Among the rising literati, both Edgar Allan Poe and James Kirke Paulding revived the form “hide-binder” to show they were in the know. But the label was losing its power and starting to sound stale. <br />
<br />
TOMORROW: High-binders head west. <br />
<br />
(The picture above is George Catlin’s 1827 view of the Five Points neighborhood, <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/20891">now at the Met</a>.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-77623964240352307712023-11-22T22:19:00.000-05:002023-11-22T22:19:00.125-05:00The First High-Binders<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Old_Saint_Peter's_Roman_Catholic_Church%2C_Manhattan%2C_New_York.jpg/210px-Old_Saint_Peter's_Roman_Catholic_Church%2C_Manhattan%2C_New_York.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="343" data-original-width="210" height="343" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2a/Old_Saint_Peter's_Roman_Catholic_Church%2C_Manhattan%2C_New_York.jpg/210px-Old_Saint_Peter's_Roman_Catholic_Church%2C_Manhattan%2C_New_York.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>I’ve been reading about San Francisco before the big earthquake of 1906, and one word that comes up a lot is “highbinder.”<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/highbinder">Merriam-Webster defines that</a> as “a professional killer operating in the Chinese quarter of an American city,” or alternatively “a corrupt politician.” <br />
<br />
There were plenty of corrupt politicians in Gilded-Age San Francisco, but in the newspapers of the time and in histories since the term “highbinder” definitely meant a thug of Chinese extraction. <br />
<br />
I wondered what the etymology of that term was. What were those men binding, and how high? Was is something to do with queues, or Chinese dress? <br />
<br />
It turned out the answer lies in the early 1800s, and it has nothing to do with Chinese-American culture at all. <br />
<br />
The term surfaced in New York City at the end of 1806. The <i>Evening-Post</i> of 26 December reported on a riot the evening before this way:
<blockquote>There has for some time existed in this city, in and about George and Charlotte-Streets, a desperate association of lawless and unprincipled vagabonds, calling themselves <i>High-binders</i>, and which, during the last winter, produced several riots, making the demolition of houses of ill-fame the ostensible object of their disorderly practices. </blockquote>
The <i>Weekly Inspector</i> of 27 December stated:
<blockquote>On Christmas Eve, a party of banditti, amounting, it is stated, to forty or fifty members of an association, calling themselves <i>High-binders</i>, assembled in front of St. Peter’s Church, in Barclay-street, expecting that the Catholic ritual would be performed with a degree of pomp and splendor, which has usually been omitted in this city. These ceremonies, however, not taking place, the High-binders manifested great displeasure, but were at length prevailed on to disperse. </blockquote>
I should clarify that these original High-binders wanted to jeer at and disrupt a high Catholic ceremony inside St. Peter’s Church (shown above), not to participate. They were a Protestant, probably nativist gang. <br />
<br />
The High-binders’ actions on Christmas Eve provoked counterattacks by Irishmen the next day. Those fights escalated until a town watchmen was killed. Although the police arrested only Irishmen at first, the <i>Republican Watch-Tower</i> of 6 Jan 1807 (misdated 1806 by its printer) said, “It is shrewdly suspected that the murderer will yet be found among the ruffians denominated <i>high binders</i>.” <br />
<br />
The Bowery Boys site tells the <a href="https://www.boweryboyshistory.com/2016/12/christmas-riot-1806-anti-catholic-violence-mars-holiday.html">story of the Christmas Riot of 1806 here</a>. <br />
<br />
On 24 Jan 1807, the <i>American Citizen</i>, another New York paper, reported on the trials arising from that violence. Its editors did their best to sort out the sides. They also stated that the correct term was “hide-binders,” for men working in the leather trade. <br />
<br />
Within just a few months the May 1807 <i>Weekly Inspector</i> published this item at the end of a column:
<blockquote><i>An American bull.</i>—An American, speaking of the turbulent conduct of the <i>“hide-binders,”</i> observed that these <i>low Irishmen</i> were so <i>used</i> to being <i>hung</i>, that they could not <i>live</i> without it.</blockquote>
Just five months before the High-binders had burst onto the New York scene by besieging a Catholic church and then brawling with its Irish defenders. Now the term had become a pejorative label slapped onto “low Irishmen” since apparently only they could be thugs.<br />
<br />
COMING UP: Spreading out of New York. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-50709462732941248002023-11-17T16:35:00.001-05:002023-11-18T00:25:49.494-05:00The Return of “The Fuzzy Ghost” <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.timberghostpress.com/store/p41/The_Big_Book_of_Things_that_Go_Bump_in_the_Night_Paperback.html#/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="3638" data-original-width="2386" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje9CT35H_KLjXoz1wn2UhyplNHBgpqvio8fe9EVZtdx2Sx4GwQrnQTZPeLDCVmmgqyOw0nbarv4o70ED76P8b5JhKPeR6HorxFrDQnoJuUJxs-09sSrxbTCou7ILmrhf8SbweHMPJyPfgdMR1r5e4RUCYMrysr92hRJFZnzgd9gFtxWn4WbcIILQ/w131-h200/IMG_1669.jpeg" width="131" /></a></div>This week I received my contributor’s copy of <i>The Big Book of Things That Go Bump in the Night: A Collection of Utah Horror</i>.<br />
<br />
This anthology of “27 stories, poems, and flash fiction pieces, all geared toward kids” is published by Timber Ghost Press and <a href="https://www.timberghostpress.com/store/p41/The_Big_Book_of_Things_that_Go_Bump_in_the_Night_Paperback.html#/">available here</a>.<br />
<br />
My story, “The Fuzzy Ghost,” is much older than its target audience. It’s a tale about a family coming to terms with the death of a relative, and I wrote the first version in the 1990s after the death of my own older brother, Al. <br />
<br />
At one point I had interest in the story from a kids’ magazine company, but the editor of the magazine I’d submitted to thought it would work better for the next-younger audience. I wrote another version, half the length to fit the second magazine’s specs. But for a story that depends on mood, that took away too much, and the revision didn’t sell.<br />
<br />
Back then, kids’ magazines were practically the only market for such short fiction, and they had very strict limits on word counts. Technology has made internet magazines, micro-press anthologies, and even story vending machines viable, and that in turn has opened up the specs for stories. <br />
<br />
Last year, as I continued to process the death of my mother, I spotted Timber Ghost Press’s call for submissions. I dug the latest draft of “The Fuzzy Ghost” out of my hard drive, updated it with specific period details, and sent it in. And now it’s come back to me inside a paperback book.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-74941223589308965452023-11-14T22:07:00.003-05:002023-11-14T22:07:40.099-05:00“In the Land of Oz they use no money at all”<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjs_hm3E4XCNk9cP5OAnB8jiIh_SIR6MBsBjvqYUpHfFj-lSwUorGjIPwHRrzaZdltWmLAT9SazZiEl-HZrK0H_T5ZqlQOJTg-E6kC_o9DOs3jfIPY-7DwGVh4JaUflUf0YbbLHbjTQTtJ5vO07gBDqDbFiTtdGr3h1d0t1WF7oqdq7oKgakQbg/s397/Woggle-Bug%20Book.jpeg" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="397" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSjs_hm3E4XCNk9cP5OAnB8jiIh_SIR6MBsBjvqYUpHfFj-lSwUorGjIPwHRrzaZdltWmLAT9SazZiEl-HZrK0H_T5ZqlQOJTg-E6kC_o9DOs3jfIPY-7DwGVh4JaUflUf0YbbLHbjTQTtJ5vO07gBDqDbFiTtdGr3h1d0t1WF7oqdq7oKgakQbg/s320/Woggle-Bug%20Book.jpeg" /></a></div>In <i>The Road to Oz</i> (1909), L. Frank Baum wrote:
<blockquote>“Money! Money in Oz!” cried the Tin Woodman. “What a queer idea! Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here?” . . . <br />
<br />
“If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world,” declared the Tin Woodman. “Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use.” </blockquote>
That contradicts this detail in <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i> (1900):
<blockquote>…a man was selling green lemonade, and when the children bought it Dorothy could see that they paid for it with green pennies.</blockquote>
