Dr Hermes Reviews - TARZAN

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THE RETURN OF TARZAN (Dec 4, 2003)                             From 1913, where it appeared as a seven part serial beginning with the June issue of NEW STORY MAGAZINE, this is great stuff. So much happens in this book, yet it never feels dense and the pages practically turn themselves. After starting off with a few of the stale, tired entries from the second half of the series, reading one of the first dozen Tarzan books is a refreshing reminder of why Edgar Rice Burroughs was such a major writer of adventure fiction.                     THE RETURN OF TARZAN contains some of the most important moments of the canon. Tarzan marries Jane after much agita and suffering (their love seems genuine and poignant here, strange considering how they seem to drift apart later). He meets the noble Waziri, becomes one of them and eventually their chief. He discovers Opar, first of the many lost cities he will find scattered around Africa, and here he tangles with that other woman in his life, La (I had forgotten that La and Jane had met and that in fact La was about to carve Jane`s giblets when Tarzan interfered; another good reason not to let your girlfriends cross paths). Where TARZAN OF THE APES ended on a wonderfully melodramatic note of romance and self sacrifice, THE RETURN OF TARZAN sets up the framework for the rest of the series.             What I enjoyed most about this book was how complex and introspective Tarzan himself is. After TARZAN AT THE EARTH`S CORE, all those amnesia inducing concussions seemed to have left the Apeman rather dim, a sullen brute moping around with not much on his mind. Here, though, he`s a creature unique in the world. Even though he seems to be able to get along perfectly well wherever he finds himself, Tarzan is also never entirely at home anywhere, always an outsider and a strange one. (His physical abilities help him dominate civilized society through action and charisma, while his intelligence and inventiveness helps him take over when back in the jungles; it`s a neat twist.)             The book gives the Apeman some lengthy episodes in Paris and Algeria; I really would have liked to have seen Burroughs do more of this, rather than dragging out the warring pair of hiden cities one more time. Tarzan in Paris, smoking cigarettes and sipping absinthe* as he enjoys the nightclubs and museums, is a great reminder our hero has spent considerable time cultivating that thin veneer of sophistication he likes to shed when provoked. He`s not simply enduring civilization grudgingly, either. ("In the daytime he haunted the libraries and picture galleries. He had become an oniverous reader...." determined to learn as much history and culture as he could.) This is after all a man who as a boy taught himself to read just out of sheer curiousity and determination. We find out in a later book he has learned Latin so he can enjoy the classics.               Tarzan gets caught up in a mildly sordid domestic scandal, thrashes ten tough Apaches in a terrific scene, fights a pistol duel he doesn`t expect to survive, and in general has a lively time. Then, of all things, he becomes an investigator for the French Foreign Legion (posing as an American big game hunter!) and finds himself running around Algeria after possible traitors. Here, our hero befriends a sheik and fits in so happily with a crew of tough desert Arabs that he is tempted to stay with them permanently. It`s one of the most interesting and yet least remembered episoes in the Apeman`s exploits. (It would have been great if Burroughs had later written Tarzan joining up with a bunch of real Apaches, wandering the Yukon or heading up the Amazon to tangle with the Jivaros. Throwing different challenges at the Apeman, even for only half a book, might have kept the series fresh.)               Two thirds of the way through the book, the Apeman is given the heave ho over the rails of a ship off the African coast and just happens to swim ashore within spitting distance of the cabin where he was born. Imagine that. Burroughs uses up a writer`s career allotment of coincidence right here, as virtually everyone important to the saga somehow ends up on that spot: Jane and her unfortunate fiancee William Clayton, her addled father, her friend Hazel Strong, even Paul D`Arnot (Even Tarzan is confounded by all this. "Paul! In the name of sanity what are you doing here?"). A little hard to believe, but if you`re going to read more Edgar Rice Burroughs (or pulp fiction in general), get used to having one-in-a-million chances lying thick on the ground. Probably, with more planning time and care, Burroughs could have come up plausible ways to drag all these characters together at just the right time. But what the heck, that wasn`t the kind of story he was telling. It`s meant to be a rollercoaster of thrills and chills, where you just hang on and enjoy the ride.         