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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
dr_hermes' InsaneJournal:
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | |
| 11:23 pm | HEY THERE! Hey there! I'm using this space to archive my reviews for the moment, just as a back-up. Right now my two main sites are DR HERMES REVIEWS http://community.webtv.net/drhermes/DRH Then there's my ongoing LiveJournal site, Retro-Scans. http://dr-hermes.livejournal.com As its name hint, this is mostly scans (with commentary) of pulp art, old paperbacks and comics, ads and stills from obscure movies and pictures of Babes of Yore. As well as anything that strikes my fancy to be honest. Updated everyday, except when I just have to get some sleep. Feel free to leave a comment at Retro-Scans or e-mail me at drhermes@webtv.net. See ya! |
| Friday, October 9th, 2009 | |
| 11:03 pm | TARZAN AND THE "FOREIGN LEGION" (Oct 23, 2002) Written in 1944 but not published until 1947 (and with no magazine serialization), this was the last Tarzan book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, penned only a few years before his death. It`s also one of the very best in the entire series. Stationed as a war correspondent in Hawaii, Burroughs broke with tradition in many ways with this book. Where the preceding dozen novels had become increasingly repetitious and predictable, here there are real surprises. The writing style is crisp, wry, with sharper pacing and neater characterizaton than had been seen in years. With this last book, Burroughs seemed to take a fresh look at his most famous creation and see him from a different angle. TARZAN AND THE "FOREIGN LEGION" is set on the country-sized island of Sumatra, where the Japanese forces have been terrorizing the natives and massacring the Dutch colonists. On an American bomber doing recon work, our hero is shot down and finds himself stranded abruptly on Sumatra with a handful of Amrican aviators, soon joined by a succulent blonde teenager. On one level, the storyline is the basic plot that had served Burroughs well for many years. Take Tarzan and a few friends, set up some vicious enemies, throw in some bystanders who could go either way, and mix them all in a junlgle full of natural dangers and wild beasts. There`s not exactly a plot as much as there is a succession of escapes and captures, battles and journeys, with good luck and complete disaster taking turns. But against the basic action-filled narrative line, Burroughs sets the characters interacting with each other in new and insightful ways. He also loved to match up couples who were obviously meant to get together and then make them suffer as they had misunderstandings and tiffs, and he loved to juggle a large cast with wildly differing motivations, but here he does all this more smoothly and convincingly than ever before. Most significant is that this book reveals many of Tarzan`s secrets and shows him in sharper definition. For the first third of the book, he is known to the other characters (and referred to by the narrator) as Colonel Clayton of the RAF. Obviously, readers know his true identity but it`s still a stunning moment where it`s revealed. Tarzan drops naked from a tree onto a tiger about to kill his friends and he slays the enormous cat with his knife (as he has done so many times before). Then he lets loose a horrifying nonhuman victory cry and glares at his friends, lost for a moment in his animal nature. They`re frightened and uncertain, until he shakes if off and almost literally turns back into Clayton. It`s a terrific moment, one of the most impressive scenes in the series and it would hit audiences hard if it were put on the screen. To cap it off, one of the survivors suddenly recognizes him. ("John Clayton," he said, "Lord Greystoke --- Tarzan of the Apes!"), leading a slightly dim comrade to ask, "Is dat Johnny Weismuller?" Later in the story, when his identity is being challenged, a guerilla fighter says, "And there`s the scar on his forehead that he got in his fight with the gorilla when he was a boy." This is surprising and amusing. The genuine Tarzan knows of all the books and Hollywood movies about him, which in some strange way makes him seem more real. As good as the book is, it does have a few drawbacks. For one thing, whiles Burroughs obviously did some serious research, he has the orang-utans acting like his typical Mangani apes from back in Africa... challenging Tarzan to a death duel, carrying off a nubile young lady for some intended cohabitation. All of this goes way against what we know now about these primates, but that has to be overlooked. And Tarzan seems pretty casual about tackling tigers; it always seemed more impressive when his fights with big cats were desperate, risky last resorts instead of "oh well, another tiger to kill." Actually, it would have been interesting (considering tigers are bigger and faster than lions) if Tarzan had found himself with his hands full. [I have since been informed that the tigers of Sumatra are in fact considerably smaller than the big equivalent cats of India. If you spot any similar factual mistakes or dumb typo errors in these pages, please e-mail me.] (I personally have always been irritated by Burrough`s way of idealizing animals into pure incarnations of virtue and constantly putting humans down, but I seem to be the only one annoyed by this practice.) Also, remembering how Burroughs later apologized for his vicious anti-German speeches in earlier books like TARZAN THE UNTAMED, it`s a little sad to find him twenty years later, once again going on about the sub-human "monkeymen" Japanese and how a righteous hatred against the enemy is a noble thing. (The young heroine says, "I have not killed a man, I have killed a Jap." with her face lit up with "a divine light of exaltation.") But it was 1944 and you have to put yourself in the mindset of that year to see why a writer would say that. There are other points worth noting. Tarzan here relates how he has not aged, seeming to be in his twenties while actually in his sixties. He tells the story of the grateful witch doctor who gave him the voodoo treatment years ago and he also mentions the more recent Kavuru drug which he and his family share. But Tarzan is realistic enough to realize he`ll inevitably die one way or another. ("Death has many tricks up his sleeve beside old age. One may outplay him for a while, but he always wins in the end.") From that brief scene, Philip Jose Farmer was inspired to tell his own stories of the Apeman, and of the pastiche heroes Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban. The rest of the cast is drawn well, if a bit broadly in the WW II multi-ethnic tradition, and the dialogue has a more natural ring to it than in most of the earlier books. The Americans admit they`re scared when facing execution, talk about what war does to people and the nature of hatred, and they all develop emotionally as the story goes on. In addition to the American aviators of different ethnic and educational backgrounds, there are the toughened Dutch resistance fighters, the heroic young Corrie Van der Meer and the intriguing Sarina, a pirate Eurasian woman descended from headhunters but who sees the light and tries to do the right thing. These people make up the "Foreign Legion", no relation to the famous French Foreign Legion and therefore a bit of a misleading title. |
| 11:03 pm | TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS (Feb 27, 2004) From 1941, this first appeared in three parts in the August and September issues of ARGOSY WEEKLY as THE QUEST OF TARZAN (not a particularly relevant title, come to think of it). In 1964, Canaveral Press published an edition from Burroughs' original manuscript, now titled TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS, in which form it is most easily found. (Included are two short stories from that period, "Tarzan and the Champion" and "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders".) Actually, TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS is pretty good, if not spectacular. While there`s nothing wildly new about it, the story does throw the familiar ingredients together in a new kettle and stirs them up a bit more. Away from Africa for once, the Apeman finds himself on a large island in the Pacific, babysitting a handful of survivors of yet another shipwreck. That`s not enough. Okay, there are also a half dozen thugs (a cliched German and Arab and Russian) skulking about and desperately eager to cause trouble, as well as twenty vicious Lascars (any Lascars out there? How do you feel about the way you were portrayed in pulp fiction?). Still not enough gasoline on the fire. Okay, throw in a cargo of wild beasts from the ship that otherwise would never be found within thousands of miles of the island... some elephants, tigers and lions, even two lovable orangutans. (Tarzan frees these critters from the sinking ship because they are noble creatures whose lives are precious, but you notice he draws the line at snakes and lets those varmints die.) No, no, no. We need a lost civilization. What hasn`t been used so far...hmmm. A Mayan outpost! Yes, this is the city of Uxmal, founded by emigrants from Yucatan hundreds of years ago. This means we can throw a weak minded king and an insincere high priest into the plot, as well as a saucy young maiden snatched right off the sacrificial altar before the knife can do some impromptu cardiac surgery on her. Now we`re ready. The story falls neatly into two halves. First, we have a suspenseful shipboard melodrama, where a German brute named Schmidt has taken over the ship SAIGON (the genuine captain is bedridden with fever). Schmidt is terrifying some European passengers who only want to get home alive. Remember after WWI, when Burroughs started throwing in an occasional good German? Well, with a new war starting up, the heinous Hun is back,as nasty as before. Actually, there are only two or three halfway likeable people in the entire cast.... and two of them are decent only because the formula demands a young couple fall in love and go through some misunderstandings. (Burroughs reminds me of Robert E. Howard in that regard, most of the characters in both writers` stories are unlikeable scoundrels always on the edge of turning on each other. Howard would just as soon skip including the young lovers, though, as just being that mushy stuff.) The oppressive German has a naked wildman in a cage which he has purchased from a venial Arab who captured the guy. He plans to exhibit the growling savage in a sideshow back in Berlin, eating raw meat and drawing in the rubes. Of COURSE it`s Tarzan. Be serious. Lord Greystoke has suffered another severe concussion, which has left him temporarily unable to speak or comprehend ohers` speech. As soon as this corrects itself, he promptly gets creased across the noggin with a bullet, knocking him unconscious for a while. Considering how many traumatic head injuries Tarzan has survived, it`s amazing he doesn`t walk around in circles all the time, twitching and laughing for no reason. The shipboard sequence does have some clever moments. At one point, Tarzan amuses himself by letting the passengers think he is actually eating the dead captain. What a card. Of course, since we never do see the captain (who is described as being deathly ill and never mentioned after the shipwreck, you have to wonder just where the villains got all that raw meat they were giving the Apeman.... waste not, want not.) The big storm that endangers the ship, the daring escape by our hero as he bends the iron bars of his cage enough to get out, and the mutiny against the tyrannical German who has usurped command, are all presented briskly and vividly. Once our menagerie both human and beast are castaway on the uncharted island of Uxmal, things settle down into a much more typical exploit for the Apeman. There`s friction between the bad guys (who just will NOT stay in their own camp) and much badmouthing of our naked hero by a rather dim and unreasonable old dowager. Then, of course the Mayans turn up and Tarzan is on a familiar game again... saving maidens from being sacrificed, leaping over walls and racing to the rescue, even killing a lion with only a knife. (The only lion for thousand of miles in any direction, and sure enough the Apeman drops down from a tree to wrestle it and then stab it in the heart.) Because the story is considerably shorter than the typical Tarzan book, there is none of the padding where three parties chase each other back and forth. In fact, the book moves briskly and suddenly finishes up with a startling bloodbath that drops most of the bad guys dead in the dust with little fuss. Our hero survives a rather mild trial by ordeal that any reasonably fit lifeguard could manage. The castaways are rescued so promptly after the plot has been resolved you might think a ship has been waiting just offshore, the captain watching through binoculars until he got his cue. ("Looks like Greystoke`s got the girl. Now the Mayans are praising him as a god. All right, let`s go in and pick them up.") By this time, Burroughs' writing style is streamlined and breezy, very modern. He obviously did some research on the Maya but doesn`t clog the narrative with too much detail. The story shows some signs it wasn`t polished much; a tribe of cannibals on the island are mentioned but never appear, and the ending just rears up abruptly. There are some interesting little bits of business. When asked if he is an Englishman, the Apeman replies, "My father and mother were English"... not quite the same thing. When a cute little Mayan heartbreaker throws herself brazenly at Tarzan, he turns her down with no explanation. It`s a writing dilemma. Tarzan is after all still married to Jane, who cannot be killed betwen books because the fans won`t allow it. But if Burroughs dislikes Lady Greystoke and doesn`t want to mention her, then he has a problem explaining why our hero rejects the several stunning wenches who fling themselves at his brawny bod. |
| 11:01 pm | "Tarzan and the Champion" (Jan 20, 2003) From April 1940, where it appeared in BLUE BOOK magazine, this is a minor story in the Tarzan saga. It has some good points, but it also misses some great possibilities. What we`re dealing with here is an American heavyweight boxing champion who has taken it into his head to travel through Africa and shoot hundreds of wild animals for trophies. Not only does he come up against Tarzan, who takes a dim view of the whole proceedings, but there are also some particularly unpleasant cannibals in the area, so things don`t go well for the boxer and his manager. Part of the problem with this story is that "One Punch" Mullargan is such a cardboard character, an incredibly ignorant brute who never really comes to life. His limited intelligence and careless habits with his fists are quickly tedious, and his stereotyped New York slang is supposed to be amusing but is only tiresome. Also, I know Tarzan is strong and quick bordering on the superhuman, but it might have been more interesting if Mullargan had put up a good fight in their inevitable duel. Warch old newreels of Joe Louis in action and you can see how someone like that could give even the Apeman a hard time. Mullargan does show signs of being redeemable. After Tarzan chastises him for shooting dozens of zebra (with a machine gun, no less), the boxer struggles with the idea and eventually apologizes, saying that he never thought about animals having feelings. To his credit, Tarzan takes this belated apology into account. Also, when Mullargan`s manager is captured, the champ doesn`t escape but turns back in a hopeless attempt to rescue him. This impresses the Apeman. ("...self-sacrificing heroism is not a common characteristic of wild beasts. It belongs almost exclusively to man, marking the more courageous among them. It was an attribute that Tarzan could understand and admire.") This is one of the rare times when Burroughs has something nice to say about people, and it`s worth noting. The best part of the story is actually the menace of the Babanos, a tribe of canibals who relish their diet. ("They eat human flesh because they like it, because they prefer it to any other food...they hunt man as other men hunt game animals, and they are hated and feared throughout the territory they raid.") The Babanos are genuinely scary, and they provide Tarzan with a worthwhile challenge that every hero needs to show his mettle. The Babango prepare their victims by first breaking the prisoners` arms and legs in several places and then letting them soak in the river for a few days to make them tender. (I`m pretty sure I saw Rachael Ray doing this on 30 MINUTE MEALS on the Food Channel, or maybe it was the Two Fat Ladies. Anyway...) Contrasting with the Babangos are the Waziri, who are their usual stalwart, noble selves. The porters in the safari recognize the Waziri as great warriors, whom they do not have to fear. I always thought the Tarzan movies would have benefitted from having the impressive Muviro and his tribe in the action more. Finally, as brief as this story is, Tarzan manages to find an opportunity to drop down on a lion, then wrestle with it and stab it to death. Was there ANY Tarzan book where he didn`t kill at least one lion? (Even on Sumatra, in TARZAN AND "THE FOREIGN LEGION" he sent a tiger or two to their afterlife.) |
