In 2000, John Updike wrote a consideration of L. Frank Baum's "The Wizard of Oz" for the New Yorker and called it OZ IS US. He must have meant "the U.S." as well as "we Americans." Since Updike gave an early appreciative salute to "Wicked" in that same magazine, I...

"What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"

That's Shakespeare, the intelligent homosexual's most beloved Maybe Brother.

By dint of natural shyness I have managed, I think, to avoid bringing much attention to the coy reality that as a...