It`s interesting, too, that as much as he loves being back in the jungle, the animals don`t particularly care that Tarzan has returned. When he finds his tribe of great apes, they don`t really remember him at first; although the apes accept him back and get to admire the way he finds food, they`re not wild about Tarzan and certainly didn`t miss him. ("But who or what of all the myriad jungle would there be to welcome his return? Not one. Only Tantor, the elephant, could he call friend. The others would hunt him or flee from him as had been their way in the past.")           The weakest part of the book in my view is the Russian spy, Nikolas Rokoff. Like Dan Backslide, he`s a coward, bully, cad and thief. Rokoff is so completely vile and unpleasant that he stops seeming to be a human being and ends up being almost amusing as he doesn`t miss a single chance to harass and annoy everyone. And Tarzan keeps letting him go with stern warnings! (Well, in the next book, though, Rokoff pays off his bad karma.) The ill fated William Clayton, who mean well and does his best but who just isn`t up to the trials he must face, comes across as believable and very human in contrast. He, Tarzan and Jane all make their decisions (in the tangled mess of who is going to get married and who inherit the Greystoke title) with such thoughtfulness and concern with right and wrong that they all deserve to be rewarded. ______________   *It makes the heart grow fonder.

THE BEASTS OF TARZAN (June 22, 2003) From ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY, where it ran as a serial in May and June 1914, this ended up as the third Tarzan book. In many ways, THE BEASTS OF TARZAN is the least well known or mentioned of the early books. The first two, of course, give the Apeman`s origin story and are most often discussed. THE SON OF TARZAN introduces Korak and Meriem and also has its internal chronoogical problems which have been the subject of much speculation by Philip Jose Farmer and the Wold Newton school. But THE BEASTS OF TARZAN is usually neglected, which is a shame as it`s lively and brisk, and way over the top. It does introduce Mugambi and Akut, finishes off a couple of villains and naturally has its full share of thrills and spills. Still, it seems to have an air of an early filler in the saga and winds up with the characters pretty much as they were on the first page, except for some wear and tear. The story itself is an old-fashioned melodrama, with the hateful villain Nikolas Rokoff going to considerable expense and great effort to get a convoluted revenge on the Apeman. Once he escapes from the French prison where Tarzan had sent him, Rokoff might be expected to hire a thug with a rifle to simply shoot his enemy down but noooo, that would not be twisted enough. Just as master criminals are compelled to explain their plans before leaving the hero in the death trap, so Rokoff arranges for little Jack Clayton to be kidnapped and raised by cannibals ("His little boy a savage maneater! It was too horrible to contemplate!") and for Jane to end up in a harem (you know, I have to wonder if maybe she didn`t have some kind of karma involving harems from an earlier life, she ends up on her way there so often). As for Tarzan himself, does Rokoff leave him dead in a pit or dropped overboard with a rock tied to his neck? Or maybe abandoned deep in the Arctic to freeze to death? Nah. He maroons the perfectly healthy and furious Apeman on a large island within easy sailing distance of Africa! Duh. As you might expect, this is like stranding a pulp fan in a used book store. In no time, Tarzan has whipped up a stone knife, bow and arrows, grass rope, loincloth and treehouse, and is feasting on raw deer carcass while he figures out how to get on Rokoff`s trail. What gives this book much of its appeal is that our hero assembles the All Beast Squadron to help him. Luckily there are a colony of the Great Apes on the island and he quickly kills their leader and sets up Akut, a mangani of unusual insight, as the leader of the pack under Tarzan`s command. (It`s interesting that, although these huge seven foot tall apes understand his lingo, they are actually a slightly different species than the mangani who raised the boy. I don`t think it`s been emphasized that there are two different species of mangani in the books.) With Akut as his lieutenant, Tarzan has a commando squad of a dozen surly apes following him. We will meet Akut again, disguised as Korak`s grandmother (!) in the next book. Tarzan also befriends a