Thursday, November 30, 2006
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com. Ames, our mentor at this website, has an excellent new book out (he is the editor) called Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs and an even newer book out called I Love You More Than You Know.
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The most beautiful, but at the same time undeniably masculine man that I’d ever seen
Question: Dear Literary Dick,
When I was a kid, I read every single book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. That was a shitload, too. 24 Tarzan books. 12 John Carter of Mars books. Plus Carson Napier of Venus, and many others. I was a real ERB-ophile. He thought his first story was so outrageous and feared people might think he was crazy. So he published it under a pseudonym of "Normal Bean." No kidding.
But my literary mystery questions are simple: When and how did Tarzan learn to wipe his ass? His ape mother, Kala, wouldn't have taught him to do so. And how did John Carter know that Dejah Thoris was "the most beautiful woman on two planets?"
Sincerely,
Chris O.
Answer: It is the opinion of the Literary Dick that neither of these questions can be answered with specific reference to Burroughs’s books. Tarzan and John Carter’s creator simply did not think to provide text-based solutions to these conundrums, which is bad news for this literary detective and even worse news for Burroughs’s readers, particularly fans of Tarzan, for surely a passage clarifying Chris’s first question would be pretty fun.
Fun also is much of what I found in my investigation. Undaunted by Burroughs’s silence I took, as is always advisable in such cases, to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, where I found myself with a copy of Philip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystroke (Doubleday & Company, 1972). In this great book Farmer recounts his adventures tracking down and interviewing the actual lord-raised-by-apes who was the inspiration for Burroughs’s Tarzan. Or something like that. Tarzan Alive is, unfortunately – for everyone, I think – pure fiction. I of course stupidly didn’t realize this as I began my skim through through the book and so the following passage – in which Farmer writes of sitting down to interview the man behind Tarzan – was even more wonderful than it is if you know it’s all made up:
“Unfortunately, I spent about five minutes of the interview, though not all at one time, in just looking at him. He was the most beautiful, but at the same time undeniably masculine man that I’d ever seen. This was so despite the scars on his face and hands that Burroughs speaks of and many more that Burroughs does not mention. I was silenced by the exceedingly charismatic force which he radiated even when he was quiet. Perhaps tigerish would be a better term. Something burns brightly inside him.
“I got the feeling that I was in the presence of an immortal, though I knew that he could bleed and die even as I. That he was eighty years old then but looked only about thirty-five seems unbelievable now that I am not longer in his presence.” (Farmer viii)
I’m not going to tell you how long it took me to figure out that Farmer was joking, nor my reaction, though I will say I was relieved to find myself distanced from Farmer and in the company of Brian V. Street’s The Savage in Literature (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975) a book I knew going in was the real McCoy, the genuine article, a 100% work of scholarship dealing seriously with books like Tarzan and so if it had anything in it involving the uses of toilet paper then those bits were bound to be amusing.
Sadly, I did not find anything in Stone specifically addressing Chris’s questions, though a few of the author’s insights are perhaps useful. Writing of issues related to the nature-vs.-nurture question – which naturally – or perhaps because of environmental factors? – arises frequently in books where someone from a ‘civilized’ society is raised by ‘savages’ – or visa versa – Stone suggests that:
“Interest in education in Victorian England contributed to the heredity versus environment debate. If the child’s mind was a tabula rasa as Locke had maintained, the cultural characteristics must have been acquired by training. But in that case, logically, the savage should have been able to learn ‘civilised’ behaviour. On the other hand, if cultural characteristics were inherited, then those inherited by white men were superior to those inherited by black. And if they were learnt, then those taught in white schools were superior to those taught in black. It was easier to the white man to learn the few skills of savage life than it was for the savage to learn the many skills of civilised life. Thus, whether the writer of fiction thinks heredity or environment more significant, in the very nature of the argument the stereotypes of ‘primitive’ peoples are presumed as they are in the scientists’ debate.” (Street 112)
Similarly, writing with reference to Tabu Dick, Stone writes,
“Tarzan, on the other hand, was trained by the apes but inherited Victorian gentility. […] Here, ultimately, as in the Tarzan stories, the white man in the jungle excels because of his superior brain, which enables him to learn the skills of such as tracking, for which the natives are renowned, more easily than they can learn ‘civilised’ abilities, such as reasoning.” (Ibid 110)
Now, we know Burroughs thought it unnecessary to describe the origin of Tarzan’s rectal cleansing ritual. If we accept Stone’s contention that feelings of racial superiority are behind some depictions of the ‘savage in literature’ – a pretty big ‘if’ I know – particularly as related to the nature-vs.-nurture question – then we might suggest that Burroughs imagined Tarzan was of such noble stock that he did not need his ape-mother Kala to teach him how to do those things we all must do but had inherited the knowledge as part of his “Victorian gentility.”