And also <i>The Marvelous Land of Oz</i> (1904), in which a ferryman asks for money before rowing Tip across a river, the Emerald City and the Winkie castle have treasuries, and all the characters recognize “dollar bills—and two-dollar bills—and five-dollar bills—and tens, and twenties, and fifties.”<br />
<br />
Apparently something happened after Ozma came to the throne of Oz at the end of the latter book, producing an entirely different economic system that Baum explained more fully in <i>The Emerald City of Oz</i> (1910).<br />
<br />
However, I was surprised to see that the very first mention of Oz doing without money actually appeared outside the series, and outside the canon. <i>The Woggle-Bug Book</i>, a storybook Baum wrote in 1905, contains this paragraph:
<blockquote>You see, in the Land of Oz they use no money at all, so that when the Woggle-Bug arrived in America he did not possess a single penny. And no one had presented him with any money since. </blockquote>
That book doesn’t offer any ethical lesson to go along with the lack of money, as the Tin Woodman would volunteer in <i>The Road to Oz</i>. It’s just another way that the Woggle-Bug’s native land differs from America. <br />
<br />
While featuring a character from Oz, <i>The Woggle-Bug Book</i> is set in America, where we use money. It’s one of what I call Baum’s urban fantasies, taking place in a contemporary, multiethnic American city which nonetheless has magic (in that way contradicting the rules of the Oz books he wrote in the same period). <br />
<br />
<i>The Woggle-Bug Book</i> and the <i>Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz</i> comic page that preceded it were never listed as part of the Oz series, and Baum never referred back to them in his later stories. Thus, fans don’t treat whatever those books say about Oz as reliable for the rest of the series. Nonetheless, in that book Baum first tried out what would become a crucial detail of the Ozian utopia. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-86874200202514153232023-09-22T18:57:00.000-05:002023-09-22T18:57:34.765-05:00Fitzgerald and “Second Acts” <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crack-Up" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="220" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/12/FScottFitzgerald_TheCrackUp.jpg/220px-FScottFitzgerald_TheCrackUp.jpg" width="124" /></a></div>At lunch today, a friend and I invoked the line “There are no second acts in American life,” and then weren’t sure where it came from. We thought it was F. Scott Fitzgerald, but how, and what did he mean?<br />
<br />
So this afternoon I looked it up. The line did come from Fitzgerald. But the source and meaning are debatable. <br />
<br />
Around 1935 Fitzgerald wrote an autobiographical essay called <a href="http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/crackup/068e-city.html">“My Lost City”</a> that said: “I once thought there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York’s boom days.” In 1945 that text was published in the posthumous collection <i>The Crack-Up</i>. <br />
<br />
In addition, the notes that Edmund Wilson published with <i>The Last Tycoon</i> after he reconstructed Fitzgerald’s unfinished manuscript included this line: “There are no second acts in American life.” It’s not clear to me how closely that scrap was connected to that novel, but Wilson thought it was.<br />
<br />
The line as published with <i>The Last Tycoon</i> has become famous. But the line in “My Lost City” suggests Fitzgerald was reconsidering that observation, or at least didn’t think it applied everywhere. <br />
<br />
Furthermore, we’ve attached a different significance to the line. We tend to interpret the “second act” as meaning a comeback, a second chance, or more of someone’s story. <br />
<br />
However, in “My Lost City” the “second act” that Fitzgerald described was the early years of the Great Depression when New Yorkers were feeling the effects of the stock market crash. People he had just described as being worth millions in stock were back at their laboring jobs.
<blockquote>Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that <i>it had limits</i>—from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.</blockquote>
Fitzgerald himself was struggling in these years, no longer the golden boy of American fiction and beset by personal problems. <br />
<br />
As Fitzgerald used the phrase, there <i>was</i> a “second act” in American life, even if it tended to catch Americans by surprise. And that second act was a reckoning, not an encore. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-56401117650077189932023-08-22T12:30:00.013-05:002023-08-22T12:30:00.144-05:00Baum’s Contradictory Characters<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVupssHf7eNc3Y7cvAzGXFyge-u0DWTwqTLzAVQHU-02ZoxiUdEvYAP2DbyNpoqM8dygw_p7gbdPQKjbyOjCBU10UegMO-4-8lBK5N7Wtu63mtiklOjX73bin-38AfDspnYap7iDXP2c6d1vWNjb5P4P5bp3JCwyTds6ZX_js-QEZ9Gvp3MI/s320/Characters%20of%20Oz%20cover.jpeg" /></a></div>In my <a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/"><i>Characters of Oz</i></a> essay “A Good Man but a Bad Wizard?: The Shifting Moral Character of the Wizard of Oz,” I took the opportunity to talk about L. Frank Baum’s successful characterizations in general:
<blockquote>Baum built most of his best characters around contradictions. Ozma looks and plays like a young girl, but she is a dedicated monarch and, later books say, a powerful fairy. The Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girls are literally dummies made of cloth, straw, and cotton, yet they are among the most intelligent people in Oz. The Tin Woodman is metallic but warm-hearted. The Shaggy Man is a hobo proud of his ragged appearance. Jack Pumpkinhead is a tall man with the mind of a child. Tik-Tok the robot is utterly reliable and liable to run down at any moment. Even Dorothy is a paradox, a simple little girl who spends most of the first books in the series deposing one ruler after another like Napoleon sweeping through Europe. <br />
<br />
Resolving those paradoxes, Baum came to understand, rendered the characters far less interesting. <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i> settled the contradiction inherent in the personality of the Cowardly Lion by dosing him with courage, leaving him as a stereotypically brave lion ruling the forest. That character was no longer as compelling, and he had no role in the next book. When Baum brought the Lion back in <i>Ozma of Oz</i>, the first thing the character says is to assure Dorothy and readers that he’s “As cowardly as ever.” </blockquote>
(That’s my original text. The printed page says, “Tik-Tok the robot is utterly unreliable,” shifting the contradictory fulcrum within the sentence by a couple of words. I’d never want to call Tik-Tok that when he could hear me—i.e., when he’s wound up. It’s not his fault that other people neglect to wind him.)<br />
<br />
Of course, in the essay I then had to tackle why Baum resolved the interesting contradiction he originally built into the character of the humbug wizard by making him a real wizard. And does that make the Wizard uninteresting? Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-63364063530538589412023-08-15T07:32:00.001-05:002023-08-15T07:32:00.143-05:00“Dorothy the Conqueror” Now Online<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.ozclub.org/the-baum-bugle-spring-2005/" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://www.ozclub.org/oz2021/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/MIni-49-1.jpg" /></a></div>Back in 2005, the International Wizard of Oz Club’s journal, <i>The Baum Bugle</i>, published my article “Dorothy the Conqueror.” <br />
<br />
It discussed the character of Dorothy Gale as L. Frank Baum developed her, from a little girl who called herself “small and meek” into a bold adventurer. That boldness had always been part of her character, but after her first trip to Oz she knew it. By the end of Baum’s series, she was happy to set out for unknown parts of Oz because “all excitement is fun.” <br />
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The article also points out ways that the MGM movie’s treatment of Dorothy <i>doesn’t</i> reflect that character, especially in her baffling speeches at the end. <br />