panther. Pause for a second while I crank my suspension of disbelief up a few notches. Okay, this isn`t a cub he raises and trains like Jad-Bal-Ja the Golden Lion. This is a full-grown wild panther that Tarzan frees from being pinned under a fallen tree. That`s all it takes for Sheeta to decide he likes this human and start trotting alongside and hunting with the Apeman. The only explanation I can see is that Tarzan must be giving off unique and very potent body language and signals that the cat responds to. In a short time, Sheeta not only is devouring the kill alongside his new master, he refrains from attacking the apes and humans when told not to. (What makes this more plausible is that Sheeta is always dangerous and unpredictable, barely under Tarzan`s control; he`s not a trained police dog or anything.) Finally, Tarzan meets and befriends Mugambi, the only survivor of a party of natives who have the misfortune to encounter the panther and the apes. Mugambi will be a lifelong friend and companion to Tarzan`s family; in JEWELS OF OPAR we learn that he has spent time in London museums and art galleries, soaking up culture, and he sets out on a brave quest of his own to rescue Jane. Now, it`s true that the African natives in these books are often shown as craven, mean-natured and brutal, but then so are most of the white Europeans. There are only a few decent humans in Burroughs` Tarzan books and actually more of them are black than white. Like the Waziri (into which tribe he will be inducted), Mugambi is as noble and heroic as anyone could wish.("The fellow was a magnificent specimen of manhood... a black counterpart in physique to the splendid white man whom he faced.") After that, we`re off on a typical Tarzan adventure as the various characters chase each other all over the jungle for chapter after chapter. Burroughs shows a lot of enthusiasm for details and asides to the reader, and the narrative only slackens a wee bit before building up to a strong finish (the bit about the mutineers could be skipped to give a more unified story). Tarzan takes a lot of punishment this time, including being dragged by a crocodile to its underwater lair, leaving his leg pretty chewed up. All the agita really infuriates the Apeman, and that famous scar on his forehead is pretty much blazing red continously. At one point, Tarzan is throttling one of the bad guys while Jane pleads for his life. "Not again. Before have I permitted scoundrels to live, only to suffer and to have you suffer for my mercy," he replies as he twists the man`s neck like a bottle cap. You know if this were in a movie, he would stop at the last second and mutter something about how the man`s not worth killing. *CRACK!* Not this time.

THE SON OF TARZAN (Feb 12, 2005) This is really good stuff for the most part, but it does make a few stumbles here and there. The first half is absolutely terrific, Burroughs in his element dealing with themes he enjoyed, and his detailed inventiveness and enthusiasm show. Toward the end, though, it does seem to drag its feet quite a bit and it was one of the few Tarzan books where I was tempted to start skimming the pages. (Not that Swedish guy again...!) THE SON OF TARZAN was first published in weekly installments in December 1915 issues of ALL-STORY CAVALIER. It's about, well, the son of Tarzan (doyt!). We start with young John Clayton (called Jack for clarity, what was it with everyone in the Greystoke line being named John?), who is living a life of luxury with his parents in the London manor house. Forget all that stuff you learned in school about not being able to inherit acquired characteristics (if you cut off a cat's tail, her kittens will still be born with tails). Jack has obviously been born with all the instincts and latent superhuman abilities his father only developed by growing up in the jungle. At ten, Jack is big and strong enough to easily manhandle adults, he blithely jumps out his window and scampers through the trees, and he has an overwhelming obsession with the African jungle and its animals. All this despite that fact he has no idea his father is Tarzan of the Apes. (By now, Tarzan has settled comfortably into civilized life despite his strong, almost unbearable urge to go back and occasionally run naked through the jungle. It's only his love for Jane that keeps him in London. Sadly but firmly, he has decided to abandon his former life and not let Jack know what a heller his old man once was.) Through a typical Burroughs barrage of coincidence, two characters from the previous book end up in London at this time. One is Alexis Paulvitch, the surviving Russian thug who has been cruelly abused by the African natives all these years; along with him is Akut, one of the more intelligent