... " Arguably there have been three great classic quests in American Literature, Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or The Whale (1851), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Fin (1883), and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). " * Whatever their flaws of carelessness or aesthetic miscalculation, the first two titles were gloriously written, in the ambition of telling all the truth, "heart-aches and nightmares" included. The " Wizard" is relatively a lucky bauble, in the flat clear style of a man giving dictation. ...