Alternatively, he maybe just didn’t think it would be in good taste to write about that kind of thing.
Now – to the John Carter question. In The Burroughs Cylodpaedia (McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996) Clark A. Brady writes of the Virginia-born fencer’s Martian wife,
“she was certainly the most alluring creature on at least two worlds. Often called “incomparable,” her beauty has been the cause of wars on Barsoom just as Helen’s was on Earth. Like others of her race, Dejah Thoris has copper-colored skin and coal-black hair.” (Brady 88)
I shared this passage with Chris, who pointed out,
“That just adds more mystery! It implies Carter's knowledge of OTHER worlds and the beauties there.”
And Brady’s encyclopaedic entry for Dejah Thoris is interesting for another reason – he describes her not as the most beautiful woman on at least two worlds but the most alluring. What are we to make of this? Well, whether she was alluring or beautiful of both I think it was just Carter’s opinion that she was these things more than anyone else encountered by him on Earth or Mars and he was so smitten with her that he could not even conceive of anyone being more of these things than she. Love will do this to a man, especially one in love with a Martian.
And Lastly
I'll close this instalment of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) by mentioning a coincidence I uncovered in the course of my investigation. As with many of the coincidences exposed on this website, this one involves this website’s publisher, Jonathan Ames. You may recall that it was earlier reported here that Ames’s second novel (The Extra Man) shares its title with a 1977 book by Andrew Rosenthal (who looks like Ames) about a guy named Kip Ames, who, like Jonathan Ames has lots of “diverse sexual adventures”. Now, thanks to Chris’s question about Tarzan and Brian V. Stone’s book, it can be told that in 1900 a book by Bertram Mitford called John Ames was published. I couldn’t say if there are any eerie parallels between Ames’s life and Mitford’s book but here is Stone’s description of what is surely an exciting scene from that novel:
“While the commissioner is falling in love with a flirtatious Englishwoman in Cape Town, the rumblings of native discontent are to be heard in Matabeleland. The witch-doctors have gathered the people together on a moonlit night and worked them to a pitch of frenzy in which they will accept the eclipse of the moon as a sign from the gods. The oracle tells the crowd to look upwards at the darkening heavens as the eclipse beings and ‘in silent awe the superstitious savages gaze blankly upon the phenomenon’.” (Street 62)
____________________________________________________________________
The most beautiful, but at the same time undeniably masculine man that I’d ever seen
Question: Dear Literary Dick,
When I was a kid, I read every single book written by Edgar Rice Burroughs. That was a shitload, too. 24 Tarzan books. 12 John Carter of Mars books. Plus Carson Napier of Venus, and many others. I was a real ERB-ophile. He thought his first story was so outrageous and feared people might think he was crazy. So he published it under a pseudonym of "Normal Bean." No kidding.
But my literary mystery questions are simple: When and how did Tarzan learn to wipe his ass? His ape mother, Kala, wouldn't have taught him to do so. And how did John Carter know that Dejah Thoris was "the most beautiful woman on two planets?"
Sincerely,
Chris O.
Answer: It is the opinion of the Literary Dick that neither of these questions can be answered with specific reference to Burroughs’s books. Tarzan and John Carter’s creator simply did not think to provide text-based solutions to these conundrums, which is bad news for this literary detective and even worse news for Burroughs’s readers, particularly fans of Tarzan, for surely a passage clarifying Chris’s first question would be pretty fun.
Fun also is much of what I found in my investigation. Undaunted by Burroughs’s silence I took, as is always advisable in such cases, to the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, where I found myself with a copy of Philip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive: A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystroke (Doubleday & Company, 1972). In this great book Farmer recounts his adventures tracking down and interviewing the actual lord-raised-by-apes who was the inspiration for Burroughs’s Tarzan. Or something like that. Tarzan Alive is, unfortunately – for everyone, I think – pure fiction. I of course stupidly didn’t realize this as I began my skim through through the book and so the following passage – in which Farmer writes of sitting down to interview the man behind Tarzan – was even more wonderful than it is if you know it’s all made up:
“Unfortunately, I spent about five minutes of the interview, though not all at one time, in just looking at him. He was the most beautiful, but at the same time undeniably masculine man that I’d ever seen. This was so despite the scars on his face and hands that Burroughs speaks of and many more that Burroughs does not mention. I was silenced by the exceedingly charismatic force which he radiated even when he was quiet. Perhaps tigerish would be a better term. Something burns brightly inside him.
