Titles Read in 2011

January - April

Scott Pilgrim vol. 1 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Crow Planet by Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Faster Than the Speed of Hope by Donna M. Lane

Two Lines: a journal of translation vol. 13: Masks. 2006

Scott Pilgrim vol. 2 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

The Force of a Feather: the search for a lost story of slavery and freedom by DeEtta Demaratus

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

I am secretly an important man by Steven Jesse Bernstein

Scott Pilgrim vol. 3 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Deep Ska booklet accompanying 4 CD set

When Even the Sky Hurts by Julia Vinograd

Scott Pilgrim vol. 4 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

The Complete Adventures of the Borrowers by Mary Norton

Poor Stainless: a Borrowers story by Mary Norton

Scott Pilgrim vol. 5 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Give Our Regards to the Atom Smashers: writers on comics edited by Sean Howe

The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton

Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? by Martin Gardner

Born to Run: a hidden tribe … by Christopher McDougall

Scott Pilgrim vol. 6 by Bryan Lee O’Malley

Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven

Lake Huron Winds poetry chapbook by Mel C. Thompson

I Love You Phillip Morris by Steve McVicker

Unpacking the Boxes: a memoir of a life in poetry by Donald Hall

The Beats: a graphic history by Harvey Pekar

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach

Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham

Ecco Anthology of International Poetry edited by Ilya Kaminsky

Travels with Lisbeth by Lars Eighner

Silas Marner by George Eliot

Shooting in the Wild by Chris Palmer

The Grandest of Lives: eye to eye with whales by Douglas Chadwick

Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut

X’ed Out by Charles Burns

May

God’s Man / Madman’s Drum / Wild Pilgrimage by Lynd Ward

The Salt Ecstasies by James L. White, intro by Mark Doty

Patty’s Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America by William Graebner

Ringworld’s Children by Larry Niven

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Cometbus #54: In China with Green Day by Aaron Cometbus

Wishbone by Priscilla Lee

In Southern Light: trekking through Zaire and the Amazon by Alex Shoumatoff

June - September

The End of Major Combat Operatons by Nick McDonell

La Perdida by Jessica Abel

The Best American Comics 2007 edited by Chris Ware

Hot Stuff: a brief history of disco by John-Manuel Andriote

The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis

The Fart Party by Julia Wertz

Far From Home short stories by Walter Tevis

Prelude to a Million Years / Song without Words / Vertigo by Lynd Ward

Godzilla on My Mind by William Tsutsui

Self-Evident Poems by Guy Bennett

Listening to Winter by Molly Fisk

Pluto: sentinel of the outer solar system by Barrie W. Jones

Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz

From Wonderland with Love: Danish comics edited by Steffen Maarup

The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven

Shirtlifter #4 by Steve MacIsaac

Quarterly Review of Literature: contemporary poetry series IV: Wislawa Szymborska, Jane Hirshfield, et al

Three #2, edited by Robert Kirby

The World Split Open: four centuries of women poets edited by Louise Bernikow

The Unswept Path: contemporary American haiku edited by J. Brandi, D. Maloney

Kundalini: the evolutionary energy in man by Gopi Krishna

The Fart Party vol. 2 by Julia Wertz

The Commitment: love, sex, marriage, and my family by Dan Savage

Congress of the Animals a Frank book by Jim Woodring

Shedding Skins: four Sioux poets edited by Adrian C. Louis

Haiku Moment: an anthology of contemporary North American haiku edited by Bruce Ross

A Queer History of the United States by MIchael Bronski

Aunt Jane’s Nieces by L. Frank Baum

This Is Reggae Music: the story of Jamaica’s music by Lloyd Bradley

Role Models by John Waters

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda

The Complete Annotated Oz Squad, vol. 1 by Steve Ahlquist, et al

The Magic World: American Indian Songs and Poems edited by William Brandon

Tales of Magic Land 2: Seven Underground Kings and The Fiery God of the Marrans by Alexander Volkov, translated by Peter L. Blystone

The Complete Annotated Oz Squad, vol. 2 by Steve Ahlquist, et al

My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy by Robert Bly

Nothing Doing by Cid Corman

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel

Scenes from an Impending Marriage by Adrian Tomine

Usagi Yojimbo: Yokai by Stan Sakai

The Grave Robber’s Daughter by Richard Sala

Aunt Jane’s Nieces Abroad by L. Frank Baum (as ebook)

Dolphin Diaries by Denise L. Herzing

All Your Base Are Belong to Us: 50 years of videogames by Harold Goldberg

Weathercraft: a Frank comic by Jim Woodring

Ebb and Flood #1, a mini comic by Brian Herrick

Elf World vol. 2, no. 2, Spring 2011, a mini comic anthology edited by F. Vigneault