| 11:00 pm | "Tarzan andf the Jungle Murders" (March 18, 2005) Phew. This is awful. "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" appeared in the June 1940 issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES and was later collected with two other stories into the book TARZAN AND THE CASTAWAYS. It's really unrewarding material. According to Irwin Porges' book EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS: THE MAN WHO CREATED TARZAN, the original manuscript had the Apeman show up late in the story and was only identified as the Stranger (as if this nearly-naked bronzed giant in Africa in an Edgar Rice Burroughs yarn would be tough for readers to identify). Leo Margulies had one of his editors rewrite the story so that Tarzan appears from the start, and evidently this revision was extensive, uninspired and clumsy. (I would like to see what the Burroughs version was like, if it still exists somewhere.) Here's an attempt to show the Apeman as an amateur detective. Well, why not? Burroughs normally showed Tarzan as shrewd, well-read and very observant. He should be as good at sleuthing as any other amateur, if not better. The Apeman also possesses an ability matched only by Doc Savage among his pulp peers, an enhanced sense of smell. Tarzan can not only tell by a lion's body odor whether the animal is hungry or full, he can recognize scents too faint for the average person to detect even when pointed out to him. All just dandy, but this story doesn't use the super-nose power fairly. There's something here that's impossible for me to forgive in a mystery. I don't mind if the all-important clue is casually dropped in the middle of a distracting action scene or dismissed by one of the characters as unlikely, as long as it is presented to the readers early enough to give us a chance to use it. When, at the literal tail-end of the story, Tarzan explains who the murderer is by describing physical characteristics which were never mentioned before....! That's when the book goes sailing across the room to knock over a lamp and I have to retrieve it, grumbling under my breath. Also, Tarzan sniffs a glove left at the first murder scene. Okay, we realize that he can therefore recognize the owner if he should meet him. But to give the reader a sporting chance, Tarzan should mutter something like "sulphur", so that we can keep an eye out for a suspect lighting matches with his thumbnail. Give us something to work with, Burroughs! (Since the glove's scent lets Tarzan identify the killer immediately at first meeting, the other deductions our boy works out must be for the benefit of the other characters.) Aside from the fact that the mystery angle is lame, the story falls flat as jungle action as well. Tarzan finds two crashed planes, and he reconstructs what happened. This part isn't too badly done, as the Apeman realizes the dead pilot in the first plane has a bullet hole in the throat, left of the larynx, at a downward angle. Therefore, he could only have been shot from another plane. Tarzan finds two men had survived the crash and sets out to track them down. It turns out two nearby safaris have merged for expediency, and they are made up of a typical Burroughs steamy mixture of a noble British lady, an arrogant and abusive guide, two men in love with the same maiden, a spy or two involved in the theft of some plans for a weapon vitally important to the upcoming war, all that lurid tangle of lust and greed we've seen in many Tarzan stories before. This unhappy group has just been joined by two dishevelled and half-starved men who wandered out of the jungle (gee, could they possibly be the two men from the downed airplane?! Hmmm....) The Apeman turns up only to be blamed for a stabbing murder which has just happened in the camp, and then there's a second death which is also attempted to be laid on him (but he has an alibi). Finally, the motley crew assemble in the Resident Commissioner's bungalow for the big revelations. This is Colonel Gerald Giles-Burton of the Bangali government, by a remarkable coincidence the father of one of the murder victims. (Bangali? Say, you don't think this Colonel is part of the Jungle Patrol and he knows a man with a mask and a skull ring, do you?) Tarzan doesn't quite recap all the events and then point his finger and say, "You - are - murderer!" with a Chinese accent, but he does explain who is really hiding under what name, and who did the killings. But, as noted above, he basically is pulling clues out of his loincloth that weren't available before. That's not how the game is played, old boy. In case the crime-solving part of the story isn't enough to satisfy Tarzan fans, there's an interruption in the storyline as the Apeman is captured by unapologetic cannibals and has to summon a herd of elephants to rescue him. This is told in such a drab and uninspired style that it reads more like an outline than the finished story. So many other details seem odd or out of synch with the established Tarzan canon that I would guess there's as much of that anonymous editor's wordage in this story as Burroughs', maybe more. At this point, all I have left to re-read in the series is TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN (a lukewarm potboiler), JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN (some interesting and offbeat short stories of our hero's youth) and the first book itself, TARZAN OF THE APES (I'll be using the HIGH ADVENTURE reprint of the original 1912 magazine edition). And I have to say, "Tarzan and the Jungle Murders" looks like it will rank as the absolute lowest point of the entire saga. |
| 10:59 pm | TARZAN AND THE MADMAN (Dec 2, 2002) Written in 1940 but not published until 1965, this late entry in the Tarzan series never appeared in magazine form and Burroughs apparently shelved it for good. (The later TARZAN AND THE "FOREIGN LEGION" also had no success in finding a magazine sale and eventually was published by Burroughs himself, three years after it was written.) As for TARZAN AND THE MADMAN, it was eventually brought out of limbo into hardcover in 1964 by Canaveral Press and then issued as a paperback the following year. The book starts off strongly with the mystery of why local friendly African tribes think the Apeman has been abducting women and children (who are never seen again). Tarzan is puzzled and grimly determined to find out the imposter who has been undermining his reputation (he states bluntly that he will find the man and kill him, simple as that). There is also an impressive moment when a crook takes a shot at the peacefully approaching Apeman, but even as his bullet misses, an arrow thumps into the gunman`s shoulder and Tarzan is already vanishing up into the trees. Every now and then, we get a glimpse of just how quick and dangrous the Apeman is, and this is one of those instances. Unfortunately, the story quickly gets bogged down in the confused situation involving a mysterious lunatic who thinks he IS Tarzan* but who is believed to be God by the descendants of still another lost city founded by Europeans long ago. This time, it`s a castle populated by "chocolate-colored" people who are the result of Portugese colonists who have intermixed with the native Africans, and of course they are in a state of perpetual war with an opposing city populated by descendants of the Moors who had been chasing the Portugese. Haven`t we seen this setup all before? By this time, Burroughs had settled down to mixing five or six familiar ingredients in different combinations for each Tarzan book, and the result usually fell flat with a dull thud. Alemtejos,this particular lost civilization, is mostly there to make some heavy handed satire about organized religion, and since Tarzan doesn`t care particularly about the society, neither does the reader. The story lacks any of the supporting cast. Jane, Korak, the Waziris are not even mentioned. For all we know, Tarzan is a solitary creature with no family and only a casually friendly footing with some of the native tribes. He seems oddly distracted and disinterested in the whole proceedings, as if he is bored by the whole business and would welcome a bash on the head so he can have amnesia again and nol have to think about anything other than eating and sleeping. (It`s also ironic that Tarzan scoffs at the idea of his desiring some of the treasure. "What would I do with gold?" he asks, conveniently forgetting all the time and work he made his Waziri tribesmen put in to looting Opar.) Burroughs is still putting humans down and attributing imaginary virtues to animals. He writes that animals are not avaricious or greedy; of COURSE they are, almost every species from hummingbirds to deer spend much of their time defending their territory or trying to extend it, just like humans. And he repeats that animals do not lie. (Duh! If you can`t use language, you can`t lie. And don`t you think that if your pets could talk, that the cat would constantly be trying to blame everything on the dog? Or that the dog would be saying some burglar must have gotten in and eaten the steak on the dinner table?) It`s also worth noting that while the great apes (the word "gorilla" is never used here, as by this time the mangani were seen as a seperate species) are happy to eat "plaintains, bananas, tender shoots and occasionally a juicy caterpillar", they don`t mind a bit of meat now and then. This matches what modern observors have reported and it seems odd that Tarzan (who was raised by them) is so completely carniverous. In every book, he pounces on a pig or deer and devours some of it before taking off again. Seldom if ever is it mentioned that he eats fruit or nuts. Why he doesn`t have scurvy or other nutritional deficiencies is puzzling, unless he makes a point to eat the contents of his prey`s stomachs and upper intestines. It would be easier to pick some fruit or shoots, but maybe it wouldn`t be as colorful. TARZAN AND THE MADMAN is not so much an awful book as it is uninspired. There are some good parts, as when two treasure hunters lugging heavy gold are dying of thirst and exhaustion but refuse to abandon the treasure. But in general, there`s very little here we haven`t seen before, little of the creative energy and enthusiasm that made the early books in this series so compelling and so rewarding to read again. If there had been a monthly Tarzan pulp magazine in the 1930s, this would probably be regarded as an average issue; but considered as an independent book, for which expectations would be higher, it`s disappointing. I would not recommend it to someone wanting to try a book in the series... TARZAN THE TERRIBLE or JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN have much more energy and creativity, and would give a better feel to a new reader. _______ *At least this guy doesn`t look like the genuine Apeman, although they are about the same size. After Esteban Miranda and Stanley Obroski, it would be too much to have another dude showing up who just happens to look enough like Tarzan to fool even his wife. And the convoluted explanation of how a man obssessed with Tarzan ends up impersonating the real Apeman stretches your suspension of disbelief to the point where it has trouble snapping back after the book is over. |
| 10:55 pm | TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT (Sep 9, 2004) From the September and October 1936 issues of ARGOSY (later revised to form the first half of the book TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT), this is a pleasant change of pace for our Apeman, as he tackles a pair of wizened old twin sorcerers who actually possess magic powers (well, a strong telepathic mind control, at any rate - they don't turn people into toads or shoot lightning bolts from their palms). The story is brisk and upbeat, with little of those sour sermons about how vile human beings are and how idyllic life in a jungle would be. In fact, the tone of the story is almost cheerful; maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs was going through a good phase of his life. Tarzan himself is much more likeable and heroic here than he was often presented in the later books. In the second half of the series, he was shown as sometimes indifferently watching an innocent person being stalked by a lion and not particularly caring what happens. Now, actually there is no reason why the Apeman couldn't be characterized as an unsympathetic anti-hero who would only help you if there was something in it for him. Such a characterization could work and might be considered more realistic. But frankly, I much prefer it when he's shown as genuinely noble and idealistic, the Lord of the Jungle in truth as well as in name, who has tried to stamp out slavery and cannibalism in the territory he has staked out for his own. In fact, the story opens with the Apeman prowling through Abyssinia (now called Ethiopia), far from his usual turf, on a fact-finding mission. ("He has come north at the behest of an emperor to investigate a rumor that a European power is attempting to cause the defection of a native chief by means of bribery.") In 1936, this would likely be Italian spies working for Mussolini. Come to think of it, this means Tarzan personally knows Haile Selassie, the genuine Ras Tafari himself... good conversation opener if he ever goes to Jamaica! As seems inevitable in the series, our hero finds two colonies of white people isolated deep within Africa, carrying on a perpetual feud. There are several aspects here that are quite different from the usual. For one thing, the Kaji are warrior women with an unlikely cultural program of racial manipulation. For centuries, they have been capturing stray white men who wander past and forcing them to take as many wives as the captured men can service (no! what a terrible fate, heh heh) with the goal of breeding for whiteness. Don't ask me where the Kaji got this notion, but by now (although they started as sub-Saharan African natives) they apparently look mostly like the Swedish Bikini Team. Now, what is interesting is that the characters wandering into this situation (an American travel writer named Stanley Wood and his two guides, Spike and Troll) are concerned that these stunning goddesses at one point originally came from black African tribespeople. Wood promptly begins a love at first sight tumble with their erratic Queen Gonfala. Never mind that she resembles Michelle Pfeiffer in her prime, Gonfala's ancestry would make her marriage to Wood unworkable ("I`m thinking of the Hell on earth that would be your lot - hers and yours. You know as well as I what one drop of colored blood does for a man or woman in the great democracy of the U.S.A. You'd both be ostracisized by the blacks as well as the whites. I`m not speaking from any personal prejudice; I`m just stating a fact. It`s hard and cruel and terrible, but it still remains a fact.") Apparently this theme upset quite a few readers back then, but to give Stanley Wood credit, he`s in Luv and intends to take Gonfala to the States no matter what anyone says. ("She