Lipstick Traces Pt. VII: Greil Marcus
August 29, 2007
A Review
Lipstick Traces: Greil Marcus
Part VII
The Assault On Charlie Chaplin
by R.E. Prindle
Apparently satisfied with the attention called to themselves by The Invasion Of Notre Dame in 1950 Isou and the Lettrist International next made an assault on the film industry and Charlie Chaplin.
Mr. Marcus doesn’t say where Isou announced his views on film or if anyone was listening but…
Qu0te:
…(Isou) both pronounced and demonstrated the manifesto of cinema decrepant, mixing up his images and his soundtrack, negating the filmic aspect of the film with torn and scratched celluloid, intentional flickering and passages of blank screen. “I believe first of all that the cinema is too rich,” he proclaimed. “It is obese. I announce the destruction of the cinema, the first apocalyptic sign of rupture in this fat organism we call film.”
Unquote.
What does one say to such grandiose nonsense as this? What does “the first apocalyptic sign of rupture” mean? While Isou was concentrating so heavily on letters he should have worked on the vocabulary of words a little bit. How many people listened or cared? Not many. No one, actually. Cinema decrepant? Well, it was a concept but when you peeled away all the meaning, the ‘fat’, and showed nothing but black or white film, and made the strips of blank film unconscionably long, what then? No one was willing to sit thrugh four and a half hours of blank film. Once you’d seen one frame you’d seen them all, literally.
Attention was required. How to get it? The Invasion Of Notre Dame had gotten the proto-Lettrists world wide attention. That was one successful prank. If coopting someone else’s gig worked once then it ought to work twice or perhaps three or four times running. Well, that’s questionable, the old adage is never try the same joke three times running. Isou, Debord and the other guy hadn’t heard that old adage.
The second running of the joke got results but not all that much attention.
The Lettrists stormed the citadel of the cinema at the Cannes Film Festival in a blazing display of chutzpah. The boys were resisted but through the efforts of the homosexual lobby led by Jean Cocteau the Lettrists had a modest success.
Quote:
Through the graces of Cocteau, the festival actually awarded Isou the ‘Prix de l’ Avant Garde’ which was contrived on the spot.
Unquote.
With or without the Prix de l’ Avant Garde few people were interested in viewing four and a half hours of blank film.
The joke worked twice so the boys decided to ‘epater le bourgeouisie’ one more time without variation.
Charlie Chaplin was coming to Paris to premier his film ‘Limelight’. Chaplin was already in the afterglow of his long career. Limelight wasn’t his last film but it should have been. By the time he produced A Countess Of Hong Kong his career had turned into one eternal yawn.
The boys launched a campaign printing leaflets of the most insulting and tasteless content. Except that they were of the Left they would have been jailed. An excerpt:
Quote:
Go to sleep, you fascist insect. Rake in the dough. Make it with high society (we loved it when you crawled on your stomach in front of little Elizabeth.) Have a quick death, we promise you a first class funeral.
Unquote.
All chutzpah and no civility. It’s like these guys crawled out of the sewer for the occasion. Three in a row was no charm. Who the hell cared about Charlie Chaplin? In the first place he was a Commie not a Fascist. But you can’t call a guy a Commie and insult him in France. What was he compared to Easter Mass at Notre Dame or even the pitiful Cannes Film Festival. Next to nothing. Nothing. Three strikes and you’re out. The not very interesting notion of cinema decrepant made little progress. Even the ‘films’ have disappeared.
I hope Mr. Marcus was being intentionally funny or perhaps his humor was unconscious but he says that although the film had disappeared he was working from a printed ‘script.’ It apparently takes more to write about a blank screen than to show it.
So much for cinema decrepant. So now the Lettrist-Situationist International is in mid-career from 1950-52 to 57 when Debord and Isou split. So far these guys have made no impression at all. It might be of interest to note that Lawrence Sterne in his eighteenth century novel, Tristram Shandy, had a chapter that was a blank page so Debord and Isou had an illustrious predecessor.
At any rate we’ll next attempt a review of the last chapter, titled Lipstick Traces, before returning to the first chapter. When I first saw the title Lipstick Traces I leaped to the conclusion of lipstick traces on a man’s collar betraying clandestine activities but Mr. Marcus following his song source closely gives the chapter title in full as Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette.) Nothing clandestine there, just vulgarity. To Part VIII.
Lipstick Traces: Part VI: Greil Marcus
August 24, 2007
A Review
Lipstick Traces:
Greil Marcus
Part VI
by R.E. Prindle
Sometime in the early 1920s that supreme fantasist Sigmund Freud belatedly discovered the supreme impediment to the Jewish fantasy of world dominion- the Reality Principle. He should have discovered it in the Garden Of Paradise right at the beginning.
Freud had spent most of his life constructing a shining vision of the realization of Jewish dreams but he encountered that wall so wide you can’t go around it and so high you can’t go over it and it wouldn’t matter how many masochists beat their head against it that wall won’t fall down.
This was exactly the problem that the Free Spirits who are the centerpiece of this chapter faced. The Free Spirits of the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries sect who evolved into the Libertines of the 18th century essentially were precursors of the ancient Jewish attitude that nothing was to be denied them; all things were permitted to the elect. As wild fantasists as the Jews they purportedly believed that if a woman had consecutive sex with ten different men if the last was a Free Spirit her virginity would be restored. As you can see the Reality Principle had no meaning for either sect.
Freud in the end chose to ignore the Reality Principle although how he maintained hope for the redemption of Jewish hopes is difficult to follow. It should have been clear to him that no matter how strenuously Jews pursued their dreams and fantasies they would always be doomed to failure.
As with the Garden of Paradise expulsion destruction would always be their lot. Ah, but there would always be that…remnant. What sort of dream is that?
Thus as Mr. Marcus points out even after the devastation of the death camps the Jews of Europe bounced back even before the ovens were cold with schemes to take over ‘our’ Europe. That is the remarkable story that Mr. Marcus tells us in this chapter.
I don’t know if Mr. Marcus is aware that every character in his historical novel is a psychotic. All of them are in full retreat from the Reality Principle. While I’m not sure he intends it all of them are facing terrific tensions in their daily living especially the ostensible protagonist of this story, Michel Mourre. I’m going to treat Mr. Marcus’ book as a novel and accept his interpretation of the feelings and emotions of his characters as real. Certainly he puts thoughts and notions in their minds that are beyond historians. So while the situations and characters he portrays may be factual enough his story isn’t.
The ostensible protagonist of the Invasion Of Notre Dame is a disturbed, psychotic Roman Catholic by the name of Michel Mourre. He had been reared a Communist with all the attendant utopian projections and fantasies. The test of the Communists and Mourre’s disillusionment came in 1940 when the Nazis arrived and the brave Communists including his father who had indoctrinated him crowded the train stations in an attempt to flee South.
Having lost one faith Mourre attempted a replacement in Catholicism. Catholicism failing him he was intellectually adrift wandering around the cafes of Paris spouting his discontent. He was a perfect tool. He quickly found those who knew how to use him.
These were a group of young Jews seeking to epater l’eglise. Scarcely skipping a beat on the way back from the extermination camps if they were ever in one they were continuing the Jewish war on Christianity and Europe that began long before Hitler and Stalin.
The group worked up a plan using Mourre as a tool to disrupt Easter services at Notre Dame in the year of Our Lord, 1950. How Mourre could allow himself to be duped in such an egregious manner is beyond me. Well, maybe it’s not. I was absolutely amazed- non-plussed, blown out of the water- to watch on television when Queen Elizabeth visited Jamaica to watch her being handed a sheaf of paper just before the cameras rolled and told that this was her speech. She actually read it sight unseen. If the Queen of England with a body of advisors to protect her from just such egregious errors can be duped, managed, hustled by bunch of ganja smoking hustlers then perhaps Mourre wasn’t at fault or perhaps White people are just fools. I’m still working on that one but I’m afraid of the conclusion I might have to reach.
At any rate Mourre wearing a Dominican outfit rushed up the aisles bearing a speech written for him by his Jewish confreres. Mourre must have been drugged or hypnotized. I don’t know what Queen Elizabeth’s excuse might be.
According to Mr. Marcus the speech was written by a Serge Berna one of Mourre’s Jewish handlers. The speech is written in the familiar J’ accuse manner made popular by the dupe and fool Emile Zola during the Dreyfuss Affair of the 1890s. One wonders whether Zola drafted his own letter or whether his Jewish handlers wrote it for him as in the case of Mourre. One is reminded of the ‘apology’ of Henry Ford that the American Jews wrote for him.
Although written in the first person so that Mourre mouthing the words would appear to be voicing his own thoughts he is actually expressing the views of his Jewish handlers. The language is violent, vicious and coarse expressing the deep Jewish hatred of Europe and America. It seems incredible that this message went unheeded especially coming as it did on the heels of the war. Despite both Hitler and Stalin the Jews had learned nothing.
Two quotes are outstanding of this deep abiding hatred. One should never hate nothing but hatred- Bob Dylan.
Quote:
I accuse the Catholic Church…of being the running sore on the decomposed body of the West (and)…your prayers have been the greasy smoke over the battlefields of our Europe.
Unquote.