Astro City: Dark Age, part 2 by Kurt Busiek, et al

Estrus Collection, vol. 2, by Mari Naomi

My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

Comic Book Guide to the Mission edited by Lauren Davis

Ordering the Storm: how to put together a book of poems edited by Susan Grimm

Kiss and Tell: a romantic resume, ages 0-22 by Mari Naomi

Wonder Tales edited by Marina Warner

Optic Nerve #12 by Adrian Tomine

The Tale of One Bad Rat by Bryan Talbot

Dancing with a Tiger: poems, 1941-1998 by Robert Friend

Tales of Magic Land 3: Yellow Fog and The Mystery fo the Deserted Castle by Alexander Volkov

October - December

Gaylord Phoenix by Edie Fake

Ogner Stump’s One Thousand Sorrows by A. Goldfarb

I’m Walking as Straight as I Can by Geri Jewell

Beautiful & Pointless: a guide to modern poetry by David Orr

Love Is the Reason: a Cavalcade of Boys story by Tim Fish

Lies Grown Ups Told Me: a comics anthology edited by Nomi Kane, Caitlin M., Jen Vaughn

Sweethearts by Emmett Williams

Luci’s Let Down by Marjee Chmiel & Sandra Lanza

My Dreaming Waking Life: 6 poets, 66 poems by Hofstadter, et al

Book of Boy Trouble, vol. 2: Born to Trouble edited by R. Kirby & D. Kelly

A Controversy of Poets edited by Robert Kelly and Paris Leary

Bonk by Mary Roach

The Duchess Who Wouldn’t Sit Down: an informal history of hospitality by Jesse Browner

Century of Clouds by Bruce Boone

The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich

Sidewalk Empire and Wish the World parts 1 & 2, mini comics by Eddie H. Ahn

The Bridge Project a comics anthology edited by Matt Leunig

Drunk and Disorderly: selected poems, 1978-2000 by Alan Catlin

Crack Comics #63

The Lights in the Sky Are Stars by Frederic Brown

Falling Sky by Julia Vinograd

Seventh Generation: contemporary native writing edited by Heather Hodgson

The Cute Manifesto by James Kochalka

The Believer #73: The Music Issue, July/Aug 2010

The Lampshade: a holocaust detective story by Mark Jacobson

Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell

Visit Teepee Town: native writings after the detours edited by Diane Glancy and Mark Nowak

Dead, She Said by Steve Niles and Bernie Wrightson

Beast Begat Beast mini comic by James the Staton

Notes for My Body Double by Paul Guest

Radiant Silhouette: new & selected work, 1974 - 1988 by John Yau

Reading Comics: how graphic novels work and what they mean by Douglas Wolk

One More Theory about Happiness by Paul Guest

A Lifetime with Lions by George Adamson

Voices within the Ark edited by Schwarz, Rudolf

Auntie Mame: an irreverent escapade by Patrick Dennis

Mute by Raymond Luczak

Epigenetics: the ultimate mystery of inheritance by Richard C. Francis

Swallow Me Whole by Nate Powell

How Music Works by John Powell

Thinger Dingers mini comic by J. T. Yost

Titles Read in 2012

January - March

Marvel Masterworks: X-Men, vol. 4 by Roy Thomas, Werner Roth

Adam, Eve and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels

Belonging: new poetry by Iranians around the world edited by Niloufar Talebi

Born Wild by Tony Fitzjohn

The Ice Cave by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard

If You Knew Then What I Know Now by Ryan Van Meter

The More Difficult Beauty by Molly Fisk

Timescape by Gregory Benford

Paradiso Diaspora by John Yau

Magician’s Book: a skeptic’s adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller

Close Calls with Nonsense: reading new poetry by Stephen Burt

Hawaiian Cowboys by John Yau

The Wounded Alphabet: poems collected and new by George Hitchcock

The Cento: a collection of collage poems edited by Theresa Malphrus Welford

News of the Universe edited by Robert Bly

Crackpot: the obsessions of John Waters by John Waters

The Brave Never Write Poetry by Daniel Jones

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Unlikely Friendships: 47 remarkable stories from the animal kingdom by Jennifer S. Holland

Farm City: the education of an urban farmer by Novella Carpenter

Practice by Dan Bellm

With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads by Denise Levertov

Ing Grish by John Yau

Windows on the World by Frederic Beigbeder

This Great Unknowing: last poems by Denise Levertov

Music of a Distant Drum by Bernard Lewis

Eda: an anthology of contemporary Turkish poetry edited by Marat Nemet-Nejat

O Taste and See by Denise Levertov

Paying for It: a comic strip memoir about being a john by Chester Brown

The Royal Book of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Waiting to Land: a mostly political memoir, 1985-2008 by Martin Duberman

