THE CANONIZATION OF MERRY GO ROUND IN OZ

by Phyllis Ann Karr

Originally published in The Baum Bugle, vol. 27, no. 2 (Autumn 1983), pgs. 24–28

Citations

Chicago 17th ed.:

Karr, Phyllis Ann. “The Canonization of Merry Go Round in Oz.” Baum Bugle 27, no. 2 (1983): 24–28.

MLA 9th ed.:

Karr, Phyllis Ann. “The Canonization of Merry Go Round in Oz.” The Baum Bugle, vol. 27, no. 2, 1983, pp. 24–28.

Canonical versus apocryphal is a delicate debate when dealing with a body of secular literature. My personal Oz canon consists basically of Baum’s original fourteen full-length Oz books plus Merry Go Round in Oz.

Certainly, Oz scholars can produce legitimate arguments for limiting the canon to Wizard and perhaps Land or extending it to all forty full-length commercially published volumes from 1900 to 1963, for accepting the isolation of Oz at the end of Emerald City as the cutoff point or accepting the Little Wizard stories, Baum’s tales about other countries on the Oz continent, and International Wizard of Oz club publications on equal standing with the Forty. When the material under consideration has attracted readers primarily because they enjoy it, then I submit that personal enjoyment qualifies as one valid criterion for them to apply in selecting their personal canons.

It is not, of course, the only criterion. A little internal plausibility is another essential. To me it seems that Ruth Plumly Thompson at her liveliest tells a better story than Baum at his slowest, but I cannot therefore accept Giant Horse as canonical and relegate Road to the apocrypha.[1] I can accept certain characters and elements from Thompson’s work. For instance, I believe that Queen Gloma lives in her Black Forest—it is too beautiful to be untrue—but not that the Scarecrow is a reincarnation of Emperor Chang Wang Woe! I believe in that wonderful Ozzy Quixote Sir Hokus of Pokes, but I cannot believe that the Good Witch of the North ever rejoiced in the name “Tattypoo” nor that she and Sir Hokus turned out to be two more in Thompson’s long string of enchanted amnesiacs. Moreover, accepting Thompson’s output in its entirety would force me to believe that Ozma’s government and palace are depressingly vulnerable to temporary conquest, which does not make for the holiday ideal one likes to associate with Oz. Life in Ozma’s palace according to Thompson would be far too nerve-wracking for me.

Although John R. Neill created in Jenny Jump perhaps the most convincing American girl ever brought to Oz, his three books strike me as so strange and disjointed that I cannot regard them as Oztory—only as some unidentified character’s opium dreams about Oz. Jack Snow did a splendid job of reconciling Baum’s two biographies of Ozma, but my strong inner conviction that Glinda is Baum’s incarnation of the Earth Mother prevents me from admitting Magical Mimics as canonical: I cannot accept that the snippet Ozana, whose sleeping on the job let the Mimics into Oz, could conquer them where Glinda stood powerless. I do not remember any such jarring elements in Snow’s Shaggy Man or Cosgrove’s Hidden Valley. Indeed, Cosgrove introduces some promising Ozzy characters, like the Bookman and the Leopard with the Changing Spots, but unfortunately she packs most of her best protagonists off to the Emerald City as soon as she can, leaving the less interesting and most unlikable sidekicks to continue Jam’s adventure with him.

None of the above objections occur to me on reading and rereading Merry Go Round.

Purely in terms of style, the last may be the best written of the Forty. Eloise Jarvis McGraw visited Oz during a distinguished career of writing polished prose for all ages, and it shows. She obviously feels that children’s books deserve as much attention as adults’ to matters of grammar, syntax, and the general way words are linked together, an opinion not universal among writers and editors. Sound style is not in itself solid grounds foe accepting a book into the Oz canon, but it is refreshing to find in Merry Go Round pure and lucid prose that neither calls attention away from the story nor requires continual mental correction. While good content is the most important thing, good mechanics predispose me to appreciate the content.

