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From: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: The Oz canon and PJF's "Barnstormer in OZ"
Message-ID: <1457@shark.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 8-Jul-85 23:14:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1457
Posted: Mon Jul  8 23:14:52 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 11-Jul-85 06:40:55 EDT
References: <2409@topaz.ARPA> <1452@shark.UUCP> <286@dcl-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 37
Summary: 

In article <286@dcl-cs.UUCP> jam@dcl-cs.UUCP (John A. Mariani) writes:
>In article <1452@shark.UUCP> hutch@shark.UUCP (Stephen Hutchison) writes:
>>In article <2409@topaz.ARPA> jsweet@uci-icsa writes:
>>>From: Jerry Sweet 
>>>Book 41: a few months ago, I saw a book named "A Barnstormer In Oz", by
>>>Philip Jose Farmer 
>>
>>
>>As usual, Farmer completely destroys the character of the stories, making
>>something cheap, tawdry, and mildly pornographic out of the mileau of Oz.
>>
>>Hutch
>
>As usual?
>
>Disclaimer : I haven't read any of Baum's books but I have seen the Judy
>Garland film.
>
>What Farmer does is to look at a fictional place/situation as if it was
>*real*! This implies an adult, rational view of fantastic situations i.e.
>how *does* the strawman *exist*? I can appreciate Baum's readers would
>be offended, as Hutch above ... but, I found the book quite entertaining.
>I guess, as always, its up to you, but if you want to take a different
>view of a well-known place, this is worth a read.

Rather than let this degenerate into a series of opinionated flames, I will
admit that I have grown very tired of Farmer's more casual work, but I do
want to point out that Farmer doesn't look at a place as if it were real.
He writes about it as if it were what HE thinks of as real.  The trouble is,
real doesn't have to be "adult" in that sense.  For another instance of
Farmer tampering with the work of other authors, resulting in garbage, look
at what he did to Tarzan of the Apes.  Actually, I think he's done two such
things, "Lord Tyger" and this pseudo-history thing whose name I forget that
ties Doc Savage, Greystoke, and n-thousand other heroes together into the
same family tree (unnecessary!).

Hutch