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The Oz Club has now made the text of “Dorothy the Conqueror” available for anyone to read <a href="https://www.ozclub.org/the-baum-bugle-spring-2005/">through this webpage</a>. It even comes with citations in both Chicago and MLA style. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-49086363529141419532023-07-18T10:00:00.002-05:002023-07-18T10:00:00.147-05:00Call for Presentations at the CharlOz Festival<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://charloz.charlotte.edu/sites/charloz.charlotte.edu/files/media/1920x1080_CharlOz%20Digital%20Sign.jpg" style="display: block; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="800" src="https://charloz.charlotte.edu/sites/charloz.charlotte.edu/files/media/1920x1080_CharlOz%20Digital%20Sign.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>On September 27-29, 2024, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina; the University of North Carolina at Charlotte; and other organizations, local and national, will host <b>CharlOz</b>, a three-day festival exploring <i>The Wonderful World of Oz</i> and its cultural legacy. <br />
<br />
The event is now open to proposals for presentations on almost any aspect of Oz, particularly:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
History and Culture: Oz’s reflection of American history and/or culture</li><li>
Social and Economic: Aspects of Oz relating to race, class, disability, or childhood</li><li>
Visual and Performing Arts: Analysis of the visual or performing arts as they relate to Oz</li><li>
Literary Arts: Authors and/or illustrators who have adapted Oz, and how those adaptations fit into the larger framework Oz provides</li><li>
Gender Studies: Oz themes that examine gender roles/norms/traditions and sexualities, including LGBTQIA+ Oz portrayals of education, love, herosim, self-reliance, and teamwork</li><li>
Technology: Application of non-traditional technologies that include podcasts, games, making, or other examinations of how varied technology transforms Oz themes</li><li>
Mass-Marketing: Presentations of how a creator’s mass-marketed Oz work fits within the larger Oz world</li></ul>
Presentations can take the form of individual talks, group talks, workshops, roundtables, or panels. <br />
<br />
The guidelines for submitting a 250-word proposal <a href="https://charloz.charlotte.edu/call-presentations">are on this page</a>. The submission deadline is November 17, 2023. The organizing committee will respond to submitters by the end of January. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-64811660821500080252023-07-11T07:00:00.002-05:002023-07-11T07:00:00.132-05:00Contents of The Characters of Oz<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVupssHf7eNc3Y7cvAzGXFyge-u0DWTwqTLzAVQHU-02ZoxiUdEvYAP2DbyNpoqM8dygw_p7gbdPQKjbyOjCBU10UegMO-4-8lBK5N7Wtu63mtiklOjX73bin-38AfDspnYap7iDXP2c6d1vWNjb5P4P5bp3JCwyTds6ZX_js-QEZ9Gvp3MI/s320/Characters%20of%20Oz%20cover.jpeg" /></a></div><a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-characters-of-oz-and-character-of.html">Last week</a> I introduced <i>The Characters of Oz</i>, a collection of essays that I contributed to, edited by Dina Schiff Massachi.<br />
<br />
Since I don’t yet see this information on the web in a form easy to search out, I’m sharing the contents of this book.<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
Introduction — Dina Schiff Massachi</li><li><b>
Dorothy</b> and the Heroine’s Quest — Mark I. West </li><li>
But First, There Was a <b>Scarecrow</b>... — Katharine Kittredge</li><li>
Heart Over Head: Evolving Views on Male Emotional Intelligence and the <b>Tin Woodman</b> — Dina Schiff Massachi</li><li>
The Proto-Sissy, the Sissy, and Macho Men: The <b>Cowardly Lion</b> in <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i>, the MGM <i>The Wizard of O</i>z, and Dark Oz Stories — Dee Michel and James Satter</li><li>
A Good Man but a Bad Wizard? The Shifting Moral Character of the <b>Wizard</b> of Oz — J. L. Bell </li><li><b>
Witches</b>, Wicked and Otherwise — Robert B. Luehrs </li><li>
Witch's Familiars or Winged Warriors? Liberating the <b>Winged Monkeys </b>— Dina Schiff Massachi </li><li><b>
Glinda</b> and Gender Performativity — Walter Squire </li><li><b>
Ozma</b>, Sorceresses, and Suffrage: Women, Power, and Politics in L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz — Mary Lenard </li><li>
A Living Thing: The Very American Invention of <b>Jack Pumpkinhead</b> — Paige Gray </li><li>
Trading Knitting Needles for Pistols: The Feminist, Violent, and Sexual Evolution of <b>General Jinjur</b> — Shannon Murphy</li><li>
The <b>Nome King</b> — Angelica Shirley Carpenter </li><li>
Piecing Together the <b>Patchwork Girl</b> of Oz — Gita Dorothy Morena </li><li>
Afterword: Frank and His Imagination — Robert Baum </li><li>
Bibliography: Further Oz Readings, Fiction and Nonfiction — Dina Schiff Massachi </li></ul>
In other (surprising) news about this book, it’s been printed, and McFarland is taking orders.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-5698559364437966372023-07-04T08:54:00.015-05:002023-07-07T19:48:50.071-05:00The Characters of Oz and the Character of Oz the Wizard<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCVupssHf7eNc3Y7cvAzGXFyge-u0DWTwqTLzAVQHU-02ZoxiUdEvYAP2DbyNpoqM8dygw_p7gbdPQKjbyOjCBU10UegMO-4-8lBK5N7Wtu63mtiklOjX73bin-38AfDspnYap7iDXP2c6d1vWNjb5P4P5bp3JCwyTds6ZX_js-QEZ9Gvp3MI/s320/Characters%20of%20Oz%20cover.jpeg" /></a></div>
Later this year McFarland will publish <a href="https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/the-characters-of-oz/"><i>The Characters of Oz: Essays on Their Adaptation and Transformation</i></a>, edited by Dina Schiff Massachi of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.<br />
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The publisher says, “This collection of essays follows Baum’s archetypal characters as they’ve changed over time in order to examine what those changes mean in relation to Oz, American culture and basic human truths.”<br />
<br />
Among those essays is my own “A Good Man But a Bad Wizard?: The Shifting Moral Character of the Wizard of Oz.” <br>
<br>
One of the few lines that appeared in both L. Frank Baum’s original novel and the 1939 MGM movie was the Wizard’s insistence that he was “a good man, but a bad wizard.” Within that first novel the Wizard was a humbug whom people believed in, a tyrant who benefited his people, but ultimately someone Dorothy couldn’t rely on. <br>
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Just a few years later, however, the American public knew the Wizard of Oz unambiguously as a bad man in the <i>Wizard of Oz</i> stage extravaganza. And a few years after that, Baum brought the Wizard back as a stalwart friend for Dorothy and eventually a real magic-worker. This essay analyzes those changes in his persona across media and moral boundaries. <br />
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Other articles in this collection include Katharine Kittredge on Dorothy, Dee Michel and James Satter on the Cowardly Lion, Walter Squire on Glinda, Paige Gray on Jack Pumpkinhead, and Angelica Carpenter on the Nome King, among many other experts. Dina Massachi wrangled the contributors and provided her own exploration of the Winged Monkeys. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-84801479438495429602022-08-29T06:45:00.003-05:002022-08-29T06:45:00.205-05:00The First Part of “The Donnington Affair” In 1914, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Pemberton">Max Pemberton</a> published part of a murder mystery in a magazine called <i>The Premier</i>. It was titled “The Donnington Affair.” <br />
<br />
Pemberton sent proofs of the story to G. K. Chesterton, inviting him to complete the mystery with a pleasing solution. <br />
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Chesterton obliged, bringing in his sleuth Father Brown. The result is an oddity in Chesterton’s oeuvre, not included in the first Father Brown omnibuses. <br />
<br />
After Chesterton fans rediscovered the story, anthologists began to include “The Donnington Affair” in collections of the Father Brown stories—but usually only Chesterton’s part. The result is less than fully coherent. (A 2012 edition of <i>The Complete Father Brown</i> is indeed complete.) <br />
<br />
Pemberton lived until 1950, so his work remained under copyright protection in the U.K. until 2020. That year, the <i>Chesterton Review</i> published the whole story, but that issue is <a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/chesterton/content/chesterton_2020_0046_0001_0029_0031?file_type=pdf">behind a paywall</a>. <br />