It is equally obvious that the McGraws, mother and daughter, read the preceding Oztories with enthusiasm and wrote their own with affection.[2] Their Oz scholarship may not quite attain the level of Jack Snow’s, but in my opinion their storytelling is superior. Snow appears to have set about his project with gravity at the expense of spontaneity. Thompson, on the other hand, must class among the most exuberantly spontaneous of all storytellers, to the point where one sometimes questions whether she even found it worth while to keep her own scholarship straight from the opening to the closing chapters of the same book. Baum himself, of course, started many perplexities by refining his philosophy of Oz from the uncivilized wilderness of the first book to the orderly utopia of later volumes, creating such problems for future Ozophiles as how to reconcile the Emerald City children buying green lemonade with green pennies (Wizard ch. 11) with the plain statement only five books later that “there was no such thing as money” in Oz (Emerald City, ch. 3). Had Baum been able to go back and revise his earlier work in accordance with his later ideas . . . but Oztory is probably more interesting for us because he did not.

The McGraws strike a good balance between Snow’s scholarship and Thompson’s sense of fun. For instance, Halidom needs a Unique Unicorn, “the only known creature of her kind.” But Oz already has other unicorns, like that rather foolish Loo. No problem: follow Baum’s own example and explain matters with a footnote. (Merry Go Round, p. 73; cf. Tik-Tok, end of ch. 7, footnote explaining the Nome King’s change of name) In Dorothy and the Wizard Baum states that “horses were unknown in this Land” (ch. 15). One guesses he did this to enhance the situation of Jim the cab-horse at a time when he could still aim to make the Oz books a relatively short series. And indeed, to judge by their comparative rarity in his own work, Baum may not have been as fond of horses as of certain other beasts. But . . . a utopian fairyland without horses? Why, children in general are famous for loving horses! So the McGraws very wisely follow Thompson’s lead (High Boy, Stampedro, Chalk) and an earlier suggestion of Baum’s own, and gave both View-Halloo and Halidom-Troth equine populations.

Consistent characterization can be a problem for authors continuing other authors’ series, or even continuing their own over any length of time. Writers tend to feel more at home with their own characters than with those of their predecessors, or with their own newest characters than with earlier ones who have slipped out of touch. (The Billina of Emerald City seems a pale, cranky creature beside that shrewdly competent Yellow Hen who is the true heroine of Ozma.) My impression is that Thompson, while always excellent with her own characters, is spotty with Baum’s.

How do the McGraws manage in this respect? They budget themselves. Of the Oz celebrities introduced in the first thirty-nine books, only Dorothy and the Lion can be called protagonal characters in Merry Go Round. They, however, prove wise choices: two of the most famous and best beloved, going all the way back to the story that started it all, and apparently (despite the speech affectations for Dorothy that they were almost obliged to adopt from Baum’ slater books) two with whom they could get along most comfortably. Dorothy is at least as convincing a young girl in this book as in any of Baum’s—for my money, she is more so. And the McGraws’ Cowardly Lion is a satisfying mix of comic character and kindly philosopher, just as in Baum’s books.

Naturally, Ozma has her chapter of glory, and beautifully drawn she is, the benevolent ruler whose fairy wisdom is tempered with just enough youthful mischief. Billina, Scraps, and the Wizard play cameo roles in chapter 10. Billina seems more like her Emerald City than her Ozma self, but Scraps and the Wizard come off quite well. The Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, Hungry Tiger and others are at least named. Mention of Sir Hokus (p. 157) connects Merry Go Round with Thompsonian tradition at its best, while mention both of Ozma’s time as Tip (p. 115) and her origin in Queen Lurline’s fairy band (p. 288) brings Snow’s contribution to mind.

