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Title: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, James Taliaferro ISBN: 0812967062 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 11 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6
Rating: 5
Summary: The fantastic romance of White Skin of the Apes
Comment: Listed in Cawthorn's and Moorcock's "Fantasy: The 100 Best Books".
The Weissmuller movies didn't get him right. The TV series haven't got him right. And the Disney movie CERTAINLY won't get him right. Burrough's original narration of the story of Tarzan is a mix of bloodthirsty savagery and unrestrained suspension of disbelief that few would attempt to capture these days.
The Tarzan series is unique among his author's body of work. Where the Barsoom, Pellucidar and Caspak series concern modern men travelling to exotic lands and falling in love with native women, this time around it is a modern woman who comes to the wilderness and steals the heart of the savage protagonist, who must now step up to her civilized ways.
The tale is laced with bloody scenes of man-against-man and man-against-beast rampage. The great apes among which Tarzan grows are a cannibal species, who eat the prisioners of raids against other simian clans. The king ape kills Tarzan's father in a moment where he is caught off guard, mourning the recent death of his wife. When Tarzan first encounters men (an African tribe), he hunts and kills one of them to steal his arrows (killing being the way of the jungle, since Tarzan knows nothing of human behavior). Also, these men turn out to be cannibals too. And when the white men finally arrive, they raid their village and kill almost every one in an attempt to rescue a captured comrade.
After growing wild among beasts, Tarzan (whose name menas White Skin) realizes that he is different from his ape family. And through a series of inventions of his own (like making a rope) and fortunate coincides (like the use of a found hunting knife), he steps up the evolutionary ladder by himself. The moment he learns to read and write from illustrated primers and a dictionary is among the most improbable in the whole book. But if we have kept up with it until now, allowing ourselves to accept that a human child can be raised by apes, then his ascension to superiority isn't that hard to embrace.
Tarzan turns out to be the primeveal lovesick nerd. After the first time he sees Jane Porter (the first white woman he ever casts his eyes on), his heart is all for her. He writes her a love letter, which smacks of the most pityful puppy love ("I want you. I am yours. You are mine... When you see this you will know that it is for you and that Tarzan of the Apes loves you"). Yet our hero is true and noble, and he holds the upper hand in his homeland. The girl can't do anything but be carried away by her primeveal pretender.
I recommend you get this edition I'm reviewing, the one by Penguin. Besides the introduction which gives a valuable background to the place of Tarzan among popular literature and some details on the life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, it contains a series of notes that signal where he took some liberties with his story's setting (like placing American plants in the African jungle).
The English is a little bit archaic, the characterization tends to cartoon and stereotype, but the story is powerful and nothing captures the beauty of the original like the original itself. Read Tarzan of the Apes, and meet again for the first time an archetypical hero of timeless charm.
Rating: 5
Summary: A classic novel about a jungle legend!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment: I have had this book for years and never thought I would like it because of the Tarzan portrayals in the movies. But I was pleasantly surprised by the well written adventures of the jungle lord. Rice Burroughs has fully captured the essence of a man who comes to see civilization with the eyes of a child but the heart of a warrior. His great love for Kala the apemother and Jane his future mate were written beautifully. I recently saw Disneys Tarzan and the Chris Lambert film Greystoke the Legend of Tarzan and they both capture the story of Tarzan as Burroughs envisioned it. I truly enjoyed the book and recommend it highly. I cant wait to read more of the books in the series.
Rating: 3
Summary: Plenty to chew on - just hard to swallow
Comment: There are books that everyone 'knows' but hardly anybody reads any more. Reading these classics can be quite illuminating; they are not what you think. For example, do you really know how Dracula was killed? Or why The Virginian said "Smile when you call me that"? Read the originals; you'll be surprised.
"Tarzan of the Apes", the first of 23 Tarzan adventures by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is full of surprises. The Tarzan of this book is not the Johnny Weissmuller or Ron Ely that you might know. He is not raised by gorillas (as I had thought) but by mythical 'anthropoids', a sort of missing link between man and gorilla, with rudimentary speech and a social structure that includes ritual and dance. This is a science fiction tale, a sort of "Lost World" meets "Jungle Book". Tarzan befriends and converses with (and kills and eats) a variety of beasts.
There are aspects of the story that modern readers will find as hard to swallow as some of Tarzan's raw meat dinners. For example, this jungle is populated with lions, hyenas and elephants, creatures that in reality never go near rain forests. We are also asked to believe that Tarzan teaches himself to read and write from books that he finds.
Many modern readers will also find the racialism difficult to take. He boasts of being "Tarzan, killer of beasts and many black men". Coming on a village deep in the jungle, he immediately readies his bow and poisoned arrows. When his European companion admonishes him that it is wrong to kill humans, the hero protests "But these are black men". (Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe that scene was included in the Disney version). This is a 1914 American novel, with all the prejudices intact.
It's quite well written; Burroughs is very readable. The plotting is a strange mixture of ingenuity and clumsiness. There is a very clever device that involves Jane thinking there are two ape-men, one an admirer, the other her rescuer. But the plot also requires three separate mutinies, two of which just happen to involve cousins, to take place off the same remote African beach. This is beyond coincidence.
So is this genre classic still worth reading? I think so, for the same reason "Dracula" and "The Virginian" are still worth reading; this is the book that started it all.
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Title: The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs ISBN: 0345315758 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 1990 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Tarzan: The Classics - The Beasts of Tarzan, the Son of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs ISBN: 0345408306 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs ISBN: 0345331389 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 1990 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
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Title:The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs ASIN: B00005ORLN Publisher: Amazon Press List Price(USD): $2.99 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $2.99 |
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Title: The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs ISBN: 0345324390 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 1991 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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