must have Negro blood in her - they all have; but it doesn`t seem to make any difference to me - I'm just plain crazy about her...") As it happens, Burroughs cops out at the end with a foreseeable plot twist that makes the romance acceptable. There`s also a pair of great villains in this yarn, weathered old twins named Mafka and Woora. Mafka rules the Kaji with the help of his giant diamond talisman, the Konfal; the equally unappealing Woora leads his split-off faction the Zuli with HIS emerald. These are genuine magic stones with real powers of mind control and long-range hypnotism. As soon as Tarzan snatches up the Gonfal, he feels "a strange, uncanny power that had never before been his" and he finds he can mentally dominate everyone around him. Jeez, it`s Sauron`s One Ring all over again! But, being the sort of guy he is, the Apeman finds the power useful but he`s not particularly attached to it and he arranges for one stone to be given away, while he casually buries the other one deep in the forest in case he ever needs it. Tarzan himself hardly even can feel the hypnotic power of the great jewels that others find so overwhelming. ("Like the beasts of the jungle, he was immune [to witch-doctors and magic]. For what reason he did not know. Perhaps it was because he was without fear; perhaps his psychology was more that of the beast than of man.") After Jane's much needed return in the previous book TARZAN'S QUEST, it's good to see that she hasn`t been immediately forgotten again. Although she doesn`t actually appear on stage, Tarzabn does takes his female guest to stay at "his home - to the commodious bungalow where his wife welcomed and comforted her." Notice, too, the "sprawling" building is constructed centering around a large patio, where the guest can relax on "a reed chaise lounge, a copy of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS in her hand." I like Tarzan`s duality most about the character. The same man who drops down from a tree to kill a wild pig and then eat the raw flesh, is the same person who taught himself Latin so he could read the classics in their original language. The too simplistic manbeast of some of the middle books, who was either eating or dozing in the trees with nothing much on his mind, doesn`t appeal to me as much as this strange complex character who is part of two different worlds. There is one aspect of this story that is puzzling and intriguing, and I still can`t figure out what Burroughs was trying to accomplish with it. For the entire length of the tale, the three white men keep wondering who this unusual guy who is helping them could be. He introduces himself just as "Clayton" because he thinks remaining anonymous will help him gather information (?), and although he is a nearly naked white man living in the jungle, killing lions with a knife and screaming out the victory cry of the great bull ape, the outsiders can`t quite figure out his identiity until the final page when Muviro enlightens them. What makes things puzzling is that they keep comparing him to Tarzan ("If there were such a bird as Tarzan of the Apes, I`d say this was he", one says, and "Say, that bird Tarzan has nothing on you.") In fact, the Apeman seems to be teasing them with hints about his identity; he says the names he calls the hyena and jackal are from a language not spoken by men. For some reason, I liked this odd business. In several stories, it`s stated that there are popular books and movies about Tarzan, and by this point, he is so widely known by them that the general public thinks he`s entirely fictional. When people do meet the Apeman, the idea that he really IS Tarzan doesn`t occur to them. You can see where Philip Jose Farmer got some of his ideas for TARZAN ALIVE. From BLUE BOOK, where it appeared in three installments from November 1937 through January 1938, this follow-up to "Tarzan and the Magic Men" doesn't really match the fresh touches of telepathic mind control and controversial miscegenation issues that made the earlier tale interesting. Although it continues the stories of the characters Gonfala, Stanley Wood, Spike and Troll, mostly it goes back to the familiar territory of the opposed twin cities of Athne and Cathne which our boy visited in TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD a few books earlier. Even here, since the ferocious Queen Nemone is slightly dead, she can't bring any of that strong sexual tension between the Apeman and herself that gave CITY OF GOLD its strange oppressive atmosphere. Instead, we get a lot more of the same old running back and forth, being thrown in the dungeon and sentenced to the arena, counterplots and scheming, checking back on the Waziri racing to the rescue... nothing we haven't seen before, although it's presented in a solid workmanlike way. There are some very effective moments that just jump out at you. This second half of wha became the book TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT is written with more energy and craftsmanship than some of the slack books in the later part of the series. In one sequence, Tarzan is running for his life from a squad of five trained Cathnean hunting lions and even the cocky Apeman is not sure he's going to make it to the safety of the trees when he abruptly sees a stray wild lion right in his way. By now, we have come to accept that Tarzan can blithely knife a lion to death without getting a scratch on him, but five thoroughbred hunting lions is a bit much, and this situation really looks desperate. For those few pages, the story crackles with the old vitality and tension that made the early books so great and which started the legend. There is also the impressive battle between the armies of the two cities. The warriors of Athne attack riding in howdahs on the backs of bull elephants, while the Cathnean s rely on their trained lions. You might think, well heck, the elephants will just stomp on those cats but instead "....a moment later, the war lions of Cathne were among them. They did not attack the elephants, but leaped to the howdahs and mauled the warriors. Two or three lions would attack a single elephant at a time, and at least two of them succeeding in reaching the howdah." Quite an image! Just imagine seeing this brought to the movies like that scene with the Oliphants in RETURN OF THE KING. Even late in his career, Edgar Rice Burroughs would usually pull one more trick to remind me how imaginative and powerful a writer he could be. This battle could have benefiited from being expanded by a few more pages; the ending does seem rushed, and some of the forgettable Athnean stiffs could be edited out with little loss. Burroughs is still happily slapping on coincidence in great big slabs. Despite all those speeches about admiring animals, Tarzan doesn't actually socialize with them except when he's trying to eat one or one is trying to eat him. Except for elephants, with whom he has always had a steadfast friendship. At one point, he pauses to laboriously rescue a huge bull elephant from a pit. The mighty beast has one dark tusk and later on in the story, the Apeman is sentenced to be trampled in the arena by a rogue elephant the Athneans have captured. Wait a minute... you don't think... what are the odds that this rogue will have a dark tusk?! Although Jane doesn't appear on stage, she is mentioned obliquely (better than nothing). Expecting to be killed in the arena, Stanley Wood asks Tarzan if there is no message he would like to send home and the Apeman sakes his head, "Thank you, no. She will know, as she always has." It's also comforting to know that noble old Muviro is still on hand, with his Waziris, still as stoic and bushido-like as ever (six of the Waziri are ready to storm the city of Athne, even though Wood prudently points out they couldn't possibly win. "We could try," Waranji says, "we are not afraid." One exchange I enjoyed is that for once someone actually dares to contradict Tarzan's (and the author's) one-sided speeches about how awful civilization and how wonderful living naked in the woods would be. The Apeman refers to "the perfect peace and security of automobile accidents, railroad wrecks, areoplane crashes, robbers, kidnapers, war and pestilence." With a laugh, Woods replies, "But no lions, leopards, buffaloes, wild elephants, snakes, nor tsetse flies, not to mention shiftas and cannibals." It's about time someone spoke up in counterpoint, and Tarzan does not blow up but just lets it pass good-naturedly. |
| 10:54 pm | TARZAN AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY (Jan 18, 2004) From the October 1935 to March 1936 issues of BLUE BOOK, where it appeared as "Tarzan and the Immortal Men", this is surprisingly lively and enjoyable. The Tarzan series peaked about halfway through; after TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN, Burroughs dropped our hero`s family as though they had never existed and grudgingly cranked out a repetitive number of books where the Apeman stumbled upon paired warring cities of lost civilizations. None of these books are completely hopeless or unreadable*, but compared to, say, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE or TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR, they are limp and unexciting. The best thing about TARZAN`S QUEST is the unexpected return of Jane, Lady Greystoke. We haven`t seen her since TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION and she hasn`t even been mentioned for the past ten years. For all a new reader would know, the Apeman is a solitary creature meandering through Africa with only a monkey and a lion as companions. Not only does Jane turn up on the very first page, she actually gets more time onstage than Lord Greystoke himself. Jane is a delight, as always. She is so resourceful, competent, thoughtful and good-natured that she could carry the book by herself. Stranded in the jungle with a motley crew of people totally unsuited for survival there, she takes charge as well as Tarzan himself might and with much more patience. Jane can fashion a bow and arrows, leap lightly up into the trees and come back with game for everyone. At one point, she stubbornly refuses to give up her kill to a challenging leopard and promptly sends three arrows into the big cat`s heart. We are told early on that Jane has chartered a plane to go see what mischief her old man is getting into. ("You see, Lord Greystoke spends a great deal of time in Africa. I am planning on joining him there.") So evidently the previous eight books have been misleading, only showing us Tarzan when he`s on vacation and lumbering around the jungle. The rest of the time, he`s still taking care of his huge estate and spending time with his wife. (Still no sign of Korak, Miriem or little Jackie, though.) Now, this is an obvious observation but it seems significant that, while Burroughs` marriage to Emma was going sour, his alter-ego`s wife and family vanished from the stories. When he wrote this book, Burroughs was getting his divorce and solidifying a new relationship. In TARZAN`S QUEST, the crash survivors are burdened by the totally useless and whiny Princess Sborov. An old friend of Jane`s, this woman is a wealthy widow who remarried a much younger social climber with a title (much is made of this royalty scam). It`s just conjecture, but it seems likely that Burroughs was acting out his conflicts on the page with Jane representing his new love and the princess standing in for the wife he wishes to be rid of. (The fact that the princess abruptly ends up with a hatchet in her head might be a slight case of wish fulfilment.) Half the book follows the troubles of Jane`s party as they deal with the situation by the usual bickering and sniping we can expect in stories about survivors of shipwrecks or plane crashes. Buroughs lays it on pretty thick with the characterization, but then this IS pulp adventure where we want broad strokes and bright colors; we`re not dealing with Arthur Miller here. The stoic English butler Tibbs and the rough street-jive American pilot Brown are exaggerated stereoypes but at least they are distinct. One thing that I don`t like about Burroughs` villains is that he gives them such a comprehensive range of vileness. They are not men with a weakness for the flesh or uncontrolled greed or a violent temper. No, ever since Rokoff way back in RETURN OF TARZAN, the typical bad guy contains every possible evil trait you can name. The prince is this story shifts from cowardice to greed to lust to homicide at the blink of an eye. He`s so thoroughly despicable that it`s hard to give him any credence. Even one redeeming trait or a hint of remorse would have made him come to life on the page; as it is, he might as well have little horns and a barbed tail. The other half of the storyline follows Tarzan leading a squad of his intrepid Waziri to rescue Muviro`s kidnapped young daughter. There are these guys called the Kavuru living out there in the wilderness, and for hundreds of years they have been abducting nubile wenches for some mysterious purpose. It turns out the Kavuru are a sect of white barbarians who have discovered a longevity serum. They can stay young and robust indefinitely but, since the serum requires the glands and blood of young women..... well, (ahem) there are no Kavuru women left by this point and the Immortal Men must obtain the needed ingredients any way they can. The high priest of this cult is a buff blond guy named Kavandavanda, one of the better supervillains in Burroughs. Although he looks like a Malibu surfer, the necklace made of human teeth is a good clue to his real nature. He has lost track of exactly how old he is (maybe a thousand years old, maybe more), he heads a murderous cult that has killed who knows how many women to stay young (the last neophyte joined the order a hundred years earlier) and he has started developing psychic powers (the Kavuru put their victims in a compliant trance with a weird whistling call). Kavandavanda also has serious gender issues ("Man may only attain godliness alone. Woman weakens and destroys him.... How have we attained this deathlessness? Through women. We are all celibate. Our vows of celibacy were sealed in the blood of women....") Well, it`s true a vow of celibacy will make your life SEEM much longer. Despite all this rhetoric, Kavandavanda is (like just about every man in the books) immediately smitten with Jane Clayton and lusts for her bod. ("I`ll keep you; I`ll tame you - and I`ll start now.") Jane must be quite the babe. Everyone from shieks to aristocrats to gorillas gets one look at her and starts to pant and stamp one foot on the ground. The moment I read about the Kavuru, I would have bet money that Jane would end up their defiant prisoner, trading sassy remarks with the cult leader. Much has been made by Philip Jose Farmer and fans of the Kavuru pills. True, Tarzan divides a large supply of the longevity pills among the surviving members of the party. (Typically, Burroughs has a character remark the monkey Nkima deserves a share since "He`s sure a lot more use in the world than most people". Nice attitude. How about a few pills for good old Muviro, the lifelong friend who has come to Tarzan`s rescue so often? Or maybe Korak, his wife or their child. It`s hard to respect a man who would give extended life to his pet monkey rather than his own grandson.) Where was I? Oh, yes. Since a main ingredient of the Kavuru pills are the body parts of murdered young women, you might expect Jane and her friends to have a little misgiving about taking them. True, if you just had to swallow a single pill to get extended life, most people would be tempted enough to pop one. But it`s clearly stated that the pills have to be taken regularly to work, so this means once a month ("...each time that the moon comes full...") ingesting something made out of slaughtered human beings. Also, since the pills have only a temporary effect, and there is a large but finite supply divvied up here among five people (six, if they really give a share to Nkima), the pills are going to run out at some point. It has been a long time since 1934, and I think it`s safe to say the last Kavuru pill went down the hatch some time ago. If Tarzan is still running around looking like a thirty young old, it must be due to something else. (That witch doctor potion, maybe?) TARZAN`S QUEST has a lot going for it, especially when compared to the slack entries preceding and followng it. The two storylines move along fairly briskly and connect naturally. There is a great sinister menace in the Kavuru cult, Muviro and the Waziri are as bold and noble as you could ask. Even Nkima, whose antics can get tiresome quickly, has some nice episodes. It`s interesting to see Burroughs mention several times how uncomfortable the jungle is at best, with the insects and mud and steamy heat alternating with chilling thunderstorms. Even Tarzan, who has grown up here and who loves the place, isn`t comfortable in the jungle, he`s just hardened to it. Mostly, it`s great to see Jane onstage again, and although after this she again drops out of sight, we can assume she`s alive, healthy and still married to her bronzed giant of the forest. ______________ *Although I have been warned not to expect much reward in reading TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN. |