That is very strong and violent language. The reference to our Europe clearly states that the conflict between Hitler, Stalin and the Jews was not one sided. It is less a question of Hitler and Stalin exterminating Jews than whether they authorized the killing of Jews before the Jews authorized the killing of Europeans. I have already mentioned the Jewish plan as expressed by their spokesperson, Noel Ignatiev, to exterminate the entire billion strong White species. The plan has been made public. If the reader refuses to take the plan and threat seriously the more fool he.
Once can cite numerous examples of Jewish murderousness as I have in my writing both on I, Dynamo and my writing on the site, ERBzine. I’m not going to repeat them now. You may consider me a prophet as Mr. Marcus considers himself.
The whole plan to bring ‘multi-culturism’ to the West is merely a variation on the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. Just as the story of the expulsion from the Garden of Paradise shows the contradiction of the Jewish mind in which Semitism and anti-Semitism exist side by side so the story of the Tower of Babel that is a product of Jewish aspirations merely elucidates the principle of divide and conquer. The original notion said to be that in the building of the tower all spoke one language hence they could effectively coordinate their efforts. ‘God’, or the Jewish intellect, realized that if they spoke many languages i.e. if ‘multi-culturalism’ were introduced the peoples would not only not be unable to coordinate their efforts but there would be perpetual fighting.
Hence ‘multi-culturalism’ was introduced into Europe and America after the holocaust. That the Euroamericans would eagerly buy such a bill of goods shows what superb salesmen the Jews are.
Mr Marcus rather confusingly posits the origin of Lettrism to 1952 but then, if I read correctly, attributes the invasion of Notre Dame in 1950 to Isou and the Lettrists. I’m sure if I make Lipstick Traces my life’s work all will come clear.
At any rate Isou and disciple somehow kept Lettrism alive until 1957 when Guy Debord became involved and began the conversion of Lettrism to Situationism. Situationism somehow became involved with Theodore Adorno and the Frankfurt School. As soon as things calmed down in Europe and the Jews were safe again Adorno and the School sans Herbert Marcuse returned to the scene. Thus in this mysterious way Debord and the Situationist International, Adorno and the Frankfort School and Greil Marcus are brought into the same bundle and Mr. Marcus assumes his prophetic role.
It takes a tangled mind to tell a tangled tale.
The next stop on Mr. Marcus’ itinerary is entitled The Attack On Charlie Chaplin. A review of that will follow in Part VII.
Pt. V Lipstick Traces: Greil Marcus
August 21, 2007
A Review
Greil Marcus: Lipstick Traces
Part V
The Crash Of Yesterday’s Art
by R.E. Prindle
At this stage of the review it will turn into a secret history of the secret history. Since last writing I have read Mr. Marcus’ opus on Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone, The Dustbin Of History and Mystery Train plus a few articles available on line. The qualities not as apparent from a volume or two become more apparent when enough material is read. No writer can write several hundred pages without revealing himself and his intentions.
Thus it becomes clear that Mr. Marcus was reared as both a Communist and a Jew. Of course he uses the palliative, socialist. He seems to have come from a privileged background while having received a Jewish conditioning. He was born in the summer of 1945. His father, Greil Gerstner, died during WWII so he must have been adopted by his stepfather, obtaining the name of Marcus.
As part of the Critical Theory of The Frankfurt School he has been trained to view life as one tragedy after another. Whereas in the Western tradition we are trained to see life as a series of adventures in which if we triumph, good; if not, then efforts must be taken to rectify the situation. There is no mystery in situationism; it is just the way it is. Thus the Westerner even more that the Jewish Guy Debord is trained as a situationist.
In his criticism Mr. Marcus unremittingly condemns the United States as fatally flawed and ripe for destruction. As this is his vision he is compelled to work toward its realization. This might be considered strange because when his grandparents or great-grandparents landed on these shores c. 1900 they thought they had found the Promised Land. So what happened in the years between then and now to turn the Promised Land into the shitheap Mr. Marcus sees? Nothing. The conditioned Jewish character merely asserted itself and Paradise turned into fecal matter. One might look to Freud for a solution but I think the answer can be found even earlier in that ridiculous Holy Book of the Jews that Westerners call the Bible.
Now, they are always looking for a paradisical ‘situation.’ According to their Holy Book 5700 and some odd years ago which is when they believe that the world was created they lived in the literal Paradise. All they had to do was keep their nose clean and mind their manners. So as to leave room for no mistakes their mentor God, or as Jews spell it G-d, told them all of Paradise was theirs to enjoy but they must never eat of the fruit of a forbidden tree. Pretty clear wasn’t it?
So then the Jews defied their mentor by eating the forbidden fruit. This act enraged their mentor so greatly he picked them up and bodily threw them from Paradise thus beginning a very long list of expulsions. Also their God did not fool around. He was unforgiving telling them to never come back at the same time setting up a guard who couldn’t be fooled to make sure they never did come back. Thus the first act of the conditioning of the Jewish people took place.
So, the scenario is that the Jews are welcomed, then the Jews repel mentor or hosts, the host eventually becomes sufficiently angry with the Jews to expel them from their midst. This scenario has been repeated for, by Jewish calculations, 5700+ years.
C. 1900 Mr. Marcus’ ancestors arrived in what they jubilantly described as the Promised Land, in another word, Paradise. They prospered mightily. Mr. Marcus himself is the product of that prosperity but, like the Jews in the Garden of Paradise, Mr. Marcus is busily trashing the Land of Promise. As he sees it the United States is fecal matter that has to be flushed down the toilet. Further he wants you to view the United States the way he does and trash the only home you have ever known or will ever know. Mr. Marcus is a dual citizen; when the country is trashed he and his successosrs will just move on as they have always done.
That’s the short form.
Now, Mr. Marcus and his fellow culturalists have declared war on the Aryan species as well as on the United States and, actually Europe. They will settle for nothing less, according to their spokesperson Mr. Noel Ignatiev, than the abolition or genocide of the entire species, one billion strong.
While this goal can be achieved by psychological means, indeed is well advanced, the fun comes from openly fuddling people. To do that one needs a power base. A power base was first achieved in Russia in 1917 but that one slipped through their hands.
But then this summer Sarkozy got himself elected President of France thus placing the power of that State in Jewish hands. One of the first things Sarkozy did was to begin to distribute French atomic weapons to France’s enemies. Unless the Jews and Moslems are secretly allied this act seems suicidal for the Jews. Who knows maybe it has reached that point in Jewish minds. It should be clear to all that as there is no God the story of Paradise is merely a reflection of the Jewish ego. In the search for anti-Semitism it is quite clear that it is a product of the Jewish outlook. In the conflict within the Jewish mind God became the first anti-Semite. The whole Jewish scenario develops from this inner psychological conflict.
A second thing that began happening after the Sarkozy election was that key Jews were beckoned to France for instructions in somewhat the same manner as Judaeo-Communist revolutionaries returned to Russia just after the October Revolution when as Mr. Marcus quotes Trotsky as saying, the Mensheviks were tossed into the dustbin of history.
Mr. Marcus was called to France in July of this year under the auspices of The Cartier Foundation For The Contemporary Arts [ http//www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1649503,00.html ]
ostensibly to give his views on Buddy Holly. Whether Mr. Marcus actually met with Jewish conspirators in private to receive instructions I can’t say but it would have to be proved to me he didn’t, especially as this ‘cultural’ forum turned into a podium for America bashing in which Mr. Marcus gleefully participated.
Speaking of Elvis Presley and Jackson Pollack the director Alain Perrin described them as “Two young people living in a society that they want to provoke to rebel against, and to mock sometimes.” I think perhaps Mr. Perrin is projecting his and France des Juifs’ opinion on Elvis, I don’t know about Pollack. I never had the notion that Presley was mocking America and I wouldn’t have liked him if he did. The early Rock n’ Rollers were not mocking anything they were just trying to break in a different musical form against great opposition and make it big. That opposition merely had to do with people who were shocked at the musical departure.
I graduated HS in ’56 and was one of a minority who accepted the music in my class. The new era began really with the class of ’57 when the form had penetrated to the youth consciousness.
The skewed Mr. Perrin goes on to say “This was the America that had liberated the world of Nazism…’ Surely Mr. Perrin meant France although in his skewed imagination it may have seemed like the world. “…but this was also a racist America, a puritan America, (no capital. It might be possible to say America was still Puritan but it was not puritan.) a hyper conservative, McCartyite America.” Well, one out of five ain’t bad especially for France as America did what the French couldn’t do themselves. I hope Mr. Perrin wasn’t offended that America wasted its own men, some of whom were my relatives, money and resources to save an ungrateful France from itself. As I understand it there was no scarcity of French collaborators in that glorious lovely Liberal Communistic ‘pure’ France of Mr. Perrin’s imagination. One would expect a Communist of Mr. Perrin’s stripe to be opposed to weird old ‘conservative’ America. But, then I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk about that in an open forum. No one expects gratitude from the French but a little realistic appraisal of the past wouldn’t hurt. Liberals are Liberals, but, geez.
Mr. Marcus slips and slides in with his two cents worth:
Quote:
In the 1950s (ten long years note) the official story was that America was back to normal (the Depression?) women were out of the factories, (happened in the forties) everything was working like clockwork, (not so, but Mr. Marcus was a nine year old and it may have seemed so) but underneath this was an entirely different story (secret history again) of confusion, conflict, desperation, (how did I survive?) desire for grandeur. Life could have been an epic story, life was dangerous ( aw, come on, Mr. Marcus, don’t put me on with all these cliches) you could step outside the role that had been preordained for you. (by whom?)
