Wicked - Gregory Maguire
When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?
Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our pre-conceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
There are two things I would like to be able to do with regards to this book. The first is to talk about it without comparing it to the stage show. The second is to honestly say that I liked the book better. Unfortunately, I don't think I can do either. The first is because the hubby convinced me to wait until after we saw the show to read the book, and thus I came into the book with certain opinions and whatnot already. I'll address the second as a result of addressing the first, I think.
OK, so I knew the book was going to be different. Very different, in fact. I'd been warned, so I was expecting that. What I was not expecting was for it to be, by and large, an entirely different story being told. If you're not familiar with both, I can tell you that you could almost count on one hand the elements that are shared between the two. It occurred to me that it's almost like the show's creators had come up with this idea and wanted to do a show about the Witch's story, but Gregory Maguire beat them to the punch. At that point, you can't just ignore Maguire's book and proceed with your show, for obvious legal reasons, even if you did have the idea before the book came out. So instead, you incorporate a few elements from the book (some secondary character names, for example), and give Maguire credit for being the basis of the show, and all that entails, while still telling the story you'd thought of, rather than the one Maguire wrote. Does that make sense?
Anyway, as I said, I'd really like to just discuss the book on its own merits, but unfortunately, much of how I feel about this book and its contents is really coloured by my opinions of the show. So I can't really give it an honest appraisal with no reference to the show. And while I usually find books better than the movies/shows/whatever that are created from them, and feel that I ought to like the books better, in this case, I didn't. Now, maybe I'm just being seduced by all the colours and amazing music in the show, but I truly feel that it did a better job of presenting the characters and their situations and relationships with each other in a way that made you feel like you actually got to know them. I didn't really feel like I got to know anybody in the book all that well, even Elphaba, and getting to know her was kind of the point of the book, as I understand it. And as for the others? I don't know Glinda at all. I can guess why she made the choices she did, but I have no idea how she feels about them. I don't know Fiyero. Was what he and Elphaba shared just sex, or did he really love her? And did she truly love him? And where do his feelings for his wife fit in? Nessa was really just a caricature of a hyper-religious tyrant, with nothing to really humanize her. And I don't even really get why Boq was in the book at all. Mostly, he was just there.
Compare that to the show, where even though it's a condensed form of storytelling, where you can fit less in than in a book, you can see how Glinda's torn over the choices she makes. You can even drum up a little sympathy for someone whose choices have essentially put her into a position where she has to pretend to celebrate the death of someone she truly cared about. Maguire's Glinda is just very self-serving, with no apparent depth or remorse about anything, even if she acknowledges any kind of wrong-doing.
You can watch Fiyero go from a completely carefree slacker to someone brave enough to step away from Glinda and all the glory he could have had if he'd put on the same mask she did, and be devasted when he's punished for it. When Fiyero dies in the book, you just don't care as much, because you never really knew him, and you didn't feel there was a real connection between him and Elphaba that makes you sad when it's brutally severed. (Also, the way in which he's dispatched in the show really kind of kicks you in the gut a lot more than a nighttime head-clubbing like he gets in the book.) Especially live, but even just on the recording, Elphaba's reaction to his punishment, and her sheer desperation to find a way to save him is seriously heart-wrenching. I got nothing of the sort from the book.
Nessa was a still a little bit a caricature in the show, but at least, in addition to her sanctimoniusness, she also developed feelings for Boq that ending up taking over her life - and his. It also gave her a reason for being such a tyrant. In the book it seemed that she was just spiteful toward her people for no really reason other than that she could be. In the show, she's tyrannical in a doomed effort to keep Boq near her and make him love her. It backfires, of course, and causes all kinds of collateral damage, but at least it's a reason that makes some kind of sense.
And as for Elphaba herself, in addition to feeling like I knew her better in the show, her whole situation was, I thought, more interesting, and more tragic, in a way. Maguire's Wizard was basically a tyrant from day one, and everyone knew it. There were those who supported him, but not really because they thought he was such a generous benefactor; they supported him because it was advantageous to them personally. This leads to a very different feel from the show version, where the Wizard is perceived as a wonderful, benificent, magnanimous, good guy. In the book, everyone knows that it's entirely the Wizard's doing that Animals are being stripped of their rights, and losing some of their abilities. In the show, it's a mysterious force causing this, and Elphaba tries to get the Wizard's help to reverse it, before realizing that it's his doing. But no one else ever really gets to find this out, because right there is your reason for Elphaba's getting demonized. It's a pre-emptive strike to discredit her before she can damage the Wonderful Wizard's wonderful reputation. And I just found that so much more compelling, and so much more tragic, to think that if Glinda had just had a little more strength, to hold to her principles and stand by her friend, instead of taking the easy, comfortable route, so much sadness could have been avoided. The book was almost more like a war story, maybe one where you follow a Resistance cell in Germany. Still very sad, and tragic in its own way, but it doesn't have the same pathos of it being your own choices that make or break your life, rather then the circumstances beyond your control.
All that said, and hopefully I'm expressing all this reasonably eloquently, I didn't hate the book. If I'd read it first, I really don't think I would have had the same issues with it that I do now, although even with no real pre-conceived notions, I think I still would have been surprised by the bawdiness and just plain oddness of certain parts. It was a good story, with an interesting perspective, and definitely was worth reading. It's just no Defying Gravity.