| 10:53 pm | TARZAN'S QUEST (Jan 18, 2004) From the October 1935 to March 1936 issues of BLUE BOOK, where it appeared as "Tarzan and the Immortal Men", this is surprisingly lively and enjoyable. The Tarzan series peaked about halfway through; after TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN, Burroughs dropped our hero`s family as though they had never existed and grudgingly cranked out a repetitive number of books where the Apeman stumbled upon paired warring cities of lost civilizations. None of these books are completely hopeless or unreadable*, but compared to, say, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE or TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR, they are limp and unexciting. The best thing about TARZAN`S QUEST is the unexpected return of Jane, Lady Greystoke. We haven`t seen her since TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION and she hasn`t even been mentioned for the past ten years. For all a new reader would know, the Apeman is a solitary creature meandering through Africa with only a monkey and a lion as companions. Not only does Jane turn up on the very first page, she actually gets more time onstage than Lord Greystoke himself. Jane is a delight, as always. She is so resourceful, competent, thoughtful and good-natured that she could carry the book by herself. Stranded in the jungle with a motley crew of people totally unsuited for survival there, she takes charge as well as Tarzan himself might and with much more patience. Jane can fashion a bow and arrows, leap lightly up into the trees and come back with game for everyone. At one point, she stubbornly refuses to give up her kill to a challenging leopard and promptly sends three arrows into the big cat`s heart. We are told early on that Jane has chartered a plane to go see what mischief her old man is getting into. ("You see, Lord Greystoke spends a great deal of time in Africa. I am planning on joining him there.") So evidently the previous eight books have been misleading, only showing us Tarzan when he`s on vacation and lumbering around the jungle. The rest of the time, he`s still taking care of his huge estate and spending time with his wife. (Still no sign of Korak, Miriem or little Jackie, though.) Now, this is an obvious observation but it seems significant that, while Burroughs` marriage to Emma was going sour, his alter-ego`s wife and family vanished from the stories. When he wrote this book, Burroughs was getting his divorce and solidifying a new relationship. In TARZAN`S QUEST, the crash survivors are burdened by the totally useless and whiny Princess Sborov. An old friend of Jane`s, this woman is a wealthy widow who remarried a much younger social climber with a title (much is made of this royalty scam). It`s just conjecture, but it seems likely that Burroughs was acting out his conflicts on the page with Jane representing his new love and the princess standing in for the wife he wishes to be rid of. (The fact that the princess abruptly ends up with a hatchet in her head might be a slight case of wish fulfilment.) Half the book follows the troubles of Jane`s party as they deal with the situation by the usual bickering and sniping we can expect in stories about survivors of shipwrecks or plane crashes. Buroughs lays it on pretty thick with the characterization, but then this IS pulp adventure where we want broad strokes and bright colors; we`re not dealing with Arthur Miller here. The stoic English butler Tibbs and the rough street-jive American pilot Brown are exaggerated stereoypes but at least they are distinct. One thing that I don`t like about Burroughs` villains is that he gives them such a comprehensive range of vileness. They are not men with a weakness for the flesh or uncontrolled greed or a violent temper. No, ever since Rokoff way back in RETURN OF TARZAN, the typical bad guy contains every possible evil trait you can name. The prince is this story shifts from cowardice to greed to lust to homicide at the blink of an eye. He`s so thoroughly despicable that it`s hard to give him any credence. Even one redeeming trait or a hint of remorse would have made him come to life on the page; as it is, he might as well have little horns and a barbed tail. The other half of the storyline follows Tarzan leading a squad of his intrepid Waziri to rescue Muviro`s kidnapped young daughter. There are these guys called the Kavuru living out there in the wilderness, and for hundreds of years they have been abducting nubile wenches for some mysterious purpose. It turns out the Kavuru are a sect of white barbarians who have discovered a longevity serum. They can stay young and robust indefinitely but, since the serum requires the glands and blood of young women..... well, (ahem) there are no Kavuru women left by this point and the Immortal Men must obtain the needed ingredients any way they can. The high priest of this cult is a buff blond guy named Kavandavanda, one of the better supervillains in Burroughs. Although he looks like a Malibu surfer, the necklace made of human teeth is a good clue to his real nature. He has lost track of exactly how old he is (maybe a thousand years old, maybe more), he heads a murderous cult that has killed who knows how many women to stay young (the last neophyte joined the order a hundred years earlier) and he has started developing psychic powers (the Kavuru put their victims in a compliant trance with a weird whistling call). Kavandavanda also has serious gender issues ("Man may only attain godliness alone. Woman weakens and destroys him.... How have we attained this deathlessness? Through women. We are all celibate. Our vows of celibacy were sealed in the blood of women....") Well, it`s true a vow of celibacy will make your life SEEM much longer. Despite all this rhetoric, Kavandavanda is (like just about every man in the books) immediately smitten with Jane Clayton and lusts for her bod. ("I`ll keep you; I`ll tame you - and I`ll start now.") Jane must be quite the babe. Everyone from shieks to aristocrats to gorillas gets one look at her and starts to pant and stamp one foot on the ground. The moment I read about the Kavuru, I would have bet money that Jane would end up their defiant prisoner, trading sassy remarks with the cult leader. Much has been made by Philip Jose Farmer and fans of the Kavuru pills. True, Tarzan divides a large supply of the longevity pills among the surviving members of the party. (Typically, Burroughs has a character remark the monkey Nkima deserves a share since "He`s sure a lot more use in the world than most people". Nice attitude. How about a few pills for good old Muviro, the lifelong friend who has come to Tarzan`s rescue so often? Or maybe Korak, his wife or their child. It`s hard to respect a man who would give extended life to his pet monkey rather than his own grandson.) Where was I? Oh, yes. Since a main ingredient of the Kavuru pills are the body parts of murdered young women, you might expect Jane and her friends to have a little misgiving about taking them. True, if you just had to swallow a single pill to get extended life, most people would be tempted enough to pop one. But it`s clearly stated that the pills have to be taken regularly to work, so this means once a month ("...each time that the moon comes full...") ingesting something made out of slaughtered human beings. Also, since the pills have only a temporary effect, and there is a large but finite supply divvied up here among five people (six, if they really give a share to Nkima), the pills are going to run out at some point. It has been a long time since 1934, and I think it`s safe to say the last Kavuru pill went down the hatch some time ago. If Tarzan is still running around looking like a thirty young old, it must be due to something else. (That witch doctor potion, maybe?) TARZAN`S QUEST has a lot going for it, especially when compared to the slack entries preceding and followng it. The two storylines move along fairly briskly and connect naturally. There is a great sinister menace in the Kavuru cult, Muviro and the Waziri are as bold and noble as you could ask. Even Nkima, whose antics can get tiresome quickly, has some nice episodes. It`s interesting to see Burroughs mention several times how uncomfortable the jungle is at best, with the insects and mud and steamy heat alternating with chilling thunderstorms. Even Tarzan, who has grown up here and who loves the place, isn`t comfortable in the jungle, he`s just hardened to it. Mostly, it`s great to see Jane onstage again, and although after this she again drops out of sight, we can assume she`s alive, healthy and still married to her bronzed giant of the forest. ______________ *Although I have been warned not to expect much reward in reading TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN. |
| 10:52 pm | TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN (Sep 13, 2005) First published in BLUE BOOK from August 1932 to January 1933. This one was a real chore to slog through. If you are a pulp or adventure fan who had never read a Tarzan book before and happened upon TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN, you might think, "Hey, that's not bad. Wonder if there's any more in this series?" But if you had enjoyed the earlier books (some of which are just excellent in the genre, like TARZAN THE TERRIBLE or TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR), by the time you got to this eighteenth episode, serious deja vu will have swamped you. Actually, it has a fine premise to base an adventure on. Instead of finding another pair of warring cities originally founded in Africa somehow by Olmecs or Picts, Tarzan tackles the cult of Leopard Men. So much could be done with this. A dreaded secret society of African tribesmen (living unsuspected in their various villages) who don leopard robes and steel claws to carry out missions of murder and cannibalism... how could you ask for better villains? And the actual plot of the book uses this idea (in a lukewarm way), as the Apeman joins forces with Orando of the Utengi, the only chief brave enugh to stand up to the cult. There could be savage battles with the killers, our heroes trying to find out which tribesmen are loyal and which belong the cult, having a young native forced into the society and struggling between his loyalty to his family or to the cult. And at the end, one hundred Waziri led by Muviro would come charging down for a big slaughter. It could have been a great yarn. But no. By this time, Burroughs was grudgingly cranking out stories about a character he had long since grown tired of. I personally felt the series peaked around TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN and then twisted its ankle and tumbled downhill fast (with an occasional flash of the old spark here and there.) There are large stretches in this book that I half suspect were pasted out of earlier epics with new names pencilled in. At the very beginning, Tarzan is in a tree in a storm, when a tornado (a TORNADO? In the jungle?) sends him crashing down and leaves him pinned helplessly under a huge branch. Once again, a concussion has left him able to speak and reason but has wiped away all memory of his identity. (Just once, I would like to see a head injury leave Tarzan talking like a duck or seeing everything upside down for a while, instead of just this selective amnesia.) Or course, later on, a second sharp smack to the cranium instantly restores all his memories and he's not any worse for all the head trauma. I really don't see the narrative purpose of this particular session of "Who am I?" Tarzan is taken to be a spirit by Orando and is renamed Muzimo (and little N'Kima the kvetching monkey is now believed to be the ghost of the slain warrior Nyamwegi). What's the point of all this? If I didn't know better, I'd suspect Burroughs was trying to fill up page after page with Tarzan trying half-heartedly to remember his real name and Orando speculating on muzimo theology. And frankly, it would be a lot more exciting if Tarzan found evidence that the Leopard Men were active again, that they were terrorizing tribes who were under his protection and were defying his law. Imagine the Apeman standing up after searching for life in the victims of a massacred village, growling "Leopard Men....again!" and then hurtling up into the trees to begin his war. It would have made him seem genuinely heroic, Lord of the Jungle in more than nickname. The other half of the story involves three white Americans who keep running into each other, being captured and rescued, escaping one pickle after another and in general carrying on like the exact same characters in half a dozen earlier books. There's the Playboy centerfold candidate called Kali Bwana, who is looking for her lost brother; there are two ivory hunters, Old Timer and the Kid. (Wait, wait... don't tell me who the kid really is, I think I can guess.) Almost inevitably, Old Timer and Kali Bwana get off on the wrong foot, hold unreasonable grudges against each other throughout all their adventures together and stubbornly resist the instant True Love that boings up between them like a stepped-on rake. Huh, did I doze off? Is it 11:45 already... what page was I on? Anyway, there are a few moments where we get a glimpse of the old magic that made Edgar Rice Burroughs in his prime such a major pulp writer. The scenes in the Leopard Man temple hidden on an island guarded by crocodiles are lurid and ominous enough (a hand falls out of the merrily bubbling stew pot). And there is a moment when Kali Bwana lies trembling as a leopard crouches and is ready to spring at her... and hurtling up silently behind the cat silently a huge bronzed giant. This was one of the few scenes where I got a clear visual snapshot. Some of the racial snarks are a bit more blatant than usual ("He saw that religious and alcoholic drunknness were rapidly robbing them of what few brains and little self-control Nature had vouchsafed them") and we don't see enough of the noble Utengi tribe to counter-balance that impression. Also, it's disquieting to see Burroughs ragging on Pygmies the way he does. I read a couple of books years ago by a man named Jean-Pierre Hallet (CONGO KITABU and PYGMY KITABU*) who lived among these people for years (and in fact grew up with them until he was six). He never mentioned that they were cannibals, filed their yellow teeth to points or beat their captives, and other reference or travel books also gave a different impression than Burroughs did. Maybe Kali Bwana just fell in with a particularly riff-raff Pygmy (more correctly called Khoi-San?) tribe, I guess. Finally, a couple of Mangani make a belated appearance and it's worth noting that they are definitely a unique species. "It was evident that they were not gorillas, and that they were more man-like than any apes he had seen." I'd like to see the next Tarzan movie or TV show dwell on this and show the Mangani as sort of Bigfoot or hominid creatures, contrasting them with a actual live gorillas to make the point. __________ *Here :http://www.pygmyfund.org/eulogy.htm |