<br />
Fortunately for people who like a complete narrative, <i>Metropolitan Magazine</i> bought the U.S. serial rights in the story, and Google has digitized the issue that includes Pemberton’s part. So you can <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Metropolitan/ke5HAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=RA5-PA22&printsec=frontcover">start reading the tale here</a>. There’s even a picture by Dalton Stevens.<br />
<br>
The same volume of <i>Metropolitan</i> includes stories by Booth Tarkington, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Richard Harding Davis, Joseph Conrad, E. C. Bentley, and more; nonfiction by John Reed, Lincoln Steffens, Walter Lippmann, Francis Ouimet, and H. G. Wells; and humorous tales each with one illustration (not, unfortunately, comics) by Harry Grant Dart. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-68489240554240477432022-05-19T22:22:00.001-05:002022-05-19T22:22:16.391-05:00Drama about a Dress One of the blue gingham dresses worn by Judy Garland in the MGM <i>Wizard of Oz</i> is up for auction. Or maybe not.<br>
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<a href="https://wtop.com/dc/2022/05/catholic-universitys-auction-of-wizard-of-oz-dress-uncertain-after-judges-order/">WTOP reports</a> that a court has ordered the auction house not to proceed until it works out whether the seller, Catholic University in Washington, DC, really owns the garment.<br>
<br>
At issue:
<blockquote>The family of Gilbert Hartke, who was Catholic University’s longtime drama director, said the dress was given to him by actress Mercedes McCambridge as a personal gift after he helped her battle substance abuse. <br>
<br>
The university said that the dress was presented to Hartke in his official capacity as a professor of drama at the university. </blockquote>
Catholic University provided evidence that Hartke wanted the dress to be displayed at the campus theater, named after him. <br>
<br>
The garment went missing for decades and was found on campus last year. Some smart lawyers might argue that treatment negates Hartke’s gift to the school. <br>
<br>
But of course Catholic University’s position is that the dress never belonged to Hartke individually anyway. He had, in fact, taken a vow of poverty.<br>
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All this matters because the collector’s price for the dress might be $1 million. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-11597796845273880392022-04-04T12:54:00.041-05:002022-04-04T12:54:00.213-05:00The Opening of the Emerald City<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/The_marvelous_land_of_Oz%3B_being_an_account_of_the_further_adventures_of_the_Scarecrow_and_Tin_Woodman_a_sequel_to_the_Wizard_of_Oz_%281904%29_%2814750932084%29.jpg/171px-The_marvelous_land_of_Oz%3B_being_an_account_of_the_further_adventures_of_the_Scarecrow_and_Tin_Woodman_a_sequel_to_the_Wizard_of_Oz_%281904%29_%2814750932084%29.jpg" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; padding: 0px 1em 0px 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="171" height="200" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/88/The_marvelous_land_of_Oz%3B_being_an_account_of_the_further_adventures_of_the_Scarecrow_and_Tin_Woodman_a_sequel_to_the_Wizard_of_Oz_%281904%29_%2814750932084%29.jpg/171px-The_marvelous_land_of_Oz%3B_being_an_account_of_the_further_adventures_of_the_Scarecrow_and_Tin_Woodman_a_sequel_to_the_Wizard_of_Oz_%281904%29_%2814750932084%29.jpg" /></a></div>My last posting explored the location of the original gateway into the Emerald City, the one Dorothy and her friends use in L. Frank Baum’s <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i>.<br />
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The travelers come to an emerald-studded gate at the end of the Yellow Brick Road. That outer gate leads to a room inside the thick wall with an inner gate on the other side. The little man inside is therefore called the “Guardian of the Gates” even though there is only one opening the in wall. (With his typical inconsistency, Baum also called this character the “Guardian of the Gate,” sometimes within the same chapter.) Thus, the many early references to the city “gates” don’t mean there’s more than one gateway through the wall. <br />
<br />
When characters arrive at the city in <i>The Marvelous Land of Oz</i>, Baum describes their experiences in much the same way as in the first book. The Guardian of the Gates greets them and hands them off to the Soldier with the Green Whiskers. Characters speak of “the gate” of the city.<br />
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At the same time, it’s clear that there have been changes in the Emerald City. While before the gate was studded with emeralds, the jewels inside the city only appeared to be emeralds because people wore green spectacles. In <i>Land</i> the city contains some real jewels. General Jinjur and her soldiers don’t fear blindness without the spectacles. <br />
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More pertinent to this inquiry, in <i>Wizard</i> the Guardian tells Dorothy and her friends there’s no road to the west because no one ever travels that way for fear of the Wicked Witch. In <i>Land</i> the Sawhorse follows “the road to the West.” It’s not clear whether this path begins at the same gate where the Yellow Brick Road ends. <br />
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Finally, toward the end of <i>Land</i> Baum tells us that “Jinjur had closed and barred every gateway” into the city. While other passages in that book refer to “the gate” as if there’s still only one, the phrase “every gateway” definitely implies that by the time of Jinjur’s brief rule the city had more entrances. <br />
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Once again, this fits with what we know about overall politics in Oz. When the Scarecrow becomes ruler of the Emerald City at the end of <i>Wizard</i>, the Wicked Witches of the East and West have been eliminated. He’s on good terms with Glinda to the south. His friend the Tin Woodman will now govern the west. It would be safe to welcome visitors to his city.<br />
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I therefore surmise that between <i>Wizard</i> and <i>Land</i> the Scarecrow began the process of building more gates into the Emerald City walls. Perhaps not as large as the original gate, or perhaps (given the peacetime conditions) larger. Likewise, the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman probably promoted the new road from the city to the west. <br />
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Commerce and travel between the parts of Oz was probably still slow in this period. The Scarecrow met Gillikins so rarely that by the time of <i>Land</i> he hadn’t learned they speak his language. Yet General Jinjur could assemble an Army of Revolt of young women from all four outer realms of Oz. (Indeed, Jinjur’s uprising might have been the first pan-Oz movement, at least for several decades.) <br />
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Another sign of Oz opening up to travelers appears when we consider the “road to the South” to Glinda’s castle. At the time of <i>Wizard</i>, that route ran into the Fighting Trees, the walled China Country, a dark and boggy forest, and the Hammerheads, who refused to let anyone hike over their hill. None of those obstacles ever appear in the Oz books again, and characters make many easy land journeys from the Emerald City to Glinda’s home. <br />
<br />
What could produce that change? The most likely answer is Glinda the Good Sorceress. With the Wizard in power, she might well have appreciated having several difficult obstacles between his power base and her castle. But once the Emerald City was under a friendly straw-man regime, Glinda probably preferred easier travel. <br />
<br />
In <i>The Emerald City of Oz</i> we learn that Glinda has established several protected little communities in Quadlingland and even manipulates the weather over one of them, Miss Cuttenclip’s village. At the end of that book she unilaterally cuts all of Oz off from our Great Outside World. <i>Tik-Tok of Oz</i> shows us Glinda’s moving a mountain pass to divert a hostile army outside of Oz—and so casually she doesn’t bother to remember that she’s done so. <br />
<br />