Kabumpo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

What You Least Expect: selected poems, 1930-2011 by Rebecca Radner

The Sorrow Dance by Denise Levertov

Full Service: my adventures in Hollywood and the secret sex lives of the stars by Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg

My Heart is That Eternal Rose Tattoo by John Yau

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

The Cowardly Lion of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Sasquatch Stories by Mike Topp

Grampa in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Among African Apes edited by Martha Robbins & C. Boesch

April - August
Debt: the first 5000 years by David Graeber

Drama: an actor’s education by John Lithgow

The Lost King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge by Paul Guest

Concrete a collection of prints by Andrew Topel

black on white on black a chapbook of vizpo by Andrew Topel

Wisdom Teeth #1, a zine edited by Stephanie Foo & Neil Carman

The Hungry Tiger of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Poems, 1972-1982 by Denise Levertov

My Symptoms by John Yau

The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go by Eliot Khalil Wilson

Oblique Prayers by Denise Levertov

The Gnome King of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

The Static Element by Natan Zach

Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World by Paul Guest

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: translation and the meaning of everything by David Bellos

The Dolphin in the Mirror by Diana Reiss

Across the Line / Al otro lado: the poetry of Baja California edited by Harry Polkinhorn and Mark Weiss

The Virgin Project 2 edited by K. D. Boze & Stasia Kato

The Rejection Collection: cartoons you never saw and never will see in The New Yorker edited by Matthew Diffee

King of Shadows by Aaron Shurin

Life Itself by Roger Ebert

The Giant Horse of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Better Angel by Richard Meeker

Breathing the Water by Denise Levertov

Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Tough Shit: life advice from a fat, lazy slob by Kevin Smith

Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics edited by Paul Gravett

The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll

The Passionate Spectator: essays on art & poetry by John Yau

White Trash Debutante by Jennifer Blowdryer

Neuromancer by William Gibson

Shuck by Daniel Allen Cox

The Negritude Poets edited by Ellen Conroy Kennedy

The Big Splat, or how our moon came to be by Dana MacKenzie

City Tree of Concrete and Hope by Luke Warm Water

The Yellow Knight of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Ishi: last of his tribe by Theodora Kroeber

The Science of Yoga: the risks and the rewards by William J. Broad

Big Questions by Anders Nilsen

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me by Roald Dahl

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

Selected Poems by Tchicaya U Tam’si, translated by Gerald Moore

Iktomi’s Uprising by Luke Warm Water

Dog Years by Mark Doty

Wrong Wrong Wrong a chapbook by Jennifer Blowdryer

Daytripper by Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba

Sparkle & Blink 3.1, the Quiet Lightning reading for June 8, 2012

Pirates in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Three #3 a comics anthology edited by Robert Kirby

Leo Geo and his miraculous journey through the center of the earth by Jon Chad

My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

The Purple Prince of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

Voyage to the Whales by Hal Whitehead

Best American Comics 2008 edited by Lynda Barry

Song of the Ape: understanding the language of chimpanzees by Andrew R. Halloran

Evening Train by Denise Levertov

Healing the Split: collected essays by Marc Elihu Hofstadter

Magic Mushrooms and other highs edited by Paul Krassner

Ojo in Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson

My Family and other animals by Gerald Durrell

The Grief Performance by Emily Kendal Frey

September - December

X-Men: Schism 2011, by Jason Aaron

Gas #8, 96/97, edited by Kevin Opstedal

Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman

Further Adventures in Monochrome by John Yau

Cats Are Weird by Jeffrey Brown

Brush Fire by Tchicaya U Tam’si

Below the Belt & other stories by Phil Andros

Sand of the Well by Denise Levertov

Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogas and Gaddam

Torn from the Nest by Clorinda Matto de Turner

Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry edited by Stephen Tapscott