Unquote.
Now, let’s see. How many cliches are in that novelistic approach to history. Mr. Marcus says he was born in the summer of ’45. McCarthy was shot down in ’54 so Mr. Marcus would have been eight or nine. His memories of the fifties then are pretty thin so he must be reading the Time-Life Decade series for the 50s. Even then they wouldn’t have made such puerile remarks. Well, I’ve read the series and they do, so… My memory of the time was that there was no normal. The discord was right on the surface and that was no fooling around. Our town was virtually in the hands of the Chicago Outfit. Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster bomb wielders were serious, the Korean War, the Commie Threat (that Mr. Marcus and the French refer to as ‘McCarthyite America’) produced great tensions. The Atom Bomb, my god Mr. Marcus don’t you ‘remember’ the Rosenbergs in 1953?
If you’re going to try to write history give up your sophomoric Jewish presentation. Hunker down. Get objective.
Mr. Marcus has his own secret history and mocking America is central to it.
In concentrating on the nonentities clowning it up in Zurich Mr. Marcus fails to relate Da Da to the course of the evolutionary development of Western society thus exaggerating the importance of these clowns grossly. Their effect on the development of society was minimal. The Da Da art movement did have some effect. Bear in mind that Da Da is merely a state of mind shared by a percentage of any age cadre from say 17 to 25 or so when they are struggling to find their way. Finding one’s way isn’t easy and does have its stresses. The situation of this particular group occurred as the Scientific Revolution, the real revolution, begun in 1859 with the publication of Darwin’s Origin Of Species was disrupting Western society to the maximum extent. Science challenged religious concepts including those of the Jews.
The ethos of art had run its course having achieved all that representational art could achieve. The search for novelty or an avant garde, if you will, produced Cubism, Da Da and Surrealism. Thus these clowns in Zurich who produced nothing but had a narcissitic crush on themselves were presumably able to make a noise. In reading Mr. Marcus one isn’t sure exactly what that noise was. In any event the Cabaret Voltaire changed nothing that had not already been changed or was changing.
Other than rescuing this crew from the dustbin of history and amusing us aside it is difficult to understand what significance Mr. Marcus finds in this clown act performing hackneyed stunts.
He somehow segues this act into his following act, even more insignificant than the opening act. The Crash Of Yesterday’s Art concerns the career of another complete and insane non-entity, one Isador Isou.
In order to give some significance to Isou he manages to compare him with both Elvis Presley and Tony Curtis. Not bad footwork for a fancy dancer.
As is usual with Mr. Marcus all the people he considers important are Jewish and those he denigrates are goys. Thus in the comparison between the earth shaker Presley and the non-entity Isou the latter comes out as the more signficant of the two. How Tony Curtis comes in isn’t clear unless it is his famous pompadour that is said to have influenced Presley’s hair style. At any rate the two Jews to one goi with Presley basing his hair style on one Jew while the other’s portrait often mistook him for a ‘pop star’ which it would appear raises him to a level slightly above Presley seems relevant in Mr. Marcus eyes. I don’t know, hard to dicipher.
As Mr. Marcus describes the megamaniacal Isou it would appear that he could have been at the famous dinner at the Maison de Sante described by Edgar Allan Poe in his famous The System Of Dr. Tarr And Professor Fether. In fact much of Mr. Marcus writing reminds me of nothing so much as Poe’s lady who tried to get outside her clothes rather than in them. I have great difficulty taking Mr. Marcus discussion of Isou as seriously as he seems to, although I find the story a fascinating bit of trivia.
Leaving Isou’s manias aside it seems that his contribution to the deconstruction of Western Civilization was to insist that paragraphs, sentences and words were meaningless while the only thing of importance was the bare letter itself. A building block. You see what I mean by trying to get outside one’s clothes than inside. Mr. Isou grandiloquently called his ‘organization’ The Lettrist International with he and his other member. He wished to establish the Lettrist Dictatorship.
Actually as a Jew Isou was merely following the letter mysticism of the Jewish alphabet in which not only does each letter have incredible symbolic meaning but each curve and segment of a letter is also endowed with incredible symbolism. A whole several hundred page volume could easily be written concerning the letter aleph and each additional letter thus adding up to a magnificent Harvard five foot shelf of the Jewish alphabet.
Somehow Charlie Starkweather and Caril figure in here but I’ll have to go back and study to get it which would scarcely be worth it. I’ll see if I can find the time.
Mr. Marcus also recasts a version of his musings on what appear so be his favorite song: It’s Too Soon To Know of the mid-forties. Favorite songs are often inscrutable to anyone who doesn’t ‘get it.’ I know the song and while I like it, I don’t get it like Mr. Marcus does. On the other hand I don’t expect Mr. Marcus to get a couple of secret favorites of mine, one by a singer whose name I forget, Clint something or other, although I should still have the 45. I got the disc in a close out mystery package of 10 for 99 cents. The song goes something like ‘Bertha Lou, Bertha Lou, I wanna conjugate with you.’ I like it however I have never met another person who has ever heard the song.
Another favorite of mine is by the Crows (Orioles-Crows- the bird, the bird, the bird’s the word) of Gee fame that reads something like this:
I’ve got a girl named Rosie Lee,
I wanna tell ya what she did for me.
She took me in when I had nowhere to go
And that is the reason I love her so.
—-
Face like a tadpole, shape like a bear,
But when it comes to lovin’ Rosie is there.
The lyricist is certainly no Allen Ginsberg but as you can see both these songs and Ginsberg’s Howl are concerned with a certain word begining with the letter F. And the usage is indeed international. God bless Isidore Isou and the Lettrist International.
Well, enough of this funnin’, let’s get on with the serious stuff. So Isou and his Lettrist Interntional is going to segue into Guy Debord and his Situationist International but first we have to go to church. It seems to me that I have a vague memory of Part VI so the invasion of Notre Dame must have been a true international scandal.
Part VI Follows.
Pt. VI Springtime For Edgar Rice Burroughs
August 15, 2007
Springtime For Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part VI
Working Around The Blues
by
R.E. Prindle
Nineteen-fourteen dawned with ERB trying to work around his problems. As unbelievable as it may seem he wrote three stories in the first quarter of that year- The Beasts Of Tarzan, The Lad And The Lion and The Girl From Farris’s.
Beasts probably relates to his continuing problems with Emma. Quite probably the wishes expressed in Nu Of The Niocene remained unfulfilled as Tarzan and Jane or ERB and Emma become estranged or separated in Beasts. The separation is reminiscent of the separation in Tarzan The Untamed, Tarzan The Terrible and Tarzan And The Golden Lion. Obviously something is going on in the marriage but apart from inferences in the novel we can’t be clear as to what. Suffice it to say the couple remains together.
Then in February ERB began what must have been a painful book for him to write. He began the book on 2/12/14 almost exactly one year after his father died. George T. passed away on 2/15/13. ERB had had a year to mull over his dad’s dieing and Lad is the result.
George T. appears to have been a difficult father for his sons, all of them not just ERB. Except for ERB slipping the noose by becoming a writer none of the Burroughs Boys would have been a success in life by business standards.
The hangman’s noose is a minor theme in the stories of the teens appearing most significantly in Bridge And The Oskaloosa Kid. The noose also make an appearance on the 100th anniversary of George T.’s birth in 1933’s Tarzan And The Lion Man. While the noose was intended for Burroughs alter egos in the teens in Lion Man the situation is reversed when Tarzan/ERB places a noose around the neck of God/George T. Perhaps the strange piebald appearance of God reflects ERB’s love/hate relationship with his father.
Little study of George T. Burroughs has been done. But if we postulate the burning of his distillery as the central fact of his later life from which he never recovered but edged slowly downhill then the burning of God’s castle may possibly represent the burning of the distillery.
It is possible that the fire changed the personality of George T. He may have been one man before the fire and another after. It is significant that God/George T. is associated with cannibalism. Thus the theme of cannibalism that looms large in the corpus may be associated with ERB’s relationship with his father. Thus the noose and cannibalism would be symbols of ERB’s treatment by his father.
In Lad his father surrogate is a deaf mute crazy old coot who torments the Lad and his Anima every day of their lives. I am not clear on ERB’s relationship with his mother but let us compare a passage from Howard Pyle’s story of King Arther from Volume II The Story Of The Champions Of The Round Table which it is very probable Burroughs read and was influenced by:
Quote:
So she (Percival’s mother) kept Percival always with her and in ignorance of all that concerned the world of knighthood. And though Percival waxed great of body and was beautiful and noble of countenance yet he dwelt there among those mountains knowing no more of the world that lay beyond that place in which he dwelt and the outer world, then would a little innocent child. Nor did he ever see anyone from the outside world, saving only an old man who was a deaf mute.
Unquote.
Transfer the above setting to the deck of the derelict, make the old deaf mute vicious and mean and possible substitute the lion for the mother and you have transposed Percival to the Lad And The Lion.
We don’t have enough information to be certain of the characters of George T. and Mary Evaline. ERB is reticent about his mother. Either I’m missing the key or she doesn’t appear in the stories. Not much has been said of her after her husband’s death in 1913 and her own death in April of 1920 while visiting in Tarzana. Prior to that she had been visiting her sons spending three months at a time with them. Whether she had just began this rotation is uncertain but this was the first time she had visited ERB and Emma.
