Why ‘Wicked’ Author Gregory Maguire Prefers ‘Alice in Wonderland’ to ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Two of the most beloved children’s books of all time are Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked, said he actually prefers Alice in Wonderland to the book that helped make him famous. Interestingly, he has his own connection to Alice in Wonderland.
Gregory ‘Wicked’ Maguire said a genius wrote ‘Alice in Wonderland’
If anyone understands both Oz and Wonderland, it’s Maguire. In addition to writing Wicked, the most famous book based on The Wizard of Oz, he released an adaptation of Alice in Wonderland called After Alice. During a 2015 interview with Vice, Maguire revealed that writing After Alice was more complicated than writing Wicked. “It was more difficult, partly because people know it’s so very, very much better than they know some of the fairytales,” he said.
“Alice in Wonderland, as I say, is like [Pablo Picasso’s] Guernica: Every brush stroke is indelibly impressed upon the mindset of somebody who cares about it at all,” he added. “It was daunting to walk up, stand in the bright glare of achievement, and say, “Well, I’m just gonna prop my little ladder up here, and take a [piece], knock the foot off [Michelangelo’s] Pieta and see what it looks like there.”
Maguire revealed that writing Wicked was not challenging, despite the importance of The Wizard of Oz. “No, and here’s why,” he said. “L. Frank Baum had a good idea, but he is not a genius writer. Alice in Wonderland, however, was written by a true literary genius. So I felt that The Wizard of Oz is good and is significant — and is even fundamental to the American psyche — but it’s not a work of absolute brilliance, like Alice.“
Gregory Maguire explained why ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is universal
Maguire was asked if Alice in Wonderland was part of the American psyche even though it’s a British book. Maguire gave a nuanced answer. He said that, 25 years earlier, he would have said that Alice in Wonderland is part of America’s collective mind because of Walt Disney’s film version. Fifteen years earlier, he would have said Alice in Wonderland didn’t matter in the United States. However, the success of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland proved that the opposite was true.
Maguire opined that there’s something universal about Alice in Wonderland, a story about a child who falls into a bizarre universe. He said that we all end up in an absurd and totalitarian world that we can’t change much.
What the author of ‘Wicked’ got right
So, is Maguire correct that Alice in Wonderland is better than The Wizard of Oz? Well, Alice in Wonderland deserves credit for coming first and inspiring a lot of subsequent fantasy books, as well as elements of the surrealist movement. It also has a tremendous British wit that is not present in The Wizard of Oz, which doesn’t have much in the way of wordplay. Alice in Wonderland is superior, though The Wizard of Oz inspired a movie that’s more beloved than all film versions of Alice in Wonderland.
Fantasy is full of surprises and Maguire’s taste in literature grows curiouser and curiouser.
