Ryman, Geoff. Was. New York: Penguin, 1992.

Ryman's novel is a greatly titled one when you know that it's both a rethinking of the Wizard of Oz mythology and a book both enamored with and troubled by the past. it brings together three (probably more) central narratives: that of Dorothy Gael, who lives in Manhattan, Kan., with her Aunty Em and her Uncle Henry; Frances Gumm, who grows up to become screen star Judy Garland; and Jonathan Lastname, an AIDS survivor who has an obsession with Oz in specific and Kansas in general.

I couldn't understand at first why Ryman fragmented his narrative so much. Well, I suppose I still can't quite figure it out. Specifically, the sections where we're witness to the making of the film, and the life of Frances Gumm/Judy Garland. Yes they're relevant, but this isn't Garland's story in any way, it's this "real" Dorothy's story, and Jonathan's, too. I could find no way to mediate those latter stories through the old-Hollywood narrative. I think maybe Ryman had done a ton of research into Garland's life and needed to find some use for it. She had a gay dad, probably—I suppose that's of interest.

The choice of the Oz narrative by a gay writer is an obvious one. All my life, and certainly all my out life, I've wondered what was going on with gay U.S. men and The Wizard of Oz. They seem to love it so much, and why exactly? Why the euphemism "Friend of Dorothy"? Why the ubiquitous rainbow?

And then reading this book I got an idea: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". There's a clear connection for Dorothy's pining for some place other than Kansas. Some colorful place where magical things happen. Here one can maybe map (clumsily) "Kansas" as "inside the closet" and Oz as outside.

Except this isn't what the story as a whole is really about. Dorothy doesn't live a new, exciting life in Oz. She survives through far more dangerous obstacles there than she had to in Kansas, and eventually it's all too much for her and she pines for the simplicity of home. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" isn't the story's theme, it's that "There's No Place Like Home".

And maybe gay men today have happy memories of home and healthy, productive connections to their families, but could that Friend-of-Dorothy/pre-Stonewall generation say the same thing? What's so great about the black-and-white home Dorothy works so hard to return to?

Ryman does a good job of opening notions of "home" up beyond The House One Grew Up In, but I want to argue that the movie his novel is based on does not. Why this complete embrace of what may be old-Hollywood's most conservative movie?

Has anyone read the original Baum book? Does it have the same No-Place-Like-Home drive as the film does?