George T. figures more largely in Burroughs’ writing while always in a love/hate relationship. I never had a father so I have that blind spot in my education meaning that, perhaps, I may not be the best judge of the father-son relationship. My evaluation of George T. is that he wished to maintain a dominant role over his sons. Perhaps, like many fathers, he was fearful that as his powers waned theirs would wax and they would become more powerful than he. Something along the lines of the Greek god Cronus who, having been warned that one of his offspring would replace him swallowed them whole as they were born. A stone was offered Cronus in place of his youngest son, Zeus, who did grow up to replace him.
It is interesting that George T.’s youngest son, ERB, was able to escape his meshes just as the father died.
The letters of the Burroughs Boys – George and Harry- from Yale indicate that while their father supported them he kept them on a short leash. It is true that they began college after the distillery fire so that he may have been more liberally handed before the fire so as to bind the Boys to him but we won’t know.
Having finished Yale as graduates of the Sheffield Scientific School they returned home to take up roles in the battery business that succeeded the distillery. They were only able to escape their father’s domination when Harry became ill from battery fumes requiring his living in the dry climate of the West. George begged to follow him and was so allowed.
George T. didn’t own the battery business outright in its first years. It would be nice to know something about his business associates in that business.
I have already detailed the difficulties he placed in ERB’s life that were detrimental to the formation of the lad’s character.
And then we have Herb Weston’s characterization of George T. as a stern man of the old school who he yes, sirred and no, sirred and got along with him famously.
It is not impossible that John Carter is the idealized character of ERB’s father. Carter’s own role in the Mars series does not disappear after 1913’s Warlord Of Mars but his role is greatly curtailed. A possibility.
I think it is a near certainty that the deaf mute old coot of the derelict is the negative father. In Lad he doesn’t die naturally but is killed by the Lion who rips his face off. This must be an affect of his father’s death as after the Lion kills him the Lad and the Lion continue to drift along for several months before the ship gently beaches itself, the tide goes out and the two walk ashore. Then, just as Percival saw the knights, being drawn into the outside world, the Lad sees the Arab ‘knights’ being also drawn into the outside world. He experiments with the burnoose just as Percival experimented with the armor.
Thus a year after his father’s death Burroughs attempts to escape from the ‘crazy old coots’ shadow.
That done, ERB then turns to a story begun the previous May to finish it. The long period of incubation indicates the difficulty he had in getting the story out. The Girl From Farris’s tells of the period from his bashing in 1899 to his return from Idaho in 1904.
It is a difficult story vis-a-vis Emma. ERB places his heroine in a brothel in Chicago. Harris’s, the original location, was actually a famous brothel; Harris himself being a noteworthy figure which is probably why the name was changed to Farris’s.
The woman escapes from the brothel. After a series of adventures in Chicago she leaves for Idaho where she meets the hero Ogden Secor again who had aided her back home.
Secor is in a desperate psychological state and that is probably an accurate description of ERB’s state of mind during those few years.
The woman is identified and taken back to Chicago where after a bit of legal hoopla she is exonerated, we learn that she was never a prostitute and she and Secor are married. After this number of terrible years something good happens to Secor and, one assumes Burroughs, the ray of light breaking through the clouds.
At this point in March, nearly April, of 1914 ERB and the family return to Chicago, after once again auctioning off their belongings as they had done in Salt Lake City before returning to Chicago in 1904. This has to signify in Burroughs’ mind that he had reversed his shameful performance of ten years earlier. He undoubtedly expected Emma to also accept 1913-14 as a redemption of 1903-04. Just as he had gambled and lost in ’03, in 1913-14 he had gambled and won.
Even though according to him he was living hand to mouth he ordered a new automobile (not a used Velie) for delivery upon his arrival back in Chicago. If the car was Burroughs’ Hudson then that would indicate that he had visited Baum in Hollywood as Baum drove a Hudson. ERB would want to emulate his hero. Then within a month or two the Burroughs left their old address in Chicago to move into the fancier suberb of Oak Park. Perhaps this move was made possible by the expected book royalties. Thus Burroughs continued to spend in anticipation of income rather than from money in his pocket. So Burroughs kept his hopes and dreams alive.
The springtime of ERB thus ended. The incredible psychological release of success was now to be tempered by new realities. The act of writing would now become a full time job. From 1911 to 1913 he wrote from hopes and dreams. Now he would have to settle down to turning out two or three books a year for magazine sales plus book royalties and newspaper royalties soon to be joined by movie revenues. ERB had won the gamble of quitting his day job. The Roving Gambler could now turn to the pleasures of life on the yacht.
But first there was the unfinished business of the three stories- The Mad King, The Cave Girl and The Eternal Lover- to be taken care of.
Properly belonging to 1913 the three sequels would take up a large block of time in 1914 which makes that year a transition year.
I will review the stories in the sequence in which they were written: The Cave Man July-August of 1914, The Eternal Lover, August and September and The Mad King, September-October.
Next:
Part VII
The Denouements.
Pt. 5 Springtime For Edgar Rice Burroughs
August 10, 2007
Springtime For Edgar Rice Burroughs
Part 5
by
R.E. Prindle
In this year of excitement for Burroughs as his success becomes established and he tries to work out his psycho-sexual conflicts it is interesting to follow the development of both.
Three of his stories expecially concerned with his sexual conflicts were followed by sequels relating to their development. The first The Cave Girl finished in March as a sort of sequel was followed by the Mad King of October-November and then in November-December of 1913 by The Eternal Lover. After a fashion these novels may be considered a trilogy.
Writing approximately a year later – 16 months for Cave Girl, a year for Mad King and eight months for The Eternal Lover- the three sequels rapidly followed each other. The Cave Man was writtin in July-August of 1914, Sweetheart Primeval (The Eternal Lover) in August-September and Barney Custer of Beatrice (The Mad King) from September to November. The diptyches were then published as single volumes. They have been disconcertedly packaged as single stories when they should be considered as different stories with different approaches to the same problem. Unless I am mistaken with the sequel to the Mad King Emma is written out of the story.
Following Cave Girl in early 1913 Burroughs wrote The Monster Men in April-May that probably has little to do with his psycho-sexual problems but relates to his long admiration of Frankenstein and probably the more recent H.G. Wells’ novel The Island Of Dr. Moreau. There will be a number of related stories along this line if not sequels.
The Warlord of Mars followed in June and July. John Carter probably relateing to Burroughs’ emasculation concerns thus having little or nothing to do with Emma. August to October’s The Mucker is a very important book, the first of what I consider a quartet exploring Burroughs psycho-sexual needs. In The Mucker a low brow hoodlum from Chicago is thrown together with a New York society girl. The novel brings together the theme of yachts, shipwrecks, cannibalism and the stranding on a South Seas island.
In this case the low brow realizes that he won’t make it in a high brow world so he renounces his claim on the society woman.
The first sequel to the Mucker gestated for three years until 1916’s Out There Somewhere (The Return Of The Mucker). In this novel Burroughs splits his personality into Bily Byrne- the Mucker- and the gentleman hobo, Bridge. Thus by 1916 it apears that Burroughs sees himself as more polished than his Mucker creation. Bridge is a voluntary exile from a wealthy Virginia family so that he unites The Prince And The Pauper in his identity while reversing the order of Little Lord Fauntleroy. It will be noticed however that Bridge combines all three of Burroughs’ most favorite books.
In the denouement Burroughs gives the society girl to the Mucker while Bridge goes off in search of the ideal ‘mate’ who is Out There Somewhere.
The second sequel, Bridge And The Oskaloosa Kid (The Oakdale Affair), of 1917 continues the story of Bridge in, really, a very good story, in which at the end Bridge is revealed as not a bum, assuming his true identity as a Virginia gentleman. The Pauper become the Prince, Fauntlroy comes into his own.
The last of the quartet is 1924’s Marcia Of The Doorstep in which in a wholly fictitious way Burroughs’ Anima and Animus are united in the characters of Chase III and Marcia. This novel appears to conclude this particular exploration that has lasted for eleven years.
The Mucker was followed by October-November’s The Mad King. The Mucker was written in both Chicago and San Diego while the Mad King was written wholly in San Diego.
The Mad King returns to the theme of the Cave Girl of ERB’s relationship to Emma. He even names the lead female Emma. It seems possible that the uprooting from Chicago with all their possessions had an unsettling effect on Emma so that ERB’s difficulties with her probably become more pronounced. Certainly her discomfort is understandable but the Mad King may have determined her fate.
The title The Mad King is probably significant in this context. Once again Burroughs creates doppelgangers so that both characters are split from his own personality. Once again we have The Prince And The Pauper theme of an interchange of roles. At this stage ERB may have felt like a king but realized he was acting in a mad way.
The Mad King is followed immediately in November-December actually a matter of only twenty days by The Eternal Lover- Nu Of The Niocene. The two stories must be closely related in Burroughs’ mind. Indeed the sequel to Nu Of The Niocene, Sweetheart Primeval includes several characters from The Mad King. So one would have to ask how does Barney Custer’s sister Victoria relate to Emma.
I intend to devote a few pages to the The Eternal Lover which I consider perhaps the most imaginative and interesting of Burroughs’ stories. The inspiration for the story can be related to two of Burroughs significant influences, Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling. Among others of Haggard’s work She stands out most prominently while Kpling’s very interesting ‘The Finest Story In The World’ bears directly on the theme of reincarnation and close encounters in time.