Mangani. Akut had been Tarzan's lieutenant in the All-Beast Squad in THE BEASTS OF TARZAN, and he goes along with Paulvitch because he misses his human friend and hopes to find him again. The unlikely team start performing in London music halls, where Akut's dramatic presence and intelligence easily outshine the baggy-pants comedians and ventriloquists. How can Benny Hill compete with an ape who can juggle and ride a bicycle? Inevitably, Jack breaks his curfew and goes to see the performing primate. Akut recognizes a bit of the father in the son, and they immediately becomes great chums. There are a few unfortunate mishaps where the great ape kills a couple of men who were threatening Jack, and the two take off for Africa to return Akut home (Jack disguises the seven foot ape as his invalid grandmother in a wheelchair; pull my leg a bit harder, Edgar). Feeling he can't return to civilization because he would be hanged for the murders, Jack mutters, "Oh, well" and promptly spends the next six years becoming an Apeman himself under Akut's training. He does very well, ending up with the loincloth and spear and whole kit, terrorizing natives and eating raw flesh and all that. (Attacked by one tribe, he concludes all Africans are his enemies and cheerfully murders a few when he needs supplies.) Soon enough, Jack is called Korak ("the Killer", and he's earned it) and he rescues an adorable little girl who is being held prisoner by an atrocious Arab. Meriem grows up in the jungle along with Korak and Akut, and before you know it, she is also somersaulting happily through the trees, stabbing animals for dinner and having a grand time. After a few years, those pesky hormones start to kick in and the two kids get twingy feelings. It looks like we're in for some BLUE LAGOON style soft porn until the plot gets back toward PG developments. There are a lot of the expected battles with big carnivores, alliances with Tantor (who seems a bit more bloodthirsty and unpredictable than in the other books), captures by native tribes and rescues (Korak leads a charge of three thousand ferocious baboons on a village, which must have been quite a sight, not to mention smell), and of course at one point, Jack and Meriem are separated and think the other dead (Burroughs loved to do this, he really knew how to put his characters through purgatory.) Meriem is taken in by an aristocratic English couple who run a large plantation ("...the flower-covered bungalow behind which lay the barns and outhouses of a well-ordered African estate." I must repeat, "outhouse" evidently had a different connotation back then). The man is tall and imposing, with black hair and grey eyes, the woman is lovely and gracious. They are referred to Bwana and My Dear, but c'mon, Edgar... of COURSE, they're Tarzan and Jane. Did he really think any readers wouldn't figure it in the first few paragraphs? It's odd that no mention is made of the Greystokes still searching for their long-lost son, but I assume that's why they're relocated to the hometown turf. At this point, despite large servings of carnage and suspense here and there, the story veers into soap opera territory. A visiting Englishman called the Hon. Morrison Baynes is smitten with the gorgeous jungle jailbait (she's about sixteen at this point) and he starts talking her into going back to London with her. Now, Baynes has no intention of doing the right thing and marrying Meriem - she's a common Arab waif, after all - but he can sure have some fun with her for a while. Not knowing much about relationships, our little girl is seriously tempted and starts to tumble for this smooth-talking dandy. Although he has an understandable weakness for nubile teen flesh, Baynes is not altogether the unredeemable black-hearted villain. He will find himself and his courage tested as more vile brutes lurk about, Meriem is abducted by the atrocious Shiek and his diseased half-brother. It's no placid picnic for Korak, either. He has wandered by and although he sees this girl sure looks like his lost Meriem, she also seems to be romantically snuggling with this English dude. There's a lot of anxiety and mixed emotions harder for the junior Apeman to deal with than just wrestling one more lion to the ground. I have to give Burroughs credit here; although you can reasonably expect a happy ending, it's hard to say at any point what Meriem or Baynes or Korak are going to decide. With his Barsoom stories, Burroughs soon dropped John Carter and Dejah Thoris into the supporting cast and started using a variety of new, younger heroes and heroines in the books. This worked well and kept the series fresh. He may have been thinking about doing the same here, but Korak never took over. Tarzan as a merchandising tool (with the movies and lunchboxes and Big Little Books and so forth) was just too much in demand to step down. So he was back on stage in TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR. Korak and Meriem appeared a few more times (Korak especially had a great dramatic scene in TARAZAN THE TERRIBLE) and they did produce a little heir before quietly drifting out of the stories. It's all a pity, in my opinion. After TARZAN AND THE GOLDEN LION, the Apeman's family faded out. Jane made one or two further appearances (especially welcome as a co-star in TARZAN'S QUEST). Without his wife, his son and daughter-in-law and grandson (wouldn't you love a few scenes with Tarzan teaching a toddler how to swim or ride a baby elephant?), the Apeman became a much less appealing and overly simplified figure. But, judging by the long run of the series and the merchandising empire that is still active today, Burroughs knew what the public wanted and was willing to supply it. It's easy for me to say what should have been written, but then I wasn't there trying to provide for my family by selling novels. Burroughs has specifically distinguished between the ordinary Bolgani (or gorilla) and the Mangani of which Akut is a splendid specimen. The Mangani are "almost extinct... Even the natives seldom see these great, hairy, primordial men." Interesting choice of words there. Finally, there is the amazingly tangled and unworkable chronology of the life of young Jack Clayton. Philip Jose Farmer had his theories to explain how Korak could be born in 1912 and serve in WW I (I've heard of volunteers lying about their age, but...), and several other explanations have been put forward. I think I'm just going to let the matter pass, as more industrious minds than mine have struggled with it.

TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR (March 30, 2003) From the November and December 1916 issues of ALL-STORY WEEKLY, this is more like it! I started these reviews with some of the lesser known books in the series and, well, there's a reason why those later books are not as well known. They're not very good, particularly when compared with the earlier entries. JEWELS OF OPAR, on the other hand, is a lot of fun to breeze through. It doesn't have a linear plot as much as a tangle of threads weaving in and out (Burroughs basically sets a dozen characters loose in the jungle and has them bounce off each other for a hundred and fifty pages), but the writing itself has much more energy and enthusiasm than the latter half of the series showed. There is more description and detail, and plenty of vivid incidents which may not be plausible but are still dramatic (a rhino in a trench fighting seven lions may be something that wouldn't happen in real life, but it's a wild image.) And the final paragraph is in effect a wonderful punchline that leaves the reader knowing something which the puzzled characters will never learn. For me at least, the most interesting aspect of Tarzan is his duality. He's unique in the world, the only one of his kind. He can enjoy an art gallery in London with Jane, while not being really happy in the constricting clothing and stuffy interiors. Yet back among the great apes or his Waziri, he's also somehow not fully at home either. Tarzan is the classic misfit and outsider, living in two worlds but not wholly of either. This is something that was lost after the tenth book or so, where the Apeman apparently abandoned his family and went back to a simplistic jungle life. In JEWELS OF OPAR, he comes back on horseback "from a tour of inspection of his vast African estate" and then spends "the afternoon in his study, reading and answering letters". Yet the very next night, he's droppng naked out of a tree onto a deer because he just HAS to kill something himself and devour some blody flesh. Tarzan is actually more savage than his tribe of Waziri, since they will not eat some of the odd items he enjoys and they prefer their meat cooked. The Apeman enjoys fresh meat, uncooked and unspoiled (hey, Tarzan, how's that trichinosis going lately?) While in later books, our boy seems to live entirely on raw meat and river water, here Burroughs is still taking time to mention that Tarzan eats a wide variety of prey, including "beetles, rodents and caterpillars". Once or twice, there is mention of fruit, which may not be as macho as raw flesh but which is useful to prevent scurvy. The tangled events in the story spring from the misdeeds of a renegade Belgian officer, Albert Werper, and his uneasy alliance with a vicious Arab cut-throat named Achmet Zek. Werper is weak and greedy, more an opportunist than the outright predator Zek is. Tarzan has returned to steal a hundred ingots of gold from the hidden treasure vaults