Adventure Week #4: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

(This is my latest entry for Patti Abbott's Friday's Forgotten Books. For today's complete list, head on over to her blog.)

Can we be honest here? Tarzan is far from forgotten. He's so well know, in fact, that we all know the story of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Whether it’s from all the movies, the TV series, the comics, the animated movies of Disney, or the Broadway play (yeah, really, and it doesn't look half bad), Tarzan has entered the collective DNA of popular culture. But how did it all begin? I wanted to know and that’s why I picked up Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first Tarzan novel.

Again, y’all know the story so I don’t have to restate it here. In short, John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, and his wife, Lady Alice, get themselves marooned in equatorial Africa. Soon after the birth of their only son, John, they are killed and the child is adopted by the she-ape Kala, whose own child was also killed. Named Tarzan (“white skin”), little John is raised unaware of his human heritage.

As an adolescent, he teaches himself how to read with books found in the cabin his parents built. Eventually, he sees other humans--native Africans--but he still hasn’t seen a person that looks like him: a white man. A group of white men and women soon get themselves marooned *in the exact same place* as his parents. In this group is a young woman named Jane Porter. Tarzan is smitten and the story really takes off from there.

Not that it was ever boring. Tarzan fights rival bull apes, native Africans, lions, and all sorts of jungle denizens. I was happy to note that Tarzan doesn't always escape his trials unscathed. After a particularly bloody battle, he wears a scar across his forehear that burns with anger whenever the ape man rages. Burroughs basically created a super man, a noble savage who knows right from wrong, cannot be corrupted, and can will himself to do the right thing. The dialogue is a bit stiff and some of the coincidences make you go “Oh, come on!” but they’re not egregious. What surprised me most was the ending. It was a cliffhanger. Pretty bold for a first book.

The stereotypes are present and as you’d expect: Africans are savages, women are frail, and other white men are all out for money and power. Only Tarzan rises above it all. Comparing the stereotypes of King Solomon’s Mines (1875) and Tarzan (1912), not a lot of progress was made in the nearly forty years between the publication of both books.

If you know the Tarzan stories through the movies or radio, then you know the signature thing: his call, yell, what have you. Johnny Weissmuller’s version is the most famous. You can find it here. In the book, Burroughs describes it as a fierce call that chills the blood of those who hear it. What’s better is the way Tarzan looks when he issues the call: after he’s beaten an enemy, he stands with one foot on his kill, and belts out the yell. That’s what I’m talking about.

The setting is the Africa of romance, the Africa of your imagination. It's fantastic. The violence in the novel is much higher than the older movies could ever show. Oh, and there’s another thing the movies could never show: Tarzan’s nakedness. Up until he meets the whites, he’s naked. But he doesn’t care since that’s how the other apes are--except they have hair--as well as the Africans.

If H. Rider Haggard set out to write a book half as good as Treasure Island (and failed), I can’t help but wonder if Burroughs set out to write a book that captured the exuberance and excitement of Stevenson’s pirate opus. Or just made up for Haggard's lesser work. If so, he succeeded. Actually, he blew the wall down.

I thoroughly loved this book--though not quite as much as Treasure Island--and can think of no other way to demonstrate my enjoyment than to say this: I’ve already read the sequel. For that, you’ll have to come back next week.

Adventure Week #3: King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

According to The Source of All Truth, Wikipedia, H. Rider Haggard bet his brother that he, H. Rider, could write a novel half as good as Treasure Island, published two years before in 1883. I’m not sure he reached that lower bar. Sure, the book may have been a bestseller back in 1885, but the book really isn't even half as good as Treasure Island.

If Treasure Island was a giant leap forward in Victorian adventure novels, King Solomon's Mines was a few steps back. Following a common thread of the novels I’ve been reviewing this week, King Solomon’s Mines (KSM) is a travel/adventure book. Allan Quatermain, an English adventurer living in South Africa, is commissioned by Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good. They want Quatermain’s help in locating Curtis’s brother, last seen hunting for the fabled diamond mines of King Solomon, the son of King David.

Here’s where the waves of my preconceived notions going into the novel broke against the hard rock of the novel itself. Before I read this book, the name Allan Quatermain held a somewhat mythical place in my imagination. I remember Richard Chamberlain playing him in some movie I never saw but, mostly, I know Quatermain as played by Sean Connery in the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It’s Sean Friggin’ Connery so Quatermain was a bad ass. Yeah, well, not in the book. He’s almost a coward and calls himself one a couple of times. That jarred me and, frankly, started to lend itself to a general lack of interest and caring about what happened to him. Besides, the novel was written in first person so you know Quatermain lives. How dull.

The party travels north toward the desert and then nearly dies of thirst. Really? No way. Then they survive and the entire story comes to a screeching halt as Quatermain, Curtis, Good, and the African guide Umbopa, become embroiled in the inner squabbles of a lost African tribe. When I say screeching halt, I mean it. Haggard wrote something like five to seven chapters of the whites trying to help the blacks. Oh yeah, the white chauvinism is rampant in this novel, as you’d expect of a novel published during the high Victorian era. And, lo and behold, Umbopa just so happens to be the true heir to the throne. You saw that one coming, didn’t you? I’ll admit the war scenes were thrilling, filled with typical British stiff-upper-lipness (made that one up) and bravery, even for the coward Quatermain. But that couldn't overcome the boring, political parts.

