My Most Clever Subject Title Ever!
Aug. 15th, 2002 03:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Woke up today. Went to work. Came home. I forget if there was anything interesting in between.
Oh yeah. I drove downtown to buy a cake. Our new thing at work is that you buy a cake for the next person to have a birthday after yours... that way everyone is covered. So my birthday was in early July, and now it was Nancy's birthday... not sure why we included her, she's not our boss anymore and she's management and she doesn't really work the same shift as us, more of an overlapping afternoon/evening shift, but anyway, we're nice and all so we still include her and celebrate her birthday, and anyway I work with her brother and sister lol. ^_^ So there's this cook Asian bakery in the International District, right across the street from where Uwajamaya used to be, called A Piece Of Cake, and they make these AMAZING cakes that have all sorts of fruit in them... strawberries, canteloupe, honeydew melon, kiwi fruit, etc. etc. Usually some on top and a layer of fruit in the middle... with a type of frosting that's more like cool whip... very wonderful cakes. I got one of those. And I was afraid I was going to be late to work because I'd braved downtown Seattle traffic, but somehow I made it on time. And since the cake was kind of small (six inches across) I wanted to go to Fred Meyers and get something drenched in chocolate, like a raspberry chocolate torte, and what would you know? Laura (Nancy's sister) brought in a chocolate raspberry torte! Sincronicity! Kismet! Or something! Because she had forgotten it was Nancy's birthday, she'd just grabbed it because it looked good. ^_^
So... anyway, got another Oz book in today. I'm a bit mollified... this was "Visitors From Oz" which I bought for $4.95 plus shipping and handling, then realized I could have bought for $4.95 from Half Price Books in the U-District... but actually the Half Price copies were paperback, and it turns out the one I ordered online is hardback, so for that reason I'm mollified, I'm glad to have a nice hardback book. ^_^
Why is it that people who are the closest to the material, who are the most afraid of altering or damaging the history or feeling or whatever of something, are the first to take major liberties and piss off all the fans? I have two examples now... "The Mysterious Chronicles of Oz" by Onyx Madden, who is a life-long Ozophile, has a huge library of Oz books including many first editions, and has been an active member of the International Wizard of Oz Club for many years... and his book, from what I've read, is very long-winded and takes some major liberties with the whole Oz Worldview, all the while claiming that he's being scrupulously attentive to every detail of the Oz Milieu (the book contains many expository passages that relate events from other books, and how they tie in to his own story). You'd think someone that much in love with Oz would be careful to not screw things up, but that never seems to be the case. And you also have to wonder about a man who writes a children's book, and in the very first sentence uses a word like "presaging". I'm not a fan of "dumbing down" a story for children, but at the same time, you have to at least take into consideration the reading level of your audience, and despite use of an extensive vocabulary, Madden is clearly attempting to write a children's story. But I suppose he's an old man who's still very fond of these children's books, but doesn't quite remember what made them likeable in the first place.
Then I have this second book, "Visitors From Oz" by Martin Gardner. I've already read that it includes such things as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodsman getting mugged on Broadway, and in general is not really written in the spirit of the original Oz books. Yet the author is also a lifelong fan of Oz, very devoted to the entire series of books, has written articles about Baum and Oz, was even listed as "Chairman of the Board of Directors" on the masthead of the very first Baum Bugle, the official magazine of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and he dedicates the book to the unfortunately named Fred Meyer, longtime secretary of the club and lifelong Baum booster.
Why would someone whose entire life apparently is wrapped up in Baum and Oz write a book that misses the mark by a mile? It's a mystery. He's also written a book called "The Annotated Alice" so I would assume he's a fan of Lewis Carroll's work, and indeed in "Visitors From Oz" Dorothy and company visit Wonderland, where they meet Humpty Dumpty, and they have the following conversation:
"I liked the way you explained all those nonsense words in 'Jabberwocky,'" said Dorothy.
"Carroll got that all wrong. Alice couldn't recall what I said, so Carroll invented all those silly meanings."
"Can you terll us now what the lines in 'Jabberwocky' really mean?" asked Dorothy.
