Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Follow the Yellow Brick Code

"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one of the world's best-loved fairytales. As Judy Garland's famous film nears its 70th birthday, how much do its followers know about the story's use as an economic parable?"

Well, I do know that Kansas represents the epicentre of everything worth anything; plus, there's no place like hell.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:42 PM

    Didn't William Burroughs end up living in Kansas?

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  2. Mind-reading again, elberry? I had a flash of WSB's heart attack the day before he died in Lawrence, Kansas (where he lived earlier in his life, IIRC, and spent his last years) while creating this post. So, yep, you iz indeedly correct.

    (Also? Was thinking of a former co-commentarian, TF, who knows more about Kansas than anyone I know; and, to hear him discuss / describe it, you do get the impression it is the centre of the universe.)

    Hey, BTW, congrats on the novelistic kudos coming your way. Good on ya, Mate.
    p.s. The reason I remember the name of the place in Kansas? Often wondered if he called it Larry (which explains something, I think)

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  3. Anonymous7:01 PM

    My mother keeps seeing fortune tellers who prophesy i'll get published at some point. i always reply, grimly: "After my death" much to her chagrin.

    Burroughs was one of my first literary heroes, more because of his weirdness than his actual writing, i think, though Queer, Junky, and Naked Lunch are good. i love the idea of him living in Kansas, with his dozen or so cats, and his guns, and his knives, and his expandable batons, and whatever other weapons he felt a man should keep about his person at all times.

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  4. Funny thing about Burroughs, elberry (aside from his trail of tears)? He had this thing about 23 and it totally affected one of your countrymen, fellow by the name of Robert Anton Wilson who became obsessed with the 23 "phenomenon" thanks to WSB.

    Even funnier? When I did drive taxi in uni, my cab was number 2323 and I think the double saved me from a fate worse than fate the night I had the gun pointed at my right temple, in my sock feet, since I had to take my boots off because the perp knew that cabbies stashed their take in their boots.

    I knew a lot of people knew that. I had waist-length hair and used to tuck in under a ball cap. That's where my cash was and stayed. Poor fool, hope he doesn't read this and come looking for my cash now since, my hair is much shorter and I no longer don ballcaps :).

    WSB's weapons were downright weird, though, I'll grant you that. I think he'd actually carved a few clubs he felt were talismanic and often took with him when he went anywhere during his final years.

    Just a weird guy, very very Weird. Liked Red Armies more than Naked Lunch, though. He was a OneOf; and, posterity will show he did a great deal to liberate literature from its Puritanical prudery, I guess.

    Could you ask your mom to ask her fortune teller if she sees me hooking up with a guy from FL in this century? (No, not the Rand guy, the grand guy who's given up communicating via email, speech, telephone, and so on for Lent. Just my type, is why I call him Edweird :)) . . .

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