Since Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have come to Oz for good, it only makes sense for them to see some of the country. Accordingly, Dorothy, the Wizard, Em and Henry, Omby Amby (the commander of Oz's all-officer Army), Billina the Hen, and the Shaggy Man all set out aboard a wagon drawn by the Sawhorse on a tour of Oz. Fasten your seat belts: L. Frank Baum is about to embark on an epic spree of Wacky Wayside Tribes.
Their first stop is at the Royal Athletic College of Oz, run by Professor H.M. Wogglebug, T.E. It's called an Athletic College because the students devote all their time to sports. Actual education is taken in the form of School Pills, devised by the Wizard. There's a pill for each subject, and a single dose is the equivalent of four hours of study.
This has got to be a jab at the University of Chicago, which L. Frank Baum lived near for several years during its brief period as a sports powerhouse at the turn of the century.
After the College, the party proceeds to visit the Cuttenclips, a village of living paper dolls. Because they are easily blown over, they have strict rules against any visitors stirring up drafts. The creator of the Cuttenclips is Miss Cuttenclip, a normal human girl about Dorothy's age. She makes her living dolls from magical paper provided by Glinda the Good. That's right, Glinda casually passes out the ability to create a whole species of intelligent beings.
The visit to the Cuttenclips comes to an abrupt end when the Shaggy Man lets out an especially powerful sneeze which devastates the entire village. Leaving chaos and destruction in their wake, the party moves on.
Their next stop is the village of Fuddlecumjig, inhabited by the Fuddles. Where the Cuttenclips were sentient paper dolls, the Fuddles are living jigsaw puzzles. Each one is made of hundreds of pieces, and under stress they fly apart. They depend on the kindness of passing strangers (including our heroes and, for some reason, a talking kangaroo) to get reassembled. A little Meat Glue would seem to be just what the Fuddles need, but Mr. Baum hasn't gotten around to thinking of that yet.
The Fuddles are pleasant enough once reassembled, and give their visitors a meal before sending them on their way.
Meanwhile . . .
General Guph pays his final diplomatic visit, to the creepiest and most Lovecraftian of Baum's creations, the dread Phanfasms of Mount Phantastico. The Phanfasms are Erbs. You don't know what Erbs are? Well, Baum isn't going to tell you, but he does mention that they are so fearsome that nobody, mortal or immortal, has dared to visit their mountain for several thousand years.
Not that they make it easy for visitors: Guph has to cross a river of lava infested by poisonous salamanders, then get past a scarlet alligator on the narrow bridge. Then he meets his first Phanfasm, who looks like a savage man with the head of an owl.
The owl-headed Phanfasm takes Guph to the First and Foremost of the Phanfasms, who lives in a crude hut of rocks and has a bear's head. The First and Foremost drags him into the hut to hear his offer -- but Guph has the strange feeling that he's not inside a dark little hut at all, but a vast space in which hundreds of eyes are watching him.
Guph makes his offer, and the First and Foremost laughs at it. Worse yet, Guph hears a multitude of others also laughing, even though he's apparently alone in the hut with the bear-headed man.
The Phanfasms are scornful of the Nomes and their other allies, even the alarming Growleywogs. The First and Foremost shows Guph why: he takes the form of a beautiful woman, and all the hundreds of other Phanfasms become fierce wolves. Then she becomes a giant butterfly while the others turn into lizards. Finally they resume their animal-headed disguises, and the First and Foremost asks Guph what he can offer that the powers of the Phanfasms cannot already accomplish.
Guph has an answer. The people of Oz are happy. By helping to destroy them, the Phanfasms will have the pleasure of spreading unhappiness and misery, which they dearly love to do. The First and Foremost is pleased with this answer and agrees to join the alliance.
But once Guph leaves, the crude huts on the mountaintop are replaced by a mighty and beautiful city, and the Phanfasms take on beautiful forms to discuss the matter among themselves. The First and Foremost announces that there's no reason to stop with simply conquering and enslaving the people of Oz. Once that's done they'll wipe out the Whimsies, Growleywogs, and the Nomes, as an appetizer before going on to "ravage and annoy and grieve the whole world."
Guph hasn't just gained an ally against Oz; he has opened the door to Hell.
The chapter ends with one of my favorite lines in the Oz books. "I am told that the Erbs are the most powerful and merciless of all the evil spirits, and the Phanfasms of Phantastico belong to the race of Erbs."
Here L. Frank Baum shows us a hint of what might have been. If he had ever tried to write a genuine adult fantasy, what could he have accomplished? The Phanfasms are mysterious and frightening, very different from the whimsical paper-doll people and jigsaw-puzzle people. With just a sentence Baum implies so much: the existence of other types of Erbs, some possibly worse than even the Phanfasms. There's a momentary chill breeze of Lovecraftian horror, for the magical realm of Oz also holds monsters -- monsters with inifinite powers of shapeshifting and illusion. What are their real forms? Do they even have "real" forms at all?
The Erbs are a marvelous hint at a much bigger fantasy world than Baum has showed us so far . . . and he never used them again. It wasn't until 1946 when Jack Snow, one of several "Royal Historians of Oz" to continue the series, used another bunch of sinister Erbs as the shapeshifting invaders of The Magical Mimics in Oz.
I haven't read that one, but I may try to track down a copy. It sounds as though Mr. Snow also felt the little thrill of fear and wonder in that one sentence of Baum's. (A little research indicates that Snow was a Weird Tales contributor when he wasn't being a radio writer and obsessive Oz fan. Sadly, he died at just 49 years old before the fantasy boom of the 1960s. You can read one of his Weird Tales stories here: this little bit of sadism was written shortly after The Magical Mimics in Oz!)
Next time: more strange discoveries.
In my head I keep replacing the Shaggy Man with this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_Man_(comics)
Tough even that one would be defeated by the erbs.
Posted by: Brian Rogers | 06/02/2012 at 02:33 AM