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When an elementary class sets out on a quest to save the world from disenchantment, their adventures reveal paradoxes of the human mind and ways of awakening the magic within us.
This is a new, expanded version of the underground classic, originally published in 1974. This edition, which includes new episodes and changes throughout, is now available on CD ROM for $19, with other stories by Richard, and with voice narration in addition to the text. (You need the RealPlayer to hear it). We're experimenting in various ways trying to determine if publishing books on CD ROM, instead of on paper, can work well both for writers and readers. Please check our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat You can also still buy the paperback first edition (with illustrations by Christin Couture) there.
Five children's
books by Richard Seltzer: The Lizard of Oz (illustrated by Christin
Couture), Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome (illustrated by Richard
Seltzer), See You Later, Elevator, Hundreds and Hundreds of Gerbils, and
Tiger in the Intercom. All are presented in both HTML text and audio form
(read by the author). Review of this book CD http://www.largeprintreviews.com/lizard.html
The
Lizard of Oz by Richard Seltzer. When an elementary class sets
out on a quest to save the world from disenchantment, their adventures
reveal paradoxes of the human mind and ways of awakening the magic within
us.
Library Journal -- "An intriguing and very entertaining little novel."
Paperback. Autographed on request.
Everything
But the Internet gathers the complete non-Internet
works of Richard Seltzer on CD, in plain text, with software that lets
you listen as well as read. It includes: The Name of Hero, Ethiopia Through
Russian Eyes, The Lizard of Oz, Without a Myth, Spit and Polish, Mercy,
Rights Crossing, short stories, articles, book reviews, and poems.
Would you rather read it on your palm? For $5 you can buy an 84K zipped
file with the full text at PalmGear 
To read that file you'll need iSilo (software available for from www.isilo.com)
Also please visit our Readers' Corner and Writers' Showcase page at www.samizdat.com/readers.html
To see the illustrations by Christin Couture, click here. Badges with these illustrations can be made on demand (using Badge-a-Minit). These 2-1/2" diameter badges, made from black and white line drawings, sell for $1 each plus $1 per order for shipping (first class mail). To order, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
Mr. Carroll asked the Mothers of Fact, "Could you please direct us to the home of the muses?"
"Certainly," answered Miss Fortune. "Their sorority house is on Mount Parnassus."
When they got to the base of Mount Parnassus, Mr. Carroll said, "Okay, Judy, it's up to you to invoke the muses."
"But what should I say?" asked Miss Morgan.
"Whatever you feel."
So she said, "Please, Muse, we're very lost and very confused. We don't know how we'll ever find our way out of here if you don't help us."
A hollow echoing voice asked, "Which muse do you want to see?"
"A muse. Just a muse," she answered.
"Yes," said the voice, "the A-muse is my favorite, too. Right this way. Third cave on the right."
Mr. Carroll introduced the speaker, "That's Mr. Plato. He's the speaker of the house. He helps the muses talk to strangers. He interprets their signs and strange words so people can understand them."
Plato led them deep into the dark cave and had the class sit down facing the wall. Miss Prysby, Mr. Newman, and the Redcoats all sat with them. The A-muse -- a young lady in a light blue evening gown -- sat by the fire behind them, making shadows dance on the walls. She was very good at it, and soon the kids were all laughing at the funny shapes and having a great time.
Miss Morgan stood off to the side with Mr. Plato and Mr. Carroll. She was very concerned, "Muse, Miss Muse," she called. "I hate to interrupt. I'm sure the children enjoy those shadow pictures you're making. And any other time I would enjoy them, too. You're quite good at it, really. But, you see, we're lost, very lost. And I'm sure the children's parents are worried sick."
The Muse didn't say a word in reply. She just kept making funny shadow pictures on the wall of the cave, and the kids kept laughing.
"Mr. Carroll," Miss Morgan asked, "why doesn't she answer me? Why does she just keep playing those shadow games for the children?"
"She's answering you in her own way," he said. "The children understand."
"Well, I don't understand," she complained, her voice trailing off in despair, "... if there is anything to understand." She felt very empty and very helpless.
"Come with me," offered Mr. Plato. "I'll explain in words." He led her deeper into the cave, and told her the story the Muse was showing with her shadows.
"Once upon a time there was a world and an unworld. People lived in the world, and unpeople lived in the unworld. The world was very much like the unworld; and the people were very much like the unpeople. The sun spent half its time in each place; and everyone lived and grew and died and was happy.
"The name of the world was 'Home'' and the name of the unworld was 'Ome.'