Given that record, it’s easy to imagine Glinda magically shifting the road from the Emerald City to her castle to be straighter or safer, or shifting the Fighting Trees, Hammerheads, and other relentlessly hostile obstacles away from it. <br />
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The process of connecting the Emerald City to the rest of Oz no doubt accelerated after Princess Ozma took the throne at the end of <i>Land</i>. Unlike the Scarecrow, she claimed dominion over all of Oz. Her realm is largely peaceful and her rule increasingly secure. It’s no surprise, therefore, that years later <i>The Patchwork Girl of Oz</i> assures us there are four gateways into the city, one for each quadrant of Oz. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-4613983992492160692022-04-02T13:01:00.003-05:002022-04-02T13:01:52.094-05:00Seeking the Original Gateway into the Emerald City<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Emerald_City.jpg" style="display: block; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="332" data-original-width="534" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Emerald_City.jpg" width="398" /></a></div>For fictive purposes, I’ve been trying to figure out the location of the original gate to the Emerald City and when more gates were added. <br />
<br />
L. Frank Baum’s <i>The Wonderful Wizard of Oz</i> makes clear the city has only one gateway, which Dorothy and her companions use to enter and exit. That makes sense historically. Oz the Wizard built the Emerald City as a citadel against the witches, especially the Wicked Witches, so he wanted to minimize the entry points. He claimed no authority over the lands of the Munchkins, Winkies, Quadlings, and Gillikins and therefore didn’t need to welcome them. <br />
<br />
Several adventures later, <i>The Patchwork Girl of Oz</i> states that by then there are four gates in the city walls, one pointing in each cardinal direction. Presumably one of the four gates of the later city was the Wizard’s original. That means the original gate faces north, south, east, or west—but which one? <br />
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We know that it doesn’t face to the west or south because when Dorothy and her friends leave the gate to head in those directions, Baum wrote that they “turned toward the West” and “turned their faces toward the Land of the South.” Turning would be unnecessary if they were already facing either of those directions as the gate opened. <br />
<br />
Baum described the travelers’ first glimpse of the gate this way:
<blockquote>As they walked on, the green glow became brighter and brighter, and it seemed that at last they were nearing the end of their travels. Yet it was afternoon before they came to the great wall that surrounded the City. It was high and thick and of a bright green color.<br />
<br />
In front of them, and at the end of the road of yellow brick, was a big gate, all studded with emeralds that glittered so in the sun that even the painted eyes of the Scarecrow were dazzled by their brilliancy.</blockquote>
Likewise, in <i>The Marvelous Land of Oz</i> travelers from the Gillikin Country to the north follow another Yellow Brick Road to what appears to be the same gate. And in <i>The Patchwork Girl of Oz</i> we learn there’s another Yellow Brick Road in Munchkinland. <br />
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We must presume that when there was only one gateway into the city, all those roads merged at some place in the green country surrounding the city. That leads to the possibility that one or more of the Yellow Brick Roads didn’t head straight to the city from east or north but first led to the merge point—perhaps why Dorothy’s approach seeemed to take so long. <br />
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In contrast, the Sawhorse and Jack Pumpkinhead’s arrival at the gate from the north in <i>Land</i> seems more direct. To me that gives a slight edge to the original gateway being at the Emerald City’s north. <br />
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Again, that seems to fit with what we know of the history of Oz’s reign. Wicked Witches ruled to the east and west, so the Wizard wouldn’t have built an entrance in either of those directions. The most powerful magician in Oz, Glinda, controlled the south; though she was not a hostile power, she was still a threat to the humbug ruler. <br />
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In contrast, the Good Witch of the North dominating the Gillikin Country was a lesser danger to the Wizard. And as for the wicked witch in that territory, Mombi, he actually had personal dealings with her. A gateway to the north would have made the most sense to the great Oz.<br />
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COMING UP: Adding more gateways. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-3249970031367031612022-01-15T19:23:00.000-05:002022-01-15T19:23:29.791-05:00Stupendo, Secret Girl, and Boston Powers, #5 <p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbl9HWsyJNPmO_wOGpiN2PqEvoaJ3GKLp-fCisjlxUlwVZmhWBJNkMsxiodvvCq6O-CXJRFEjIjxxXrTlKWEN7fkTgI-TPqEWwnZ10g0sO4unHLoGDFMgISU72N7WCVyiQclgyKw5NGnVBBETkWKpkNXKh8ySf2oBVc2N_f8HLYXWA70khdQo=s400" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="258" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbl9HWsyJNPmO_wOGpiN2PqEvoaJ3GKLp-fCisjlxUlwVZmhWBJNkMsxiodvvCq6O-CXJRFEjIjxxXrTlKWEN7fkTgI-TPqEWwnZ10g0sO4unHLoGDFMgISU72N7WCVyiQclgyKw5NGnVBBETkWKpkNXKh8ySf2oBVc2N_f8HLYXWA70khdQo=s320" width="206" /></a></div>The Boston Comics Roundtable just published <i>Boston Powers</i>, #5, its latest superhero comic book for young readers. For now it’s available at local events, and there are, alas, few local events, but I hope to share order information soon.<p>
</p>
This magazine includes the second tale of Stupendo and Secret Girl, story by me and art by Brendan Tobin. This episode starts almost immediately after the pair’s <a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2020/03/stupendo-takes-off.html">first published adventure in <i>Boston Powers,</i> #2</a>.<p>
</p>
As you recall, Stupendo is a very strange visitor from another planet, and Secret Girl is a youngster from suburban Boston who’s taken on the task of turning Stupendo into a successful superhero. <br />
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In this installment, Emma’s parents are worried about her going along on Stupendo’s missions while someone in greater Boston is making things like babies and puppy dogs into gallumphing giants. Is this the end of the team of Stupendo and Secret Girl? <br />
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(No, it isn’t. I’ve already written the third and culminating episode in this story arc. But that, too, ends with the question: Is this the end of the team of Stupendo and Secret Girl?) Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-26147427343900537842022-01-12T22:32:00.003-05:002022-01-12T22:32:56.831-05:00We’re #2! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjDhl-45pOCaIpb1eNJt75LqB5B0sZc5JA9pU89znTNyfMK9gYPeufJ_ae47q-jLKGsrw8ACsmdiibY_1G4wx95n6j7OvZ2MDfDutABhUO8bfUcVcy2Mg-Ms3mEAvqJuzpWT6lvbiw6IBNkmZarawwOG70UrWpA6fXcNZDLDLwrY2xYOc3mZk=s1434" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" data-original-height="1434" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjDhl-45pOCaIpb1eNJt75LqB5B0sZc5JA9pU89znTNyfMK9gYPeufJ_ae47q-jLKGsrw8ACsmdiibY_1G4wx95n6j7OvZ2MDfDutABhUO8bfUcVcy2Mg-Ms3mEAvqJuzpWT6lvbiw6IBNkmZarawwOG70UrWpA6fXcNZDLDLwrY2xYOc3mZk=s320" width="223" /></a></div>Fawcett’s original Captain Marvel debuted in <i>Whiz Comics</i>, #2. There was no issue #1.<br />
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The Human Torch’s kid sidekick, Toro, debuted in <i>Human Torch</i>, #2. There was no issue #1.<br />
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Amazing Man debuted in <i>Amazing Man Comics</i>, #5, and then headlined <i>Stars and Stripes</i>, #2. Neither of those comic books had #1 issues, either. <br />
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Back around 1940, when those periodicals appeared, publishers tried to avoid #1 issues if they could. To newsstand vendors, the first issue of a magazine looked like an unproven product they could skip. <br />
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Fawcett published a couple of “ashcan” issues with different titles to secure its Captain Marvel copyrights and trademarks before sending <i>Whiz Comics</i> out into the market. Timely dropped a series after one tepid issue and retitled that magazine after its established star, the Human Torch. As for Amazing Man, the Comic Corporation of America simply started its series further along the number line than 1. <br />
