tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post8065231640019779705..comments2024-03-04T16:50:15.828-08:00Comments on Hungry Tiger Talk: Map of Oz Monday - Ojo MojoDavid Maxinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12672089188117065118noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-59894846060260445192016-09-27T11:15:05.215-07:002016-09-27T11:15:05.215-07:00I am loving these detailed Map of Oz Mondays and h...I am loving these detailed Map of Oz Mondays and how great they are. I found them when I was doing a random search on Oz Character Costumes for an up coming Wizard of Oz tea I am going to and I happened upon the entry about the Wizard of Oz Game which I did not even know they made. I read all of the first 14 books a few times in the Del Rey editions when I was a kid, so I guess I was brought up on the Oz Club Maps. But I could never read any of the Ruth Plumly Thompson's Oz books because the first one I tried to read when I was younger had the Munchkins in the West. I did not realize that it was probably not Mrs Thompson's fault and it was probably the publishers. I have always wanted to paint the Land of Oz onto my dinning room table and now I have to decided which map to paint. <br /><br />I loved this entry about Ojo and how the Oz Club Maps moved his home, I have the 1980 versions hanging on my wall in my kitchen. The only thing I believe is missing from this post is your official idea of how the maps should look. You sorta state your opinion throughout but never fully say where you think all of the Patchwork Girl and Ojo in Oz and Merry Go Round in Oz places should go. Will this be in another post? I sure hope you continue the Map of Oz Mondays someday as I loved reading them and they have made me decide to give Mrs Thompson's books a chance. Thanks!Bookworm134https://www.blogger.com/profile/16487617919703147013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-46559920548023492022015-11-26T00:03:33.933-08:002015-11-26T00:03:33.933-08:00Something seems amiss in our understanding of each...Something seems amiss in our understanding of each other. I am saying I see Baum's text as showing the left path is seemingly flat and it goes off in either the direction of the desert or the Quadling country (depending on whether one is looking at the club map or 1914 map.)<br /><br />I am in complete agreement that the "good Munchkin country" is on the other side of the mountain. The difficult path leading to the "good" lands takes them over the mountain - Dr. Pipt just happens to live on the summit.<br /><br />Again, I do not think the left hand path goes to good munchkin country. In Baum's Oz it would be leading toward the desert using his 1914 map ( and we now know to a near certainty that the map predates the writing of PATCHWORK. Ojo and Nunkie are trying to go inland, not to the outer edges.<br /><br />You seem to be equating Seebania with the "good Munchkin Country" which I do not. Not sure what I said that got confusing.<br /><br />While substituting Gillikin for Quadling may be the simplest explanation. it doesn't really fix anything and is just as big an error as the other side of the mountain is neither the Quadling OR the Gillikin country. So even if Baum had said Quadling - we'd still have a geographic contradiction.David Maxinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12672089188117065118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-25327639556196088262015-11-25T20:43:07.131-08:002015-11-25T20:43:07.131-08:00I didn't suggest a "simple path to the go...I didn't suggest a "simple path to the good Munchkin Country." I argued that scenario was unlikely. I interpret Baum's passage to say that "the good Munchkin Country" is "on the other side" of the mountain, which isn’t a simple path. I read your essay as suggesting the "good Munchkin Country" was simpler to get to than the mountain path, but that territory was Seebania and therefore dangerous for Unc Nunkie and Ojo. For me, that's an elegant solution, but it couldn't have been what Baum had in mind. (This is a divergence between Oz-as-history and Oz-as-literature.)<br /><br />We're working with different assumptions, indeed. For example, I'm not starting with the basis that Baum had a detailed map of Oz when he wrote <i>Patchwork Girl</i>. And my analysis of left/right is based on the traditional west/east directions when facing north, as in the "Radio-Plays" map, not the reversed compass of the <i>Tik-Tok</i> maps. I'm now wondering if there's any other place in Baum's Oz texts that offers a test of that. <br /><br />Finally, I think the substitution of "Gillikin" for "Quadling" is the simplest (Oz-as-literature) explanation of the glitch since it involves only one word. Of course, it doesn't explain/solve everything. J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10740087085166819408noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-75645693115657112132015-11-23T21:40:30.725-08:002015-11-23T21:40:30.725-08:00@ J. L. Bell. The idea that Baum meant "Quadl...