From further reading that I am doing all the time it is also becoming apparent that Burroughs is part of a very large intellectual and literary background activity. In reading a volume: H.G. Wells’ Literary Criticism I came across this entry: (p. 62, note 2.)
Quote: At the end of (Grant) Allen’s novel, Frida Monteith, now a Liberated Woman, hoping that suicide will enable her to join her lover in the twenty-fifth century, ‘walked on by herself…across the open moor and purple heath, towards black despair and the trout-ponds of Broughton.’
Unquote.
I don’t suggest that ERB read Grant Allen’s novel but as ERB himself said ‘plots are in the air.’ So that ERB is working within an intellectual milieu. His notion of time travel in 1913 is not unreminiscent of Mark Twain’s posthumous 1916 novel Operator 44. While I would not suggest that Twain received any inspiration from Burroughs certainly conceptions of time and time travel were ‘in the air.’ I merely suggest that there is a milieu from which all are drawing inspiration. Burroughs also seems to have in mind H.G. Wells’ When The Sleeper Wakes although he claimed virtually to have never heard of ‘Mr. Wells.’ In Wells’ story his hero had fallen asleep awaking several centuries in the future to find his investments had accrued making him the richest man in the world, the object of a religious cult and an impediment to its continuation.
In The Eternal Lover Nu has been asleep for a hundred thousand years. Burroughs’ title for Chap. III is ‘Nu The Sleeper Awakes.’ No chance of a coincidence. Instead of monetary rewards Nu will find that which makes life worthwhile- the perfect mate he had left behind in the Niocene. Burroughs make an unbelievably subtle comment on Wells. Wells did read Burroughs but whether he caught this is open to conjecture at this time.
In fact, Burroughs setting up Nu’s return to consciousness and his relationship to Victoria, Barney’s sister, is extremely well handled by ERB. I doubt if there is anything in genre literature that surpasses it.
Victoria and Barney have just passed the rock structure within which Nu lies sleeping. The Once And Future King motif is also suggested here as well as possibly Vivien’s enchantment of Merlin.
Speaking of her sensations she says to Barney: p. 14
Quote:
“Barney, there is something about these hills back there that fills me with the strongest sensation of terror imaginable. Today I passed an outcropping of volcanic rock that gave evidence of a frightful convulsion of nature is some bygone age. At sight of it I commenced to tremble from head to foot, a cold perspiration breaking out all over me. But that part is not so strange- you know I have always been subject to these same silly attacks of unreasoning terror at the sight of any evidence of the mighty forces that have wrought changes in the earth’s crust, or the slightest tremor of an earthquake; but today the feeling of unalterable loss which overwhelmed me was almost unbearable- it is though one whom I loved above all others had been taken from me.’
“And yet,” she continued, “through all my inexplicable sorrow there shone a ray of brilliant hope as remarkable as the deeper and depressing emotion which still stirred me.”
Unquote.
That sets the premonition of what is coming as discreetly as anything I’ve read. The psychology of Victoria’s emotions is as succinctly and accurately expressed as possible. It is very difficult to imagine the scene bettered by any writer. Haggard and Kipling who may have recognized their own work as a source of inspiration must have shook their heads in awe.
Barney is sympathetic: p. 16
Quote:
“Oh, Barney.” she cried, “You are such a dear never to have laughed at my silly dreams. I’m sure I should go quite mad did I not have you in whom to confide; but lately I have hesitated to speak of it even to you- he has been coming so often! Every night since we first hunted in the vicinity of the hills I have walked hand in hand with him beneath a great equatorial moon beside a restless sea, and more clearly than ever in the past have I seen his form and features. He is very handsome, Barney, and very tall and strong, and clean limbed- I wish that I might meet such a man in real life. I know it is ridiculous, but I can never love any of the pusillanimous weaklings who are forever falling in love with me- not after having walked hand in hand with such as he and read the love in his clear eyes. And yet, Barney, I am afraid of him. Is it not odd?”
Unquote:
So in a few pages Burroughs has created a mystery of instense interest that will be explained in the next few pages to stunning effect, certainly in 1913 if not today. Since 1913 the topic has been explared in a number of ways not least of which was the very interesting movie Somewhere In Time.
Victoria is afraid of earthquakes. As might be expected a major quake hits. The rock facing of the cave in which Nu has been sleeping for the last hundred thousand years sheers away releasing the gas and allowing fresh air to awaken the sleeper, much as in H.G. Wells excellent story.
Burroughs’ treatment of Nu’s experiencing the new world is exceedingly well done. Through a series of well wrought adventures Nu and Victoria/Nat-Ul are reunited then split asunder again as the Arabs capture Victoria carrying her to the well known fate worse than death in the hands of a Northern Sheik.
Barney and his crew find Nu taking him back to Tarzan’s house. Here Burroughs tells a story before Nu leaves to recover Natu-Ul that seems strange.
The story is told by an unnamed narrator who happens to be a guest of Lord Greystoke at the time.
As the whole scenario is taking place in the mind of Edgar Rice Burroughs we may be forgiven for assuming that the anonymous I is he.
ERB has a strange attitude toward his creation Tarzan here, almost demeaning. When Nu escapes with the wolf hound Greystoke just off handedly asserts that Nu had killed the missing dog. When this proves wrong ERB allows the others to verbally abuse their host. Rather strange, I thought.
It appears that this story that follows Mad King I can be construed as a continuation of that story as when Barney shows up at John Clayton’s ranch, the man formerly known as Tarzan, he is fresh from Lutha and there to forget. As he lost Emma in Lutha one assumes that she is what he’s trying to forget.
An American named Curtiss shows up. Victoria says:
Quote:
“Mr. Curtiss!…and Lieutenant Butzow! Where in the world did you come from?”
“The world left us,” replied the officer, smiling, “and we have followed her to the wilds of Equatorial Africa.”
Unquote.
A charming compliment to Victoria. Indeed, Curtiss is there to propose to her. Curtiss begins very charming then slowly turns vicious. Reminds one of Robert Canler or perhaps Frank Martin in real life. At one point Victoria was about to consent to marry Curtiss (Frank Martin?) but then demurred.
But then she made contact with her dream lover, Nu. the interchange of time sequences is extrememly well handled as Burroughs manages the hundred thousand year gap betwen Nu and Victoria in inventive and satisfying ways. Once again he has mingled prehistory and the present in what is definitely his most virtuoso performance. His depiction of Victoria/Nat-Ul’s blending of dream states and waking states is handled flawlessly and convincingly.
As Curtiss realizes that Nu is his competitor for Victoria/Nat-Ul he derides Nu calling him a ‘white nigger.’ I found the use of the term strange within the context.
When Nu had recovered Victoria from the Arabs Curtiss comes upon the two in the jungle unawares. He is about to shoot Nu in the back (Martin’s arranged bashing of ERB in Toronto?) when the wolf hound who has been protecting Nu and Natu-Ul leaps on him ripping out his throat and chest.
Burroughs seems to gloat over this gruesome death so that one must ask who Curtiss could represent in Burroughs’ real life.
That means, who are Nu and Nat-Ul?
Once again we have to go back to the period 1896-1900 and the subsequent years. It seems likely that Curtiss must represent Frank Martin who courted Emma during those crucial four years in ERB’s life. In ERB/Nu’s absence Curtiss/Martin courted Emma/Victoria/Nat-ul. We may assume that Emma was about to say yes to Martin/Curtiss’ proposal when Burroughs/Nu returned from the Niocene/Idaho thus foiling Curtiss/Martin’s hopes.
Now, when Nu rescued Victoria/Nat-Ul from the lion Curtiss shot him in the dark creasing his skull. This is a theme seldom or never absent from any of Burroughs’ books, therefore it follows that as Martin was responsible for Burroughs’ bashing in Toronto that Martin/Curtiss are the same.
Curtiss becomes abusive of Nu after he recovers from the effects of the near miss revealing his ‘true’ or mean side. So Martin may have, or probably did, become abusive of ERB upon their return from Toronto. It is not to be believed that he just disappeared from the couple’s life without some demonstration of anger. As we know that Martin paid close attention to Burroughs and Emma from 1900 to at least the divorce when he sent his friend Butzow/Patchin to LA to talk to Burroughs it is very likely that he interfered in their marriage through the whole Chicago period. This would explain the gruesomeness of Curtiss/Martins’ killing and ERB’s seeming to revel in it. So the whole Narrator, Barney Custer, Lord Greystoke and Curtiss story is somehow related. The missing piece of the puzzle is Burroughs’ seeming hostility to Tarzan/Greystoke. I haven’t got that yet.
Having rescued Victoria/Nat-Ul from the Arab abductor in one of the most satisfying fight sequences in the corpus Nu tries to claim Nat-ul as his own. He is still confused as to how Victoria can be of two minds as both Victoria and Nat-ul. Before we consider Burroughs’ masterful handling of the fictional situation let us consider the relation of the sequence to Burroughs’ and Emma’s real life situation. This story was written in San Diego not Chicago.
The prehisoric aspect of the story may represent the early days of their marriage before ERB lost Emma’s trust in Idaho. Thus Victoria/Emma remembers the old days but she isn’t necessarily willing as yet to replace her trust in ERB. Nu/ERB having now the two tusks of Oo the saber toothed tiger on him as proof of his devotion, possibly once again representing his John Carter and Tarzan successes, insists that Victoria/Emma return to the past with him. i.e. the early days of the marriage. In other words Burroughs wants to start all over again. The name Nu- New- may mean that ERB thinks himself a new man but the same old guy he used to be.
