Finding Oz by Evan I. Schwartz is a new book that tells the story behind the story of The Wizard of Oz and its creator L. Frank Baum. Smithsonian magazine gives a taste of the tale in a brief profile of Baum, who wrote his masterpiece in 1898, at the age of 40. Apparently, Baum was so convinced of his manuscript’s magic that he framed the pencil he had used to write it. From Smithsonian:
With his skepticism toward God–or men posing as gods–Baum affirmed the idea of human fallibility, but also the idea of human divinity. The Wizard may be a huckster–a short bald man born in Omaha rather than an all-powerful being–but meek and mild Dorothy, also a mere mortal, has the power within herself to carry out her desires. The story, says Schwartz, is less a “coming-of-age story … and more a transformation of consciousness story.” With The Wizard of Oz, the power of self-reliance was colorfully illustrated.
It seems appropriate that a story with such mythical dimensions has inspired its own legends–the most enduring, perhaps, being that The Wizard of Oz was a parable for populism. In the 1960s, searching for a way to engage his students, a high-school teacher named Harry Littlefield, connected The Wizard of Oz to the late-19th-century political movement, with the Yellow Brick Road representing the gold standard–a false path to prosperity–and the book’s silver slippers standing in for the introduction of silver–an alternate means to the desired destination. Years later, Littlefield would admit that he devised the theory to teach his students, and that there was no evidence that Baum was a populist, but the theory still sticks.
Frank Baum, the Man Behind the Curtain (Smithsonian)
Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story (Amazon)