The presence of the Easter Bunny as an important minor character has been questioned. Baum’s use of Santa Claus provides some precedent. Baum does not assign Santa a home in Oz proper, but he does settle him on the Ozian continent. The Easter Bunny must live somewhere, so why not Oz as well as, say, Topeka or Manhattan? It is a bit hard to think of so important a personage as a mere vassal, even of Ozma, so although she calls him and he calls himself her “subject” (pp. 141, 148), I suspect this is diplomatic pretense. Most likely he is an autonomous ruler whose domain happened to exist within the boundaries of Oz since before Ozma came to her throne, and whose gift is not tribute but a free “token of esteem.” The Easter Bunny, even more than St. Nick, was divorced from the religious significance of his holiday before any Oz author appropriated him, and even more than Santa, the Bunny is fair game for anyone’s new interpretation. In effect, the McGraws’ Easter Bunny is their own new character in all but his traditional holiday function.

In any series, continued by one author or by many, recapping becomes a continual problem. Enough must be retold to orient readers who happen to begin with the present volume, but ideally the review should be worked in without boring readers who know all that already. It would be interesting to locate a reader who came to Merry Go Round with no previous awareness of Oz. By 1963, thirty-nine full-length books and the 1939 movie ought to have made such Americans as rare as any who, twenty years later, remain unaware of Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock. I cannot but feel a little surprised that Robin Brown, whose only regret at leaving Oregon is losing his King Arthur book, comes to Oz with no previous knowledge even of the movie. On the other hand, in 1963 enthusiOzm may have been between peaks.

So Robin’s ignorance may not be improbable after all. At any rate, it gave the McGraws an excellent excuse for slipping in the almost obligatory recapping, and neatly they did it. In chapter 2 we get the redbird’s succinct geOzgraphy lesson, in time to provide placements for View-Halloo and Halidom-Troth. In chapter 8, an Oztory lesson supplies conversational material for Robin’s halcyon interlude with Howzatagin, and foreshadows the introduction of the present adventure’s last two major participants. Whether this would suffice for a reader previously unacquainted with Oz I cannot say, but it is far from likely to bore Oz aficionados, and I find the McGraws’ technique of having Oz inhabitants fill in a protagonist, thus furthering their own tale, preferable to many of Thompson’s authorial-voice recapping. And I think the McGraws’ story more than interesting enough in its own right to carry along our hypothetical reader-who-knows-no-Oztory with a minimum of hesitation when established Oz characters and traditions are introduced.

The history of Halidom and Troth, given in explicative bulk at the beginning of chapter 4, belongs to the McGraws’ new storyline, but it does introduce the one element I find tricky to reconcile with Oztory as Baum settled it: the question of lifespans. Thompson deftly revised Baum’s dictum that nobody ages or dies a natural death in Oz to read that individuals stay the same age as many years in a row as they like, growing older at any rate they choose. The McGraws, however, seem to ignore the issue and present an Oz in which people are born, grow up, and pass on at about the usual mortal rate. Otherwise, Prince Gules’ prospect of succeeding his father on the throne would be nominal. And what untold ages must have been required for Halidom’s monarchy to reach the 64th King Herald, or Troth’s the 59th King Armo, or for the generations-old family feud between Sirs Gauntlet and Greves to reach its present state! True, these dynasties and this feud could have begun long before Lurline enchanted Oz. Gules’ father finally retires instead of dying, and there seem to be few enough boys progressing through the page-squire-knight program to allow the interpretation that life is indeed proceeding at a Thompsonian pace. Nonetheless, the impression is definitely exaggerated fairy-tale history on the lines of such works as Thackeray’s Rose and the Ring rather than traditional Ozonian freedom from fear of aging.

The more idyllic a utopia becomes, the wiser its rulers and the more ingenious their magical tools, the harder grows an author’s task of devising action story lines. Most later Oz chronicles settle into certain basic patterns or combinations of same: (1) the stability of Oz itself is threatened by an external enemy (i.e., the Nome King, the Mimics) or a renegade Ozite (Ugu, Mogodore); (2) new characters come to Oz, frequently after adventures in mundane or fairy lands outside Oz (Betsy Bobbin, Zeb, Planetty, etc., etc.—they may or may not settle in Oz for good); (3) characters adventure through Oz on quests that may be of vital personal importance but do not affect the security of Oz {Ojo’s efforts to save Unk Nunkie, the Tin Woodman’s search for Nimmie Amee); (4) inhabitants of Oz leave to journey in the outside world on missions, quests, or accidental adventures (Captain Salt, the Shaggy Man): (5) subkingdoms in Oz are visited, sometimes to bring them happily under Ozma’s sway (Glinda of Oz) but more often for travelogue interest or an extra fillip of danger.