| 10:51 pm | TARZAN AND THE LION MAN (Nov 10, 2002) From 1933, where it was first serialized in LIBERTY (a bit more prestigious a magazine than the usual ALL-STORY pulp), this is one of the weaker entries in the series. It gets off to a dreary start, detailing a bunch of unlikeable characters entering Africa to film a movie, and it`s almost half over before things start to perk up. On the other hand, it does have the wild concept of a lost city of talking gorillas who till fields and build stone castles, and who are named after 16th century figures from English history like Henry the VIII and the Duke of Buckingham. There`s also a great mad scientist villain who calls himself God, and some amusing if heavy-handed satire as Tarzan reacts to Hollywood and its denizens. The Lion Man of the title is not, as one might expect, a genuine rival for Tarzan like Kaspa or Ka-Zar might be, but a character in a proposed film to be shot deep in Darkest Africa. This feral hero is to be played by Stanley Obroski, a hunky tower of beef who, strangely enough, resembles Tarzan enough that the two can impersonate each other without being detected. (There seems to be a lot of these guys. It`d be interesting if Tarzan got this Stanley and Esteban Miranda in the same room and gave Jane something to fantasize about.) Although Stanley looks the part, he`s a rather dim guy without much courage. The rest of the movie crew are basically unpleasant specimens whose struggles to get their massive equipment through the jungle make for some dismal reading ("Oh well, you got to treat these niggers rough" says one of the crew as the drunken director is using a whip on the natives hired to do the hard work.) A stunt woman named Rhonda Terry, however, is down to earth, resourceful and good natured, and although the movie star Naomi Madison starts out as a grotesque caricature of a diva, she starts to see the light as they`re hunted by cannibals, kidnapped by Arab slavers, chased by lions... you know, the usual stuff. One thing about Burroughs that never fails to irritate me is his attitude toward human beings. He fills his books with the worst examples of people available and then compares them with the allegedly pure, noble animals of the jungle who don`t have any vices. Of course, the fact that he doesn`t seem to know much about wildlife really stacks the deck. In fact, most animals who live in groups are constantly scheming and struggling for status and dominance, trying to challenge the alpha males or push out dominant females as soon as they feel up to it, and animals which are weak or getting old are in constant danger of being mauled or abandoned by their own kind. It sure doesn`t sound like they have any moral superiority over humans. Sometimes it seems that Burroughs didn`t so much glamorize other beasts so much as he disliked his own species. Anyway, the mastermind behind the Gorilla City which is called "London" turns out to be a one hundred year old Briton who did research with early geneticists like Mendel and actually discovered a way to implant "germ cells" from humans into gorillas and vice versa. Settling in Africa, he began basically transferring human DNA (although of course neither he nor Burroughs uses that term) into gorillas. Sure enough, in a few generations, the great apes began to start speaking and grasping the rudiments of agriculture. If that`s not wild enough, the cells which the mad scientist used had been taken from the dead interred at Westminster Abbey! So these talking gorillas have a natural affinity to English culture and are an odd lot indeed. As if a settlement of these critters isn`t enough to deal with, not far away is a colony of their outcasts... offspring which look partly gorilla and partly human or else resemble California surfers but have ape brains. These mutants are not much fun to visit, either, although the gorgeous and completely uninhibited Balza might be a fun date if she didn`t drop a rock on your head. As for "God" himself, once he started getting all creaky and aged, he reversed his genetic process and started injecting cells from healthy young gorillas into himself. So now he`s a bizarre hybrid of both species, piebald black and white skinned, with patches of fur and fangs in a human face. This is the stuff of classic pulp horror of this era, and I wouldn`t be surprised if this guy wouldn`t eventually have made his way to Harrisonville, New Jersey and found himself being shot by Jules de Grandin. "God" intends to regain his complete human physiology by simply eating his prisoners, which works faster than all that cell implant business and he implies that before he eats the beautiful Rhonda, he might have something else on his agenda. There is a lot of humour in this book, much of which is rather obvious but there are some genuinely amusing moments. When Tarzan meets one of the talking gorillas, he growls at him in the mangani speech. The gorilla answers in perfect English, and this reversal of the expected stuns both of them. It`s also a nice touch that the Apeman blithely allows everyone to think he`s the cowardly Stanley, purely for his amusement. Tarzan`s mischievous trickster nature is one of the more appealing sides of his complex personality. (Stanley`s unhappy fate seems unnecessary but it also keeps the reader from being too sure about which way the story is going to go.) Hollywood and its inhabitants come in for severe thrashing by the author, reflecting Burroughs` unhappy experiences with the Tarzan films. And in an epilogue set a year after the main story, the Apeman travels to California as John Clayton to see what this mythical place is like. Just as a goof, he decides to audition for the lead role in a Tarzan movie and is flatly turned down as being the wrong type. (Hey, wait a minute.... doesn`t he look exactly like Stanley Obrosky, who was chosen as the perfect type by the same company?) And when a supposedly tame lion gets rowdy and seems about to devour the genuine star, Tarzan leaps upon the beast in his long practiced routine and stabs it to death. ("My God, you`ve killed our best lion. He was worth ten thousand dollars if he was worth a cent. You`re fired!") You might think he`d take Jane with him to hobnob in Hollwood but in fact she`s not even mentioned in the book, and for all a new reader could tell, Tarzan is just a happy Apeman lounging around the jungle with his big golden lion buddy. Having Tarzan married but with his wife offstage meant that he could never really have any romantic adventures and that he lost the benefit of his supporting cast.. one reason why the second half of the series seems a bit downhill. |
| 10:50 pm | TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD (Sep 16, 2003) From 1932, where it was serialized in six parts in ARGOSY for March and April, this is pretty unrewarding. Most of the book has such an unpleasant, bitter attitude that it's difficult to find any excitement or pleasure in it. In the third half (errr the final third), though, everything comes together for a strong, tense finish... so if you are a diehard Tarzan or Edgar Rice Burroughs fan, the ending alone would make it worth trudging through the build-up. Wandering around Abyssinia for no good reason, the Apeman finds, yes, another pair of lost cities locked in endless pointless war. By this time, he seems to take it for granted that Africa is dotted with remnants of ancient civilizations populated by Europeans. This time, the City of Gold and the City of Ivory are apparently the surviving outposts of early Greeks (they use drachmas and have names like Xerstle and Gemnon). It's never explained. Tarzan never troubles to ask, "Say, what are you boys doing out here, anyway?" Possibly Burroughs intended to explore the backstory in a planned sequel called TARZAN AND THE CITY OF IVORY but although our Apeman does return to the area in the second part of TARZAN THE MAGNIFICENT, we still don't learn the history of this bunch. Our hero finds himself a prisoner in the warlike Cathne, where the people worship lions, use lions for hunt and for war, and in general suffer from leomania. They also use gold for just about everything, which may be impressive but (considering how soft and easily worn away it is), might not be practical. The Cathneans are caught up in the usual unending series of raids and sorties which these lost empires are prone to; their rival city Athne uses elephants the way the Cathneans prefer lions. (An all-out battle between armies of lions and elephants sounds pretty colorful but again apparently Burroughs was saving it.) The City of Gold is ruled by an absolute tyrant Queen Nemone, who is absolutely gorgeous and who either suffers from manic depression or has just been ruined by the way she was brought up. Cruel, vindictive, imperious, demanding absolute obedience, she's like Madonna with a pet lion. And because Tarzan isn't intimidated she naturally tumbles for him hard. He never mentions Jane (neither does the narrative, although La of Opar is mentioned), and while he finds her fascinating and even tragically appealing, her sick personality keeps him from quite falling in love with her. Nemone has a strong sexual charge that just about crackles off the page, though. The tug of war between Nemone and Tarzan is really what this book is all about. By this time, I expected to find mean-spirited sermons by Burroughs on how abominable human beings are and how saintly wild animals are by contrast. But the rhetoric seems more harsh than usual, and Tarzan seems unpleasantly smug as he keeps rubbing it in (there's a huge vanity there, too, because he himself is morally superior to all other humans in his own eyes). But toward the end of the story, almost against his will, Tarzan starts caring about the friends he starts to make; he risks his life to rescue helpless sacrifices to the sacred lions; and he starts to seem genuinely heroic and noble for the first time. The uneasy relationship between Tarzan and Nemone makes up most of the book. Although unhappy, it does have a certain resonance of a doomed romance in the making. After about the halfway point of the series, the Apeman apparently abandoned his wife, his son and daughter-in-law, even his grandchild, not to mention the Waziri. It seems to happened at about the same time Edgar Rice Burroughs' own marriage started to turn sour. Now this is just an obvious interpretation, but Burroughs' increasing sullenness and loss of good-natured humour in his writing, as well as the way Tarzan runs away from his obligations like a deadbeat jungle lord, kind of suggests that the aurthor was acting out his own inner struggles on the page. It's almost inevitable with writers. Two years after he wrote this agonized book, Burroughs seperated from his wife of thirty years and applied for divorce. It wasn't until after he re-married his new love that Jane returned to the printed page. So reading TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD as a sort of playing out of the author's conficts gives the book some depth the text itself doesn't provide. Aside from the psychodrama underlining the story, there's not much in this book that we didn't find better done in early entries in the series. I will say this for Jad-Bal-Ja, though... that cat knows how to make an entrance! (Think about the symbolism of that final scene, too, as Nemone sends her soul-mate lion Belthar to chase and devour Tarzan; that lends itself to several bad puns.) |
| 10:49 pm | TARZAN TRIUMPHANT (Oct 3, 2004) This was more fun than you might expect. Although the books in the second half of the series don't feature much of the creative enthusiasm or inventiveness Edgar Rice Burroughs showed in the first dozen, each usually has a few good points that make it worth reading at least once for a pulp fan. Two or three of the books are completely hopeless drags, of course, and there is a LOT of repetition from the early stories, hey, that's true of most any pulp series. TARZAN TRIUMPHANT has a good deal of flowery, pretentious writing at first about the strange ways of Fate but Burroughs drops it quickly for his usual style. "The Triumph of Tarzan" ran in six installments in BLUE BOOK from October 1931 to March 1932. Like most of the later entries, it doesn't exactly have a linear plot as such. Burroughs basically throws half a dozen characters into the African jungle, stirs in a lost city and some slavers, and lets everyone run back and forth for two hundred pages until he drags them back together for the resolution. Sometimes his writing reminds me a scoutmaster trying to get an unruly troop of cub scouts lined up, with one or two always wandering off and getting into mischief. Like several other of the entries of this period, TARZAN TRIUMPHANT takes place in Abyssinia (today called Ethiopa), which was much in the news at the time as the new Emperor Haille Selassi was facing Italian aggression and his country would eventually be invaded by Mussolini's forces in 1935. So it was a natural setting for a writer who wanted to toss in a few European spies and instigators to give Tarzan headaches. In the previous book TARZAN THE INVINCIBLE (these generic titles are another uninspired aspect of the later books), our hero had stopped a Communist expedition to stir up trouble in Abyssinia and Egypt, causing the death of Red agent Peter Sveri in the process. Back in Moscow, Stalin himself is annoyed enough to send an assassin to avenge Sveri. Unfortunately for the story, it's not someone as awesome as SMERSH's Red Grant but the rather drab and unimpressive Leon Staubich. Back on his own turf, Tarzan is receiving a desperate plea for help from the chief of the Bangalo people far to the north. They have been victimized by shiftas, black raiders who take slaves to sell to the Arabs. Tarzan says that's a shame but none of his business ("I do not interfere among tribes beyond the boundaries of my own country, unless they commit some depradations against my own people.") The chief answers that the shiftas are led by a white man and "it is known among all men that you are the enemy of bad white men." Oh well, that's different and Tarzan promptly agrees to look into things. This is an interesting point. Despite all the times we're told Tarzan is a simple beast to whom all those awful humans are alike, he has a sense of diplomacy. His personal kingdom is basically protected to provide safety for his family (although they are not mentioned here) and his adopted tribe, the Waziri (who are really flourishing with this guy as their overlord). Beyond the rather large territory, he has staked out, Tarzan doesn't interfere with what the natives do to each other, but he does step in when white people show up and cause trouble. Maybe he feels their actions reflect badly on himself; maybe he thinks the black Africans should be free to kill and enslave each other their own way; and maybe as an English lord with large business interests, he likes the situation as it is, and doesn't welcome European agitators to disturb the status quo. Be that as it may, the Apeman sets out to investigate. He poses as a British traveller named Lord Passmore, with a full safari. This might have been intended to be a big surprise at the end of the book, but Burroughs pays so little attention to "Lord Passmore', who hardly makes an appearance, that he might have skipped it and no one would notice. It does give Tarzan an excuse to loll about in front of his tent, "faultlessly attired in evening clothes", eating a good meal and sipping coffee. Maybe Jane had corrupted him more than he admitted. As you might expect if you've read a few of these books, Tarzan inevitably finds a pair of warring lost cities full of white people deep inside Africa. What the heck? How come Stanley and Burton and the other 19th Century explorers didn't come back and mention Opar or the City of Gold or Pal-Ul-Don? It would have made world history class more interesting. This time out, we're dealing with Midian, an unattractive slum in the crate of an extinct volcano, inhabited by epileptic religious fanatics descended from a follower of the apostle Paul. These mangy mutts practice human sacrifice as part of their distorted form of quasi-Christianity and are not much fun to visit, being offended by anyone even smiling. Dropping