There’s No Place Like Home

Okay, enough of the doom and gloom! I decided to give my mommy brain a vacation and picked up an audiobook of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I don’t see how anyone could feel unhappy while listening to this story, which is why I want to buy a copy for my son. I’ve watched the movie dozens of times, but I’ve never read the book until now. For the most part, the movie follows the book pretty closely, but the movie script actually improves a few plot points. 

The first thing that caught my attention was how Baum describes everything in Kansas as being gray and gloomy and then when Dorothy arrives in Munchkin Land it is full of all colors of the rainbow. This reminded me of how brilliantly the film goes from black and white to Technicolor. It’s an amazing movie moment. I couldn’t believe how similar the book and the movie were in that scene.

One memorable difference is that Book Dorothy is given silver shoes instead of ruby slippers. As the owner of both silver and ruby red ballet flats, I think either is a legitimate fashion statement. Silver is a great neutral and goes with everything, so Book Dorothy probably had more wardrobe options. But of course everyone remembers the sparkly red shoes from the movie, and probably every little girl (or gay boy) who watched Judy Garland trot down the Yellow Brick Road wanted to own heels just like them. If I’m not mistaken, the Smithsonian owns the real ruby slippers. So Dorothy had great and timeless style. In fact, in the  book the silver shoes are the first thing that Oz asks Dorothy about when she arrives in the Emerald City. He sounds more like a fashions stylist than a wizard, but whatever. Moving on…

Did you know that Tin Woodsman, as he’s called in Baum’s book, once was engaged to a nice village girl until the Wicked Witch cursed him and turned him to metal? It’s such a sad little anecdote. The Tinman tells Dorothy that he promised to marry this girl once he made enough money from chopping wood to buy a house. And he thinks the poor girl is still waiting for him in her cabin where she lives with her mean aunt! I thought for sure at the end of the book he would dramatically reunite with this girl and have a big wedding in the forest. But, um, nope. The Tinman gets his heart and decides to rule some gang of midgets or something. So much for romance.

Another big difference between book and movie is that Book Oz and Book Wicked Witch aren’t too bright. Movie Wicked Witch is crazy scary and whip smart. In the book she tries to outsmart Dorothy and her pals by sending wolves and flying monkeys killer bees after them. The book goes all kinds of Hunger Games for a couple of chapters! But the witch seems really afraid of Dorothy and her silver shoes. In the end it’s death by bucket o water for her! Oz is a really crappy wizard, as he even admits himself. He tries to appear as a giant bald head, a pretty blonde girl, and a ball of fire to Dorothy and her friends. But then Toto exposes him for the fraud he is. And he really has no idea how to help them get courage, a heart, a brain and a trip to Kansas. He kind of throws together some arts and crafts (a courage energy drink for Cowardly Lion, a silk heart for Tinman, a set of pins for Scarecrow’s head, and a hot air balloon for Dorothy) and everyone seems satisfied. But then he takes off in the balloon without Dorothy like a chump! He really is useless. So the lesson here is that they all possessed the traits they wished for all along. Scarecrow was smart, the Lion was courageous, and the Tinman had a loving heart. And Glenda the super pretty Ginger Witch tells D in the end that she just has to click her heels together to get home. It’s all about the shoes, ladies!!!

But Victor Fleming did a great job condensing some repetitive scenes. In the book there are two or three trips to the Emerald City and more than one Good Witch who helps the kids and at least three road trips on the Yellow Brick. And the end of the book finds Dorothy at home in Kansas with her aunt and uncle, but it wasn’t all a dream like it was in the movie. I always loved the end of the movie where you see that the helpers on the farm were really the Scarecrow, Lion and Tinman. “And you were there and you were there and you were there!” That is movie magic. As a kid it made me believe that anything was possible, and that’s what good fairy tales should do.

The Sound of Mommy’s Fury

Hi folks. Yes, I’m still alive. But when does mommy have time to blog when she’s working full-time and taking care of a four-month old at home? Try never. But I’m alive, feeling positive and trying to read and write a bit every day to keep my brain functioning.

