# Digest urth.v024.n016 *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 18 Mar 1999* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *18 Mar 1999, 20:21* William, I think you've done a great job, and that you should polish it up and publish it somewhere. About the wings: This is a peculiar thing that Wolfe does sometimes---look at the very end of "Tracking Song." Through it makes me squirm, I think that he really is invoking angels in both places. (I don't mind when they're like Tzadkiel, now why is that?) Or, to put it another way, Oz = Sugarland = The Big Rock Candy Mountain = The Great Good Place = Heaven. They certainly aren't the Gump's palm-frond wings! Though I feel cheered at the suggestion! This suggests that Little Tib is not long for this world, and I feel that this is true. Your argument against this view is that Nitty is a real person. Yes, but he is a sort of angel too, and my own feeling is that both of them will be beyond the rainbow soon. And remember that the Shaggy Man and Dorothy and Betsy and Trot and a few other earth people do live in Oz, probably forever, since one is immortal there. I don't think Baum was necessarily a Christian, but Wolfe is, and the conclusion is obvious. Gosh, if I thought I had a chance of going to Oz when I died, I'd try to be a better person.... -alga ---