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When companies canceled one series of stories and started another which seemed to have better prospects, they often changed titles but kept the numbering. Thus, the first <i>Sub-Mariner Comics</i> evolved into <i>Official True Crime Cases</i> in 1947, <i>Amazing Mysteries</i> in 1949, and finally <i>Best Love</i>, but the numbering climbed steadily from #23 to #33. <br />
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After a five-year gap, the Atlas company brought Prince Namor back in 1954, with <i>Sub-Mariner Comics</i> resuming at issue #33. That was neither exact nor logical, but what mattered was reminding retailers this character was an established draw. <br />
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Likewise, <i>Daring Mystery Comics</i> ran through #8 and was then succeeded by two series, both launching at #9: <i>Comedy Comics</i> in 1942 and <i>Daring Comics</i> in 1944. At Charlton in the late 1950s, <i>Nyoka the Jungle Girl</i> morphed into <i>Space Adventures</i> after <i>Space Adventures</i> lost its numbering to <i>War at Sea</i>. <br />
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That preference for presenting a new comics series as firmly established lasted into the succeeding decades. When Marvel shifted its monster and sci-fi magazines to superhero brands, the company changed the magazines’ titles but not their numbering. Thus, <i>Journey into Mystery</i>, #125, was followed by <i>Thor</i>, #126; <i>Strange Tales</i>, #168, by <i>Doctor Strange</i>, #169; and <i>Tales of Suspense</i>, #99, by <i>Captain America</i>, #100. Over at DC, <i>My Greatest Adventure</i>, #85, led into <i>Doom Patrol</i>, #86.<br />
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To be sure, Marvel’s other regular <i>Tales of Suspense</i> feature, Iron Man, got its own magazine with a #1 number and a “Big Premiere Issue” decal drawn on the cover. That presaged a new force on the comics scene—collectors who liked to own the first of something special.<br />
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In the 1980s the comic-book industry completed a huge shift from newsstands to specialty comics shops. One of the most visible effects was on the #1 issue. Collectors and resellers like that number. Once a liability, a #1 designation is now an asset. Comics publishers seize any opportunity to restart series and put out new #1s. There are, for example, four magazines designated as <i>Nightwing</i>, #1:<br /><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>
the first issue of a 1995 miniseries.</li><li>
the first issue of an ongoing series started in 1996. </li><li>
the first issue of an ongoing series started in 2011. </li><li>
the first issue of an ongoing series started in 2016. </li></ul>
Increasingly new fans complain that all these #1 issues and reboots make it harder to follow the storylines and figure out what back issues to seek. But just as economic incentives made comic books designated #1 rarer in earlier decades, for now those forces push the other way.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-48115613330174570222022-01-06T23:40:00.000-05:002022-01-06T23:40:08.344-05:00“Every statement is an overstatement” <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/authors/gk-chesterton/" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; padding: 0px 1em 0px 0px; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="175" src="https://www.wheaton.edu/media/migrated-images-amp-files/media/images/page20images/centers20and20institutes/wade20center/authors/GKC-cont.jpg" /></a></div>This passage appeared in a an <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/the-back-of-the-world">essay by Adam Gopnik</a> that appeared in <i>The New Yorker</i> in 2008. I’ve found it to offer one of the most useful observations of the millennium.<br />
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Gopnik was discussing how G. K. Chesterton had gone out of style:
<blockquote>The second big shift occurred just after the First World War, when, under American and Irish pressure, and thanks to the French (Flaubert doing his work through early Joyce and Hemingway), a new form of aerodynamic prose came into being. The new style could be as limpid as Waugh or as blunt as Orwell or as funny as White and Benchley, but it dethroned the old orotundity as surely as Addison had killed off the old asymmetry. <br />
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Chestertonian mannerisms—beginning sentences with “I wish to conclude” or “I should say, therefore” or “Moreover,” using the first person plural un-self-consciously (“What we have to ask ourselves . . .”), making sure that every sentence was crafted like a sword and loaded like a cannon—appeared to have come from some other universe. Writers like Shaw and Chesterton depended on a kind of comic and complicit hyperbole: every statement is an overstatement, and understood as such by readers. The new style prized understatement, to be filled in by the reader. <br />
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What had seemed charming and obviously theatrical twenty years before now could sound like puff and noise. Human nature didn’t change in 1910, but English writing did. (For Virginia Woolf, they were the same thing.) The few writers of the nineties who were still writing a couple of decades later were as dazed as the last dinosaurs, post-comet. They didn’t know what had hit them, and went on roaring anyway.</blockquote>
In the years since 2008, I perceive, our popular rhetoric has undergone the opposite shift. People now once again speak in hyperbole, especially online. We no longer simply have a fun time; we enjoy “the best Day EVER!” We no longer dislike someone; we say they “deserve to die.” I see people express anxiety about not having enough exclamation points in their business emails. <br />
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For someone who learned to write before this shift, I say with characteristic understatement and deflection, it’s a bit disconcerting. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-29279979751449448732022-01-05T22:43:00.001-05:002022-01-05T22:43:32.367-05:00“You don’t expect a benefit”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.powells.com/book/-9781683692607?partnerid=33508" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" src="https://covers.powells.com/9781683692607.jpg" /></a></div>From <a href="https://medium.com/authority-magazine/author-james-kennedy-on-how-to-write-compelling-science-fiction-and-fantasy-stories-2553aa5f0391">Ian Benke’s Authority Magazine interview</a> with James Kennedy, author most recently of <a href="https://www.powells.com/book/-9781683692607?partnerid=33508"><i>Dare to Know</i></a>:
<blockquote>There is no benefit to reading science fiction. Or at least, I hope there isn’t. And if there is, I hope nobody finds out what it is. <br />
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The worst thing that can happen to art is for it to become respectable, to be considered as something that is “good for you.” Science fiction had its golden age when literary people considered the genre to be juvenile, unserious, and embarrassing. Now that science fiction has become more respectable, is it really as exciting? Vital, unruly punk energy resists being enlisted for causes, it rightfully doesn’t want to help you, it goes its own swinging way and if you’re lucky, maybe it’ll let you tag along. <br />
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The adventure of art is that you submit to it. You let it take you somewhere. You don’t expect a benefit, you don’t even want one. Maybe you’ll get hurt, maybe you won’t, maybe it’ll be a good experience, maybe bad, but for me, the whole thrill is surrendering myself to it, without any expectation of earning some new virtue or snagging some nugget of information. I just want to be overwhelmed, thrilled, transported. </blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-67098611275649559152022-01-03T13:57:00.025-05:002022-01-03T13:57:00.204-05:00The “Shipoopi” Problem <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.powells.com/book/-9780816667703?partnerid=33508" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="1" src="https://covers.powells.com/9780816667703.jpg" /></a></div>Over the holidays, Godson informed me that Godson’s Brother had never seen <i>The Music Man</i>, the stage and screen musical by Meredith Willson. Since Godson’s Brother is now in the business of theatrical production in Britain, I gave him a copy of Willson’s carefully wide-eyed account of developing the show, <a href="https://www.powells.com/book/-9780816667703?partnerid=33508"><i>But He Doesn’t Know the Territory</i></a>. <br />
