Unrest for the Wicked

[spectralbovine]

Since the musical is coming to San Francisco, I thought it was a good time to finally read Wicked, by Gregory Maguire. As everyone knows, it's the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, and the book assumes familiarity with the basic story of The [Wonderful] Wizard of Oz, if not all the details. I've never read the book, but I want to now to see

Comments

[duchessdogberry]

I was the one at the Dragonfly that wanted to hear your thoughts on the book.

That said, I'm surprised to see you and so many people actually admire the writing. I hated this book so much it made me feel ill as I forced myself to try to continue to read it. The stuff while they're at school was interesting, but it just went off the deep end after they see the wizard. And, yeah, the stuff in the tower at the end is just full of "What the fucking fuck?!" and so on. Also, I got the distinct impression that Maguire has a fascination with urination. It seemed to come up a bit more often than I'm used to.

But I adore the musical. Normally, I don't go for the fluffier version of a story if given the choice, but I definitely prefer the cut-down and focused world of the musical to the muddled over-written crap of the novel. I finally felt for Elphaba rather than wanting to strangle her, although the characterizations of Fiyero and Glinda do suffer some major simplifications in order to make Elphaba easier to relate to and to put more comedy into the story. And there's just an air of political themes to the musical to make you think, rather than a rain of anvils.

Not to mention, they do some really cool effects in the musical that I just adore.

[spectralbovine]

It sounds like I'll probably like the musical more than the book! I'm looking forward to it.

But I'm amused by your feelings on the book. I think if I wanted to, I could have hated it, but that's not how I'm wired, as you know.

[duchessdogberry]

Once you see the musical, I'll link you to the five or so LJ entries I wrote in 2006 about it with mentions of how I felt about the book.

[outforawalk]

HA! See? I just commented above that you are least likely of my whole flist to hate something! It makes me laugh. We'll all be miserable gits about it and you are all, "But they are so committed to sparklemotion!" Or whatever.