My hair is still curly,
My eyes are still blue,
Why don’t you love me
Like you used to do.
Hank Williams
As this half of the story ends somewhat in a quandary regarding the relationship, Victoria nevertheless agrees to return to the past with Nu.
As ERB tells the story in the novel he creates a most extraordinary scene.
Quote.
“You do not love me Nat-Ul?” He asked. “Have the strangers turned you against me? What one of them could have fetched you the head of Oo, the man hunter? See!” He tapped the two great tusks that hung from his loin cloth. “Nu slew the mightest of beasts for his Nat-ul- the head is buried in the cave of Oo- yet now I come to take you as my mate I see fear in your eyes and something else which never was there before. What is it Natu-ul- have the strangers stolen your love from Nu?
The man spoke in a tongue so ancient that in all the world there lived no man who spoke or knew a word of it, yet to Victoria Custer it was as intelligible as her own English, nor did it seem strange to her that she answered Nu in his own language.
“My heart tells me that I am yours, Nu,” she said, “but my judgement and training warn me against the step that my heart prompts. I love you; but I could not be happy to wander, half naked through the jungle for the balance of my life, and if I go with you now, even for a day, I may never return to my people. Nor would you be happy in the life that I lead- it would stifle and kill you. I think I see now something of the miracle that has overwhelmed us. To you it has been but a few days since you left your Nat-ul to hunt down the ferocious Oo; but in reality countless ages have rolled by. By some strange freak of fate you have remained unchanged during all these ages until now you step forth from your long sleep an unspoiled cave man of the stone age into the midst of the twentieth century, while I doubtless, have been born and reborn a thousand times, merging form one incarnation to another until in this we are again united. Had you, too, died and been born again during all these weary years no gap of ages would intervene between us now and we should meet again upon a common footing as do other souls, and mate and we to be born again to a new mating and new life with its inevitable death- you have refused to die and now that we meet again at least a hundred thousand years lie between us- an unbridgeable gulf across which I may not return and over which you may not come other than by the same route I have followed- through death and new life thereafter.”
Unquote.
Wow! I don’t know that that can be topped in fantasy or other fiction. And there are people who say that Burroughs has no occult background. The passage fairly drips of Haggard and Kipling. Novels and stories that he’d read perhaps twenty years or more before had been working away in his mind to surface in this magnificent speech and wonderful story.
The unbridgeable gulf clearly refers to Haggard’s Allan Quatermain. The influence of the story of She is unmistakeable while Kipling’s The Finest Story In The World is clear. yet Burroughs has built an entirely new edifice that rises magnificently above the old foundations.
Haggard and Kipling read the story too, I’m sure with their mouths hanging open. It inspired them four years later to collaborate on Haggard’s own Love Eternal. While inspired by his masters Burroughs also inspired them. It’s a pity they didn’t all three sit down to smoke a cigar and have a brandy together.
That this story has gone unrecognized seems incredible. With this half of the story ERB capped his incredible year of 1913.
The tone of the corpus changes after Nu of the Niocene.
—–
As he worked his stories were being published elsewhere. It would not be before mid 1914 that Tarzan Of The Apes would see book form but perhaps more importantly his work was recognized and serialized in the newspapers. We have to thank Bibliophile Robert R. Barrett for collating the newspaper publications that George McWhorter published in the Winter 2005 NS #61 of the BB. My information is gratis Mr. Barrett’s collation.
The New York Evening World kicked off Burroughs career when it serialized Tarzan Of The Apes beginning in January of 1913. The paper also published many subsequent novels. Following the Evening World Tarzan Of The Apes was published by the Los Angeles Record, Chicago Record, the Bowman ND Citizen.
The Return Of Tarzan was syndicated by the Scripp’s Howard papers and The Cave Girl by the NY Evening World. After 1913-14 the number of papers publishing Tarzan Of The Apes increased greatly so by the time the book was published in June of 1914 Tarzan was much more widely disseminated than the mere publication in the All Story Magazine would warrant.
Burroughs’ book publishing history is difficult to understand. the reports of untold millions of copies cannot be substantiated. Indeed it appears that in 1914 fewer than fifteen thousand copies were sold. There is no record that his publishers, McClurg’s even printed the full fifteen thousand copes of the contract. When they leased the reprint rights to A.L.Burt in 1915 there had been no record of sales success. Indeed Burt would only take the title if McClurg’s would indemnify them for the first twenty thousand copies if unsold.
The cheap edition did well well but Burt reported less than seven hundred thousand copies ehen they turned the rights over to Grossett & Dunlap. So Burroughs while having a success never realized the substantial royalties on which he had been counting and would have bought him his yacht.
The springtime of ERB was nearly over. By the time he wrote the sequels to The Mad King, Cave Girl and The Eternal Lover in 1914 he was already entering Summer.
Let us now examine the year 1914.
End Of Part V
Lipstick Traces: Greil Marcus
A Review
Part IV
The Art Of Yesterday’s Crash
by R.E. Prindle
As I mentioned in Part II Mr. Marcus seems to consider himself first an Old Testament prophet prophesying fire and destruction for the United States. Secondly he sees himself as a continuator of the Frankfurt School or New School Of Social Research and thirdly the spiritual successor to Guy Debord and perhaps the new leader of the Situationist International.
In the situations under consideration he turns his New School For Social Research and SI sides up.
Now as it happens that when I attended Cal State At Hayward one of the professors was a fellow named Theodore Roszak. Mr Roszak wrote a volume called The Making Of A Counter Culture while teaching at Cal State; probably something called American Studies or some such, I can’t remember, which these Frankfurters always aim for and we’ll see why.
We are now talking ’64-’65. Sixty-five is probably best known for the Black rebellion in LA’s Watts district. That kicked off the violent revolt of the Blacks which smolders on today flaring up here and there. Thus in Mr. Marcus’ The Shape Of Things To Come he prophesys blood in the streets.
It was also the beginning of the San Francisco Scene. The San Francisco Mime Troop- a Communist outfit- had been active in street theatre for some little time. Then Kesey organized the Merry Pranksters, Owsley entered the picture and the Acid Tests began. I was invited to the Acid Test but declined to go. Couldn’t see the social utility; it would have been interesting but I’m not sorry I missed it.
Roszak. So everybody assumed that this book he advertised he was writing called The Making Of A Counter Culture was about what Jack Kerouac called ‘The Rucksack Revolution.’ These were the post-British Invasion days so long hair was slowly making inroads into the East Bay. I didn’t have long hair but I had a strange long ducktail from the fifties. Cal State was on a windy plateau so everytime I went outside I looked like a hurricane walking around. This was enough for the profs and administration who were terrified that the Free Speech Movement would edge up from Berkeley to classify me as a ‘radical.’
I was sent to Roszak as he was presumably writing a book on the ‘counter culture’ which is what the hip movement was known as. I found Roszak one guilty customer. Dark mind too, repellent. He thought I was sent as a spy. That increased his guilty reaction.
When his book came out it didn’t have anything to do with a Hippie counter culture. It was all about the Frankfurt School, Marcuse et al. The book was about the Jewish Revolution. Roszak must have thought the ‘anti-Semites’ sent me. So, now I understand Mr. Marcus; use of the term ‘Secret History.’ He doesn’t just mean obscure. Roszak was part of history being made but it was unintelligible to the uninformed mind. Even though the Frankfurt School was operating openly I don’t know if anyone knew that subterranean history was being lived in the open but there it was as plain as day. Roszak was a continuator. I don’t know if Mr. Marcus knows Mr. Roszak but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did, they are both Jews etc, but as a continuator of the Frankfurt School Mr. Marcus may be described as having the baton passed to him through Mr. Roszak. Mr. Marcus is more prolific and effective while being more obscure and secretive than Mr. Roszak. The reader, even the informed reader, probably doesn’t know he is being spoon fed Semitism.
Mr. Marcus even allows himself to be called by the presumptuous title of The Holy Greil even further insulting his subordinate Euroamerican culture. I don’t mind Mr. Marcus and others insulting the half-Jewish Jesus but I do want him to keep his hands off the essence of Euroamerican Culture. I can accord Mr. Marcus neither Holiness nor any association with the Grail stories even though his style incomprehensible as it is is pretty entertaining. Must have learned that from Old Bob.
Mr. Marcus establishes himself as a continuator of the Frankfurt School and then says he is going to criticize the living crap out of everything. Well, alright, OK! I would like to point out however that criticism is not analysis. Any fool can criticize but analysis requires a little science. There’s a serious rub in Mr. Marcus’ style, not science, all, well, not all, blather.
I will give him credit for not beginning this Situation with the Armory Show. My god and Jesus H. Christ we know how that changed America but, well, as an Israeli citizen and man of the world Mr. Marcus isn’t talking about America or anything as earth shaking as the Armory show. No. He’s talking about six inconsquential nerds pulling sophomoric stunts in Zurich in 1916 while there was a war going on. All a bunch of draft dodgers too, except for the woman doing the splits with the madonna face whatever one of those is. I been looking but not finding.
These six Mr. Marcus informs us created Da Da. They gave their shenanigans a name that stuck. While Mr. Marcus seems to revere their stuff I have to confess that it doesn’t seem much different than the shenanigans of any other generation. Da Da is just a state of mind that certain people experience at a certain stage and condition of life.
