The first thing to be said for L. Frank Baum is that he just got on with it. There is, clearly, a certain metaphorical power to characters with no brain, no heart, and no courage, but Baum, in the original Wizard of Oz, never belabored it. He told the story and left it to his many and varied adaptors over the last hundred years to obsess about meaning. Baum invented Oz while holding down his day job as editor of Chicago Show Window, a magazine for department-store window decorators—and no, he wasn’t gay: the original friend of Dorothy was not a Friend of Dorothy. He’s not the fanciest prose stylist, but he’s brimming with strong, visual ideas: There’s a terrific moment in the third book, Ozma of Oz, where Princess Ozma, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, the Hungry Tiger, the Saw-Horse, and the entire officer-heavy Royal Army cross the poisonous desert from the Land of Oz to the Land of ...

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