"In the middle of Home was a huge machine. It could wash your dishes and your clothes. It could cook your food or keep it cold. It could do all sorts of thing. The people of Home were very happy with their machine. It saved them so much time in doing things they'd never enjoyed doing. And it had potential -- it could be made to do many more things.
"So people worked on the machine and worked on it. Soon it could move you from one part of Home to another at great speeds. It could even tell you how great it was and show you pictures of how much everybody loved it and depended on it. That made it easier for people to work harder for the machine so it could give them all the things they'd ever dreamed of."
Miss Morgan could hear the kids reacting to the pictures.
"Gosh," said Donny, "that looks just like pictures on TV."
"Like Star Trek, maybe," said Mark.
"Or like astronauts on the moon," said Eugene.
Mr. Plato continued, "The more people worked for the machine, the more benefits the machine could offer, and the more the machine thanked them and paid them and reminded them of what great new benefits were waiting for them. So they used their pay to buy more parts for the machine; and in their spare time, they enjoyed seeing and hearing and reading about all the things the machine could do and how happy everybody was and would be."
"The only trouble was the atmosphere. The machine gave off fumes. You got used to it after a while; so you hardly ever noticed it except on what would have been a clear bright sunshiny day, but the fumes were always there. It was a deadening atmosphere. Plants and animals started dying. But man adapted. He learned to breath machine air instead of plant air. He learned to use machine light instead of sunlight. If he, like the plants, had kept needing the sun to grow, he would have withered and died. But he adapted. He came to depend more and more on the machine. He could no longer see the sun, and what plants and animals remained were ugly stunted creatures. There really wasn't much of anything to look at but the machine. And since there was less to distract him, man worked more efficiently, and the machine gave him more benefits, and he enjoyed them.
"He worked and enjoyed, worked and enjoyed. He used the machine, and the machine used him to make itself better so he could use it better, and there was great progress throughout the world.
"Back when the sun could be seen, plants and animals and men used to grow up toward the sunlight. Now, instead, they grew toward the machine light. And they thanked the machine for letting them see. And they thanked the machine for letting them grow. And by the light of the machine, they saw the machine and other people working for it and enjoying its benefits. So they grew toward the machine, grew close to it. And the machine built them houses, much warmer and more comfortable than caves. There in their houses, men sat night after night, watching the moving shadows that the machine's light cast on the walls, watching the shadows of how wonderful their world was. And they were very pleased.
"Meanwhile, without anyone noticing it, the sun left. It wasn't just behind the clouds anymore. Maybe just as plants and animals and people used to need the sun to live and grow and die, the sun needed the plants and animals and people. But whyever it was, the sun just left the world and went to the unworld.
"Before, it used to shine equally in both places, revolving around so it spent half its time in each. Now it just stayed in the unworld named Ome. And strange things started happening there. The unanimals and unplants and unpeople who lived there weren't used to all that light. They started growing and growing. Soon there were all sorts of monsters. Little lizards grew to the size of dinosaurs and dragons, and strange beasts of all kinds filled the unworld.
"The unpeople feared that if the sun kept shining that way, the monsters would get out of control and kill them. So the unpeople captured and tamed the biggest dragon they could find; and they taught him to jump, till he could jump all the way up to the sun. And he did. And he swallowed it and came back down to the ground with the sun in his belly."
"Gosh," said Donny, "can you do that again?"
Mr. Plato went on, "As the unpeople had hoped, the monsters couldn't stand the change in climate -- the plants they needed to survive stopped growing. Soon the only monster left was the dragon with the sun in his belly, that somehow the sun had made deathless.
"The sunlight diffused through the dragon's skin like light through a shade, but still the light was so intense that many unpeople were blinded, all but those who wore sunglasses.
"Before, plants and animals had felt drawn toward the sun, but gravity had held them back -- they hadn't been able to run to it; they could only grow toward it. Now with the sun on the ground, gravity no longer restrained them -- they surged forward, crowding toward the source of the light.
"It was unlike any light they had ever seen, unlike even sunlight seen from a distance -- it was so pure and bright. As they got close, they were speechless: awe-struck and spell-bound by the sight. Ever after that, they never moved. Spell-bound to a single spot, they just chanted over and over, "Ome, Ome, Ome..." as an expression of their awe and perhaps of their joy at being in this place and seeing this sight.
"In the old days when the sun shone equally in both places, people and unpeople used to travel freely between the world and the unworld," Mr. Plato continued. "But when the machine got so big and so efficient that it did most everything people ever dreamed of and even did their dreaming for them, people stopped going to the unworld -- they were too attached to the machine to want to go.