If Mr. Marcus had looked around Berkeley and the Bay Area he would have seen plenty of evidence of the state of mind in the Mime Troupe, the whole San Francisco Sound was Da Da. Kesey was Da Da, and everyone was pulling the same kind of stunts with the same results. That trick with the splits and madonna face is so commonplace it doesn’t bear mentioning. A guy playing an imaginary violin? Whew! Wow, who in the world could ever have thought that one up?
The hell with this Da Da crap. Real men dying in the trenches and these guys are scraping an imaginary violin? Not too impressed, Mr. Marcus. Let’s get on to the real stuff. This gets passed over by The Holy Greil. The foundation of the Frankfurt School c. 1923. Here’s the real crux of Mr. Marcus; psychology, the culture wars between the Semitic intellect and the European intellect. A lttle clash of loyalties here in that dual citizenship Mr. Marcus holds.
While the clowns in Zurich, for that is what they were , were trying to live down their antics at the Cabaret Voltaire the real revolution was forming in Frankfurt. This the revolution of which Mr. Marcus is the continuator. This is the real substance of Mr. Marcus’ work. Nice work too, don’t get me wrong.
I’ve done some work on this subject but I’m going to refer any possible readers to this web page for a quick history of the Frankfurt School: http://no-maam.blogspot.com/2007/07/great-historical-outline-of-cultural.html The article was posted by Mr. Rob Fedders. Bear in mind this analysis represents the foundation of Mr. Marcus thought, intellect and purpose. His writing makes much more sense in this context.
Quote:
Before World War I, Marxist theory said that if Europe ever erupted in war, the working classes in every European country would rise in revolt overthrow their govenments and create a new Communist Europe, but when war broke out in the summer of 1914, that didn’t happen. Instead the workers of every European country lined up by the millions to fight their country’s enemies….After World War I ended in 1918, Marxist theorists had to ask themselves a question: What went wrong?…two leading Marxist intellectuals, Antonio Gramsci in Italy and George Lukacs in Hungary…independently came up with the same answer. They said that Western culture and the Christian religion had so blinded the working class to its true, Marxist class interests, that a Communist revolution was impossible in the West, until both could be destroyed. That objective, established as cultural Marxism’s goal right at the beginning, has never changed.
Unquote.
There’s a little secret history for you. The Frankfurt School employed the political theory of Marx, the psychological theory of Freud and the relativistic nonsense of Einstein to undermine Western culture backed up by the ever potent charge of ‘anti-Semitism.’ Their BS could easily have been resisted and rejected but for their alliance with Liberals. To merely state that a critic was anti-Semitic was enough to set the conditioned Liberals on the accused and make him or her a non-person in society. Thus without their Liberal slaves the Frankfurt School would not have been that effective. Liberals are the true enemy.
Now, skipping the interim machinations, by the time of the Free Speech Movement the Jewish Revolution had been nearly completed.
In addition to the music the introduction of hallucinigens made the capture of the whole generation child’s play.
As with the so-called Free Speech Movement the problem was not one shared by society as a whole which was functioning quite nicely, thank-you, but a cultural problem within the Semitic species. As always the inability of the Semites to compete effectively with the Indo-Europeans, or to be brief, Aryan species was the crux of the problem. The Terachites challenged the Ur of the Chaldees. In the ancient conflict between the Semites and the Aryan Sumerians the latter were centered about Ur while the Semites were centered further North. So Abram as a Semite was challenging the Aryan Sumerians who had understood and developed Astronomy. The Egyptians were an amalgam of the HSII Libyans and the Egyptians of the Upper Nile valley. In my opinion the intellectual content of Egypt was injected by the Libyan refugees from the post-ice age flooding of the Mediterranean.
The Semites then came into collision with the superior intellecual and scientific civilization of the Hellenes more especially in Greek Alexandria where Philo attempted to subvert Hellenic science in favor of ‘Talmudic’ mythology. The Romans who created the most amazing empire the Mediterranean world had ever seen once again, as it were, illuminated the inferiority of the Semitic intellect. The Jews set about to subvert and destroy the Roman Empire which, in my opinion they did both in the exhausting Roman-Jewish Wars and the succeeding Pauline Judeo-Christian subversion. Matters were then stalemated for centuries until Aryan science finally pushed through the Judeo-Christian meshes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Once again the inferiority of the Semitic intellect was displayed. Marx, Freud and Einstein created the basic non-scientific means posing as science to subvert the Aryan scientific intellect. The groundwork laid by the big three, the epigone went to work. The nitwits of Da Da may be considered shock troops while the Frankfurt School- The Institute For Social Research- formed c. 1923 began the serious work of undermining Western Civilization. Once again, Mr. Marcus seems to consider himself first a continuator of the Frankfurt School, a reincarnation of Guy Debord and then in The Shape Of Things To Come to graduate to the role of a Hebrew prophet.
Now, in every instance in which the Jewish Semites have confronted the Aryans they have failed to excel them although taking advantage of the reluctance to face the problem directly on the part of the Aryans the Jewish Semites have been able without exception to destroy the Aryan achievement.
The Jews also insist that they are the Chosen People of mankind just as the Arabs insist that they are The Central People. Chosen, Central are the same things. We are talking a characteristic of the Semitic species. Yet evolutionarily they are constitutionally or genetically inferior to Aryans. No matter what happens they will never be able to match or sustain Aryan achievements.
What to do? I know most readers have never delved deeply into this area of study so that the reader may be astonished by what is going on and find it unbelievable. It isn’t. Realizing that they can never excel the Aryans the Jewish Semites have resolved to exterminate- that is commit genocide- on the whole species. They propose to and are fairly well advanced in their program to eliminate a species of over a billion people.
Astounding and unbelievable isn’t it. Well, while you were sleeping astounding developments were in progress. It is time for the sleeper to awake. Be patient with me and I’ll explain how it is being done and why Mr. Marcus may possibly see himself advance from Hebrew prophet to Judge-Penitent of the Aryan peoples. (See my review of Albert Camus’ The Fall here on I, Dynamo.)
The plan is available on line at a site run by a former Harvard professor, Noel Ignatiev called Race Traitor. Mr. Ignatiev believes in races even though he is a Jew and the current Jewish line is that races do not exist. The first stage of this program is part of psychological warfare based on the Freudian model.
Mr. Ignatiev as spokesman for the Jewish culture asserts that all the evil in the world proceeds from the Aryan ‘races.’ It is true that the Jews argue in other situations that ‘race’ exists only as a social construct however as ‘race’ is useful in this instance the idea is reconstituted. The approach is a key tenet of ‘critical theory’ in which the critical base point is one’s relative need at the moment.
As all evil proceeds from the Aryan ‘race’ it follows that if the Aryan race is eliminated from the face of the earth by ‘any means necessary’ that evil will disappear from the world. This notion is apparently a variation on the eighteenth century Jewish notion of Jacob Frank that Jews will only become good when they expend all the evil in their system. Apparently at that time Jews were the evil ‘race’ but at some point between then and now they have expended all the evil in their system and have become ‘good’ along with the rest of the world. All this stuff sounds good according to Jewish ‘critical theory’ but falls apart under ‘Aryan’ scientific analysis.
The problem is the obvious Aryan superior intelligence so that Mr. Ignatiev invents the concept of ‘White Skin Privilege.’ Using critical theory the only reason Aryans or Whites, to which term I will revert, have obtained the prominent position among the ‘races’ is because Aryans have White Skin. Real Tarzans if you know what I mean. Thus the superiority is based on cosmetics. Change the cosmetics and the superiority will go away. Not bad reasoning really. It therefor follows that if Whites can be persuaded to give up their ‘White Skin Privilege’ why, the Utopia will become a reality and evil will disappear from the world. I’m not making this up.
Therefore from sheer shame Whites should voluntarily abandon ‘Whiteness.’ Remember this line of reasoning comes from a Harvard graduate and a Harvard professor. I would have been laughed out of a ‘third rate’ college like Cal State for proposing such nonsense. To my knowledge neither the Jewish culture or Harvard University have ever publicly repudiated Mr. Ignatiev so one must assume he speaks with the full approval of both.
Mr. Ignatiev also calls his program the New Abolitionism calling for the abolition of the White ‘race.’
The easiest course, or least painful, for Whites to abolish themselves, actually, is to marry Black people. Any resulting offspring will be non-White so that if all Whites could be persuaded to do this ‘Whiteness’ would disappear within, well, a generation.
Realistically this isn’t going to happen although historically conquerors have killed the men and kept the women. Without White men White women will have to produce colored children. This was actually done during the Haitian revolution from France. The men were killed and the White women were told that they could live only if they served as wives to Black men. Most of them did. Thus we have the result of Haitians being the most beautiful people in the world while having constructed the most successful and glorious society not to mention culture.
Now, if you follow what’s happening in education, kindergartners are being taught to be homosexuals. Is it necessary to say that homosexuals cannot reproduce themselves? It therefor follows that if White boys are raised as homosexuals White women will have to turn to Black men while if such a program is successful White men will diminish say by a half life a generation. Thus another method to eliminate Whites. And White people are dumb enough to go for it. Can’t ask for more than that, can one?
And then for the remainder of hard cases there are always industrial means to eliminate them. Gas chambers or whatever means necessary, who cares?
So as you can see Mr. Ignatiev is not theorizing but helping to implement a program that is well advanced.