@ J. L. Bell. The idea that Baum meant "Quadling" but wrote "Gillikin" has been proposed many times. But that doesn't work for me as it totally contradicts the text if one considers the Baum map, which I believe predates or was at least created during the writing process of PATCHWORK GIRL. <br /><br />I'm not sure why you suggest there might be a “simple path to the good Munchkin Country”. On the Baum map left would lead toward the Deadly Desert or if one considers RPT, to Seebania. Neither sound like promising destinations. And it might lead anywhere! Indeed, Baum and Nunkie say/show the good Munchkin Country is explicitly on the other side of Pipt's Mountain - thus the only choice is to take the right hand path over the mountain. To the south is more forest, to the west is more forest (and possibly Hammerheads).<br /><br />Granted your view could work (to some extent) if one flips over Oz to a mirror image of Baum's map (as seen in Haff's "research map" But that still, IMHO, leaves Baum's statement totally inaccurate whether he meant Gillikin or Munchkin as Pipt's mountain is a long narrow range TOTALLY contained in the Munchkin Country. There is Munchkin Country on ALL side of Pipt's mountain. <br /><br />It's impossible to say why Baum wrote Gillikin. It could have been a bit of misspeak, or a bit of detritus from an early draft (we all know how good R&L's copy editing was!) In the end my solution was to ignore that unsolvable problem and focus solely on what we have, the story logic and other clear pieces of info in Baum’s text and on Baum’s map.<br />David Maxinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12672089188117065118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-35175537256098501552015-11-23T19:30:07.011-08:002015-11-23T19:30:07.011-08:00I agree that Baum made a simple error when he wrot...I agree that Baum made a simple error when he wrote, "At the foot of the mountain that separated the Country of the Munchkins from the Country of the Gillikins, the path divided." But I suspect he intended something different from what your theory proposes.<br /><br />I suspect "Gillikins" should have been "Quadlings," and Baum was momentarily confused between the two nations bordering Munchkinland. Under that reading, Unc Nunkie and Ojo headed vaguely north-northwest, then had a choice between a path heading left/west (using the standard compass) into Quadling territory or a path heading right/northeast uphill to Unc Nunkie's old friend Dr. Pipt and beyond that cottage to "the good Munchkin Country,…just on the other side" of the mountain. <br /><br />If there was a simple path to the "good Munchkin Country," then why wouldn't Unc Nunkie and Ojo have taken that instead of spending most of a day climbing the mountain? Well, you provide an elegant solution in saying Unc Nunkie wanted to avoid Seebania. But of course Baum didn't know that when he wrote the sentence. (And it brings up the question of why Unc Nunkie told Ojo that "fruits and flowers" grew there rather than forbid him ever to travel in that direction.) My theory for Unc Nunkie's choice is that as a Munchkin he simply preferred to stay in the blue countryside, heading for the fruitful area over the mountain, rather than try the unknown redlands. <br /><br />Though I admire the dramatic unity of setting PATCHWORK GIRL and OJO in the same general area of Oz, I also think there would be logic in Uncle Stephen taking Prince Ojo to a distant corner of Munchkinland, rather than the nearest forest to Seebania. Not that life is always logical, especially in the Oz books. Just that there's an argument for separating Ojo's cottage from Seebania. J. L. Bellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15405157000473731801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-57638346175566829692015-11-23T19:23:28.417-08:002015-11-23T19:23:28.417-08:00I guess there could be a section of the Quadling C...I guess there could be a section of the Quadling Country that was settled by Gillikins and has purple foliage, like how Big Enough Mountain in SPEEDY is green, but that may be too much of a stretch for what can more easily be dismissed as a mistake. I actually remember an interpretation from the Ozzy Digest (I think) that had the party travel all the way around Oz in EMERALD CITY, as I don't think the Quadling Country is specifically identified as the location of anything other than the Cuttenclip village. It does seem like Bunnybury would have to be in Quadling territory if Glinda set it up, though.<br /><br />The idea of the forest in OJO being the WIZARD one also doesn't make sense as the Cowardly Lion would presumably have an easier time finding his way around his old home.Nathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17838510995365876113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-73669679054758208012015-11-23T19:03:44.487-08:002015-11-23T19:03:44.487-08:00Well that was fun!
