Tik-Tok Talk

Tik-Tok of Oz, by L. Frank Baum – Since I read Eric Shanower’s book about the play this was based on a few months ago, I figured this might be worth a reread. And it’s 110 years old now, although that’s not really an anniversary anyone tends to acknowledge, as far as I know. When I first read it at maybe twelve or thirteen, I already recognized that a lot of it was very similar to stuff that had happened in other Oz books. The main plot is largely a rewrite of Ozma of Oz, but much looser in structure. Again, there’s a tiny army with just one private and all the rest officers, only this time they’re not serving Ozma but the ridiculously ambitious ruler of a small country.

Since the Tik-Tok Man of Oz play was based on a script for a dramatization of Ozma that had first been drafted years earlier, I really don’t know whether such elements as the country of plant people where an American visitor picks a new ruler and the inclusion of the Shaggy Man, Polychrome, and the Love Magnet showed up first in that script or in Dorothy and the Wizard and Road, respectively.

The fact that it was based on a play explains some other oddities of the book. There are certainly instances of rapid-fire jokes in earlier Oz books, but here there’s kind of a vaudeville vibe throughout. Tik-Tok himself is sillier here than in previous appearances, with a lot of his humor coming from his taking figurative statements literally. And Baum’s desire to bring in all the main characters from the play meant a few oddities, like characters who were already friends initially not recognizing each other, and the Nome King Roquat becoming the Metal Monarch Ruggedo. It might be due to a version of the character being in the play that this character reappeared after Emerald City at all. The Little Wizard Story “Tik-Tok and the Nome King,” which came out a little earlier, also used a plot device from the show. Betsy Bobbin is largely a replacement for Dorothy, but she doesn’t get to do anywhere near as much, instead being more of an observer. She does have Dorothy’s forthright sassiness, but so does Trot.

Just as Dorothy was aged up in the Wizard stage play so she could have a love interest, Betsy in Tik-Tok Man flirts a bit with the other characters, which doesn’t carry over to the book. Characters falling in love was a major thing in Baum’s stage shows that he tended to avoid in the Oz books. Private Files and the Rose Princess still become a couple, but it’s never really made overt; and Ruggedo having feelings for Polychrome is reduced to a temporary distraction. Baum does expand on some elements from the play, like actually showing the Kingdom of Oogaboo and providing a lot more details on the Nome Kingdom. Kaliko is developed quite a bit, and I’m kind of surprised that a children’s book had executioners with “great golden pincers, and prods of silver, and clamps and chains and various wicked-looking instruments,” even if they never actually use them on anybody. But then, Emerald City had the Nome King ordering a disobedient subject to be sliced up and fed to dogs, so I guess the Nome Kingdom was a convenient excuse for the slightly sadistic.

We never find out much about Betsy’s background, aside from a mention late in the story that she’s from Oklahoma.

There’s also a new subplot about the adventuring party falling down a tube through the world that ends up in a land of fairy rulers, some of whom seem a bit redundant considering that he’d already essentially brought the mythology from The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus into Oz. And it’s hard to go wrong with adding a dragon.

The story ends with Ozma letting Betsy, Hank the Mule, and Shaggy’s long-lost brother into Oz, where the former two play a somewhat significant role in at least one later book, while the latter is only mentioned in passing. And I’m still not sure whether Shaggy is bluffing in order to get his new friends admitted to Oz, or he’s actually planning to wander around a wasteland for a while with them until Ozma relents. By the way, I believe Ev is only mentioned in this one as the place Tik-Tok is from, not where the surface adventures take place. I would have liked to see what places were listed on the faded signpost near the well where Ruggedo threw Tik-Tok. This is a fun book, especially for its further exploration of the Nomes and their kingdom, even if a lot of it is very similar to stuff readers would have already seen. And the alliterative chapter titles don’t hurt.