“I got the feeling that I was in the presence of an immortal, though I knew that he could bleed and die even as I. That he was eighty years old then but looked only about thirty-five seems unbelievable now that I am not longer in his presence.” (Farmer viii)
I’m not going to tell you how long it took me to figure out that Farmer was joking, nor my reaction, though I will say I was relieved to find myself distanced from Farmer and in the company of Brian V. Street’s The Savage in Literature (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975) a book I knew going in was the real McCoy, the genuine article, a 100% work of scholarship dealing seriously with books like Tarzan and so if it had anything in it involving the uses of toilet paper then those bits were bound to be amusing.
Sadly, I did not find anything in Stone specifically addressing Chris’s questions, though a few of the author’s insights are perhaps useful. Writing of issues related to the nature-vs.-nurture question – which naturally – or perhaps because of environmental factors? – arises frequently in books where someone from a ‘civilized’ society is raised by ‘savages’ – or visa versa – Stone suggests that:
“Interest in education in Victorian England contributed to the heredity versus environment debate. If the child’s mind was a tabula rasa as Locke had maintained, the cultural characteristics must have been acquired by training. But in that case, logically, the savage should have been able to learn ‘civilised’ behaviour. On the other hand, if cultural characteristics were inherited, then those inherited by white men were superior to those inherited by black. And if they were learnt, then those taught in white schools were superior to those taught in black. It was easier to the white man to learn the few skills of savage life than it was for the savage to learn the many skills of civilised life. Thus, whether the writer of fiction thinks heredity or environment more significant, in the very nature of the argument the stereotypes of ‘primitive’ peoples are presumed as they are in the scientists’ debate.” (Street 112)
Similarly, writing with reference to Tabu Dick, Stone writes,
“Tarzan, on the other hand, was trained by the apes but inherited Victorian gentility. […] Here, ultimately, as in the Tarzan stories, the white man in the jungle excels because of his superior brain, which enables him to learn the skills of such as tracking, for which the natives are renowned, more easily than they can learn ‘civilised’ abilities, such as reasoning.” (Ibid 110)
Now, we know Burroughs thought it unnecessary to describe the origin of Tarzan’s rectal cleansing ritual. If we accept Stone’s contention that feelings of racial superiority are behind some depictions of the ‘savage in literature’ – a pretty big ‘if’ I know – particularly as related to the nature-vs.-nurture question – then we might suggest that Burroughs imagined Tarzan was of such noble stock that he did not need his ape-mother Kala to teach him how to do those things we all must do but had inherited the knowledge as part of his “Victorian gentility.”
Alternatively, he maybe just didn’t think it would be in good taste to write about that kind of thing.
Now – to the John Carter question. In The Burroughs Cylodpaedia (McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996) Clark A. Brady writes of the Virginia-born fencer’s Martian wife,
“she was certainly the most alluring creature on at least two worlds. Often called “incomparable,” her beauty has been the cause of wars on Barsoom just as Helen’s was on Earth. Like others of her race, Dejah Thoris has copper-colored skin and coal-black hair.” (Brady 88)
I shared this passage with Chris, who pointed out,
“That just adds more mystery! It implies Carter's knowledge of OTHER worlds and the beauties there.”
And Brady’s encyclopaedic entry for Dejah Thoris is interesting for another reason – he describes her not as the most beautiful woman on at least two worlds but the most alluring. What are we to make of this? Well, whether she was alluring or beautiful of both I think it was just Carter’s opinion that she was these things more than anyone else encountered by him on Earth or Mars and he was so smitten with her that he could not even conceive of anyone being more of these things than she. Love will do this to a man, especially one in love with a Martian.
And Lastly
I'll close this instalment of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) by mentioning a coincidence I uncovered in the course of my investigation. As with many of the coincidences exposed on this website, this one involves this website’s publisher, Jonathan Ames. You may recall that it was earlier reported here that Ames’s second novel (The Extra Man) shares its title with a 1977 book by Andrew Rosenthal (who looks like Ames) about a guy named Kip Ames, who, like Jonathan Ames has lots of “diverse sexual adventures”. Now, thanks to Chris’s question about Tarzan and Brian V. Stone’s book, it can be told that in 1900 a book by Bertram Mitford called John Ames was published. I couldn’t say if there are any eerie parallels between Ames’s life and Mitford’s book but here is Stone’s description of what is surely an exciting scene from that novel:
“While the commissioner is falling in love with a flirtatious Englishwoman in Cape Town, the rumblings of native discontent are to be heard in Matabeleland. The witch-doctors have gathered the people together on a moonlit night and worked them to a pitch of frenzy in which they will accept the eclipse of the moon as a sign from the gods. The oracle tells the crowd to look upwards at the darkening heavens as the eclipse beings and ‘in silent awe the superstitious savages gaze blankly upon the phenomenon’.” (Street 62)
