Something "Wicked" This Way Comes

   

     As I began figuring out which adaptations I wanted to tackle in this project, Gregory Maguire's Wicked was my first choice.  I knew it had to be included.  As I loved the musical, which was loosely based on Maguire's Oz tale, I knew I would love this book. I always wanted to read it, but as an English major with two jobs as well as a strong desire to watch Netflix all day long, finding time for pleasure reading was incredibly difficult.  Then in comes the opportunity to design my own JanTerm class based solely around something I've always loved, The Wizard of Oz.  I was excited to start this project.
    I started reading the book with the mindset that it was going to be extremely different from both Baum's original WOZ and Schwartz's Wicked.  I hate it when people complain about adaptations being different than their base.  Of course they're different!  Different mediums require different types of stories.
    But that's a rant for another day.
     I knew going into this that it would be a completely different side to Oz than I ever expected, and I was pumped to discover it.  But then I started reading.
    We've already discussed my ridiculously slow reading pace, and that's been a bit of a struggle in trying to read this 400+ page monster in under two days.  Match that with my surprising disinterest in the plot and it's become quite a bit of a challenge.  That's why I'm writing this blog now rather than trudging my way through the last quarter of the book.  I'll get back to it once my brain has cooled off.
    No offense to Maguire lovers out there, but I do not like this book.
    There!  I said it.  I, McKenna, do not like Maguire's Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

     I'm just as shocked as you are, fellow readers.  I had the highest hopes for this novel.  And who knows, maybe these last 100 pages will change my mind and make me totally regret having ever written this.  But somehow, I doubt it.  The characterization in the novel just doesn't make sense.  And let me tell you why.

    Elphaba is a rebel, but she never actually does anything.  The whole novel is supposedly building up to this point where Elphaba becomes the Wicked Witch of the West that we all know and love to hate.  The thing is, nothing she does is wicked witch worthy.  She just kind of hides away from every thing and every one and gets ridiculously quiet when, for some reason, that method doesn't work.  There's no growth.  There's no adventure.  It's just all very morose.  

     The beginning of the novel is wonderful.  The descriptions are vivid, and you're placed into a world that seems ready for action.  And then there isn't any. 

     Glinda never grows, Fiyero just "disappears," (he's dead, y'all), and Elphaba has a son, but she never actually tells us its her son, we're just to assume.  That's another problem with this book.  Maguire relies far too much on his reader's ability to make inferences.  Honestly, inferences can be fun, but not when the whole book relies on them.  

    Also, there seems to be a political agenda in this novel, but it doesn't actually make any sense.  Political and religious undertones are ripe throughout the novel, but they never actually point in any direction.  Baum's world of Oz clearly pointed to his idea of a utopia.  Maguire's world of Oz just seems like a jumbled mess, a world created by someone who probably made a C in his World Politics course in college.  That is, if he ever took one.  

    And another thing is that this book borders on lewd.  I understand the desire to create a stark contrast from the children's story version that Baum created, but there is no need to be vulgar.  There's offensive language, explicit sex scenes, and just nastiness.  And it doesn't even serve a purpose.  It is just gratuitous.  

    On the whole, I feel like Maguire brought up a lot of questions.  He questions religion, politics, love, morality, the nature of evil, etc, without ever providing any semblance of an answer.  Not even an opinion.  As one reviewer on Amazon, Omeed Dariani, put it, " Nietzsche's famous phrase "gaze long into the abyss, and the abyss gazes into you" gets closer to explaining evil in eleven words than Maguire does in 400 pages." 

     Dariani goes on to conclude his review, summarizing everything I've been feeling through my reading of this book.  He says "You know how when you read most books, as you get closer to the end, you read faster? Some books, you can't even put them down. With this book, I had the opposite experience. The closer I got to the ending, as I realized there was nothing the author could do to salvage this train wreck, and there was no way for me to reclaim these precious hours of my life, I had to stop often - and could only read a page or two at a time. When I finished, I actually literally physically threw the book across the room."

    Thank you random Amazon user for making me feel less alone in this.  I thought I was the only one.  

    And for all you hardcore Maguire fans out there, I found an image for you.

     I may be a huge fan of the musical, and I am sorry if that will forever make me less in the eyes of those Maguirehards, but the book was just not my cup of green elixir.  

    Next, I'll be venturing more into other adaptations of the Oz world as well as the implications that are left by adaptations.  As a budding film nerd, I'm excited to (slowly) read the books I borrowed about the struggles with adaptation and what it means for the audience as well as the writers.  I'm nerd pumped!
    With that in mind, I'll leave you with a visual adaptation of Oz, starring Keira Knightley in Elle Magazine, photographed by the AMAZING Annie Leibovitz.  (Amazing's not actually in her formal title, but it should be)

Ta-ta for now my lovelies!

-M