Was (54 page)

There was a Corndale, Ontario, Canada, under another name. There was a very similar house to Jonathan’s, long ago, in Was.

The chapter set in Manhattan High School owes an enormous debt to an unpublished manuscript entitled “A Teacher Learns” by Major John Hawkins. He is in part a model for the character of Baum as portrayed in this chapter, and the particular incidents described in it are drawn from his experiences as a teacher. Dorothy’s singing death is also inspired by a Hawkins family story. Thanks also to John Clute for reinforcing the idea of Jonathan’s disappearance. Johanna Firbank has been a continual inspiration in the long discussions on such subjects as childhood conditioning and the nature of literature.

My greatest debt is to L. Frank Baum and
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
.

Books make authors, not the other way around. Books come out of their own accord, authors just write them. Books can be written without authors. They can come, like epic poetry, out of many different mouths.

Oz was first visited upon a kindly man who wanted to set children free from fear. Oz grew out of
Alice in Wonderland
, and out of Kansas and the people who settled there, and Baum’s own life.

It also kept on growing. It grew out of improved Technicolor cameras and out of the MGM studio system, which meant the first footage directed by Richard Thorpe could be thrown out. It grew out of Herman Mankiewicz and Ogden Nash and Noel Langley; Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf, and Ben Hecht’s secretary, John Lee Mahin. Can a script with this many writers be said to have an author? Oz grew out of Arlen and Harburg, who wrote the songs. It grew out of the singers, who knew how to sing them. It kept on growing, because of television; it kept on gaining meaning with each repeat. Oz came swimming to us out of history, because we needed it, because it needed to be. A book, a film, a television ritual, a thousand icons scattered through advertising, journalism, political cartoons, music, poetry. Had Oz been blocked, it would have taken another form in the world. It could have come as a cyclone.

That doesn’t make it true.

I fell in love with realism because it deflates the myths, the unexamined ideas of fantasy. It confronts them with forgotten facts. It uses past truth—history.

I love fantasy because it reminds us how far short our lives fall from their full potential. Fantasy reminds us how wonderful the world is. In fantasy, we can imagine a better life, a better future. In fantasy, we can free ourselves from history and outworn realism.

Oz is, after all, only a place with flowers and birds and rivers and hills. Everything is alive there, as it is here if we care to see it. Tomorrow, we could all decide to live in a place not much different from Oz. We don’t. We continue to make the world an ugly, even murderous place, for reasons we do not understand.

Those reasons lie in both fantasy and history. Where we are gripped by history—our own personal history, our country’s history. Where we are deluded by fantasy—our own fantasy, our country’s fantasy. It is necessary to distinguish between history and fantasy wherever possible.

And then use them against each other.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

CPP/Belwin, Inc.:
Excerpt from “If I Only Had a Brain” by E. Y. Harburg and H. Arlen. Copyright 1938, 1939 (renewed 1966, 1967) by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. Rights assigned to EMI Catalogue Partnership. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Feist Catalog. International copyright secured. Made in USA. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Centennial Committee of the City of Lancaster:
Excerpt from
Lancaster Celebrates a Century: A Pictorial History of Lancaster, California, 1983.
Reprinted by permission of the City of Lancaster.

Doubleday:
Excerpt from
Adolf Hitler by John Toland.
Copyright © 1973 by John Toland. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Elinor Anderson Elliott:
Excerpt from
The Metamorphosis of the Family Farm in the Republican Valley of Kansas 1860–1960,
M.A. thesis, Kansas State University. Reprinted by permission.

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.:
Excerpt from “Little Gidding” in
Four Quartets
by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1943 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1971 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Rights in Canada administered by Faber and Faber Ltd. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. and Faber and Faber Ltd.

Sheila Johnston:
Excerpt from the
Independent,
February 4, 1988, London. Reprinted by permission.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.:
Excerpt from
The Making of the Wizard of Oz
by Aljean Harmetz. Copyright © 1977 by Aljean Harmetz. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
and
Peters Fraser & Dunlop:
Excerpt from
The Parade’s Gone By . . .
by Kevin Brownlow, Copyright © 1968 by Kevin Brownlow. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. and Peters Fraser & Dunlop.

The New York Review of Books:
Excerpt from an essay “The Oz Books” by Gore Vidal. Copyright © 1977 by Nyrev, Inc. Reprinted by permission of The New York Review of Books.

Pantheon Books:
Excerpt from
Wisconsin Death Trip
by Michael Lesy. Copyright © 1973 by Michael Lesy. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

University of Oklahoma Press:
Excerpt from
The Kansas Indians: A History of the Wind People 1673–1873
by William E. Unrau. Copyright © 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Reprinted by permission of the University of Oklahoma Press.

Ellen Payne Paullin (ed):
Excerpt from
Etta’s Journal,
Manhattan, KS, 1981 (as published in the Manhattan
Nationalist,
March 18). Reprinted by permission.

About the Author

Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels
The King’s Last Song, The Child Garden, Air
(a Clarke and Tiptree Award winner),
253, Lust,
and
The Unconquered Country
(a World Fantasy Award winner), and a collection of short fiction,
Paradise Tales
(Sunburst Award winner). Ryman teaches Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, in Great Britain.

Recent and forthcoming books from Small Beer Press for independently minded readers:

Joan Aiken,
The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories

“Wildly inventive, darkly lyrical, and always surprising.”
—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

Nathan Ballingrud,
North American Lake Monsters: Stories

Ted Chiang,
Stories of Your Life and Others

“Shining, haunting, mind-blowing tales”—Junot Díaz (
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
)

Karen Joy Fowler,
What I Didn’t See and Other Stories

“An exceptionally versatile author.”—
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

World Fantasy Award winner

Angélica Gorodischer,
Kalpa Imperial
(trans. Ursula K. Le Guin);

Trafalgar*
(trans. by Amalia Gladheart)
“Thought-provoking. Impressive. Brilliant.”—Liz Bourke, Tor.com

Kij Johnson,
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories

“I can’t think of any other writer whose stories terrify me the way Johnson’s do.”—Lev Grossman

The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin

In two volumes:
Where on Earth
&
Outer Space, Inner Land

“A century from now people will still be reading the fantasy stories of

Ursula K Le Guin with joy and wonder.”—
The Guardian

Kelly Link,
Magic for Beginners; Stranger Things Happen

Maureen F. McHugh,
After the Apocalypse: Stories

“Incisive, contemporary, and always surprising.”
—Publishers Weekly
Top 10 Books of 2011

Shirley Jackson Award winner

Geoff Ryman,
Paradise Tales

“Includes one of the most powerful stories I’ve read in the last 10 years.”
—New York Times

Sunburst Award winner

Sofia Samatar,
A Stranger in Olondria

“Samatar’s sensual descriptions create a rich, strange landscape, allowing a lavish adventure to

unfold that is haunting and unforgettable.”—
Library Journal
(starred review)

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