of Opar (hey, the Oparians don't even know about the gold and wouldn't have any use for it if they did, so Tarzan feels it might as well be put to good use on his plantation, right?). Werper ends up with a pouch of incredibly valuable gems (thus, the book's title). Tarzan gets away with the sacred sacrificial knife of the Flaming God and so has a steaming La chasing him with fifty of her brutish followers. Meanwhile, Jane has been abducted by the Arabs, who think they can get a good price for her in a harem somewhere, and a giant Waziri warrior named Mugambi* is tracking that party with determination to rescue Jane and avenge his slain tribesmen. So there are a lot of people chasing each other back and forth through Afriica, and a lot of agita. To complicate things just a bit more, Tarzan has been conked on the head by falling rubble and suffered one of his occasional amnesiac episodes, where he has forgotten all about everything that happened since his puberty. More than a few commentaries have wondered if, deep down, the Apeman doesn't welcome these memory losses and perhaps subconsciously cause them. It's a great way to forget all his responsibilities and problems, just being a hairless ape running through the jungle for a while. Opar itself is one of the great lost civilizations in pulp fiction. Crumbling and nearly ruined, the last surviving outpost of one of Atlantis' colonies, Opar has a population of males who sound a lot like stereotyped Neanderthals. Short, stocky, with long powerful arms and bent legs, the Oparians also have interbred with the apes. In fact, they speak Mangani and have some of the apes living with them. (I'd love to see National Geographic do a special on these guys.) Yet, somehow through some real stretching of credulity, the females are still gorgeous beauties "descended from a single priestess of the royal house of Atlantis who had been in Opar at the time of the great catastrophe. Such was La." You have to like La, she's got such a hopeless life. Incredibly beautiful but condemned to eventually have to choose a mate from the Opar galoots, she has spent her life sacrificing people in cold blood on the altars of the Flaming God. As soon as she sees Tarzan, she's smitten with lust and becomes a "pulsing, throbbing volcano of desire" (Yowza!). But of course, Tarzan isn't interested in her in the least and she decides to torture him to death. I think we've all had relationships like that. By the way, doesn't it seem odd that Tarzan doesn't respond at all to La? Here's this completely luscious woman rubbing her body all over him for hours, kissing him all over, fervently pleading with him to love her, they're both essentially naked.. and yet the Apeman just smiles and goes to sleep. What the heck? At this point, Tarzan is going through one of his amnesiac periods where he has absolutely no memory of Jane and yet he doesn't react to La a bit. Maybe Burroughs was just trying to tease the readers without having the editor reach that old blue pencil... Much of what seemed tired and unexciting in the later books is here presented with real conviction. When Tarzan leaps on a lion to kill it with only a knife, it seems as extremely dangerous as it should be presented. The Apeman takes bruising punishment as the furious cat rolls about and it's not the ho-hum routine stunt it seems to be later on. ("To have loosened for an instant his grip there, would have been to bring him within reach of those tearing talons or rending fangs, and have ended forever the grim career of this junglebred English lord.") Although Burroughs himself quickly tired of Jane Clayton (even intending to kill her off in TARZAN THE UNTAMED), she brings a focus and center to the Apeman's life that he badly needs. Without her, he slips back into being a one-dimensional character not much more complicated than his usual film persona. And frankly, Jane is very likeable, a down to earth lady who can take care of herself even when dealing with Arab slavers or hungry lions. Her presence is sorely missed after the halfway point of the series. _________ *Mugambi is another character who deserved to be used much more in the books. He first saved Tarzan's life in THE BEASTS OF TARZAN, became initiated into the Waziri tribe, and seems to accompany the Apeman and Jane as a bodyguard and companion. "Now Mugambi had been in London with his master. He was not the unsophisticated savage that his apparel proclaimed him. He had mingled with the cosmopolitan hordes of the greatest city in the world; he had visited museums and inspected shop windows; and, besides, he was a shrewd and intelligent man." I would have liked to see Burroughs do a story where Tarzan gets in trouble in London and Mugambi has to go bail him out.