SWOOSH! That's the sound of Gregory MacGuire's
Wicked sailing across the room. THUMP! And landing in the trashcan. Page 236. That's what page I'm on. Two hundred thirty-six out of 407 and I've had it. Enough!
You see, I read
Wicked back when it first was published (mid 1980s) and hated it. Then this past year my friend Tessa read it. "Oh, Martha," says she, "how could you not like it? All that psychology. The philosophical stands the characters take. It was wonderful. So much more than I expected."
What I remembered was a lot of gunk slowing down the story line. But Tessa's persuasive, so
Wicked wandered back onto the to-be-read shelf. Shoot. The 1980s were 30 years in the past, and I remember reading some theory holding that particular books need to be read at the "right" time in one's life. Maybe I'd read
Wicked at the wrong time.
I started reading this time with a blank slate, telling myself
Wicked was a book in its own right, not simply a prequel to
The Wizard of Oz. And for a while the reading was great. The philosophical insights were good. The personal oddities of Elpfafa (The wicked witch's first name, at least according to MacGuire, were intriguing because the reader knows what she becomes. Language use was as interesting as it was in
World Without End and
Fool because in
Wicked we're dealing not only with the distant past but the distant past in some far-off dimension. Specifics for any of the above? Okay.
Oops. Not okay. Any page I wrote down now has absolutely nothing of interest. So I'll quote from the paragraph where I stopped. "By the light of sallowwood (Huh?
www.dictionary.com doesn't recognize it either.) torches, the camels, in glittering comparison lurched and lumbered (Pick one. Please!) on a worn track. It was like going up and down a staircase at the same time. (Okay. That sentence isn't bad, but Macguire continues.) Elphie sat above the grass, a vantage point over the green flickering surface. Although the ocean was only an idea sprung out of mythology, she could almost see where it came from—there were small grasshawks (another huh?) launching themselves like fish leaping out of the spume, nipping at the fireflies, pocketing them, then falling back in a dry splash. Bats passed, making a guttering, sputtering (Back to "Pick one. Please!) sound that ended in an extinguishing
swoop (ialics his). The plain itself seemed to bring forth color: now a heliotrope, now a bronzy green, now a dun color skeined (huh?huh?huh?) through with red and silver. The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar (Phew! That's stretching for a metaphoric image)." (page 236) And there I stopped. Why? you may ask. Two reasons: 1) the parenthetical comments above, and 2) I caught a whiff of a writer lingering over his words—or non-words—and marveling at how wonderful they all were. OMG! Right up there with pretentious poetry, written by high school students and wannabe poets. A perfect reason to stop. IMHO.
Oh, I will have to tell Tessa that psychology and philosophy didn't stop me; instead, the over-written description did.
Oh, well.
