Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Wizard Of Oz: A Populist Fable?


Occasionally, I receive interesting things via e-mail. Most, I ignore and others make my brain hurt.

I received a link to a site which talks about "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" in terms of being a populist fable. Of course, there are many different interpretations.

Maybe some of our Coshocton Public Library pals can give us their opinions.

For me, I think it's a case of "Paul Is Dead" scholarly work. Certainly, you can apply the story to the times in which Baum lived, but can't you do that with other works, too? I doubt that Baum was quite as clever as the populist fable mongers would have us believe. I've always believed that Frank let his imagination run wild after breaking down his mind's doors with some type of mind altering substance...a kind of American Alice In Wonderland. Now where's my Pink Floyd album?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe additional research should be done to determine Baum's motivation for the tale.

Randy M. Combs said...

Cool! You're hired! And by the way, I can only pay you with a picture of Fred Landerman's grave, a tea stained memo to myself discussing a lack-of-motivation regarding thorough research of Coshocton train fatalities, and last, but not least, an autographed picture of 80's hair metal band, Pretty Boy Floyd (if I can find it).

 
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