Last Call: What Made Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Writing Unique?

Michael Sellers Tarzan

I’m at the very, very end with John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood.  I’ve been holding out for one last interview with someone very significant who has been signaling they are willing, but has not yet come through. In the meantime, although I think the book makes considerable progress on the issue of trying to define what it was about Edgar Rice Burroughs that causes him to stand out from all other fiction of this type, and to establish a very emotional and in many cases lifelong connection with the reader — I don’t think I’m all the way there yet.  I know I’ve tossed this out here before but I’m doing it again: What, exactly, is so unique about Edgar Rice Burroughs?

One of the things I’ve learned in my journey is that it’s perfectly acceptable to footnote comments from a “weblog”, and I know that we have some on here who can contribute in a major way, and I’m hoping for some nuggets of comment gold that I can cite …..

One of the best attempts at capturing Burroughs’ essence comes from Gore Vidal in 1967 article for Esquire Magazine.  Here are some of the key excerpts:

“Most of the stories I wrote were the stories I told myself just before I went to sleep,” said Edgar Rice Burroughs, describing his own work. . . . With a sense of recapturing childhood, I have just reread several Tarzan books. ….All through these stories one gets the sense that one is daydreaming, too. Episode follows episode with no particular urgency. Tarzan is always knocked on the head and taken captive; he always escapes; there is always a beautiful princess or high priestess who loves him and assists him; there is always a loyal friend who fights beside him, very much in the Queequeg tradition which Leslie Fielder assures us is the urning in the fuel supply of the American psyche. But no matter how difficult the adventure, Tarzan, clad only in a loincloth with no weapon save a knife (the style is contagious), wins against all odds and returns to his shadowy wife.

And

 For instance, how many adults have an adventure serial running in their heads? How many consciously daydream, turning on a story in which the dreamer ceases to be an employee of I.B.M and becomes a handsome demigod moving through splendid palaces, saving maidens from monsters (or monsters from maidens: this is a jaded time). Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality. Although this sort of Mittyesque daydreaming is supposed to cease in maturity, I suggest that more adults than we suspect  are bemusedly wandering about with a full Technicolor extravaganza going on in their heads. Clad in tights, rapier in hand, the daydreamers drive their Jaguars at fantastic speeds through a glittering world of adoring love objects, mingling anachronistic historic worlds with science fiction.  “Captain, the time-warp’s been closed! We are now trapped in a parallel world, inhabited entirely by women with three breasts.” Though from what we can gather about these imaginary worlds, they tend to be more Adlerian than Freudian: The motor drive is the desire not for sex (other briefer fantasies take care of that) but for power, for the ability to dominate one’s environment through physical strength. I sate all this with perfect authority because I have just finished rereading several books by the master of American daydreamers, Edgar Rice Burroughs . . . . .

Vidal winds up with:

There is something basic in the appeal of the 1914 Tarzan which makes me think that he can still hold his own as a daydream figure, despite the sophisticated challenge of his two contemporary competitors, Ian Fleming and Mickey Spillane. For most adults, Tarzan (and John Carter of Mars) can hardly compete wit the conspicuous consumer consumption of James Bond or the sickly violence of Mike Hammer, but for children and adolescents, the old appeal continues. All of us need the idea of a world alternative to this one. From Plato’s Republic to Opar to Bond-land, at every level, the human imagination has tried to imagine something better for itself than the existing society. Man left Eden when we got up off all fours, endowing most of his descendants with nostalgia as well as chronic backache. In its naive way, the Tarzan legend returns us to that Eden where, free of clothes and the inhibitions of an oppressive society, a man can achieve his continuing need, which is, as William Faulkner put it in his high Confederate style, to prevail as well as endure. The current fascination with L.S.D. and non-addictive drugs — not to mention alcoholism — is all part of a general sense of frustration and boredom. The individual’s desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining. Since there are few legitimate releases for the average man, he must take to daydreaming. James Bond, Mike Hammer and Tarzan are all dream-selves, and the aim of each is to establish personal primacy in a world which in reality diminishes the individual. Among adults, increasing popularity of these lively inferior fictions strikes me as a most significant (and unbearably sad) phenomenon.

