Re: (long) Respectable artists my <ahem>

["DJH" <donna@math.uconn.edu>]

> >My specific example is that of L. Frank Baum who wrote " The Wizard of
> >Oz". 
> >A cute, children's story accepted by the masses.
> 
> "The Wizard of Oz" was definitely NOT a children's story. It was a satire.
> A political one at that (The Cowardly Lion was William Jennings Bryan).
> Not only is your position historically incorrect, it is pedantic and
> self-serving. I am not condoning Baum's position, I am simply stating that
> you have grossly misunderstood what his position and writings were about.
> Try to show some historical accuracy as well as some knowledge of the
> subject you are addressing before writing about it.  
> 
> 
> 

Kinda harsh words... especially considering the following from the
Wizard of Oz FAQ - ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/t/tiktok/oz/ozfaq.txt

"4.5.  Is it true that Baum wrote "The Wizard of Oz" as a political
tract?

Probably not.  Baum was not very active in politics, and although his
other books do contain some contemporary social commentary, none of
them could be considered overtly political works.

The connection was not even raised until 1963, when a summer school
teacher named Henry Littlefield, while trying to teach the 1896
Presidential election and the turn-of-the-century Populist movement to
bored history students, stumbled upon the idea of using "The Wizard of
Oz" to teach the concepts.  He and his students made a number of
connections -- the Scarecrow was the farmers, the Tin Woodman the
factory workers, the Wizard was the President, the Cowardly Lion was
William Jennings Bryan, the silver shoes were the silver standard, the
yellow brick road the gold standard, and so on -- and Littlefield
eventually wrote an article, "The Wizard of Oz:  A Parable on
Populism," that was published in the magazine "American Quarterly" in
1964.  That was it, until Gore Vidal, writing about Oz in "The New
York Review of Books" in 1977, mentioned the article, and the idea
took off.  Unfortunately a number of other articles later came out
that misunderstood or reinterpreted what Littlefield had said or
meant, and other writers took the ideas even further, some not even
aware of Littlefield's original essay.  Some of these interpretations
even contradict each other, and others invented political leanings for
Baum (whose early newspaper columns show a stronger leaning towards
the Republicans than the Populists).  Littlefield makes pains to say,
then and now, that he does not believe Baum had an overtly political
agenda in writing "The Wizard of Oz," and that his observations are
more allegorical than theoretical.

Like almost any literary work, one can find just about anything in
"The Wizard of Oz," if one looks for it hard enough.  Other
interpretations of the book that have been published include spiritual
(Baum did have a minor interest in the Theosophist movement), mythic,
psychological (Freudian, Jungian, and others), feminist, and
socialist/Communist.  The strongest evidence, however, points to Baum
merely wanting to tell a good story, and not to add any hidden
meaning."