The Hazards of Indexing

[vovat]

As you probably know, I read a lot of apocryphal Oz books and stories, and one project I've been working on for years (on and off, of course) is a sort of index of new characters who appear in these works. I'm sticking to stories that are consistent with the Famous Forty, or at least the Baum fourteen, which means it doesn't contain any original characters from, say, Wicked. I try to be thorough, but it's a pretty casual project, and I'm not sure how I'll make it into a format that other people can read. Also, there are several categories of characters with whom I'm not entirely sure what to do, including:

• Crossover characters. Over the years, writers have crossed over Oz with everything from Alice's Wonderland to Raggedy Ann to Greek mythology to Red Dwarf. Should characters from these other universes be included in my main list, or maybe a separate one?
  
• Expanded universe characters, which is to say characters from Baum fantasies who don't appear in any of his Oz books, but do in later ones, such as Zurline and Tanko-Mankie.
  
• Characters in Oz stories who really have nothing to do with Oz. This is especially problematic in the Skeezik books, which have a lot of stories within stories. I think it might be best not to include these characters, unless they actually intersect with the main story at some point (which some of them do, but most don't).
  
• Insertions of the author, and/or the author's family and friends. This sort of thing is a pet peeve of mine. I mean, I've certainly imagined myself having adventures in Oz, so I can see the appeal. And not all of the stories that do this are bad; The Flying Bus in Oz, which stars the author's children, is a quite good Oz book. But I think it strains the credibility of these stories. If you want to put people you know into your Oz stories, at least figure out a way that the person can fit into what we know about the fairyland. Edward Einhorn, for instance, wrote of two characters who share names (and quite likely personality traits) with his nieces Ayala and Talia, but they're also princesses of the Ozian sub-kingdom of Tonsoria. So he managed to put in family references, but not in a heavy-handed way. Still, I should probably include these self-insertion characters, unless they're only there to narrate.
  
• Real people mentioned in Oz stories. For the most part, I ignore them, but there are some stories where they're actually significant to the plot. Buddy Ebsen meets Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot in March Laumer's The Vegetable Man of Oz; and graycardinal's story "The Solitary Sorceress of Oz" makes Glinda a former maid to the sixteenth-century English scholar and occultist John Dee. So should these people be included or not? I'm thinking of a possible separate list for them.
  
• Contradictions. For the most part, I'm not that concerned with them for this particular project (although it's almost certainly a project that I'd like to take one at some point), but I think I'll make cross-references when two characters are credited as doing the same basic thing, like how March Laumer mentions someone other than Conjo as the creator of the Love Magnet, and how there have been several different names (and two different genders) given for the royal cook in Ozma's palace.
  

This will be an ongoing project as long as new Oz stories are still coming out, and I don't expect to catch everything. And, contrary to what you might think, I haven't read every book with "Oz" in the title, so I'm going to leave out characters from some stories simply out of ignorance. I'll probably want to make this a collaborative effort at some point, but for now, I'm keeping it as my own pet project. Or has someone else been doing basically the same thing? I don't know.

Comments

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd put in crossover characters -- it would be neverending. And what about Oz characters who appear separately in other universe stories, like the one appearance by Dorothy in my Buffy universe? It would make the project unweildy to include all of that.

I feel the same way with self-insert characters. I wrote a long Oz story starring my youngest daughter; I think it was true to the Oz characters and style, but again, gathering up every one of these would be a huge task -- haven't we all at least thought of writing such a story? On the other hand, I do lean toward saying yes to the real people insertions, if they're a major part of the story.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

And what about Oz characters who appear separately in other universe stories, like the one appearance by Dorothy in my Buffy universe?

Well, I guess I'd only want to include stories that are primarily about Oz, and ones that jibe with the canon.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Makes sense.

[annamatic.livejournal.com]

Has anyone ever done an Oz concordance? If not, you might be the guy for it.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

There are a few works of the sort, including an index of characters in the Famous Forty (well, actually only thirty-nine, as the last hadn't been published at that point), and another more recent book that also includes places and things.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

Also, there are several categories of characters with whom I'm not entirely sure what to do...

Separate appendices?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that might well be what I'll end up doing, but they're presently kind of all over the place.