My sense of it is that Vidal is close, but still not quite hitting the bullseye.  I do think that he is correct when makes the connections between dreaming, daydreaming, and Burroughs.  It’s as if, when reading an ERB novel, that you are in the midst of the most fantastic dream ever and you are carried along as effortlessly as when you are dreaming.   I’ll give him that.

But I think there was more.

If I were to get one of those dial-o-meters like they use with focus groups on political debate nights and have it hooked up to me to measure the joy of the moment and degree of immersion when reading, here is what it would show.  The scale is 1 – 100, right?

  • Burroughs’s contemporaries and semi-contemporaries, Haggard, Verne, Wells — 60
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — 70
  • The best modern “serious fiction” I’ve ever read — Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, James Joyce, Hemingway — 75
  • “Exception to the rule” great fiction — stories that for some difficult to define reason just seem to speak to my spirit — The Old Man and the Sea, The Pearl, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, Slaughterhouse 5 —  80
  • Burroughs at his worst — the later books, the potboilers — 80
  • The best classic sci-fi — Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land, — 82
  • Burroughs at his best — Tarzan, Return of Tarzan, A Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars, Warlord of Mars,  — 92

How is it that the books of ERB would cause me to dial up the meter that high?

A word that I find myself using is “imaginative transport” — that indefinable ability to take you from wherever it is that life has you (usually stuck in some sort of mud or traffic somewhere) and transport you to a world that is engaging, and that seems to possess certain things that have a deeply felt innate appeal.  With Tarzan it is the jungle and a sense of, perhaps, Eden.  With Tarzan it was also — particularly in my youth — something about Tarzan’s ability to move effortlessly through the upper canopy of the rainforest.  Wasn’t that almost like flying?  Dream flying, I mean?

To this day I persistently have a dream of flying — a dream in which I’m able, simply by exerting my arms like wings, gain enough traction to get hundreds of feet up into the air.  And then I can (and it all seems reasonable) swoop and fly, and the favorite path that I tend to take on these occasional dream flights is through a steeply inclined forest — a “mountains of the mist rain forest”……in a way, it’s like Tarzan.  (It’s also like the curious moment at the beginning of Avatar, the very first image, when we hear Jake Sully talk about dreams of flight over an image of a rain forest….hmm….I always wondered what Cameron was up to with that non-sequitur of a start.)

As a fifteen year old living in Germany and reading the Tarzan books, I recall riding the bus to school on a route that took us through a fairly dense forest.  In the spring, as the leaves came out, filled with chlorophyll, I would lean against the window and look up into the trees and dream of a Tarzan-like journey.

But it was Barsoom that, more than any other creation, caught my imagination.  There was a grandeur to it, and a history — but again, flying was part of it too.  The very first passage of Burroughs that I ever read was the opening to Llana of Gathol (I picked up the book on the shelves of a library mostly because I was curious about the strange double “L”)….

No matter how instinctively gregarious one may be there are times when
one longs for solitude. I like people. I like to be with my family, my
friends, my fighting men; and probably just because I am so keen for
companionship, I am at times equally keen to be alone. It is at such
times that I can best resolve the knotty problems of government in
times of war or peace. It is then that I can meditate upon all the
various aspects of a full life such as I lead; and, being human, I have
plenty of mistakes upon which to meditate that I may fortify myself
against their recommission.

When I feel that strange urge for solitude coming over me, it is my
usual custom to take a one man flier and range the dead sea bottoms and
the other uninhabited wildernesses of this dying planet; for there
indeed is solitude. There are vast areas on Mars where no human foot
has ever trod, and other vast areas that for thousands of years have
known only the giant green men, the wandering nomads of the ocher
deserts.