down into this hellhole are an intrepid British aviator, Lady Barbara Collis; a sheltered geologist with good intentions but poor survival skills, Lafayette Smith; and a ex-gangster from Chicago who has fled to Africa because things got unhealthy back in his town, Danny "Gunner" Patrick. The fourth member of the cast is a potential PLAYBOY Playmate of the Year from Midian, the gorgeous blonde Jezebel. (Once again, Burroughs sets up a colony of ugly brain-dead males and their beautiful oppressed females - it would be nice just once if we found a lost city of homely hags and buff young studs, but I think he was trying to win over women readers.) All four outsiders become completely tangled up in each other's problems. getting captured and freeing each other, fighting off the slavetakers and wild animals, tangling with the vile Staubuch and and an Italian Comminist he happens to meet and team up with, wandering through the jungle and running into each other as if they were all at a small county fair instead of lost in a vast wilderness. Meanwhile, Tarzan carries on as normal for him, dropping out of trees and mugging lions, making daring rescues and pausing for an occasional brief sermon about the evils of the human race and how wonderful animals are ("Geeze! That guy ain't so crazy about men," the gangster observe astutely.) Nothing new here, although it's handled well enough. What I liked best about TARZAN TRIUMPHANT is that for once the comic relief is actually amusing. "Gunner" speaks in an exaggerated big city jargon, both Lady Barbara and Lafayette Smith speak upper class dialect and poor Jezebel (who has been taught some English by Lady Barbara) only catches parts of what Gunner is saying. Even Tarzan, who has travelled around Europe and the States and who is fluent in French and Latin, sometimes is baffled by what "Gunner" is saying. It's good-natured and inoffensive (the characters themselves seem to enjoy the repartee), and it seems to make these people more lifelike than the usual folks we meet in these stories. "Gunner" also provides some crudely funny moments. He verbally mistreats the Africans badly, calling them "smokes", "Cotton Ball here", and "tar baby" but the natives don't seem to notice or care. Trying to trail the villains, "Gunner" spots a footprint which is one of his own and starts to follow it. "I guess I'm getting good," he thinks smugly, "Pretty soon that Tarzan guy won't have any edge on me at all." All the time, he is undergoing that character development Burroughs often put his people through, where surviving a week in the jungle brings out the good in a person. The inevitable romance which develops between "Gunner" and Jezebel is surprisingly well-handled and not forced. They're an unlikely couple, a thug who carries a Tommy gun around the African jungle and a girl brought up in a colony of fanatics, but then we've all seen marriages where you can't imagine how they ever got together. She seems a bit boy-crazy, too, marvelling how every man she meets outside Midian is "beautiful" and frankly, I think "Gunner" will have his hands full. Lafayette Smith and Lady Barbara also hook up, but less convincingly, and I bet they didn't stay together after the last page, err after they went to England. (I like Lady Barbara's attitude. Captured by ignorant Midianites who have already tried to drown her, she tricks the leader into staring down the barrel of a revolver he has confiscated, and then tells him to pull the trigger. "It will make a light in the little hole," she promises helpfully ashe complies. It probaby did make a light for that split-second.) TARZAN TRIUMPHANT is okay, not the memorable high adventure of TARZAN THE TERRIBLE or TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN, but not the mean-spirited rants of some of the later books, either. It has a light, cheerful feel to it, with likeable characters who care about each other. The sharp little digs at organized religion are perceptive and pretty bold for 1932, although Burroughs prudently restrains from attacking mainstream churches. The holy men of Midian "were intoning their senseless gibberish, meant to impress the villagers with their erudition and cloak the real vacuity of their minds, a practice not unknown to more civilized sects." Comments like that must have slightly miffed or tickled many readers at the time. The book is better than I had feared. It would have been nice if Burroughs had dropped either the shiftas or the other colony of boring South MIdian, so as to spend more time developing the Red plot to kill Tarzan. Stalin's appearance is so brief and sketchily described as to make no impression; I would have loved it if, at the end, Tarzan had somehow smuggled a package into Moscow, maybe Staubuch's chewed up jacket or something, just to give Stalin a jolt. |
| 10:48 pm | TARZAN THE INVINCIBLE (Feb 19, 2003) From BLUE BOOK, where it was first published as a seven part serial from from October 1930 to April 1931 (under the title "Tarzan, Guard of the Jungle"), this is for the most part a dreary, confusing mess. Although it gets off to a strong start with a band of international Communist conspirators setting out to loot Opar and closes with a very effective sequence as Tarzan conducts a war of nerves against the invaders, In between, however, is a pointless jumble of characters wandering aimlessly through the jungle. Apes and Arabs carry off the white women, lions stalk hungrily, Tarzan drops down on an antelope for a meal, all familiar stuff. The book might have worked much better as a short novella, leaving out most of the padding in the center. As a coherent story of an attempted conquest of Opar, with the Apeman helping La regain her position, TARZAN THE INVINCIBLE would have had much more impact. There are some great moments, as when Tarzan`s quick thinking deals with being trapped in a dungeon between a hungry lion and a crew of unruly Oparian goons, or later when he is tied up in the jungle and watching a hyena slowly circling in. But the effect of the good scenes is muffled by the surrounding filler which brings the story up to book length. Burroughs, who previously had demonized the Germans as barbaric Huns in TARZAN THE UNTAMED and who later would go after the Japanese as "cowardly monkey-men" in TARZAN AND "THE FOREIGN LEGION", was in 1930 enraged about the Communists. He has an assortment of thugs from different nations bullying their way through Africa, hoping to find enough gold in Opar to finance revolutions in Mexico, the Phillipines, India and elsewhere. Now, every writer of adventure stories needs villains, and the nationalities suitable change over time. But Burroughs portrays the various Communist agents here as absolutely vile... greedy, braindead or secretly planning to start a new African Empire of their own; they are not shown with any depth or subtlety, and are basically fiends with BAD GUY practically painted on their shirts. To be honest, Burroughs often seems to hate the human race in general. The only reason he admires animals is because he glamorizes them and gives them virtues they don`t in actuality possess. (The extent of his research into wildlife is shown as he invariably has solitary lions and elephants wandering through the deep jungle, instead of living in groups on the savannahs.) Except for Tarzan himself and his loyal Waziri, there are few human beings in the second half of the series that are likeable or even tolerable. (Although there is always the mandatory young couple to go through the usual ritual of misunderstandings and romance.) One exception to the tired recipe is La, the High Priestess of the Flaming God. She actually comes to life on the page, with a vivid personality and presence. La is not exactly a New Age tree hugging sweetheart, of course, since she has spent most of her life stabbing victims to death on the altar of her people`s god. (And in fact, in this book, she promptly kills a guy who presumes to grab her by the shoulder. He`s not the last one she does a little open heart surgery on, either.) But she also is human, willing to make friends with Zora Drinov when they fall in together. La is a passionate little wildcat, openly telling Tarzan she is ready to be his mate then and there. The potent image of this gorgeous, barely dressed* woman,, offering herself to the even more naked Apeman has gotten generations of young readers worked up. It`s strange, but when Tarzan firmly turns her down, he never mentions his own mate. In fact, he gives no reason at all. (Hey, Tarzan! If YOU don`t want her....) After his return from Pellucidar, the Apeman seems to have abandoned his wife, his plantation, his son and the rest of his family. Instead of Jane and Korak, his companions now are Nkima (the bloodthirsty troublemaking monkey) and the Golden Lion himself, Jad-Bal-Ja, always an imposing figure. These are friends he doesn`t have obligations to protect or care for, either, as they wander off at will. Tarzan invariably appears as a lone wanderer in the wilds of Africa, as if his marriage and his kinfolk never existed. It`s a real loss to the series, as is the dual nature of our hero being both a savage Apeman and a cultured English lord at the same time. This simpler, cartoonlike interpretation is not nearly as satisfying. _______________ *La, maybe it`s none of my business, but just how comfortable can those gold breast plates be in the hot African sun? My God, didn`t it ever occur to you to borrow a strip of cloth from Zora to wear? |
| 10:47 pm | TARZAN AT THE EARTH'S CORE (Dec 20, 2002) From 1930 (it was serialized in BLUE BOOK from September 1929 to March 1930), this is a crossover between two of the series which Edgar Rice Burroughs had running. It has some surprises, some nice bits of characterization and brisk action, and would be a good choice for someone new to Burroughs to sample his style. Basically, Tarzan leads an expedition to Pellucidar, the prehistoric world inside our hollow Earth, in an attempt to rescue its Emperor, David Innes. A secondary hero named Jason Gridley has been picking up radio messages from Innes, and learning of his predicament, decides to go to the one man who could hope to invade Pellucidar with success. Tarzan accepts the challenge out of curiosity and helps fund the construction of a new dirigible, the 0-220. With a German crew and a commando squad of his Waziri tribesmen, Tarzan and Gridley fly through the huge opening near the North Pole into the lost world that lies on the inner surface of our planet. (There is a stunning scene as the big airship descends over the rim of the opening and, just as the midnight sun is lost to view, they first see the inner sun of Pellucidar. This moment really captures a sense of wonder.) Now there is absolutely no point in going into the unlikely physics of Pellucidar, with its miniature sun that hangs motionless at the center of the Earth. This is fantasy from 1930, with just enough scientific trappings to give it some credence, and you just have to crank up your imagination a few notches and go with it. It`s like Captain Future`s solar system, where every planet in habitable; just relax and enjoy the ride. Pellucidar is immense, filled with jungles and mountains and seas, packed to overcrowding with not only dinosaurs and prehistoric megafauna but also new life forms that Burroughs invented, as well as an assortment of various human tribes. Since it`s always noon under that unmoving miniature sun, there is no way to tell direction (even Tarzan gets hopelessly lost, something new and humbling for him). Almost as soon as they arrive, the rescue party scatters and spends most of the book wandering around in complete confusion, being chased by monsters and savages, in general having a terrible time but keeping the reader entertained, until they all luckily stumble back across each other when it`s time to end the story. Tarzan does not enjoy the new surroundings as much as you might expect, being unfamiliar with the wildlife and not really have a chance to wander about as he might like to. He never returns there in later books, which might have been more interesting than the various lost cities of descendants of different ancient cultures. Stiil, he performs daring rescues and lives up to the hope everyone places in him to resolve things. Jason Gridley is bland but okay, a typical young Burroughs hero who is immediately smitten by the gorgeous Jana (the Red Flower of Zoram). Frankly, no matter how lovely this Jana might be, she`s a completely insufferable brat who makes Gridley suffer emotionally the entire book until she abruptly announces that she does love him in the last sentence. Burroughs introduces one of his most gruesome creations, the snakelike humanoid Horibs, who ride big lizards and love to eat human flesh. They keep their prisoners in an underground chamber, the only entrance filled with water, where they intend to fatten up the captives until it`s time to feast. This is a genuinely creepy scene (anyone remember that 1950s drive-in flick ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES?) There is also a dramatic scene where hundreds of sabretooths round up and slaughter a huge mass of herbivores, including some mammoths; the big cats wipe out a enormous number of prey, far more than they can possibly eat and then start fighting with each other over the spoils. (So much for the usual preaching about Man being the only creature that kills for pleasure, and so forth.) And for hilarity, you can`t beat the scene where a multi-ton stegosaurus launches itself from a cliff, lowering its back plates to serve as glider wings, and swoops over our heroes. This is hysterical. The only way to beat this would be to have mastodons climbing trees with their trunks. Although much of the appeal of Pellucidar is that, with no seasons and no transition from day to night, the inhabitants have no sense of time, the idea doesn`t really ring true. Women would still conceive and give birth, children would grow and people would age; so there would still be a general concept of years going by. (Presumably, women would still have menstrual cycles, but maybe not.) And although sundials would not work, certainly some Pellucidarians would have devised an hourglass filled with sand, water clocks, burning ropes marked in segments, or any number of ways that would be so useful someone would come up with them. Finally, we should note that Muviro and his Waziri warriors are described by Tarzan as "highly intelligent men", capable of learning to man the controls of the dirigible. They are shown as brave, resourceful and competent, standing up to an attacking horde of Horibs and mowing the snakemen down. In contrast to these noble warriors is the American cook, Robert Jones, who is played for obvious low comedy (he throws his alarm clock overboard in exasperation at Pellucidar`s timeless nature). When he sees the impressive Waziri marching out in the wilderness, he "swelled with pride." ("Dem nigguhs is sho nuff hot babies," he says to himself.) I would love to know how Muviro and Jones would have gotten along and what they would have had to say to each other. Probably the Waziri would have felt no kinship with this American guy, but he might have wanted to befriend them and learn some of their history. It could have been a touching scene if handled with insight. And as long as we`re considering ethnic stereotypes, it`s interesting that Burroughs has the dirigible crewed by a staff of Germans, when only ten years earlier, Tarzan (and the narrator) had been filled with a righteous hatred of Germany and all its inhabitants. |
