ERB - Master of Adventure
One thing I did during the period I wasn't blogging was go to Hobart to see some of Dark MoFo, which I hope to blog about soon. While there we (my family and I) of course went to the Salamanca Markets, and, of course, I looked at a lot of second-hand books. I managed to resist many temptations but there was one old paperback that caught my eye. I tried to resist - I told my wife I'd leave it and if no-one had bought it before we came back that way, then I would buy it.
The book, which you have guessed I bought, is Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A Lupoff. It caught my eye because of the cover illustration which was clearly a Frank Frazetta painting and I can't resist any work by that man. If it was just a Burroughs' novel I could have resisted but this is much more.
It's a scholarly look at the collected works of ERB considering them individually and as series and as a whole in terms of their success both on their own terms and in terms of their influence on the genre.
Burroughs seems almost forgotten now, although his major creations are remembered. Tarzan is of course the most famous and Lupoff does a good job pointing out how the Tarzan most of us are familiar with is not the one Burroughs wrote. For one thing he never spoke in the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" style, it was more a "My name is Tarzan, pleased to meet you Jane." Although, he had to learn English from a Frenchman, since he spoke French first. Yes, Tarzan was trilingual if you include 'beast', bilingual if you don't.
His second most famous series were his Barsoom novels, Barsoom being the name Martians have for Mars. These have recently suffered through the horrible Disney film John Carter, which I can see no justification for. There are scenes in it which prove the people behind the film had read the book so why they proceeded to ignore its heart, rip out its soul and mutilate its corpse is beyond me.
But, once you get to what the real Tarzan and Barsoom stories are you still don't come away with literary brilliance. These are unapologetic adventure stories written primarily to entertain. ERB himself said he didn't write because he wanted to be a novelist or create great art. He was poor, he had a family, so in the evenings he wrote on the back of envelopes and managed to sell the result for a few hundred dollars to one of the pulps of the day - a big sum in 1912.
As such ERB wrote slavishly, but didn't spend hours and hours poring over his work refining it. This led to a high output, most of his books took him a couple of months to write, but also many flaws. There is no contention that Burroughs was a particularly skilled writer. His stories are full of plot holes and rely heavily on coincidence to turn out. But, for the most part, they are exciting adventure stories filled with outlandish beings and lost civilisations.
And where his plots may be full of holes, his civilisations are full of detail with rich histories and cultures. Outlandish yes, but rich.
Lupoff also places ERB in a chronology, looking at some of his sources and considering some of the influences he had - suggesting that even sword and sorcery is deeply indebted to Tarzan, despite it not being the genre of Lord Greystoke. I think there could be debate on how strong the influences Lupoff discusses were but it's always interesting to consider the development of genres over time.
Lupoff finishes by pondering the longevity of ERB's works and suggests that, as a character, Tarzan had a good chance to outlive the other modern 'supermen' of literature - Superman and Sherlock Holmes. Back in the 60s maybe that was possible, but clearly it hasn't come true. Maybe if his film incarnations hadn't been such pale reflections of their source material he'd have done better. And the abovementioned disgrace to John Carter certainly won't help ERB's reputation.
But Lupoff has encouraged me to read more of these adventures, and I hope the adaptations can be forgotten without us losing the source material completely. There are fantastic vistas to visit within those pages, let's do some travelling.
Keep dreaming!
The book, which you have guessed I bought, is Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A Lupoff. It caught my eye because of the cover illustration which was clearly a Frank Frazetta painting and I can't resist any work by that man. If it was just a Burroughs' novel I could have resisted but this is much more.
It's a scholarly look at the collected works of ERB considering them individually and as series and as a whole in terms of their success both on their own terms and in terms of their influence on the genre.
Burroughs seems almost forgotten now, although his major creations are remembered. Tarzan is of course the most famous and Lupoff does a good job pointing out how the Tarzan most of us are familiar with is not the one Burroughs wrote. For one thing he never spoke in the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" style, it was more a "My name is Tarzan, pleased to meet you Jane." Although, he had to learn English from a Frenchman, since he spoke French first. Yes, Tarzan was trilingual if you include 'beast', bilingual if you don't.
His second most famous series were his Barsoom novels, Barsoom being the name Martians have for Mars. These have recently suffered through the horrible Disney film John Carter, which I can see no justification for. There are scenes in it which prove the people behind the film had read the book so why they proceeded to ignore its heart, rip out its soul and mutilate its corpse is beyond me.
But, once you get to what the real Tarzan and Barsoom stories are you still don't come away with literary brilliance. These are unapologetic adventure stories written primarily to entertain. ERB himself said he didn't write because he wanted to be a novelist or create great art. He was poor, he had a family, so in the evenings he wrote on the back of envelopes and managed to sell the result for a few hundred dollars to one of the pulps of the day - a big sum in 1912.
As such ERB wrote slavishly, but didn't spend hours and hours poring over his work refining it. This led to a high output, most of his books took him a couple of months to write, but also many flaws. There is no contention that Burroughs was a particularly skilled writer. His stories are full of plot holes and rely heavily on coincidence to turn out. But, for the most part, they are exciting adventure stories filled with outlandish beings and lost civilisations.
And where his plots may be full of holes, his civilisations are full of detail with rich histories and cultures. Outlandish yes, but rich.
Lupoff also places ERB in a chronology, looking at some of his sources and considering some of the influences he had - suggesting that even sword and sorcery is deeply indebted to Tarzan, despite it not being the genre of Lord Greystoke. I think there could be debate on how strong the influences Lupoff discusses were but it's always interesting to consider the development of genres over time.
Lupoff finishes by pondering the longevity of ERB's works and suggests that, as a character, Tarzan had a good chance to outlive the other modern 'supermen' of literature - Superman and Sherlock Holmes. Back in the 60s maybe that was possible, but clearly it hasn't come true. Maybe if his film incarnations hadn't been such pale reflections of their source material he'd have done better. And the abovementioned disgrace to John Carter certainly won't help ERB's reputation.
But Lupoff has encouraged me to read more of these adventures, and I hope the adaptations can be forgotten without us losing the source material completely. There are fantastic vistas to visit within those pages, let's do some travelling.
Keep dreaming!
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