"A few unpeople kept coming to the world. They were singers and tellers of tales. While others were speechless in the presence of the light, they tried to put it into words; and they stuffed what words they had with light around them. A few met the Muses and learned to put their words together so the light shone through. And they all arrived at Home with tales of the unworldly monsters and dragons and unworldly things that had been happening. People listened, and the machine recorded; and the machine told and retold the stories in different, more familiar words, and in other ways made it so people could enjoy the stories with no effort at all.
"One of the very best stories the machine retold was The Wizard of Oz. It called the land "Oz" because that sounds very far away, and it's much more fun hearing about some far away place than some place that sounds like 'Home.' And it said that the sunglasses unpeople wore to keep from being blinded were green-tinted glasses a fake magician used to fool people. And they were very good stories the way the machine told them -- so very good that most people forgot the stories the unpeople told. But a few people did remember them dimly and passed them on from generation to generation. To the few who remembered, the dragon came to be known as the Lizard of Oz, the Great Dragon of Ome, or the Leaping Lizard.
"It's said that once there was no machine in Home, that a giant named Prometheus had somehow stolen fire from the sun -- not just the light but some of the fire itself -- and brought it to earth for man. And there was just enough of the fire so man was enchanted and very happy, but not enough to spell-bind him. And so things were for many, many years, until the fire burnt out.
"Nobody knows why the fire went out, but it did. And suddenly, man felt a great emptiness, and it was that emptiness that drove him to begin building the machine.
"Some say that Prometheus returned from wherever he had gone and tried to bring back fire from Ome; but that this time he failed and was spell-bound to a great rock at the dragon's feet.
"I've heard that things are changing fast at Home, that a humbug has been flying around beating on his humdrum, and most everyone has been picking up the beat, getting into the rhythm of the machine. They say that people are getting much more efficient -- all working at the same rhythm, the rhythm of the machine. But the Humbug is hardly the cause of it all. He's just part of a long, long process. He's just speeding things up a little. And nothing will really change the direction of things unless somebody brings back fire."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Plato," said Miss Morgan, "but I'm still very confused. We've seen so much so fast. The pieces just don't seem to fit together. These potheads and eggheads and everything -- who are they? And what do they have to do with Home or Ome?"
"At one time or another, for one reason or another, there have been people and unpeople who didn't like living in Ome or at Home. They found a rabbithole or a pothole or some such place, and just dropped out, like you did. They all fell to their own level -- suspended between Home and Ome. There are quite a few colonies of them."
"Well, being under the world, do they understand things?"
"Most of them aren't sure where they are, much less what's above them. The underworld's something else altogether. It lies under and underlies everything, even the unworld."
Miss Morgan thought for a while. Then she admitted, "I really don't understand. I've never seen a machine like that at home, and I'm sure if there is such a thing, it's very expensive and not many people can afford it. And the sun hasn't left. It shines in Winthrop sometimes. I saw it just yesterday before we fell down that pothole."
"Are you sure that was the sun you saw and not just something the machine made?" asked Mr. Plato. "I hear it's been making moons and stars and flowers and fruit that look more bright and fresh and real than the things they're copies of; but they are, nonetheless, mere lifeless copies."
Miss Morgan wasn't sure what was real anymore, but she did know that something was wrong -- very wrong. And she knew that she had to get the class home. But now she also felt that she ought to help bring fire back to the world, because, whatever it meant, (and she wasn't at all sure what it meant), it seemed like something that really ought to be done.
Chapter 17
Links to the
rest of The Lizard of Oz and related materials
To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
Five children's
books by Richard Seltzer: The Lizard of Oz (illustrated by Christin
Couture), Now and Then and Other Tales from Ome (illustrated by Richard
Seltzer), See You Later, Elevator, Hundreds and Hundreds of Gerbils, and
Tiger in the Intercom. All are presented in both HTML text and audio form
(read by the author). Review of this book CD http://www.largeprintreviews.com/lizard.html
The
Lizard of Oz by Richard Seltzer. When an elementary class sets
out on a quest to save the world from disenchantment, their adventures
reveal paradoxes of the human mind and ways of awakening the magic within
us.
Library Journal -- "An intriguing and very entertaining little novel."
Paperback. Autographed on request.
Everything
But the Internet gathers the complete non-Internet
works of Richard Seltzer on CD, in plain text, with software that lets
you listen as well as read. It includes: The Name of Hero, Ethiopia Through
Russian Eyes, The Lizard of Oz, Without a Myth, Spit and Polish, Mercy,
Rights Crossing, short stories, articles, book reviews, and poems.
A
library for the price of a book.
Readers' Room and Writers'
Showcase
Return to B&R Samizdat Express.
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