Sometimes I am away for weeks on these glorious adventures in solitude.
Because of them, I probably know more of the geography and topography
of Mars than any other living man; for they and my other adventurous
excursions upon the planet have carried me from the Lost Sea of Korus,
in the Valley Dor at the frozen South to Okar, land of the black
bearded yellow men of the frozen North, and from Kaol to Bantoom; and
yet there are many parts of Barsoom that I have not visited, which will
not seem so strange when there is taken into consideration the fact
that although the area of Mars is like more than one fourth that of
Earth its land area is almost eight million square miles greater. That
is because Barsoom has no large bodies of surface water, its largest
known ocean being entirely subterranean. Also, I think you will admit,
fifty-six million square miles is a lot of territory to know
thoroughly.

Upon the occasion of which I am about to tell you I flew northwest from
Helium, which lies 30 degrees south of the equator which I crossed about
sixteen hundred miles east of Exum, the Barsoomian Greenwich. North and
west of me lay a vast, almost unexplored region; and there I thought to
find the absolute solitude for which I craved.

I was hooked, and throughout the Barsoom series, that image of John Carter setting off in his one man flyer on this or that mission, hurtling across the planet — it was heaven for me.

But there’s another aspect that had an even deeper appeal, and in this, I think my experience of the books may be different than many. This is why, for example, my eyes glaze over with the arguments about whether Andrew Stanton’s changing of the Therns was warranted, etc etc.

For me, it was the chivalric romance of it all that was — other than the imaginative transport — the pull of the stories. I would later go on and do college and graduate level studies on “the matter of Britain” — the Arthurian mythology and history in all of its manifestations, and I think that more than anything else, Barsoom propelled me there. John Carter was assuredly a knight errant in every meaningful way, and he finds meaning in his love of Dejah Thoris and through her, his love of Barsoom. But his larger journey to becoming a unifying figure on Barsoom is always seen through his love for Dejah Thoris.

Truly, once his love for Dejah is a settled matter, my rating of the books on the dial-o-meter would go down. Burroughs seemed to sense this — which is why, after completing the trilogy, he branched out and wrote of Carthoris and Thuvia, Ulysses Paxton and Valla Dia, Hadron of Hastor and the wonderful Tavia…..

I was unabashedly drawn in by the romance, and the sense of destiny between the two parties. It never occurred to me that this was “shallow stuff” in its guilelessness……it was rich, engaging, I could believe in the characters and their desires and motivations and I was thrilled by the world they inhabited.

No one was quite like Burroughs.

But none of that quite gets at the true essence. I’m hoping someone can formulate it better.

Think of it like this. Suppose you were called to a stage, in front of assembled sci-fi and non-sci-fi fans and scholars and authors and had to make a statement to them about what, exactly, made Burroughs unique among all of the other authors you’ve experienced in your life. What sort of answer would you give?

17 comments

  • I don’t know if you’re going to find a keystone sentence to answer that question, but what MCR just said describes where it resonates deepest with me.

    Burroughs’ exemplified the ‘Love Conquers All’ ethos more powerfully than any other author I’ve encountered, in any genre. For what hero accomplished more to that end than John Carter? The Trilogy covers this titanic struggle of an entire world from racist, warring city-states held prisoner by superstition and ignorance to something like a rational league of nations, confronting their prejudices, held (at least momentarily) together in mutual respect. All of this achieved as secondary or tertiary, even accidental goals of a man driven first and foremost by Romantic Love. John Carter reveals to the Tharks, and Barsoom, a path where compassion is strength, not weakness – where a hopelessly lovelorn warrior is the greatest on two worlds, and largely for that reason.

    It’s this unique combination of bloody masculine adventure and sci-fi wonder that also truly understands how hard boys/men can fall, especially the first time. By giving Carter that ‘soft’ core, Burroughs transmutes all the insecurity, joy and terror of first love into aspirations of strength, courage, and justice.

    Burroughs makes one feel he can be a Knight.