The one thing KSM has going for it is an over arching story: the hunt for the mines. That’s something missing from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea but a trait Robert Louis Stevenson does better in Treasure Island. The ultimate goal that’s achievable is what makes the chapters where the journey stops infuriating. Sure, they have to get out of their predicament but seven chapters worth? Nah.

KSM is the first of the “Lost World” novels, a mantle taken up by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ruyard Kipling, HP Lovecraft (didn’t know that one), and Michael Crichton (in Congo). As a first novel of its kind, it’s not horrible. It’s just that many of its successors did it better.

One of the books I’m now interested in reading is the graphic novel of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which features Quatermain and Captain Nemo. I want to see how Alan Moore used these two characters and how, or if, he changed them.

Like 20,000 Leagues, I’m glad I’ve read King Solomon’s Mines but I’m not hankering to start in on the sequels. Anyone read them? Are they worth it?

P.S. this is your last chance to offer a prediction about my forgotten book tomorrow. The only clue you have so far is that it was published after this novel.

Adventure Week #2: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Johnny Depp owes Robert Louis Stevenson big time. Were it not for Stevenson, Depp’s resurgence into the popular eye might not have happened. Well, it might have happened but it would not have been because of his portrayal of pirate Captain Jack Sparrow. Come to think of it, Walt Disney himself might not have even had the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. So, add Disney to the list of people who owe Stevenson tribute.

Treasure Island is one hell of a novel. Jim Hawkins is the narrator (except for three chapters) and it’s through his young eyes we see the story. His mother owes the Admiral Benbow Inn and an old, craggy sailor, Billy Bones, takes up lodging. Billy tells Jim to look out for a man with one leg. That’s a man who’s after the contents of the chest Billy keeps in his room. One thing leads to another and, after Billy suffers a stroke, Jim takes possession of a map hidden in the chest. And not a moment too soon: some of Billy’s old scalawags come looking for the map and Jim and his mom barely escape. They turn to Squire Trelawney (wonder if J. K. Rowling is a fan of Treasure Island?) who, along with Dr. Lovesey, realize the map leads to buried pirate treasure. They resolve to form an expedition and go hunt for the gold.

Yeah. I am so there. And so is Jim, who comes along for the adventure. Trelawney hires a man named Long John Silver, an old sea cook, and a bunch of Silver’s friends to crew the ship. Jim’s immediately suspicious since Silver has only one leg. (Cue scary music.) But, onward they sail, all together on the Hispaniola, to the Caribbean. There is some shipboard mischief and suspicion ending with Jim overhearing Silver talk to his lads. You see, they are the former crew of the man, Captain Flint, who drew the map. This expedition is merely their way of returning to Treasure Island and discovering what is rightfully theirs. Or so they think.

Once the crew make landfall, the real excitement begins. Mutiny, battles, and affairs of honor ensue. For awhile, you forget that Jim is a mere teenager for all the derring do he accomplishes. For the most part, even though I had never read the book, I kind of knew the general story line for a century of other pirate books and films. The only outstanding question for me was the fate of Long John Silver himself. I was quite satisfied.

If 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea made me yawn and yearn for the Disney movie just to liven things up, Treason Island made me long for another hundred pages. Or a sequel. Or a series. Man! This book was great. Hard to believe that Stevenson’s novel (1883) was published only thirteen years after Verne’s seminal novel. They read and feel like they were written decades apart.

I listened to the audiobook read by Alfred Molina and he hit it out of the ballpark. He nailed all the piratey accents so well that I would find myself talking “pirate” to my family and friends. As big a fan of audiobooks as I am, listening to Treasure Island is something I highly recommend. It was one of the best audio productions I've listened to and, frankly, will continue to listen to this recording in the years to come.

When I finally watched “Casablanca” in my twentieth year of life, I was struck by how many famous lines and scenes were in that movie. Ditto for Treasure Island. I never knew that Stevenson’s novel was the mother lode—nay, the source—of so many things we associate with pirate lore: the black dot, treasure maps, parlay, one-legged seamen, and the black flag, to name but a few. And the song! This is where it comes from. How cool is that?

 "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
           Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Like I wrote before, the thrilling excitement that was the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie would not have existed were it not for Treasure Island.

I always keep a list of the books I read and rank them at year’s end. Since I read a lot of older books, I allow myself the luxury of naming my favorite book of the year and my favorite classic book of the year. To date, Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity ranks as my favorite new book of the year. By far, Treasure Island tops the classic book list. The only one that comes close is the mystery book I’ll be reviewing on Friday (guessed what it is yet?).

I joke about these four adventure books and me reading them at age forty rather than when I was a kid. Here’s the thing: when I listened to Treasure Island, I felt like a kid with all that childlike wonder and enthusiasm. It’s a thrilling book and one you can enjoy at any age.