Now then, the strength of the US economy and well being of Whites as a result is a standing rebuke to the other ‘races’ of the world and a cause of the most destructive envy. We don’t want to look at Zimbabwe and South Africa do we? Naw. How’s that going to prove anything? Thus jobs were exported out of the country to everywhere. The US economy as a whole was picked up and moved to China which for all practical purposes is run with the lowest cost slave labor possible.
The unions have been broken and the well being of the working man has been destroyed by unrestricted Mexican immigration which is lower cost. Technical jobs have been given to lower cost immigrant labor via the worker visa program.
Back in the eighties the savings and Loan industry was savagely looted. One of the beneficiaries of that theft was the family of the current President of the United States. The housing debacle which will be a blow from which the US economy will not recover was engineered from the start to impending finish with the full knowledge of that President.
It only remains to gut the savings of the older generation. At the appropriate time this will be done by inflation. At that point the United States and the West will be defenseless. One can’t imagine what the Liberals have to gain from this.
So, within the matter of a few decades ‘White Skin Privilege’ will be just a memory. Of course other ‘situations’ may enter in to redirect the course of history. No one can accurately prophesy including Mr. Marcus.
Thus if Mr. Marcus lives long enough he may finish his life as a ‘Judge Penitent’ choosing who may live and who not.
I will end this Part here and meld the end of The Art Of Yesterday’s Crash with the next situation The Crash Of Yesterday’s Art.
Pt. III Lipstick Traces: Greil Marcus Legends Of Freedom
August 2, 2007
GREIL MARCUS
LIPSTICK TRACES
A Review
Part III
Legends Of Freedom
Greil En Repose
So Mr. Marcus’ question is: Why am I nothing when I should be everything? Sounds like a lot of frustration to me. If the questioner doesn’t understand the answer then he is in a veritable quandary. In the first place nobody can be ‘everything.’ Nobody can corner all the money in the world although it doesn’t stop some people from trying, some people who have a more effective plan than Karl Marx or…Johnny Rotten or…Guy Debord or…do I dare say Greil Marcus?
One must question in this novel of frustrations, for that is what it is, to what extent is the author talking about himself; he certainly sems to identify with his characters. He named a subsequent book The Shape Of Things To Come after a title of the man who wrote The Anatomy Of Frustration, H.G. Wells.
Writing is a dangerous vocation. I’m terrified by it everytime I put pen to paper. No matter how careful you are you must expose your real self to a readership that may or may not be all that forgiving. For myself I have abandoned any hope of concealment and write as my needs dictate. However once published your fate is in the hands of any readers. So, I sympathize with Mr. Marcus but wonder if he himself isn’t frustrated by a lack of monetary success that he thinks he deserves.
Why else would he concentrate on such nonentities as Johnny Rotten, Guy Debord and these non-entities hanging around the Cafe Voltaire. I have a feeling that Lipstick Traces could have been titled The New Anatomy Of Frustration.
Why am I nothing when I should be everything?
Did Guy Debord think he would become everything by plastering grafitti like Ne Travaille Jamais all over Paris? Ne travaille Jamais?
Guy Debord
There’s a defeatist slogan if I ever heard one. Mr. Marcus has worked plenty hard to realize his something. My god, the effort I have put in trying to make a success as a writer. Mr. Marcus at least has made it into print for which he has been paid something I should think. I’ve spent twenty years writing with no recompense and I still am. The only consolation I have is that the readership of my blogs seems to be growing. That’s something, no money, but something.
Ne travaille jamais? Why does Mr. Marcus want to make a hero out of some yo-yo sitting around a bar cadging drinks from people who do travaille? Unless Mr. Marcus explains, that is going to remain a mystery to me.
What is Guy Debord doing as he sits around drinking cadged absinthe, ruining his liver? Yes, but he’s trying to dream up ‘situations’ in which he can bring the society that won’t recognize his greatness to its knees. And according to Mr. Marcus he nearly succeeded in the Paris of 1968. That was the the work of the SI he says. SI, Situationist International.
Debord and his SI remind me of nothing so much as the fable of the Ants And The Grasshopper. You remember that. The Ants worked hard all summer storing up supplies against the long cold winter that inevitably follows the short pleasant summer while the grasshoppers lived heedlessly off the land fiddling and dancing.
When the inevitable happened as the inevitable will they who had thought they were everything turned out to be nothing. They demanded charity, much as Debord and his kind do, when they were refused their response was that they would burn the stores of the Ants and they wouldn’t have anything either. Mr. Marcus appears to admire this attitude.
What did Shakespeare say in Hamlet of ‘the spurns that patient merit takes of the unworthy’? Are those who will not contribute to be given the same consideration as those who do? The people who trashed Paris in ’68 thought so. The Grasshoppers did the only thing they knew how, they burned what les travailleurs had created.
Mr. Marcus admires that. Unless I read him wrong he considers that ‘freedom’. Guy Debord is one of legends of freedom.
SI. Situationist International. International- some guy sitting in a bar in Paris cadging drinks dreaming that he runs an International subversive organization. Some legend of freedom. So far Mr. Marcus’ argument is not very convincing.
During some very very formative years Mr. Marcus and I were subjected to many of the very same influences. I’d gotten out of the Navy in late ’59 moving into the East Bay of the SF Bay. Mr Marcus at that time, as I gather, was growing up in Menlo Park on the Peninsula. I was based in San Leandro-Castro Valley-Hayward. I worked in Oakland and San Francisco while hanging out as much as I could in Berkeley. While as I gather Mr. Marcus was fortunate enough to attend UC-Berkeley I was running the gamut of various Junior Colleges beginning with Oakland City finally ending up at Hayward State from which I graduated in ’66.
I’m willing to bet that Mr. Marcus is familiar with Henry Miller, The Story Of O, Steppenwolf and several other similar titles that were de rigeur in that cockpit of Freedom, the so-called Free Speech Movement from ’64 or slightly earlier on. Needless to say the apostles of the Frankfurt School, Adorno, Fromm, Reich, Marcuse et al. were running around trying to force that crap on everyone.
Since we’re talking Legends Of Freedom here that Mr. Marcus identifies, jokingly I hope, p.181:
They were “enfants perdu” Debord often said, lost children, and so they claimed any father in whose faces they could recognize their own; (cough, cough) the surrealists, the dadaists, the failed revolutionaries of the first third of the twentieth century, the Communards, the young Karl Marx, Saint-Just, medieval heretics-and all, as Debord and the others began talking in the 1950s, were moribund, forgotten memories and rumors, manque, maudit. All were, at best, legends- to the LI and SI, part of the legend of freedom.
Legends of freedom! Hmm…pardon me while I smile, pardon me further, I’m beginning to shake uncontrollably from laughter. Karl Marx and the Soviet Union legends of freedom? Oh yes, indeed, Mr. Marcus. A trick of perspective perhaps?
Listen now. Mr. Marcus hopes that the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkeley may be included in those great freedom battles. But I ask Mr. Marcus, Freedom for who? As it happens Cal-State was a new college with a very small library so we were given library privileges at UC. So I was actually on campus when a lot of this was going on. I even tried to join up but was rejected in this great experiment in freedom because I wasn’t…Jewish. But I would be allowed to carry a sign and throw my body on the barricades…if I wanted to help this legend of freedom along. Well, I declined, envisioning myself in a more exalted postion as I did, I who should have been everything spurned away with the foot as nothing.
As I say I graduated in’66 so I spent the summer attending summer school at Berkeley. By this time the Revolution was over and the revolutionists were in control. When I came up from Hayward I entered the campus through the famous Sather Gate, perhaps since renamed Legends Of Freedom Gate, I don’t know. I used to see the ‘fabled’ Allen Ginsberg there trying to sell the Berkeley Barb or whatever.
Just inside the Gates Of Freedom, I think Dylan sang about some such fantasy, just inside the gates of freedom the Jewish Commissars of the revolution sat. One was supposed to submit one’s free American manhood to these ‘revolutionary’ slugs if one wished to attend classes unmolested. I just walked by these slugs because I didn’t know what was going on. I was told what was going on. Well, I’m a free American boy, born that way, not going to give it up, you dig? I don’t submit my manhood to anybody least of all some degenerate looking slug pretending to be Cheka, Gestapo, Che or whatever. Fuck that… pardon me, none of that for me.
Now, Berkeley had these huge thousand member or something like that, lecture classes. The teaching genius who wrote a book or two you’ve never heard of, lectured from a podium about a mile away then we were all divided into groups of about thirty and turned over to teaching assistants who were, you guessed it, vetted by the Commissars. You know where I stood in that great battle for, what was that word Mr. Marcus? Freedom? A legendary one too.
And you mentioned all these legends of freedom that preceded the so-called Free Speech Movement of Berkeley as representative?
And did we all dance with one hand waving free with no fences but the sky facing?
Don’t be disingenuous sir! None of the people you mention were interested in the least in freedom for anyone but themselves and I’m afraid that might include you. So was Berkeley a mere created situation that preceded the situation in Paris in ’68? Were the Commissars active in Paris as they were in Berkeley? I’ll bet they were.
Actually I’m beyond the third reading which is quite a tribute to Mr. Marcus. I’m up to five readings of Legends Of Freedom and I’ll probably be at five for the rest of the situations Mr. Marcus records. I may do some more detail work when I finish the main outline.
Next let us turn to the second situation. The Art Of Yesterday’s Crash.
End Of Part III
I, Dynamo 