So a week or two ago I finished Faulker’s The Sound and the Fury, the first classic I picked up since returning to work after maternity leave. My mom loves Southern Gothic Dysfunctional Family Novels and so I’ve always meant to check out good ole Faulkner. And she warned me that this one is the toughest, what with the four different narrators and the stream of consciousness and the whatnot. But I guess I am just a glutton for punishment sometimes.

According to Mom the Literature Teacher, you need to read The Sound and the Fury more than once to really get it. And I believe it. I mostly listened to the book on audio and that made it a bit tougher to comprehend. At least on the page, the author used italics to indicate flashbacks, but not always. Basically, the Compton family is f-ed up, and they have been since the Civil War ended. Benji, one of the brothers, is mentally handicapped. Quentin, another brother, drowns himself because he’s so depressed that his sister became a floozy. Jason, the third brother, is bitter that the bank job he was promised by his sister’s fiance was taken away from him when the sister’s baby turned out to be someone else’s kid. Caddy, the sister, leaves town after she has the baby girl, who is named after Quentin. Mom is totally self-absorbed and checked out emotionally. Dad dies of alcoholism. So, yeah, it’s a feel-good book. Sort of like Marley and Me, except in the South. Uh-huh.

Well, here’s what I’ll say in this bummer of a book’s defense. Reading it feels like a brain exercise, a puzzle to be solved. It fascinated me even though it made me feel sort of dumb. I don’t know how the guy wrote this thing and pasted it all together. I had to read background info in both SparkNotes and Novels for Students to even figure out the plot. And even then, there is a lot left up to interpretation. Reading the characters’ confusing thoughts and memories reminded me that everyone has a different take on family events. If you ask any member of your family what happened on any given day, you will get completely different answers. Whose narration should we trust, if any of them? It’s sort of like a Choose Your Own Adventure with a family that really needs a therapist.

These days the family probably would turn to a therapist, talk show host or self-help book. Currently I’m reading Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, which explains how to use mediation techniques to stay calm with your children. I am having mixed results with its suggestions, but that is another story! It reminded me of S&TF’s stream of consciousness narration when I read, “our thinking is complex, chaotic, unpredictable, and frequently inaccurate, inconsistent, and contradictory.” So, Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn would suggest that the Comptons take a mediation class together to let go of their negative thoughts and their inaccurate memories of family events. That would be a much happier outcome then all of the death, bitterness, yelling, and running away that goes on in Faulkner’s book. Faulkner himself would probably say, “Screw that hippie nonsense” and just go hunting.

In any case, these people had PROBLEMS. I don’t even have the brain power to unravel them right now. All I can tell you is that I found the women in the book, Caddy, her daughter Quentin, and the housekeeper, Dilcey, far more interesting than the men. I would have much rather read their perspectives on their messed up family, but I guess it’s symbolic of women’s lack of power in 1920’s society that we only hear from the men and the omnicient narrator. Okay, fine, I get it, but it still would have been way more fun to read Miss Quentin’s version of how she stole her a-hole Uncle Jason’s money (which was supposed to be hers anyway) and ran away with some guy from the circus. At the end of the book, Miss Q’s antics are supposed to mark the complete downfall of the family. She’s become a floozy just like her mother and feels no remorse about it. But I felt happy for her. She got out of town and hopefully created a new life for herself. At least she showed some backbone. Dilcey is supposed to be the redeeming member of the whole family, the one who keeps everything together with her quiet wisdom and religious faith and cooking skills. Well, screw that, I say. She should have told the whole family they were nuts and left the lunatics to run their own asylum. Being the martyr is overrated.

But finding a classic book where female characters have any sort of optimistic ending is a tough task. I guess my goal for next classic will be to read something that doesn’t make me want to follow in Quentin’s footsteps and drown myself. Maybe I should pick up something for children in honor of my munchkin at home?