CHAPEL HILL -- With all the hoopla surrounding publication of the newest Harry Potter book, it's easy to overlook what's been called America's most distinctive contribution to the world literature of fairy tales -- "The Wizard of Oz."
That story is best remembered from the 1939 movie starring Judy Garland. It featured a girl named Dorothy and her dog Toto, who found themselves on a yellow brick road about as far as one can get from Kansas. Other major characters included a cowardly lion played by Bert Lahr, Ray Bolger as a scarecrow with no brains, a tin man seeking a heart, a pair of especially memorable malicious, cackling witches and a kind, thoughtful witch named Glinda.
Written by Frank Baum and published in 1900, the novel turns 100 this year. Scholars and fans from around the country will gather in Bloomington, Ind., this weekend to celebrate the remarkable work, its many sequels and its author. Among them will be Dr. Kenneth J. Reckford, professor of classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An ardent fan since age 6 and now a well-known scholar, Reckford teaches Greek and Latin but studies the Oz books as a hobby.
"In 1964, I joined the International Wizard of Oz Club, which was started with 16 members by a 13-year-old boy who grew up to be a prominent bookseller," Reckford said. "Now the club has 3,500 members and publishes a very professional, very scholarly journal called the Baum Bugle. This will be a tremendous celebration."
Reckford will present a talk titled "Childish or Childlike? The Emerald City of Oz" Friday afternoon at the Indiana University Memorial Union. The talk will cover the sixth of 14 Oz books Baum wrote before his death in 1919. Ruth Plumly Thompson then wrote 19 more, and other people, including the author's great grandson, are still churning them out.
"Baum was a wonderful man, a very American type of inventive man who moved from New York to North Dakota, to Chicago to California, and his books reflect his pioneer spirit," Reckford said. "Many similarities to the Potter books can be found, including a lot of magic, humor and good human decency. The Potter books are terrific, and I think they are going to bring people back to some of the other fairy tales we have forgotten a little such as the Oz books."
Reckford believes that Americans live in such a practical and technological age that a hunger exists among adults as well as children for works of the imagination.
"These books are wonderful for small children, and I wish grown-up books could be as good as many of the books written for children," he said. "I always wanted to write Oz books myself but never had the gift."
Baum, who also worked as a window dresser, a chicken rancher, a journalist, a theatrical producer and filmmaker, began his career as one of the nation's most successful writers accidentally, the professor said. His and other people's children enjoyed the stories he made up so much that he was persuaded to begin writing them down. In the process, he created an original kind of fairy tale.
An idealist, Baum moved away from the traditional dark European fairy tales of the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen that are full of suffering and wrote instead with gentle, almost corny humor, puns and moral wisdom, Reckford said. In Oz -- a distinctively American form of Utopia -- no one is poor, and just about everyone is generous, kind and contented. The books strongly influenced several generations of Americans to want and to try to create a kinder, gentler nation.
Perhaps the fact that his mother-in-law was a famous suffragist prompted the author to make Dorothy the heroine and to both praise and sometimes make fun of the women's rights movement. Very different from the passive Alice in "Alice in Wonderland," Dorothy is practical, down to earth, cheerful, brave and considerate.
"A lot of my education came out of these books, which make goodness seem very attractive," Reckford said. "To my great pleasure, my grandchildren have really been enjoying them."
The conference attracts "an extraordinary mix of artists, writers, business people, liberals, conservatives, gays and people of all and no religions," he said. "It's common to see an 80-year-old woman, for example, sitting down with a six-year-old boy to have a serious discussion about the Oz books."
At UNC-CH, Reckford also teaches a course titled "The Heroic Journey from Homer to Tolkien" that begins with "The Odyssey" and ends with "The Lord of the Rings."
July 20, 2000 - No. 377
By DAVID WILLIAMSON UNC-CH News Services
Note: Reckford can be reached at home at 919-942-3723 when he returns Sunday.