| 10:45 pm | TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE (Oct 26, 2003) From BLUE BOOK, where it was published in five parts from October 1928 to February 1929, this is pretty good stuff. The book has the same basic premise as the one before it, TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE (two eternally warring cities of white people deep inside Africa, Tarzan getting tangling up in local politics, a struggling romance between a local couple), but Edgar Rice Burroughs tells his tale with such energy, attention to detail and broad characterization, that it`s a lot of fun. The action n the gladiator scenes is brisk and bloody, the melodrama of the scheming conspirators works well, and there`s even some humour that`s not overdone as one villain tries to impress the ingenue with an unsuccessful dive into the public baths. I don`t think much of Burroughs` theory that crime is entirely hereditary and that if you simply kill all criminals and their families (!?), there won`t be any more lawbreakers. Good thing he didn`t have a brother convicted of manslaughter, he`d come up with a new philosophy in a hurry. This is a sort of transitional book in the series. My favorite group of stories start around TARZAN THE UNTAMED and end around TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN. The Apeman as portrayed there is a complicated mixture of wild beast and English lord, he has a supporting cast and family he loves, and there is enough action and surprises in each book to make them enjoyable even if you had never heard of Tarzan. By TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE, our hero is starting to drift down into a simpler characterization. He still patrols his territory with the fighting Waziri and his friend Muviro, there is a reference to his bungalow home and estates... but his wife and son (and grandson) are not even mentioned in a passing thought. Some sort of marital difficulties there, Lord Greystoke? After TARZAN AT THE EARTH`S CORE, the Apeman seems to decisively abandon his family and estates to wander carefree through the jungle with only his chums Jad-Bal-Ja and Nkima (who don`t place any responsibilities on him). He also seems much more sour and unpleasant in the later stories, with ongoing sermons about how awful the human race is. In this book, though, Tarzan still likes people enough to have friends he is glad to see, to go on a dangerous quest to rescue Erich von Harben, a young man he doesn`t know, and he is perfectly happy to stay with a family in the Lost Empire for weeks while learning the language and history. His strong curiosity is one of the things I llike best about the early Tarzan; he is always asking questions and snooping around for its own sake. We find that he went to the trouble on his own to learn how to read Latin and has read Virgil and Caesar`s Commnentaries. Pretty impressive, considering no one was making him do it. Yet the British peer who sat up at night in his srtudy with dictionaries and reference books about Roman history is the same man who kills yet another full-grown lion with only a knife. "The savage personal combat, the blood, the contact with the mighty body of the carnivore, had stripped from him the last vestige of the thin veneer of civilization. It was no English lord who stood there with one foot upon his kill and through narrowed lids glared about him at the roaring populace. It was no man, but a wild beast, that raised its head and voiced the savage victory cry of the bull ape, a cry that stilled the multitude and froze its blood." There`s that dual nature that makes Tarzan so interesting. He`s not a literal split personality; the wild beast side is much stronger and more the "real" Tarzan, but the sophisticated aristocrat who sat in the House of Lords and enjoyed Parisan art galleries and museums is not just an empty pose either. Oddly, there`s some talk at the beginning of the mysterious city as being a survival of the fabled lost tribes of Biblical history but this is quickly dropped. Instead, we`re dealing here with the surviving outpost of a Roman incursion into Africa, still keeping its society and customs amost completely unchanged after a thousand years with only slight influences from the native cultures (prettty darn unlikely, if you ask me). They still think there`s a Caesar ruling in Rome, they still have senators and patricians and all that. In effect, this is Tarzan dropping into a gladiator movie for an adventure. (Of COURSE, he ends up fighting in the Colisseum, it`s mandatory for an action hero to have at least on a Coliseeum scene in his career.) Long ago, a civil war resulted in a breakaway faction founding its own city, and now there is ongoing feuding between Castrum Mare and Castrum Sanguinarus. The pair of enemy outposts is part of the successful formula but it seriously weakens this particular story. There`s really no reason why Erich von Harben couldn`t be trapped in the same city as Tarzan without running into him, and the hopping back and forth between two very similar settings (complete with two pairs of struggling young lovers) is a bit confusing. Also, the exciting climax (which is vividly presented) with the oppressed populace marching in a bloody uprising, grim legionnaires slaughtering crowds, half a dozen of Tarzan`s great apes as a hairy commando squad (despite "their disposition to attack friend as well as foe"), the heroic Waziri doing their calvary charge... whew. All that big finale is diffused by having to then go back to the other city and see how von Harben is doing with his own lesser troubles. TARZAN AND THE LOST EMPIRE introduces Nkima, the little monkey who takes on the traditional sidekick role for the remainder of the series. (Does Tarzan ever mention that he, like the rest of the great apes, used to eat tailed monkeys when they could catch them? Might dampen the friendship.) I like Nkima, he`s as much of a troublemaker as he is a help but he saves the day enough times to make his simpleminded chatter forgiveable. Every hero can use a bumbling pal to help with the plotting now and then. It`s interesting that except for Jad-Bal-Ja and NKima (and good ol` Tantor when they run into each other), Tarzan isn`t really friends with the wild animals. Despite his speeches about how admirable and noble the beasts are, he pretty much ignores them until he`s hungry. |
| 10:44 pm | TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE (Dec 23, 2004) Here's a pleasant surprise, a middle-period Tarzan yarn with all the enthusiasm, imaginative detail and vivid writing of the best early entries in the series. It seems clear that Burroughs admired the ideals of medieval chivalry, and that the glamourized WHITE COMPANY-style dialogue and ethics appealed to him strongly. He really did some research here, and it shows. The result is a very enjoyable adventure story, kind of like TARZAN MEETS IVANHOE, with few of the sour sermons about the evils of humanity that make the second half of the series rather dodgy reading. (In fact, Burroughs seems to get the mandatory speeches about those vile and awful human beings over with in the first few pages. TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE has more genuinely noble and likeable characters in its cast than in most of the series.) The previous book, TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN would be the last time Korak and Meriem would make an appearance and the last showing of Jane for quite a few years. This is the beginning of the era of the solitary nomadic Tarzan, not having any ties other than the monkey Nkima, the golden lion Jad-Bal-Ja and the heroic Waziri... all of whom can get along fine without his protection, leaving him essentially without personal obligations. TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE first appeared in serial form in THE BLUE BOOK MAGAZINE, beginning with the December 1927 issue and coming out in book form the next year. It uses the reliable set-up of two lost cities of white people, perpetually at war with each other deep in the unexplored areas of Africa. (This particular cow would be milked a few times too many.) This time, we're dealing with Nimmr, "the Leopard City", populated by descendants of survivors of a party on its way to the Third Crusade. As seems to be the rule in Burroughs' universe, they have not made any scientific or cultural progress at all in the seven hundred years since their founding and still are in full knighthood mode. Stuck in a valley near the southern border of Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia), the settlers have divided up into the City of the Sepulchre and the City of Nimmr (one faction thinks the Crusade is over and the other wants to push on to the Holy Land) They exist in an uneasy cold war status enlivened by an annual tournament where the winning city gets five luscious young babes to take home and marry off (thus keeping the gene pool from becoming completely stagnant). Tarzan himself is not present all that much in this book, showing up for dramatic rescues and exposition. The lead hero on stage most of the time is a young American photographer named James Hunter Blake. He's good-natured and brave enough to carry an adventure story by himself; his accomplished skills at fencing and polo come in very useful in Nimmr. (Of course, he's also no fool and is prudent enough to keep his revolver at hand without explaining what it is for.) Blake finds himself in the Leopard City, fits right in and has a grand old time. It's interesting that, even before he tumbles for a princess, he doesn't show any inclination to start planning an escape back to his homeland. This life of swordfights and feasting suits him fine. (Of course, he IS at the top of the social pyramid; if he had ended up a miserable serf digging in the mud and sleeping in a damp hut, he might have had thoughts about moving on.) Blake has a sense of humour and tells the astonished Nimmrans (Nimmrites? Nimmroids?) that the world outside has become filled with knights.. "You see, things have changed a lot since the days of Richard... we have Knights Templar and Knights of Pythias and Knights of Columbus and Knights of Labor and a lot more I can't recall." He also impresses the heck of them by informing them his father is a 32nd Degree Mason. It's worth noting that Burroughs usually got in a few digs at the corruption of organized religion, considering all the phony high priests he used as villains. Here, although there is a lot of religious imagery and many references to Our Lord, there's not a tiny remark anywhere about hypocrisy or falsity. Maybe Burroughs figured that would be sure to either get the story rejected again or else suffer heavy blue-pencil obliterations (this was 1927, remember). As it stands, the Christian references are so appropriate to the characters that they seem natural and unforced. There's even a striking moment when the Apeman leaves the unusually nubile princess by the huge stone cross marking the road to Nimmr and goes back to rescue someone or other. Burroughs writes, "Down from the Cross went Tarzan...", a nice little allusion to sneak in past the editor. Burroughs always keeps a few plotlines running parallel to each other, cutting back and forth between them at suspenseful moments and then bringing them all together at the end in a neat pretty bow which Tarzan himself usually ties. Interestingly, the author sets up one of his inevitable romantic subplots (which always suffer misunderstandings and setbacks) between two Bedouins, Zeyd and Ateja. Except a chapter or two in THE RETURN OF TARZAN where he befriends a shiek in Algeria, I don't recall him presenting sympathetic Arabs before, usually showing them as demonic slavers who would fit right into a mid-1980s Chuck Norris movie. Zeyd and Ateja are a pair of nice enough youngsters who have to overcome a lot of obstacles and suffering to get together. Even Tarzan befriends and helps them. Some villainy is necessary for an action story, of course, and part of it supplied by an arrogant hunter named Stimbol, who parts ways with Blake early on and then just proceeds to keep causing trouble wherever he is. Most of the menace though comes from the Bedouin slavers and raiders led by ibn Jad, who discover the valley where Nimmr lies and attack it (with firearms giving them quite an unfair advantage). Burroughs doesn't emphasize the irony, but I thought it was pretty funny in a dark way that these Crusaders have convinced themselves they are surrounded by a overwhelmingly vast army of Saracens, until Blake tells them, "Naw, there's no Saracens out there," and then they are in fact invaded by gunshooting Arabs. Just what they feared, in a strange way. The book has some unexpected plot twists. I certainly thought the big finale would likely involve a clash of knights on horseback between the forces of the two cities, with Tarzan and Blake leading the charge. There is a lovingly detailed account of a tournament where Blake wins honors (and his merciful treatment of a downed foe pays off later when he most needs it, a nice moralistic touch Burroughs often included). But although Tarzan introduces himself not only as an Englishman but a peer of the realm, he is only in armor long enough to perform an impressive feat. He THROWS the heavy lance like a spear to slam right through his opponent's shield, armor and chest. ("It was not Viscount Greystoke who faced the knight of the Sepulchre; it was not the king of the great apes. It was the chief of the Waziri, and no other arm in the world could cast a war spear as could his.") After that, though, the Apeman shucks off the heavy mail and weapons like they were one of Jane's chiffon gowns he got caught trying on and he's back to his usual style. The story goes on to include the normal amount of tangling with gorillas and lions and leopards that no Tarzan book would quite be whole without. (Talk about the jungle animals being afraid of thundersticks, no lion with any sense will hang around when he sees a naked bronzed giant with a knife nearby!) Blake gets to perform some more heroics, Zeyt and Ateja and Stimbol return to get tangled in the general running back and forth. Even a war party of the Waziri warriors a hundred strong accompanied by Jad-Bal-Ja himself make the long trek to arrive for the conclusion, although they needn't really have bothered. All in all, it's quite a party. I've only found one or two Tarzan books that really had no merit to them; even the weaker ones usually have a few exciting scenes or interesting ideas, and TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE is a fun read. |