"No, because they don't mean anything. If they did, the poem wouldn't be nonsense. Carroll wrote it when he was young. How it got to Wonderland I can't imagine. I could make up meanings for the words. As I told Alice, a word can mean anything you want it to mean. But my meanings wouldn't be any better than the ones Carroll put into my mouth."
Now, I ask you, what the frigging HELL is the purpose of this little interchange? Alice In Wonderland is one of the best-loved children's books in history, and one reason for that is Carroll's extremely clever wit. His nonsense poem 'Jabberwocky' is all the more fun because the nonsense words have explanations that make a certain sort of sense, the words have a sort of twisted etymology of their own, that gives the nonsense a kind of legitimacy. Without question, these explanations were not made up after the fact; Lewis Carroll constructed them very carefully when he wrote the poem. It's beyond stupid to suggest otherwise, and why on earth would you suggest any such thing? Is it funny? No. Does it advance any plot? No. All it does is tear down and destroy one of the most entertaining passages in a much-beloved children's story, and you have to wonder why a person who apparently loves Oz and Alice would do such a thing. Again, he seems to be in love with Oz and Alice, and wants to put a bit of Alice into his Oz story, but has no idea what made it a cool story for him when he was a kid.
I still expect both books will be entertaining to read. They're both founded on good story ideas. Both are very nicely illustrated, and each includes a number of full color illustrations. But I can already see why any serious Oz fan would claim that both of these books are not "cannon". And the mystery is, why do people so intimately connected to the source material fail to write stories in the same spirit as the original books?
Well... have I wandered off-topic far enough? Oh yeah... I lied. QFC doesn't have net cable. I thought the local one did... I could almost swear they did at one point, maybe when they were still Art's and not QFC. But whatever. ^_^
I've been pretty careful about adding people to my list of lj friends. Mostly, I've only added people who are in our local circle, ie Tai-Pan people, of which our gaming group is mostly a sub-set. I've kept it small. But yesterday I added four new people... three from my EQ Guild (well... one of the three was never *officially* in the guild, but you get the idea), plus another Tai-Pan person (Brombear) who I found by searching on everyone with "tai-pan" as an interest. He just started his ljournal recently... actually I think the three guild friends started recently too. And I don't know if they all realize I'm reading them now... although I did post a reply to Malm's latest entry so I guess he'll know soon enough. ^_^
Oh yeah. I drove downtown to buy a cake. Our new thing at work is that you buy a cake for the next person to have a birthday after yours... that way everyone is covered. So my birthday was in early July, and now it was Nancy's birthday... not sure why we included her, she's not our boss anymore and she's management and she doesn't really work the same shift as us, more of an overlapping afternoon/evening shift, but anyway, we're nice and all so we still include her and celebrate her birthday, and anyway I work with her brother and sister lol. ^_^ So there's this cook Asian bakery in the International District, right across the street from where Uwajamaya used to be, called A Piece Of Cake, and they make these AMAZING cakes that have all sorts of fruit in them... strawberries, canteloupe, honeydew melon, kiwi fruit, etc. etc. Usually some on top and a layer of fruit in the middle... with a type of frosting that's more like cool whip... very wonderful cakes. I got one of those. And I was afraid I was going to be late to work because I'd braved downtown Seattle traffic, but somehow I made it on time. And since the cake was kind of small (six inches across) I wanted to go to Fred Meyers and get something drenched in chocolate, like a raspberry chocolate torte, and what would you know? Laura (Nancy's sister) brought in a chocolate raspberry torte! Sincronicity! Kismet! Or something! Because she had forgotten it was Nancy's birthday, she'd just grabbed it because it looked good. ^_^
So... anyway, got another Oz book in today. I'm a bit mollified... this was "Visitors From Oz" which I bought for $4.95 plus shipping and handling, then realized I could have bought for $4.95 from Half Price Books in the U-District... but actually the Half Price copies were paperback, and it turns out the one I ordered online is hardback, so for that reason I'm mollified, I'm glad to have a nice hardback book. ^_^
Why is it that people who are the closest to the material, who are the most afraid of altering or damaging the history or feeling or whatever of something, are the first to take major liberties and piss off all the fans? I have two examples now... "The Mysterious Chronicles of Oz" by Onyx Madden, who is a life-long Ozophile, has a huge library of Oz books including many first editions, and has been an active member of the International Wizard of Oz Club for many years... and his book, from what I've read, is very long-winded and takes some major liberties with the whole Oz Worldview, all the while claiming that he's being scrupulously attentive to every detail of the Oz Milieu (the book contains many expository passages that relate events from other books, and how they tie in to his own story). You'd think someone that much in love with Oz would be careful to not screw things up, but that never seems to be the case. And you also have to wonder about a man who writes a children's book, and in the very first sentence uses a word like "presaging". I'm not a fan of "dumbing down" a story for children, but at the same time, you have to at least take into consideration the reading level of your audience, and despite use of an extensive vocabulary, Madden is clearly attempting to write a children's story. But I suppose he's an old man who's still very fond of these children's books, but doesn't quite remember what made them likeable in the first place.