  • The first ERB book that I read was JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN, when I was turning nine. TARZAN OF THE APES was out of print at the time and Grosset & Dunlap had only eight Tarzan titles in print at that time. Of course, the great discovery for me was that ERB’s original conception of Tarzan far outstripped the pale imitation that I had seen in the movies. When TARZAN OF THE APES came back into print in a Grosset & Dunlap edition several years later, I promptly devoured it. At age twelve, it was not only thrilling, it was deeply moving. In Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes I had discovered characters that would guide my literary tastes to a large extent in my youth. These characters shared roots in mythology and had become cultural archetypes. Even more importantly for me, they would be personal role models throughout my life. Each of these characters was fully invested in being alive in their respective worlds. Most of all, Tarzan is an indomitable figure who is consumed with curiosity and in love with possiblity. When ERB describes Tarzan awakening from sleep, ERB stresses that Tarzan awakens instantly. There is no hestitation, there is no doubt in his mind, for hesitation and doubt are antithetical to his nature. While I cannot make any such claim for myself; I cannot kill a lion; or survive in the jungle. Yet, I am consumed by curiosity and in love with possibilty. For that I owe a special debt to Tarzan and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

  • Rick Barry wrote: “the apparent simplicity of Burroughs is even more wonderful and mysterious”.

    Now THAT’S a good one. I really like it. “apparent simplicity” is a wonderful way to put it. So much of great storytelling feels simple but isn’t — the genius is in reducing it down to exactly what is needed, and it gains power from that simplicity. I like that one ….. can I steal it? 😉

  • Calin wrote:

    I don’t believe it is possible for me to explain now why I was so fascinated with the Barsoom books when I first read them at 12-13 years old. It was a unique experience at a unique age when a young person is able to become totally immersed in things, and though I still love the stories, I cannot “experience” them the way I did then, for the first time. I just remember that they became a very pleasant field of imagination and wonder, where I could live on dazzling alien worlds, meet strange new creatures and could feel that I was part of the adventure. How Burroughs created this world is still a mystery to me — he seems to have immediately had his story-telling skills during his very first attempt at writing . Or perhaps he had been mentally honing those skills in the preceding years before he began putting stories down on paper. In any case, Burroughs knew how to keep people coming back for more and how to make them want to find out what happens next. I believe Burroughs made a comment to the effect that he wrote stories that he himself could enjoy as a reader — that may be one of the important elements that make his fiction unique.

    Your comment about having trouble recapturing that feeling……for me, it’s sort of yes and know. Obviously I’m aware of a lot more now, but it does still stir the old magic. But to really feel it all the way, I think I would need to disconnect from the internet and everything else and go curl up on my bed in grandma’s house and read three books over a weekend without having any interruption from the outside world. That’s how it was when I read them the first time, and I bet it would allow me to bring back more of the magic. …..

    But even without that, the magic is pretty much still there for me.

  • Most of what makes Burroughs work has already been touched on-his imagination, the characters, the romance. For me it has been the last one that touched me and makes his work unique.

    Most of the science fiction I read didn’t have that romantic angle. From HG Wells to Starship Troopers to Dune (even though its been a long time since I read it I felt the romantic subplots never gelled) they never had that. What made it work for me was that the romance was what made the hero who he is and the goal was to save that person. In the first three John Carter of Mars books that was all he cared about, rescuing Dejah Thoris. As he said in A Princess of Mars it was love for her that made him accomplish the impossible. Not some preset destiny or machinations of others, just love. That was the heart of those books and it carried on throughout the other books as well as Dotar mentioned in his piece.

    What also stirred my heart was the other female relationship Carter had in Princess, his relationship with Sola and how she becomes a surrogate mother to him. She taught him the language, the customs of Barsoom and the Tharks. She told him what he did wrong in his mistakes with Dejah. It added a dimension at the time I hadn’t thought about and added more to her character.

    It was that heart that drove Burroughs’ work more than most writers in the genre. It made his work unique.