| 10:43 pm | TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN (Oct 14, 2002) From the February and March 1924 issues of ALL STORY (where it was serialized before being published in hardcover), this is a pretty wild adventure with strong elements of satire. People who have only a passing knowledge of Tarzan may think the books are a simple series of fights with wild animals and African tribes, but this book in particular shows a vivid imagination with a good use of extrapolated detail that makes the improbable events more convincing. Along with the three previous books, this is the phase of Burroughs` career where I like his prose best. It`s still eloquent and expressive, but not as overly wordy as the earliest books and not the sparse, brittle tone of the rest of the series. The major part of this story is fine, a classic example of pulp adventure, but the two lengthy subplots are a bit too much added weight and lessen the impact. First, there`s the misadventures of Esteban Miranda, the crazy Spaniard who looks exactly like Tarzan and who comes to be believe he IS Tarzan (carrying method acting a bit too far). We first met Miranda in the previous book, TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION, and here he`s still a prisoner of a cannibal tribe which is unsure what to do with him. Miranda`s usefulness in this book seems to be that (by showing up amnesiac at the Greystoke plantation and leading even Korak and Jane to mistake him for the Apeman), he provides a bit of suspense at the thought that family might be fooled and Jane might, well, carry out her wifely duties. Also, when Tarzan himself turns up at the cannibal village, the natives think he`s the rather ineffectual Miranda and get quite a surprise when they try to capture him. The comic aspect of this falls flat, and might better have been developed as a humorous short story, with mistaken identity and slapstick. Here it just seems like paddding. Then there`s the lengthy interludes with the Alulus, a strange society where the men are meek little wimps who hide in the forest from the hulking, muscular women. This whole concept, which could have been interesting, is handled so clumsily that it gets the book off to a false start which probably discouraged many readers from continuing. Just the idea that these people are so primitive that they don`t have a spoken language, only simple gestures, is impossible to believe in a series where the Great Apes carry on conversations with human beings. Apparently this is Burrough`s reflection on what giving women the vote will lead to, and it rings false from beginning to end. To be fair, there is a huge amount of fiction aimed for a female audience which features matriarchal societies full of kind, loving, noble near saintly women, while the men are all brutal hopeless thugs. From Wonder Woman to CLAN OF THE CARE BEAR (err, CAVE BEAR) to all those 600 page fantasy paperbacks by authors like Robert Jordan, they present a viewpoint just as skewed to their audiences. So it`s not like Burroughs is unique in this. But the bulk of the story, and the best part, is the Apeman`s encounter with the Minuians, the Ant Men of the title. These are eighteen inch tall Caucasians with an elaborate warlike society, the original "pygmies" of myth and legend, not the tribes of short African natives now associated with the name. The Minunians are a terrific creation, their cities of hundred feet high stone "ant hills" are described in great detail, and the working of their class-conscious society is explored. Just a few inches shorter than the smallest recorded midgets, the Minunians are not so tiny as to be completely unbelievable (as if, say, they were six inches high). And there is nothing cute or elfin about them. They are heroic warriors with a strong code of honor, riding small antelope into battle, and Tarzan (and the reader) takes an immediate liking to them). Any resemblance to GULLIVER`S TRAVELS is superficial beyond the basic premise of a normal man interacting with warring cities of tiny humans, Captured by Minunians of an enemy anthill in a vivid scene, Tarzan is (surprisingly enough) shrunk down to their size by scientific doubletalk and taken as a slave. Adding more tension is the nagging knowledge that at some point he will abruptly regain his normal size... not an appealing thought if it happens while he`s in a small stone room. Making the best of things, Tarzan has a grand old time among the Minunians, befriending the Prince Komodoflorensal who was captured with him. When he inevitably makes his near hopeless escape attempt, the Apeman is determined to also bring with them a slave girl who had been kind to them (anything to make it more difficult). In a startling moment, Tarzan discovers that he has retained most of his normal strength and is now capable of bending thick steel bars and leaping effortlessly several times his own length. (Remind anyone of a certain Virginian on Barsoom?) Unfortunately not much is made of his new superhuman powers, and I wish Burroughs had cut back on the anti-feminist Alalus premise to instead show some spectacular scenes of Tarzan leaping over the charging army, strangling a wildcat as big proportionately as a lion, or fighting with a club as large as his body. As it is, our hero is normally so overwheming that he hardly seems any different here. But underneath the classic pulp adventure is a large dose of Burroughs` social criticism, as we find the Minunians are suffering through their own Prohibition, and that the king has been taxing wealthy people so heavily that they have to work harder than ever just to stay afloat (evidently being rich and famous was not all Burroughs thought it would be. "...those who work hard and accumulate property have only their labor for their effort, since the government takes all from them in taxes.") As satire goes, it`s pretty blatant but not really overbearing, and it provides an interesting counterpoint to the bitter remarks in GULLIVER`S TRAVELS. |
| 10:43 pm | TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION (May 10, 2003) From 1923, where it first appeared as a seven-part serial in ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY beginning in December 1922, this is one of the books from (in my opinion) Tarzan`s best period. From roughly TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR to TARZAN AND THE ANT MEN, Burroughs had developed his writing style into something clear and flexible, while keeping the dignified formality of his earliest work. His concept of Tarzan as a complex man with a fully realized supporting cast was in full use, things which would be sorely missed in the second half of the series. And he had not yet become as bitter and filled with dislike of humanity in this period as he later showed. TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION neatly juggles several different plot threads and ties them together (with perhaps a heavy glue of coincidence) into a very entertaining book. There is the introduction of Jad-Bal-Ja, the golden lion himself, but as imposing a presence as he is, he`s not the main focus of the book. For the most part, the story follows a trip by Tarzan back to Opar for some boodle and then to the nearby odd civilization of the Palace of Diamonds. Meanwhile, a vile crew of assorted rogues are also headed for Opar to snatch some of that treasure, among them the Greystoke`s former maid and a Spaniard named Esteban Miranda, who looks so much like Tarzan that he fools even Muviro and the Waziri in daylight. (What are the odds of that, eh?) There are many fascinating details in this book which remind us that, in his prime,. Edgar Rice Burroughs had a wild imagination and a gift of presenting his creations vividly. Opar remains his best conceived and developed lost city, but he introduces something here nearly as intriguing. Not far from Opar and related to it is a vast castle literally studded with diamonds set in gold. Instead of the gnarled Neanderthalish Oparians, though, it`s inhabited by a race of speaking gorillas, who wear jewelry and girdled loinclothes and keep a brutish clan of natives as downtrodden slaves. There`s a tangled genetic mess here, all right. The goons of Opar have interbred with apes enough that they not only look pretty darn simian, they can speak the ape language and even understand the nagging of Manu the monkey. In contrast, the Bolgani look just like rather large and unsavory gorillas but they walk upright without leaning on their knuckles and they have human level intelligence. Perhaps they were originally elevated by the ancient Atlantean founders of the colony to serve as guards and laborers. (Is it just barely possible that Michael Crichton had read this book before writing CONGO?) One thing I like about this book is that Tarzan is genuinely heroic in the chivalrous sense. In the later books, he became indifferent to human suffering and lost himself in an indolent daydream unless hungry or attacked. But in this middle period, he has claimed a large territory as his personal domain and he enforces the peace in it with vigor. Slavery, torture, cannibalism... all are forbidden in Tarzan`s turf and you`d better not let him catch you at it or even entering his domain without permission. Here he immediately is offended at the brutal mistreatment of the black slaves by the Bolgani and he resolves to free the humans and establish justice in this area. Tarzan`s supporting cast is also very welcome in these middle period books. Jane is brave, admirable and as heroic in her own right as her husband. Their son Korak is not seen that much and wife Meriem is oddly absent, but then young Jack Clayton had enjoyed a dramatic role in the previous book, TARZAN THE TERRIBLE. And the Waziri tribesmen are repeatedly described as the bravest and most competent warriors in Africa, if a bit bloodthirsty and eager for a fight. They are "clean-cut, powerful men, with intelligent faces and well molded features.." Their loyalty to Tarzan and Jane might seem a bit overdone to touch modern sensibilities, but after all the Apeman was their chief and blood brother and it would be a wise fighter who accepted Tarzan as a leader. My delicate sweetie La also appears, still hopelessly lusting for Tarzan, exiling herself to save him from sacrifice and still strutting about nearly naked; she doesn`t seem quite as murderous or memorable as in her other appearances, though. As for Jad-Bal-Ja himself, well what can I say? He`s an impressive character on the stage. Rescued as a cub and raised painstakingly by Tarzan himself, the golden lion grows into a huge blackmaned beauty. Probably only Tarzan could have trained a lion to follow spoken commands, to fetch and heel. Wnat rings most true is that, however well trained he is, Jad-Bal-Ja always stays more than a bit unruly and unpredictable and even Tarzan has trouble reining him in against his natural impulses. He certainly gets a workout too, plowing his way through a full scale battle and leaving raw piles of chewed Bolgani all over the place. This era has my favorite characterization of Tarzan himself. He has enough sophistication to tease Jane that perhaps his father was in fact an ape ("...you know Kala always insisted that he was"), and there are referennce to his sitting in the House of Lords and enjoying a late cup of coffee "upon his return from the theatre or a ball." This is the same man who is enthusiastic about dropping from a tree to kill an antelope with his knife and, in this story, hoisting a full grown gorilla to his shoulders and carrying the carcass around with him. It`s the duality of Tarzan that makes him unique. Although he might prefer to lived naked in the trees and eat raw meat all the time, his genuine love for Jane has led him to develop a huge plantation and ranch, with a comfortable bungalow for a home. I don`t think this is entirely for Jane`s sake, either. Tarzan always has to be the alpha male, the Big Bwana, chief of his tribe whether ape or Waziri. He supervises his estate carefully and also enforces his self-imposed rule on the territory around him. For all of his (and the author`s) sermons against civilization, Tarzan seems determined to bring basic law and order even to tribes which don`t affect him directly. Within three or four books later, the Apeman would essentially forget his family and responsibilities and escape to a simpler childhood`s fantasy of no schedule and no decisions to make. He was less interesting as the wandering solitary savage, with only Nkima and occasionally his pet lion, than he was as the literal Lord of the Jungle. |
| 10:42 pm | TARZAN THE TERRIBLE (Jan 2, 2003) From 1921, where it was published as a seven part serial in ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY, this is more like it! Starting off these reviews with some of the weaker, less energetic entries from later in the series gave me a wrong impression. I had forgotten just how good Edgar Rice Burroughs could be. TARZAN THE TERRIBLE is one of the very best of the entire series, filled with imaginative details, strong characterization and tighter plotting that`s unified by the Apeman`s search for his missing wife. It showcases one of Burroughs` most intriguing and believable Lost Worlds. Seperated from discovery by a huge nearly impassable morass, Pal-Ul-Don features a few prehistoric beasts still surviving, notably the sabretooth and the triceratops- like `gryf` (I`m sure the triceratops is the favorite dinosaur of many of us, and if one could be still extant and lumbering around, I`d prefer it to a T. Rex, that`s for sure). Pa-Ul-Don is inhabited by two species of pithecanthropoi...essentially modern humans except for their opposable big toes and odd thumbs. Oh, and there is the fact that they have long, prehensible tails. The black skinned denizens are the Waz-Don, and except for the fact that they have a beautiful glossy pelt, they`re mirror images of the white skinned Ho-Don. The Ho-Don live in settlements, while the Waz-Don build elaborate caves which honeycomb cliff walls. (I love the images of these guys scurrying up and down sheer cliffs with their system of removable pegs set in holes in the walls...if the people I know who pay to practice indoor rock climbing could spend a weekend in Paul-Ul-Don, they`d be delirious.) What`s most appealing about this story is how open-minded Burroughs was. The Ho-Don and the Waz-Don are essentially equals in intelligence and morals; and characters from both species are likeable. Tarzan himself is more complex and subtle than the simplistic one-dimensional portrayal he was later shown as. For one thing, he enjoys primitive art for its own sake. In an interesting moment, he appreciates gazing at scenery ("that spiritual enjoyment of beauty that only the man-mind may attain..."). Later, we`re told that he had differed from the apes in many characteristics "not the least of these were in a measure spiritual, and one that had doubtless been as strong as another in influencing Tarzan`s love of the jungle had been his appreciaton of the beauties of nature." This dual nature is one of the things I love best about the character. Tarzan is not a mere animal in a human form, he is a unique symbiosis of the human and the animal natures. In the later books, this was forgotten in favor of increasingly mean spirited attacks on human nature, but the balance between Lord Greystoke strolling through Hyde Park with Jane on a Sunday and Tarzan ripping raw meat from a freshly killed gazelle* is an essential part of the appeal. Tarzan is yin and yang in a single body. Another vital factor in this book being so good is Jane Clayton herself. She is badly missed by her absence after TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION. Not only does she give the Apeman a compelling, urgent motivation to go through all the hardship and danger he undertakes here (in later books, he often seemed to get involved in wars and crises out of boredom), but Jane herself is a very likeable character. For the past two years, she has been a prisoner of the Germans and the native tribes, but she`s kept her self respect and as much dignity as possible. As soon as she can escape, she does. Jane is half naked and unarmed, but in a short period of time, she`s making spears and building a tree house. The moment when she claps her hands in joy at managing to build a fire is a delight for the reader as well as herself. Jane provides a focus to Tarzan`s life that he himself realizes very well, and her inexplicable absence from the later books accounts for much of their blank, inconsequential feeling. There is another supporting character that keeps showing up during the story, a dark giant in a loincloth who doggedly struggles through the morass and vicious wildlife that gave Tarzan himself so much trouble. This stranger is carrying bandoliers of ammo and an Enfield rifle which he refuses to use until he reaches his goal. Longtime readers of the series will know who he is, of course, and his dramatic entrance at just the most critical moment is perfectly handled. The fact that Tarzan, his family and friends, love each other so strongly that they will hike through wilderness for years to find each other, is touching and rewarding for the reader to witness. There is a lot more to recommend in this book. In Pal-Ul-Don, Tarzan encounters a false religion which he manipulates to his own ends, and the situation is handled much more defty than in later books. It should be noted too that, here the Apeman actually is Tarzan the Terrible in deed. Not only is he capable of rampaging through a mob of armed opponents, throwing them in all directions, leaping over low walls so quickly that no one is sure what happened to him, killing lions with a knife and so forth, but he`s remarkably callous. Twice, when he needs to inflitrate, he thinks nothing of killing a Ho-Don priest (who has done him no harm), cutting off the man`s tail and fastening it to his loincloth to pose as a Ho-Don. He also lops off the head of a slain warrior, taking it with him as a "recollection of the days when he had delighted in baiting the blacks of the distant jungle of his birth." (I don`t remember those scenes in the recent Disney cartoon.) There is nothing saintly about Tarzan, he`s no perfect Zen master. ____________ *There is a mention here of Tarzan supplementing his diet with fruit and berries, a detail neglected in the later books which seemed to have him thriving exclusively on raw meat. |