Then I have this second book, "Visitors From Oz" by Martin Gardner. I've already read that it includes such things as Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodsman getting mugged on Broadway, and in general is not really written in the spirit of the original Oz books. Yet the author is also a lifelong fan of Oz, very devoted to the entire series of books, has written articles about Baum and Oz, was even listed as "Chairman of the Board of Directors" on the masthead of the very first Baum Bugle, the official magazine of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and he dedicates the book to the unfortunately named Fred Meyer, longtime secretary of the club and lifelong Baum booster.
Why would someone whose entire life apparently is wrapped up in Baum and Oz write a book that misses the mark by a mile? It's a mystery. He's also written a book called "The Annotated Alice" so I would assume he's a fan of Lewis Carroll's work, and indeed in "Visitors From Oz" Dorothy and company visit Wonderland, where they meet Humpty Dumpty, and they have the following conversation:
"I liked the way you explained all those nonsense words in 'Jabberwocky,'" said Dorothy.
"Carroll got that all wrong. Alice couldn't recall what I said, so Carroll invented all those silly meanings."
"Can you terll us now what the lines in 'Jabberwocky' really mean?" asked Dorothy.
"No, because they don't mean anything. If they did, the poem wouldn't be nonsense. Carroll wrote it when he was young. How it got to Wonderland I can't imagine. I could make up meanings for the words. As I told Alice, a word can mean anything you want it to mean. But my meanings wouldn't be any better than the ones Carroll put into my mouth."
Now, I ask you, what the frigging HELL is the purpose of this little interchange? Alice In Wonderland is one of the best-loved children's books in history, and one reason for that is Carroll's extremely clever wit. His nonsense poem 'Jabberwocky' is all the more fun because the nonsense words have explanations that make a certain sort of sense, the words have a sort of twisted etymology of their own, that gives the nonsense a kind of legitimacy. Without question, these explanations were not made up after the fact; Lewis Carroll constructed them very carefully when he wrote the poem. It's beyond stupid to suggest otherwise, and why on earth would you suggest any such thing? Is it funny? No. Does it advance any plot? No. All it does is tear down and destroy one of the most entertaining passages in a much-beloved children's story, and you have to wonder why a person who apparently loves Oz and Alice would do such a thing. Again, he seems to be in love with Oz and Alice, and wants to put a bit of Alice into his Oz story, but has no idea what made it a cool story for him when he was a kid.
I still expect both books will be entertaining to read. They're both founded on good story ideas. Both are very nicely illustrated, and each includes a number of full color illustrations. But I can already see why any serious Oz fan would claim that both of these books are not "cannon". And the mystery is, why do people so intimately connected to the source material fail to write stories in the same spirit as the original books?
Well... have I wandered off-topic far enough? Oh yeah... I lied. QFC doesn't have net cable. I thought the local one did... I could almost swear they did at one point, maybe when they were still Art's and not QFC. But whatever. ^_^
I've been pretty careful about adding people to my list of lj friends. Mostly, I've only added people who are in our local circle, ie Tai-Pan people, of which our gaming group is mostly a sub-set. I've kept it small. But yesterday I added four new people... three from my EQ Guild (well... one of the three was never *officially* in the guild, but you get the idea), plus another Tai-Pan person (Brombear) who I found by searching on everyone with "tai-pan" as an interest. He just started his ljournal recently... actually I think the three guild friends started recently too. And I don't know if they all realize I'm reading them now... although I did post a reply to Malm's latest entry so I guess he'll know soon enough. ^_^
