Delving into Gnome Man's Land

So, after holding my article hostage -- hostage, I tell you -- for four years, the editor of The Baum Bugle, Sarah Crotzer, has finally published it into her most recent issue:

  • “Delving into Nome Man’s Land: Two Traditions in Baum and Tolkien.” Baum Bugle, Autumn 2021, pp. 13–22.

Interesting story behind this one. Sarah suggested the original idea to me back when we were in grad school together, maaaaybe right after she became Bugle editor, I don't remember. Anyway, I sat on the idea for a while. Then, in December 2017, tuckered out from my long article on gender violence in Stephen R. Donaldson, and wanting to write something short and spiffy for the CV, I turned to L. Frank Baum.

Since I knew this break had been coming up, I'd been reading a whole bunch of Oz books in preparation. So, once the fall semester ended, I plunged into a 5-week writing spree where I wrote two short articles back-to-back -- the first an essay on magic words in fantasy (but especially Baum, of course), and then "Delving into Gnome Man's Land."

It took Sarah two years to publish the first one, technically the first feature article she ever commissioned. (To be fair, she did tell me it would be a while, since it was for the centenary of The Magic of Oz.) I wrote "Delving into Gnome Man's Land" immediately afterward, since Baum was still so fresh in my mind, but Sarah decided to save it for an emergency, just in case something else fell through. Well, that took four years, and I'm glad it's now finally out there.

My argument, incidentally, concerns the respective uses of gnomes in Baum and Tolkien. Whereas Tolkien associated his gnomes with knowledge, eventually realizing that he needed to change the name to the Noldor Elves, Baum got his gnomes from late 19th-century theosophy. I made a guess that he changed the spelling to "Nome" because that's the name for provinces in ancient Egyptian, and theosophists love Egypt.

Once The Baum Bugle came out, incidentally, it turns out my essay acquired a fan -- LA Quadling, who does video reviews of each issue on Youtube. He quite liked my first essay (you can read about it in my previous entry), but he also really liked the new essay, too, which is nice. At one point he say, "Dennis answers questions about Baum's gnomes that I didn't even know I had!" Anyway, LA Quadling's video review can be found here. He starts talking about gnomes about halfway through.




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