{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1356", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1356, "subject": "The Wonderful Eyeflash of Oz, part 3", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1999-02-03T00:38:04+00:00", "last": "1999-02-03T00:38:04+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "William H. Ansley", "address": "wansley at warwick.net" }, "date": "1999-02-03T00:38:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The Wonderful Eyeflash of Oz, part 3", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Here is my third posting on the Oz references in _The Eyeflash Miracles_.\n\nThe next Oz reference is a throw away line from Nitty. He is in a box car\non a freight train with Mr. Parker and Little Tib. Mr. Parker is asleep in\nthe back of the car. Nitty is sitting by the open door with Little Tib, and\nis describing the scenery outside the train to him. They are passing a\nlarge pine forest and Nitty says that he thinks there are a lot of animals\nin the woods. \"You like animals, George?[8] Bears and big old cats.\" This\nis certainly another way of saying \"Lions and tigers and bears\" but without\nthe \"Oh, my.\"\n\n\nThe first miracle (or at least a possible one) occurs on the train. Little\nTib appears to be feverish[9] and pale, which worries Nitty. Two railroad\npolice women throw a tear gas grenade into the boxcar. There is a commotion\nas Nitty yells and tries to throw the grenade out of the car, Mr. Parker\nruns full tilt into a wall of the car and Little Tib is almost overcome by\nthe gas. There is no Oz vision here, but Little Tib does has a vision or\nmemory of the first home he can remember where there was a clear, ice-cold\ncreek and a \"kite-flying west wind was blowing.\"\n\nThe gas disappears. At first Nitty and Mr. Parker think that the grenade\nhas fallen out of the car, but then they find it. It just stopped emitting\ngas, much sooner than it should have. Nitty seems to suspect that Little\nTib had something to do with this and later events make him sure of this.\nOne such later event is that Mr. Parker seems to have completely recovered\nhis sanity ever since the grenade incident.\n\nLittle Tib continues to be feverish and falls asleep. He dreams of a place\nwith apple and cherry trees with red leaves and red grass around their\nroots. The trees have faces in their trunks and talk to each other. There\nare red birds in the trees: cardinals.\n\nLittle Tib comes upon a little house painted with red and white stripes.\nOut the house comes a copper man with features, including a large\nmoustache, stamped upon his face. He has three key holes in his back (like\na clockwork toy) labeled 'Moving Action', 'Talking Action' and 'Thinking\nAction'. There is a loud hammering sound in the hills behind the little\nhouse. It is a giant woman with a giant broom hitting at and missing a\ngiant rat, over and over. The woman is Little Tib's mother.\n\nLittle Tib wakes up crying in a doctor's office with Nitty and Mr. Parker.\nNext to him is a woman who has a little girl with a crippled, shrunken leg.\nLittle Tib touches her leg and heals it. This is the second miracle as I am\nreporting them, although it is the first inarguable one. There is no direct\nOz vision during the performance of this miracle, but the echoes of the\nBam! Bam! Bam! from his most recent dream are still in his mind and Little\nTib thinks about how his own legs felt in his earlier Oz dream when he was\nrunning from the spinning sunflowers to the green city.\n\nThere is a lot of Oz material here. The trees with faces in their trunks\nare from the movie (the scene in the apple orchard). The place where the\nleaves, grass, etc. are all red is in the Land of Oz; it is the portion\nknow as the Country of the Quadlings or Quadlingland. In the Oz books the\nMunchkins are only one of the four major groups who live in Oz. To the\nnorth live the Quadlings, to the east live the Munchkins (blue), to the\nsouth live the Gillykins (red) and to the west live the Winkies (yellow).\nAnd in the center is the Emerald City where things are, of course, green.\nOz is first described this way in _The Marvelous Land of Oz_[10].\n\nThe copper man is Tiktok, Smith & Tinker's Patent Double-Action,\nExtra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking Mechanical Man, as it\nsays at the beginning of his instruction manual. He is introduced in _Ozma\nof Oz_ and appears in many books thereafter. Wolfe got a few details wrong\n(in the book he has one keyhole in the middle of his back and one under\neach arm and one key fits all of them) but his copper man is unmistakable\nTiktok, who is often referred to as a copper man in the Oz books. One of\nthe great pleasures of the Oz books is the illustrations[11]. Wolfe\nobviously remembers the pictures of the characters; the drawings often\nshowed details that Baum did not describe but that Wolfe does, such as\nTiktok's moustache.\n\nThe giant version of Little Tib's mother is based on a giant in _Ozma of\nOz_. The giant in the book is another clockwork man, made of iron, by the\nsame manufacturer as Tiktok. All the iron giant can do is pound the path\nthat runs by him with his giant hammer; he is meant to discourage people\nfrom using the path. But if you move quickly and time it just right, you\ncan run under his hammer. Otherwise you will be crushed.\n\nStay tuned for the next installment.\n\nWilliam Ansley\n\n[8] Even though George Tibbs always thinks of himself as Little Tib, he\ntells people his full name when they ask him, so he is usually called\nGeorge by adults in the story.\n\n[9] Little Tib seems to have a fever whenever he works a miracle.\n\n[10] Baum is very inconsistent about the colors of things in these\ncountries in the different books or even in different places in the same\nbook. At one point he will say that the predominant color of (for example)\nMuchkinland is blue: Munchkins paint their houses blue, wear blue clothes\nand grow blue flowers, and so on, even though Munchkinland grass is still\ndescribed as green. But elsewhere he will say that everything is blue, the\nplants, the dirt, the people's hair (and perhaps skin). Or he will say\neverything has a blue tinge, although other colors show through.\n\n[11] The illustrator of _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ was W. W. Denslow.\nJohn R. Neill illustrated most of the rest of them. Unfortunately, I am\nre-reading these books in plain text form on my Palm III, so I can't say\nfor sure who illustrated any given book, in general. (Many of the Oz books\nare now in the public domain.) But I read all the books in illustrated form\noriginally and remember the pictures well. Plus I have a copy of _The Road\nto Oz_ from our local library with the original illustrations to look at (a\nyoung relative is reading it)." } ] } ] }