Ojo was one of my favorite Oz c... Well that was fun!<br />Ojo was one of my favorite Oz characters growing up (and still is). He and I were both born on Friday the 13th., so I always saw that as a sort of link between us. I also had a home made Ojo costume as a boy.<br /><br />I was always troubled when I got my first club Oz map (in a Del Rey Baum book) and saw the change in places for Ojo's house and never could quite accept it and your theories for why it was moved and evidence for it being in the southern Munchkin Country has made me reject the northern position.<br /><br />I love the club maps but more and more I'm thinking they need an overhaul in a few places...maybe it's even time they were redrawn completely, since we know now that Prof. Wogglebug wasn't the only one capable of making mistakes in Ozian cartography!<br />An interactive map online would be nice too, one that shows "closeups" of the locales, sort of a Google-Oz.<br /><br />Anyway, I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on Ojo and the layout of Munchkin Country. Ojo is too often neglected!<br />saintfighteraquahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16195760262262189059noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-32988162423774989372015-11-23T17:31:53.969-08:002015-11-23T17:31:53.969-08:00Thanks, Nathan - All good points: I think it's...Thanks, Nathan - All good points: I think it's interesting that Baum doesn't mention the Hammerheads in his position as narrator, but has Ojo say in dialogue that that's "where they say the Hammerheads live." So Ojo MIGHT only sharing a rumor. Perhaps Nunkie told him that to keep him from being too curious or wandering off - after all Ojo and Nunkie are in hiding. Or there may be more than one tribe of Hammerheads ... or the Hammerhead Mountain is very tall. After all Dorothy & Co. needed the monkeys to fly them over the mountain in the end.<br /><br />It's too bad Flutterbudget is near the Quadling/Winkie border. If it was near the Quadling/Munchkin border, one could explain that reference to being tinted purple as color from one country spilling into the other - red+blue=purple sort of like the "Bordermoor" in FORBIDDEN FOUNTAIN.<br /><br />Hmmmm... That "bandit's Forest" might possibly be indicating Vaga's band. It's difficult to say as RPT has also placed the hollow tree leading to Gorba's Garden a ways off from the "Bandit's Forest," and as you point, out the tree should be in the same forest as the bandits. One could argue that this little stretch of Munchkin Country has a LOT of bandits: Vaga's group, Realbad's group, etc. So in a new map, one could easily extend the forest a bit and have the location serve both books.<br /><br />I read your old NONESTICA BCF comment about why Haff has Dorothy's rescue party arrive in the old forest from WIZARD. As you saw in this blog post, in the earliest Club map she didn't. I'm sure Jim and Dick made the change to the old WIZARD forest to allow for the Rolling road to dump them in that preexisting river.David Maxinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12672089188117065118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-52810425346401860782015-11-23T14:48:22.713-08:002015-11-23T14:48:22.713-08:00The mention of the Hammerheads seems like a bit of...The mention of the Hammerheads seems like a bit of a red herring, since Baum's own map shows their location as being pretty far away from where Ojo lived, and probably not visible from there. There could have been another place where Hammerheads lived, but then it could be anywhere, not necessarily in the Quadling Country. That said, I agree that the one mention of the Gillikin Country shouldn't trump the original map. In "Emerald City," Baum writes that, after leaving Flutterbudget Center, "The country they were now passing through was everywhere tinted purple, the prevailing color of the Gillikin Country"; but the Oz Club map still places the Flutterbudgets in the Quadling Country where they were on Baum's map. Mind you, I've gotten so used to the Oz Club map that it's difficult for me to think of Ojo and Dr. Pipt living in the southern rather than the northern Munchkin Country even if it DOES make more sense.<br /><br />I wonder whether Thompson intended her "bandit's forest" to be the hideout of Vaga's band from "Grampa," although then shouldn't the hollow tree to Gorba's Garden be IN that forest? Regardless, the location of the bandits' cave on the Club map suggests that the gypsies traveled AWAY from Moojer Mountain after capturing Ojo, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Also, when Scraps wishes to be "in that grumpy forest," why would it have sent them to a different forest from the one in the Magic Picture? Not that that scene makes a lot of sense anyway, because her wish shouldn't work when Dorothy is the one who swallowed the pill, but saying it took them somewhere entirely different just complicates things even more.Nathanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17838510995365876113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8930190065426288711.post-12414753125832138232015-11-23T13:58:59.396-08:002015-11-23T13:58:59.396-08:00Too bad Haff and Martin didn't comment on this...Too bad Haff and Martin didn't comment on this change in their accompanying pamphlet the way they did with some other ones they made from the 1914 map.marbplhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00123588973701816295noreply@blogger.com