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At some point I hope to sit down with both brothers to watch <i>The Music Man</i>, ideally in an environment that allows commentary, both wide-eyed and snarky. That brings up a potentially big problem: the “Shipoopi” number. <br />
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Back in college, a friend who was cowriting musicals used the word “Shipoopi” almost as profanity, shorthand for a stupid, unmotivated dance number plopped into the middle of a show. And indeed there’s a lot to sneer at in “Shipoopi.” The song title sounds silly, if not scatalogical. The lyrics are sexist. In the movie, the number ends with Marian in Harold’s arms, leaving no reason for them to go separately to the footbridge for their rendezvous. <br />
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Even more than some of the other “trunk songs” that Meredith Willson wrote before <i>The Music Man</i> and then tried to find places for, this song’s lyrics don’t arise out of the dramatic situation. They don’t reflect the characters’ emotions. All that granted, I can nonetheless make a case for “Shipoopi.”<br />
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Most of the early numbers in <i>The Music Man</i> uncover music in scenes of small-town daily life: the rhythm of the rail, the pitch of a salesman, a repetitive piano lesson, gossips’ prattle, the raised voices of the school committee. In coming to town, the title character brings the latent musicality of River City to the surface. <br />
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Of course, Marian the librarian already embodies music. As the piano teacher, she’s the only person in River City who knows about the subject. But her straight job requires, ironically, keeping patrons quiet and still. The town’s other ladies shun Marian for having been too friendly with Old Miser Madison, preferring a player piano to a real piano player. <br />
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By promising River City a boys’ band in “Seventy-Six Trombones,” Harold Hill makes the idea of music explicit and appealing. That song doesn’t just reveal the music in daily life; it’s about enjoying music itself. “Shipoopi” does the same in the second act—a whole chorus of townspeople knowingly sing and dance together. Musical subtext becomes text. <br />
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The significance of “Shipoopi” differs in the Broadway show and the movie because of when and how the song appears. On stage, early in Act 2, River City’s teenagers interrupt the ladies rehearsing their Grecian urns tableau in order to have a dance—the number shows the younger, more musically inclined generation taking over. On screen, “Shipoopi” comes later as part of a town celebration. It demonstrates community cohesion, not division. <br />
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Either way, “Shipoopi” shows how River City has moved to embrace music, an element of life repressed at the start of the story. That foretells the town’s acceptance of Harold and Marian at the end. <br />
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(Godson’s Brother said the little he knew about <i>The Music Man</i> made it seem thematically akin to <i>Footloose</i>, which tells me he’ll get this.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-47626877943021909562020-10-22T18:43:00.215-05:002021-02-06T15:35:24.794-05:00The “Thomas Nast” Art Team, Part 3Yesterday’s <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/10/21/arts/onscreen-if-still-not-yet-site/"><i>Boston Globe</i> praised</a> the approach of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s <a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast">“Thomas Nast: A Life in Cartoons”</a> online exhibit: “In a nice twist, the exhibition doesn’t emphasize Nast’s own work (though it offers links to many of his cartoons). Instead, nine contemporary cartoonists illustrate episodes from Nast’s life.”<br />
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I discussed six of those artists in the two <a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-thomas-nast-art-team-part-1.html">preceding</a> <a href="https://ozandends.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-thomas-nast-art-team-part-2.html">postings</a>. Here’s the rest of the team.<br />
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Under <i>Harper’s Weekly</i> publisher Fletcher Harper, Nast had editorial freedom in the topics he chose and how he approached them. That often put him at odds with the magazine’s political editor, George William Curtis, who was more gentle and loyal to the Republican Party as a whole rather than just President U. S. Grant. We illustrated that conflict in what I later realized was yet another Nast-speaking-to-his-editor scene. But hey, his job was speaking to editors, and it’s a scene I know well.<br />
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The line “hit the enemy between the eyes” line came straight from Nast. The historical society understandably wanted more Massachusetts content, so this cartoon includes Nast’s unflattering caricatures of two Bay State politicians, Benjamin Butler and Charles Sumner.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="clear: right; display: block; float: right; padding: 0 0 0 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="402" data-original-width="400" height="125" src="http://www.masshist.org/features/juniper/assets/section42/artists/Sam-Cleggett.jpg" /></a></div>The artist for this panel is <a href="https://http://www.samcleggett.com/">Sam Cleggett</a>. When the core team were thinking of cartoonists to recruit, two of the qualities we looked for were political work and visual style reminiscent of Nast. I pointed out, “Sam knows hatching,” and this energetic cartoon shows that he sure does. Sam also creates animation art for television and video games.<br />
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On top of his political cartoons, Thomas Nast’s biggest contribution to American culture was to popularize a certain look for Santa Claus. He had grown up with a German Christmas tradition of “Pelze-Nicol,” which he used to illustrate the Dutch tales of ”St. Nick” preserved in New York. Nast’s Santa was round and jolly, the size of a child, and swathed in fur.<br />
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For years Nast drew black and white pictures of Santa Claus for <i>Harper’s</i>. They became so popular that McLoughlin Bros., a pioneering picture-book publisher, offered to publish a book of Nast’s pictures converted to color lithographs. That technique approximated brown by printing black lines and highlights on a red field, with the result that the fur tinged toward red—and a red suit became what we expect Santa to wear.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="clear: left; display: block; float: left; padding: 0 1em 0 0; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="1" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="400" src="http://www.masshist.org/features/juniper/assets/section42/artists/Dan-Mazur-head-shot.jpg" width="125" /></a></div><a href="http://www.danmazurcomics.com">Dan Mazur</a> produced the cartoon of a McLoughlin brother showing Nast his page proofs for <i>Santa Claus and His Works</i>. As usual, he loaded it up with historical detail, hunting for the right sort of press and Pelze-Nicol himself.<br />
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Dan was also one of the organizers of this project, and he was one of the founders of both the <a href="http://bostoncomics.com">Boston Comics Roundtable</a> and the <a href="https://www.micexpo.org">Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo</a>. His latest comic as a publisher is the <a href="http://bostoncomics.com/boston-powers1/"><i>Boston Powers</i> series</a>, and his upcoming comic as an author-illustrator is <a href="http://www.danmazurcomics.com/2020/10/03/lunatic-is-available/"><i>Lunatic</i></a>.<br />