  • I’ll add one thing, Michael. Both my wife and I are well into middle age (past in my case?) and are new to Burroughs within the past two years. We’ve also read and loved many of the other writers and books you mention are favorites of yours, and so the apparent simplicity of Burroughs is even more wonderful and mysterious. But it’s real. I’ve now read approximately fifteen of his books and loved ’em all.

  • I don’t believe it is possible for me to explain now why I was so fascinated with the Barsoom books when I first read them at 12-13 years old. It was a unique experience at a unique age when a young person is able to become totally immersed in things, and though I still love the stories, I cannot “experience” them the way I did then, for the first time. I just remember that they became a very pleasant field of imagination and wonder, where I could live on dazzling alien worlds, meet strange new creatures and could feel that I was part of the adventure. How Burroughs created this world is still a mystery to me — he seems to have immediately had his story-telling skills during his very first attempt at writing . Or perhaps he had been mentally honing those skills in the preceding years before he began putting stories down on paper. In any case, Burroughs knew how to keep people coming back for more and how to make them want to find out what happens next. I believe Burroughs made a comment to the effect that he wrote stories that he himself could enjoy as a reader — that may be one of the important elements that make his fiction unique.

  • I can’t do better than Abraham Sherman but will just say this. Something about Burroughs’ mastery of storytelling compels the reader to keep turning the page, even when you’ve figured out that he is going to be totally shameless with his use of impossible coincidences and miraculous escapes. To humor me, my wife finally read ‘A Princess of Mars’ last winter before we saw the film. She went on to rip through the next two books, because Burroughs just doesn’t let go of his readers until they find out how everything ends.

    If this were easy, or if it were something you could analyze and copy, there’d be a lot more of it today than there is.

  • Burroughs is like a rollercoaster: even if you know by heart all the twists and turns, you can’t help but go back to it, because the sensations you get from the journey itself are unique.

    Burroughs doesn’t just describe to you what happens, he makes you experiment the adventure in the hero’s mind (even when the story is written at the third person). And what you get is nothing mundane, like in the rollercoaster. You experiment absolute feelings like there’s none in our daily lives: absolute love, absolute friendship, absolute sense of honor, all of this described with wit, humor, sensitivity, a sense of innocence, a sense of wonder, and absolutely zero cynicism. Burroughs’ style is more often than not overlooked and criticized, but it’s to me a huge part of his appeal.

    And like the rollercoaster, it’s safe to be there and experiment all that. You know that all will end well, you can even easily guess how, and it doesn’t matter.

    My all-time favorite novel not-written-by-Burroughs is Neuromancer by William Gibson. Those universes couldn’t be further apart, but they share a common point, you experiment the universe in the hero’s mind. The novel is written in an impressionistic style; for me it’s a sensory experience even before being a novel. I never loved any of his other books as I love this one.

    Another favorite is The Lord of the Rings, not because of the world building, but because Tolkien, through his witty prose, allows me to experiment the adventure through his wonderful hobbit characters. Because they, more than any other character, represent the absolute purity of Middle-Earth.

    If I would have to choose a word to describe Burroughs’ work, it would probably be: purity.

  • he made me believe . . . . his writing . . . is just purely honest, it feels like he is telling the truth . . . it is so . . . sincere . . .

    adn . . . just sooooooo familiar .. . THE FIRST TIME I read a pricness of mars . . . it was just, it felt like I had heard the story somewhere. Not because of all the derivative stuff, it felt like a new story I had never heard before.

    But it also felt like a kind old man was telling me a story, that he had told me a thousand times before . . . that I was more than happy to listen too.

  • Dotar Sojat wrote: “I’ve been holding out for one last interview with someone very significant who has been signaling they are willing, but has not yet come through.”

    I think I have a good guess who that person is. Seems like your book couldn’t be 100% complete without it. Will it happen?