My tolerance being somewhat limited for Conquest of Oz plots, I am delighted that in Merry Go Round the McGraws combine patterns (2), (3), and (5), resisting any· temptation to wrest a Thompsonian Oz-shaking affair out of an intimate, personal adventure. Ozma has no cause to suspect the new troubles in Halidom, or even the existence of Robin and Merry, much less their arrival in Oz—though she politely refrains from pointing this out in the explanations chapter. She becomes aware of the multiple situation only when she checks to see what is taking Dorothy and the Lion so long. The Lion’s dislike of travel by magical means supplies sufficient explanation why Ozma does not just wish them home straight from the Easter Bunny’s kingdom. Glinda and her Book do not need to come into it; the story involves no life-threatening (or the Ozian equivalent) situations and no menaces to the security of Oz. The McGraws do not ignore these magical devices. But they fit the devices in logically, letting Ozma use them just in time to shorten anything that might otherwise drag on too long after the climax, but raising no questions as to why she did not use them earlier. Where, when and why Belt and Picture are used enhance the character development.

A respected Oz scholar has questioned whether Merry-Go-Round does not contain so many distinct English and European elements as to shake its claim to canonicity. True, such elements abound: the fox-hunting society of View-Halloo, the quasi-medievals of Halidom and Troth, the decidedly British feel of the nannies and nursery tots in the Land of Good Children, the Easter Bunny’s monocle and other Anglicisms. “Flittermouse” is a play on the German word for bat, “Fledermass.” “Roundabout,” that British term for a merry-go-round, is used as a multiple, cross-cultural pun that also serves as an important clue. “Roundheads” seems to be another pun from English history, all the more whimsical for the great dissimilarity between the original Puritan Roundheads and the Ozites who wear that name.

But Merry-Go-Round is not the only Oz or Oz-related book to include heavy European elements. In many ways, John Dough and the Cherub is a far more “American” fairy tale than The Wizard of Oz. Oz books have their various flavors. Merry Go Round stands with Scarecrow and Rinkitink as one of those with a strong European flavor, but need that make it any less an Oz book? Moreover, the hunters of View-Halloo never kill their foxes, who live on terms of democratic equality with the hounds and review their tactics like baseball players going over their games. Candidate-for-knighthood Fess and kitchen-page Barry bunk together as equals; in some hard-to-define way Prince Gules seems to resemble a certain guileless tenderfoot-type of Western hero; and translating terms like Hack, Palfrey, Steed, Charger, and Destrier (synonyms in some cases, different breed in others) into titles of equine rank may have required Yankee informality. Fess as well as Dorothy reacts to the Good Children much as Tom and Huck would, and the Flittermouse tearfully protests being mistaken for a bat. Without denying that England and Europe have their opponents of blood sports, proponents of democratic equality, satirists who delight in word games, Peter Pan and other youthful rebels against cloying orderliness—our culture is, after all, based on that of the Old World—I feel that the McGraws have given some Yankee twists to their English and European elements.

A few rare authors can make mood, setting, or philosophical ideas the major sustaining interest of a fictional piece, but as a rule it is safest to begin with plot or characters. Thompson rather obviously began with characters. Jack Snow, I suspect, began with plot (except for those characters he took from Baum). The McGraws, like Baum, seem to have worked out plot and character simultaneously, starting with an outline tight enough to keep them in control but loose enough to allow room for spontaneous invention, letting characters and plot help mold one another.