Next up, Carmen and Other Stories, by Prosper Merimée
Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability, and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly, and misunderstood creature who challenges all our pre-conceived notions about the nature of good and evil.
There are two things I would like to be able to do with regards to this book. The first is to talk about it without comparing it to the stage show. The second is to honestly say that I liked the book better. Unfortunately, I don't think I can do either. The first is because the hubby convinced me to wait until after we saw the show to read the book, and thus I came into the book with certain opinions and whatnot already. I'll address the second as a result of addressing the first, I think.
OK, so I knew the book was going to be different. Very different, in fact. I'd been warned, so I was expecting that. What I was not expecting was for it to be, by and large, an entirely different story being told. If you're not familiar with both, I can tell you that you could almost count on one hand the elements that are shared between the two. It occurred to me that it's almost like the show's creators had come up with this idea and wanted to do a show about the Witch's story, but Gregory Maguire beat them to the punch. At that point, you can't just ignore Maguire's book and proceed with your show, for obvious legal reasons, even if you did have the idea before the book came out. So instead, you incorporate a few elements from the book (some secondary character names, for example), and give Maguire credit for being the basis of the show, and all that entails, while still telling the story you'd thought of, rather than the one Maguire wrote. Does that make sense?
Anyway, as I said, I'd really like to just discuss the book on its own merits, but unfortunately, much of how I feel about this book and its contents is really coloured by my opinions of the show. So I can't really give it an honest appraisal with no reference to the show. And while I usually find books better than the movies/shows/whatever that are created from them, and feel that I ought to like the books better, in this case, I didn't. Now, maybe I'm just being seduced by all the colours and amazing music in the show, but I truly feel that it did a better job of presenting the characters and their situations and relationships with each other in a way that made you feel like you actually got to know them. I didn't really feel like I got to know anybody in the book all that well, even Elphaba, and getting to know her was kind of the point of the book, as I understand it. And as for the others? I don't know Glinda at all. I can guess why she made the choices she did, but I have no idea how she feels about them. I don't know Fiyero. Was what he and Elphaba shared just sex, or did he really love her? And did she truly love him? And where do his feelings for his wife fit in? Nessa was really just a caricature of a hyper-religious tyrant, with nothing to really humanize her. And I don't even really get why Boq was in the book at all. Mostly, he was just there.
Compare that to the show, where even though it's a condensed form of storytelling, where you can fit less in than in a book, you can see how Glinda's torn over the choices she makes. You can even drum up a little sympathy for someone whose choices have essentially put her into a position where she has to pretend to celebrate the death of someone she truly cared about. Maguire's Glinda is just very self-serving, with no apparent depth or remorse about anything, even if she acknowledges any kind of wrong-doing.
You can watch Fiyero go from a completely carefree slacker to someone brave enough to step away from Glinda and all the glory he could have had if he'd put on the same mask she did, and be devasted when he's punished for it. When Fiyero dies in the book, you just don't care as much, because you never really knew him, and you didn't feel there was a real connection between him and Elphaba that makes you sad when it's brutally severed. (Also, the way in which he's dispatched in the show really kind of kicks you in the gut a lot more than a nighttime head-clubbing like he gets in the book.) Especially live, but even just on the recording, Elphaba's reaction to his punishment, and her sheer desperation to find a way to save him is seriously heart-wrenching. I got nothing of the sort from the book.
Nessa was a still a little bit a caricature in the show, but at least, in addition to her sanctimoniusness, she also developed feelings for Boq that ending up taking over her life - and his. It also gave her a reason for being such a tyrant. In the book it seemed that she was just spiteful toward her people for no really reason other than that she could be. In the show, she's tyrannical in a doomed effort to keep Boq near her and make him love her. It backfires, of course, and causes all kinds of collateral damage, but at least it's a reason that makes some kind of sense.
And as for Elphaba herself, in addition to feeling like I knew her better in the show, her whole situation was, I thought, more interesting, and more tragic, in a way. Maguire's Wizard was basically a tyrant from day one, and everyone knew it. There were those who supported him, but not really because they thought he was such a generous benefactor; they supported him because it was advantageous to them personally. This leads to a very different feel from the show version, where the Wizard is perceived as a wonderful, benificent, magnanimous, good guy. In the book, everyone knows that it's entirely the Wizard's doing that Animals are being stripped of their rights, and losing some of their abilities. In the show, it's a mysterious force causing this, and Elphaba tries to get the Wizard's help to reverse it, before realizing that it's his doing. But no one else ever really gets to find this out, because right there is your reason for Elphaba's getting demonized. It's a pre-emptive strike to discredit her before she can damage the Wonderful Wizard's wonderful reputation. And I just found that so much more compelling, and so much more tragic, to think that if Glinda had just had a little more strength, to hold to her principles and stand by her friend, instead of taking the easy, comfortable route, so much sadness could have been avoided. The book was almost more like a war story, maybe one where you follow a Resistance cell in Germany. Still very sad, and tragic in its own way, but it doesn't have the same pathos of it being your own choices that make or break your life, rather then the circumstances beyond your control.
All that said, and hopefully I'm expressing all this reasonably eloquently, I didn't hate the book. If I'd read it first, I really don't think I would have had the same issues with it that I do now, although even with no real pre-conceived notions, I think I still would have been surprised by the bawdiness and just plain oddness of certain parts. It was a good story, with an interesting perspective, and definitely was worth reading. It's just no Defying Gravity.
Next up, Carmen and Other Stories, by Prosper Merimée