Subject: (urth) FLF as Oz, or "The good company you keep"

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 15:26:39 +0000

"From almost the first page of FREE LIVE FREE, Wolfe makes it clear that
his fable can be read as a loose fantasia on the 1939 film version of THE
WIZARD OF OZ.  When the four finally corner Free at the controls . . . the
connection is both pointed and deeply comical.  But OZ is by no means the
end of it.  FLF reads as an attempt to recapture the essence of the world
of the American film before the War.  Not only OZ but THE MALTESE FALCON;
not only the young Howard Hawks/Hughes but, more importantly, Frank Capra.
In its lucid nostalgia, and in its magical-realist populism, FLF is very
much OZ as Frank Capra might have dreamed it." --John Clute, "The
Washington Post" (24 Nov 1985).

=mantis=

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