”There was chemistry,” a true story by “David” and Chii Maena

Cold Comfort by Maggie Anderson

Micrograms by Jorge Carrera Andrade

Moomin: the complete comic strip vol. 1, by Tove Jansson

Harper’s April 1997 issue

Huevos verdes con jamon por Dr Seuss, translated by Aida Marcuse

The Long Trip: a prehistory of psychedelia by Paul Devereux

Drama by Raina Telgemeier

Plantas que nunca florecen by Ruth Heller, translated by Ivonne Murillo

The Full Spectrum edited by David Levithan and Billy Merrell

Relearning the Alphabet by Denise Levertov

Bill Peet: an autobiography by Bill Peet

The Hidden Europe: what Eastern Europeans can teach us by Francis Tapon

Every Step You Take by Jock Soto

Dropped Names by Frank Langella

Moomin: the complete comic strip vol. 2, by Tove Jansson

Drift: the unmooring of American power by Rachel Maddow

The Madman and the Medusa by Tchicaya U Tam’si

Buttering the Wind by Julia Vinograd

The Double Image by Denise Levertov

The Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen & Jonathan Case

Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram

Here and Now by Denise Levertov

Class Dismissed: a year in the life of an American high school by Meredith Maran

Kitties: a couscous collective collection Evan Waldinger, et al

The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway

Collected Earlier Poems, 1940-1960 by Denise Levertov

The New African Poetry edited by Tanure Ojaide and Tijan M. Sallah

Leaving Yuba City by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Straight: the surprisingly short history of heterosexuality by Hanne Blank

Rain of Iron and Ice: the very real threat of comet and asteroid bombardment by John S. Lewis

Believing Is Seeing: observations on the mysteries of photography by Errol Morris

The Jacob’s Ladder by Denise Levertov

Denslow’s Mother Goose by W. W. Denslow

DNA USA: a genetic portrait of America by Bryan Sykes

Legitimate Dangers: American poets of the new century edited by Michael Dumanis & Cate Marvin

Marbles: mania, depression, Michelangelo and me by Ellen Forney

Jesse Walker, Oz fan

The Wizard of Oz, the 1939 MGM musical, is ubiquitously known. The original L. Frank Baum novel is famous, too, of course, but it’s not long before you’re losing people if you talk Oz. You knew L. Frank Baum wrote sequels to Wizard, right? 13 of them, fourteen if you count a book of short stories. Then there are the children’s fantasies Baum wrote about lands he placed near Oz and characters from those fairylands would stop by Oz (or vice versa). But Baum wrote for a living and his was not the age when a children’s book author could become a billionaire (J. K. Rowling, you go, girl!), so Baum wrote other stories, like the series Aunt Jane’s Nieces for teens, and he collaborated on work for the stage and screen (though those actually are part of how he lost money!), and one must note Baum lived a full life before he wrote The Wizard of Oz. I’ve read all the Oz books and most the rest of Baum’s writing and have read biographies of Baum and studies of the many versions of Oz. I know a lot about Oz and Baum, so I recognize when someone else does, too. 

When I was reading Jesse Walker’s taxonomy of American conspiracy theories, The United States of Paranoia, I was a little surprised when L. Frank Baum showed up being quoted on American Indians. Baum is not going to top anyone’s list of authorities on the topic. Baum started and ran a weekly newspaper in Aberdeen, North Dakota, and in his newspaper Baum tried to calm anti-Indian hysteria, saying, “‘the Indian scare’ was ‘a great injustice’ fanned by ‘sensational newspaper articles.’” Recent Baum commemorations have been protested because Baum later wrote that the situation of the American Indian tribes had become so degraded that the Indians would really be better off dead, so, as Walker says, one “can’t accuse the man of special pleading” in his debunking.  

Oz, post-Baum, appears in Jesse Walker’s discussion of post-WWII era paranoia. After L. Frank Baum died, his publisher contracted with another writer to continue the Oz series. Thus the books continued to make money and provide royalties to Baum’s widow and sons. By the 1940s Jack Snow, a longtime fan, had inherited the mantle of Royal Historian of Oz, and got two Oz books published in the official series. Jesse Walker groups Jack Snow’s The Magical Mimics in Oz with other works of post-WWII dread like John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? which “featured an alien with the ability to adopt the appearance of the people it consumes,” and The Invasion of the Body Snatchers which did pretty much the same thing. “In The Magical Mimics in Oz … supernatural creatures capture Dorothy and the Wizard, adopt their physical forms and take the opportunity to engage in espionage within the Emerald City, searching for the spell that will allow their race of monsters to invade Oz and subject the rest of its people to the same fate.”

L. Frank Baum is listed among famous theosophists in Walker’s chapter on religious conspiracies, and Baum’s Oz-adjacent fantasy, The Sea Fairies, gets quoted to exemplify the metaphor of the octopus as monopolistic capitalism. (The girl, Trot, tells her newfound undersea friends that “‘on the earth, where I live, we call the Stannerd [sic] Oil Company an octopus, an’ the Coal Trust an octopus …’” The octopus Trot is telling this to interrupts her to demand a less insulting metaphor.) 

Clearly Jesse Walker has an unusual depth of knowledge of Oz and L. Frank Baum. I wonder if he’s a member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, like me. 

source: The United States of Paranoia: a conspiracy theory by Jesse Walker