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After losing his editorial independence, Thomas Nast left <i>Harper’s Weekly</i>. He launched his own magazine, which lasted only a few months. He went on the lecture circuit, but that was exhausting. He produced history paintings looking back on the Civil War. His investments went bust, leaving him in a precarious financial state.<br />
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For our final cartoon, I imagined a cheeky take on the moment when Nast accepted a post in the U.S. diplomatic corps under Theodore Roosevelt. Artist Nick Thorkelson chose to render that in three panels to enhance the timing of the vaudeville dialogue. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so funny when Nast caught yellow fever only a few months after arriving at his first assignment. (We didn’t illustrate that moment.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="display: block; padding: 0 0 0 1em; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="1" width="125" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqCB1lfuWRqweM43YBCv0y-ejGpIK2zip1UHxZrxNxbskFVEPXj7i_dsUzy7i4qURtAqmEapu-TjGzkIaw5kw1wb36zt1Z-lD15wJGK9GqKGDpZ6Z3hzAfppBNOvkLv5DZuZIA5g/s200/Nick-Thorkelson.jpg"/></a></div><a href="http://www.nickthorkelson.com/">Nick Thorkelson</a> has made political cartoons for the <i>Boston Globe</i> and many other outlets. One of his specialties is graphic biography, with his latest being <a href="http://www.nickthorkelson.com/marcusechaptertwo.html"><i>Herbert Marcuse: Philosopher of Utopia</i></a> (2019).<br />
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So that’s our look at the career of American cartoonist Thomas Nast, from his childhood immigration to his death overseas.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28103455.post-90116210540870851922020-10-17T22:33:00.002-05:002022-06-29T19:43:52.800-05:00The “Thomas Nast” Art Team, Part 2With the next set of pictures for <a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast">“Thomas Nast: A Life in Cartoons,”</a> we got into the political part of his career. And the three cartoonists drawing those moments all have experience in political art.<br />
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Nast joined the staff of <i>Harper’s Weekly</i> in 1859, just in time for the US Civil War. Some of the magazine’s artists, such as Winslow Homer, drew battle scenes from life. Nast, though he took some trips to camp, preferred symbolic scenes with unmistakable pro-Union messages. His images could be so powerful that the Republican Party adopted them as campaign material.<br />
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We illustrated that connection with a symbolic meeting between Nast and President Abraham Lincoln, drawn by Shea Justice. Lincoln voices oft-quoted praise for Nast’s work in front of three of his most famous works from the war years. I suggested adopting elements from two cartoon traditions: making Lincoln and Nast into a “Mutt and Jeff” pair, and borrowing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/tom-toles/">Tom Toles</a>’s technique of adding commentary on the main scene from a couple of characters in the corner.<br />
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As for that commentary, that grew from my inability even in the age of Google to find any source for Lincoln’s praise before A. B. Paine‘s 1904 authorized biography of Nast. Fiona Deans Halloran wrote the same in her modern biography, expressed in the polite language of a footnote.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="display: block; padding: 0 0 0 1em; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="1" height="180" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="400" src="http://www.masshist.org/features/juniper/assets/section42/artists/Shea-Justice.jpg"/></a></div>Stated more bluntly, this “Lincoln quotation” seems to have come from, or at least through, Nast himself. After consulting with Halloran, we made her the voice of doubt (or reason) while Nast speaks up for printing the legend.<br />
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Shea Justice, MFA, is a teacher at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School and a member of the African-American Master Artists in Residence Program. His portraits of figures from African-American history have been collected in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Artwork-Shea-Justice-I/dp/1425962807/">this volume</a>.<br />
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To hear from Dr. Fiona Deans Halloran herself, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVANowDjZOM" target="_blank">check out this video</a> of her far-ranging conversation with longtime political cartoonist Pat Bagley for the Massachusetts Historical Society.<br />
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The next cartoon looks at Nast’s campaign during Reconstruction for basic equality for all Americans, built around his iconic cartoon “Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner.” Nast’s vision of equality was limited, though. His take on, and caricatures of, non-white Americans could be quite disparaging. And he particularly disliked Irish Catholics, as this cartoon highlights.<br />
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Originally I had Nast saying, “Except for the Irish Catholics!” But then my artistic colleagues noticed that one of the figures at Uncle Sam’s table—on the right, near where his finger rests—had the profile that Nast typically gave to his Irishmen. So I tweaked the wording to acknowledge that Nast even gave an Irish couple a seat at Thanksgiving.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="display: block; padding: 0 1em 0 0; text-align: center; clear: left; float: left;"><img alt="" border="1" width="125" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="400" src="http://www.masshist.org/features/juniper/assets/section42/artists/EJ-Barnes.jpg"/></a></div><a href="http://www.ejbarnes.com">E. J. Barnes</a> drew this panel, as well as serving the whole project as art director. She did admirable work assembling all the images, a job that turned out to include not only cajoling the cartoonists but also securing workable reproductions of Nast’s drawings and inserting them into our modern drawings in the midst of the pandemic shutdown. E. J. sells her artwork and comics stories through <a href="http://http://www.drownedtownpress.com/">Drowned Town Press</a>.<br />
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The next panel dramatizes one of the most famous episodes in Nast’s career, the second time he helped to bring down William “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall. Nast drew a lot of cartoons about Tweed, rousing public opinion enough for other legal authorities to move in. When Tweed fled US custody to Spain, police there recognized him as a wanted man from a cover of <i>Harper’s Weekly</i>—though they weren’t clear about what he was wanted for. Information from across the Atlantic is easier to come by these days, as I found when I sought period images of Spanish police uniforms.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="http://www.masshist.org/features/thomasnast" style="display: block; padding: 0 0 0 1em; text-align: center; clear: right; float: right;"><img alt="" border="1" height="180" data-original-height="532" data-original-width="400" src="http://www.masshist.org/features/juniper/assets/section42/artists/Heide-Solbrig-HeadShot.jpg"/></a></div>The artist for this panel is <a href="https://www.heidesolbrig.com/">Heide Solbrig</a>, another colleague from the Boston Comics Roundtable. With a doctorate in communication from UCSD, Heide has taught arts and media studies at various colleges in New England. She’s working a graphic memoir called <a href="https://www.heidesolbrig.com/the-dandelion-king"><i>The Dandelion King</i></a> and a series of comics journalism reports about the US-Mexico border. I see a reflection of her interest in immigration at the center of her panel as people line up in front of that transatlantic ship.<br>
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COMING UP: <a href="http://ozandends.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-thomas-nastart-team-part-3.html">Part 3</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0