During a lecture in Alumni Hall on Sunday, Maguire the bestselling author of "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West" said his work has made him feel like he has been living in Oz for the past four months.
"I'm going crazy," Maguire said. "Everything I come upon seems to be about Oz once I start working."
Maguire spoke to Dartmouth students, local families and Upper Valley residents about his development as a writer and his unique writing process, which involves envisioning illustrated scenes before creating them in writing.
As a child growing up in the 1960s, Maguire said he would act out scenes from "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) with other children from his neighborhood. Today, he recreates fantasy worlds through the dozens of novels and short stories he has written for adults and children.
Maguire explained his desire to "refresh old meanings" of classic stories and put "new meanings" into the tales by "breathing new life" into them.
"Whenever I give lectures, people ask me to give the talk the Maguire treatment,'" Maguire said. "Meaning take something that everyone knows and shares in as citizens of the world, and put little twists on it."
Maguire's stories often show a new perspective on older, classic fairy tales by telling them through the eyes of a minor character or some other aspect of the original account. Wicked, his best-known novel, tells the Wizard of Oz story from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West.
"I pick up the toys that are half broken and play with them again," Maguire said. "The toys of our culture the stories of our childhood still have merit and meaning."
Maguire employed this style of writing in his recent book, "Matchless," which is told from the perspective of a minor character in Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," he said.
In Andersen's story, one such character a young boy takes a shoe from a poor girl who sells matches to serve as a "cradle for his babies," according to Maguire.
"Hans Christian Andersen left this character for me," he said. "I immediately started asking myself, Where are the babies coming from, and what kind of babies could fit in a shoe?'"
Maguire said he developed his imagination and passion for creative writing as early as fourth grade, not to impress his parents, but to keep his creative mind active.
"Between fourth and 10th grade I wrote over 100 stories to keep my life and imagination alive," Maguire said.
Maguire described his childhood to the audience, saying that his journalist parents were skeptical of television culture and preferred "the life of the mind."
"I had intuitively come upon a reality or image bank in my brain, a separate fund from the verbal and rational bank," Maguire said. "If I got to a scene where I didn't know what was going to happen next, I would just draw the illustration and let the scene unfold."
Maguire's lecture closed with a classical music accompaniment, similar to the soundtrack from the Oz film.
"When I am writing a book, everything in life seems to be related to the story everything I see seems to speak about Oz," Maguire explained. "Once I start working and start playing with matches, I can't get out of it."
Maguire explained that authors "play with matches" in their creative process of writing a book to give readers permission to enter the world of the story and open up the imagination.
"A book is always open you can always go home to it," Maguire said. "And we all know there's no place like home."
Maguire's lecture was the second in a series sponsored by the Friends of the Dartmouth College Library, the Howe Library, the Lebanon Public Libraries and the Norwich Public Library.