  • Think of it like this. Suppose you were called to a stage, in front of assembled sci-fi and non-sci-fi fans and scholars and authors and had to make a statement to them about what, exactly, made Burroughs unique among all of the other authors you’ve experienced in your life. What sort of answer would you give?

    The scholars would be like, “WTF, who let that freak crash our party. Did he sneak
    in the back door or what?”

    Then I would be like, “Ummmm urrrggg. JC was cool and all that, but Conan
    would kick his ass. JC took advantage of low gravity. Conan gave beat downs
    to gods and devils.

    The scholars would be like …. stunned silence.

    Then I would be like, Ummm urrrgggg here is Dotar Sojat with his presentation.

    Dotar Sojat would be like, “Thanks for that steller introduction Crustbucket.”

    The scholars laugh as I am escorted away from the stage.

    Or I suppose a “Intro to ERB pre-teen story.”

    When I was twelve I use to sneak out my window late nights and then ride my
    banzai board to the local strip mall. The strip mall had four things that were
    noteworthy.

    A foosball parlour. (A hangout for beer swilling, pot smoking, drug addled hippies)
    A worlds best pizza parlour. (yummm, canadian bacon and sausauge)
    A aluminum recycling machine. (income source)
    A second hand used bookstore. (Conan)

    Anyway, I would get up early on weekend mornings, skateboard it to the strip mall
    and collect the empty beer cans that were strewn all over the parking lot.

    Yea I know, I paint a charming picture of idyllic suburban life.

    Anyway, one morning, after cashing in my motherlode of cans at the recycle machine
    I was scrounging thru the bookshelves at the bookstore lookin’ for Conan and stumbled
    across Synthetic Man of Mars. I flipped thru it and read a few pages.

    A decapitated hormad head having a conversation with the man who beheaded him
    and not having a grudge was fascinating.

    I bought the book and it was all good.

  • I think a large part of Burroughs’ appeal stems from his deeply held belief that the purpose of fiction is entertainment, pure and simple. His desire was to please readers, not critics, and if he had to violate all the rules of literature to do it, so be it. What did he care if coincidence was a rarity in the real world? If he sensed that his readers would enjoy a chance meeting of characters, then he gave it to them.
    The conventions of modern fiction writing have forced novelists to create character arcs and avoid any suggestion that a story is contrived, but in so doing we have lost much of the sheer fun that is Burroughs.

  • It’s hard to put into words what it is about Burroughs, and especially the Barsoom stories, that hits me so deeply. Some aspects are very personal to me. Not things I’ve really discussed aloud. There’s a sentiment about him that speaks to me. A certain perspective and approach to his characters, stories, and many of the details, that moves me. I agree with the thoughts above, but for me it runs deeper, and I think that’s likely the case with all of his fans. 🙂

  • ERB let his imagination go to the very extent of its leash, holding on with one hand while grasping a pen in the other, writing with the breathlessness of an awestruck observer. There is the sense that he is trying to keep up with himself, that he has let his imagination get just beyond his ability to capture it with words, and in regards to his genre and his brand of storytelling, he turned that wild quality into an unrivalled asset. He was not embarrassed to run at a dangerous pace across an unpredictable landscape. Other authors, who chose and cultivated an image of refinement, dared not run as he did. They may have been “wiser” men, and more painstaking attendants of the mind and heart of a human being, but they didn’t bottle the lightning like ERB did. Though others may have achieved greater scholarly success, they never grasped the wonder of ERB at his best. ERB rarely used outlines, and rarely revised, yet, in many cases, wrote more brilliantly than others who take years to hone a story. Perhaps it was that unrefined quality which imbued his work with raw imagination and excitement – the sense of a campfire story told off the cuff by a master. His novels often have the wild and alluring force of barely bridled dreams.

    And yet he built entire worlds! And did so with excellent internal consistency. Burroughs was a unique combination of a liberated imagination, too strong to fully capture, and masterful storytelling instincts. It will be a shame if we never see another author as reckless and brilliant as he was.

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