Perhaps wisely, the McGraws do not attempt to rival Baum and Thompson in the creation of eccentric celebrities. Oz is very plentifully stocked with these delightful creatures from the earlier chronicles, anyway: how true a bell the phrase rings, “It sounded as if nobody but celebrities lived [in the Emerald City]” (Merry Go Round, p. 114). The McGraws’ nearest approaches to such eccentrics are Merry, Flitter, and the Roundheads: an animated carousel horse, a mildly anthropomorphized member of a species not often anthropomorphized, and a humanoid strain reminiscent of Baum’s Lolanders—not on the whole a particularly outlandish selection. The Wyver is borrowed from mythological bestiary tradition without even such a twist as distinguishes Thompson’ Iffin. Bill Bored and Howzatagin, like the inhabitants of View-Halloo and Good Children’s Land, are Ozites of humanoid strain, whatever their little behavioral quirks. Fred and the Unicorn, like the Cowardly Lion, are talking animals to be judged, as characters, on more or less the same terms as the humans and humanoids. The Easter Bunny is a special case, already examined. The Oracle comes as nearly to life as an inanimate object can, but still it should hardly be classed as a “character.”

So the McGraws concentrate on humans and human-like people—but what engaging ones! Of course, Robin Brown and Fess stand solidly in the Baumian tradition of “good” boys like Ojo and Woot—boys with whom girl readers can readily identify—a tradition sometimes decried by critics who state that no male juvenile can be realistic or convincing unless he fits into the mold of Tom or Huck. Though neither of Merry Go Round‘s male juvenile leads is shown indulging in mischief for its own sake, Fess comes across as far from syrupy, and Robin would-surely have been as eager as Dorothy to escape from Good Children’s Land. Fess is the reliable attendant, the Faithful John, who this time happens to be a juvenile. Robin is the waif, who can be a child of either sex and this time happens to be a boy. Yet both transcend archetype to become living personalities.

On analysis, the other new characters can be identified with archetypes. Merry is the Toy Who Wants to Be Real, Gules is the Fairy Tale Prince, Subspecies Rather Stupid. Federigo is the Haughty Parvenu, the Unicorn the True Gentlewoman, Flitter the Comic Sidekick, Rhyming Variety. But all this becomes apparent only upon reflection and all these characters are simultaneously personalities to be liked, or in a few cases disliked, for themselves. The McGraws give us a whole cast about whom we care as soon as we meet them, whose character development and attainment of their goals leave us satisfied.

As applauded above, the McGraws chose a plot more on the intimate Jane Austen than the grandiose War and Peace scale, braiding their storyline from three patterns: the arrival of new characters in Oz, the quest of vital importance to one minor subkingdom, and the purely domestic errand involving major Oz celebrities. Of the first two, it might be hard to say which is the main and which the subplot. I would incline to call the search for the Three Golden Circlets of Halidom the main plot. It provides the mystery, the riddle game, and the largest group of protagonal characters. Yet I would vote for Robin and Merry as the most central protagonists. They are introduced first and provide a link between Oz and our own outside world, which may lend them an edge as foci for reader identification.

The last volume in the regularly-published series is perhaps the only one of the Forty that actually delivers on Baum’s famous promise to eliminate “all the horrible and blood-curdling incident.” (Introduction to Wizard, 1900) Baum must have penned these words with an eye to adults shopping for children. Certainly Wizard has plenty of food for nightmare, with tornado, Kalidahs, wolves, fighting trees, and giant spider-monster. Baum continued happily dishing out the monsters, and Thompson carried on the tradition in grand style, to the point of creating—of all things—a sinister Christmas Tree! With Headland, a boiling Deadly Desert, the Field of Feathers and Planetty’s virtual death scene, Silver Princess approaches the rank of horror novel.[3] Snow developed the horrendous Mimics and that diabolical theater visited by the Shaggy Man and his juvenile companions. Neill’s texts look comparatively innocent on the surface, except for such things as the needles that sew up Jellia’s lips, the Bell-snickle, and—let’s face it—the lobotomy of Jenny Jump; and it may be a purely personal reaction, that reading Lucky Bucky gave me the same sinking sensation as reading Kafka’s Trial; but as nearly as I remember, Cosgrove went back to traditional Baumian and Thompsonian monsters.

The McGraws prove that it is indeed possible to write a good, exciting story without nightmarish creation. Small doubt but that it is harder than using monsters and dismemberment themes, but that makes such stories as Merry Go Round all the more precious and wonderful when you can find them. They give us an Oz where most people seem good-hearted, where the worst physical dangers seem to be imprisonment, unexpected tumbles down fire escapes, brambles, and having to drink carrot tea for the sake of politeness—an Oz, in short, that offers adventure without terror, an Oz that grownups would be as happy as children to adventure in. And because we like and care about the protagonists so much, these comparatively trifling dangers and discomforts provide as much excitement as the extravagantly elaborate terrors of other works. It is more the true excitement of a Jane Austen novel than the frenzy of a Lovecraft tale.

Not even Merry Go Round delivers on the second part of Baum s promise: the elimination of “heartaches” as well as “nightmares.’ The McGraws almost match Baum’s Kansa prairie with their picture of orphanhood in Oregon. Nor is life in their Oz itself guaranteed free from heartbreak, as demonstrated by Sir Greves’ confession in chapters 19 and 20. I suspect that a story of any length which lacked both horror and grief might prove unreadable. If not both then one or the other should be present to give the fiction substance. And after the heartbreak, there is a happy ending for everyone. Happy endings should need no justification to Ozophiles, but since they have sometimes been corned in certain critical quarters as “inartistic,’ let me submit here that happy endings are often necessary to chase away the fear—when present—and soothe the heartache. When children’s authors fail to give their readers logical happy endings, they risk doing some psychological damage with fictions of horror and grief.

Where other Oz books sometimes grow as frenetic in their jokes, both verbal and situational, as in their shivery stuff, Merry Go Round offers more gentle than slapstick humor. The puns are fewer, but they tend to be more unstrained, or else. complex and related to the plot. It is not the funniest Oz book, but in some ways it is the most graceful. Its touch is light, its whimsy tender, its tone affectionate. Its illustrations are exactly right, clean, clear, uncluttered, friendly and funny and faithful to the text. They deserve an article to themselves, by the artist-illustrator.

In some ways, the last book of the Forty parallels the first. Like Dorothy and Toto, Robin and Merry are brought to Oz by means of an unexpected and more or less involuntary flight through the air. Robin’s initial motive for trying to reach the Emerald City, like Dorothy’s, is to get back to the United States. Though the McGraws build their plot on the technique Baum introduced in Emerald City, the pattern of alternate chapters telling different stories which eventually merge, the three simultaneous quests of Merry Go Round parallel the three successive journeys of Dorothy and her companions. But whereas Dorothy achieves her return in the first book, requiring three more visits before finally settling there, Robin and Merry waste no time in accepting the invitation to stay. When Baum wrote The Wizard, he did not know it would set off a series, while when the McGraws wrote Merry Go Round they were working in a long tradition of people from the outside world settling down in Oz; but there is a deeper reason why Dorothy returns from her first visit and Robin does not. Home to Dorothy in the first book is not so much Kansas as the place where Aunt Em and Uncle Henry live. She cannot rest in Oz until she has them safely there as well. Robin has no such bonds with Oregon, which is home only by default, for lack of any other familiar territory. The morals of both the first book and the last can be reduced to the idea that people are the most important element of “home.”

[1] Certain Oz books—Snow’s, Cosgrove’s, two of Neill’s and even several of Thompson’s—I have read only once. Nor do I have ready access to all the Forty. Thus, my impressions of these works are especially subjective, and I offer them as mere opinions, not a critical dicta.

[2] Bearing in mind that the co-author surely journeyed in Oz as a McGraw before she became a Wagner, I have ventured for the sake of brevity to abbreviate “Eloise Jarvis McGraw and Lauren McGraw Wagner” to “the McGraws.” The latter in any event subsequently adopted Lauren Lynn McGraw as her professional name.

[3] It is interesting that in her comparatively late Wishing Horse Thompson breaks with her earlier blithe capital punishments and shows a recognition surprising in fairy tales of the co-existence of good and bad in individuals.

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