Part 6, Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review

May 19, 2008

 

A Review

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18  Tarzan And The Lion Man

Part 6

by

R.E. Prindle

First published on the ezine, ERBzine

The Center Of The Circle

 

     Burroughs does a remarkable thing in this ring that clearly shows the Greek classical influence per Erling Holtsmark in his Tarzan And Tradition.   ERB disolves his story and cast of characters after the last Bansuto attack.  The cast is dispersed in several directions but ERB will deliver them all to Omwamwi Falls as he begins the three right hand rings:  3-2-1

     In fact this does follow the Homeric tradition.  The story of the Trojan Wars was actually a massive story of which only three parts survive, the Iliad, which concerns the central part of the epic and th two Returns, The Odyssey and The Oresteia.  All the rest has been lost or survives only in fragments such as ‘The Judgement Of Paris.”  Originally the epic was thousands of pages long.  There were undoubtedly few scholars who had ever read the story in its entirety and fewer still who understood it.

     It seems incredible that a very young ERB could have grasped the structure so completely while seeming to understand it so thoroughly.  Holtsmark quotes ERB as saying that he was rereading Plutarch’s Lives in 1923 when he discovered that Numa was the name of a Roman emperor, actually one of the Republican kings,  To that point he had believed that he had made up the name.

     Thus we learn that ERB did some rereading and his subconscious supplied material.  He could have, it is plausible, read the Iliad and Odyssey a number of times over his life.  Along with other classical reading the basic method was established in his subconscious which he was able to consciously manipulate.

     The Trojan War was the first of the three great sprawling European epics, unmatched in any other literatrue.   The second was the Arthurian Saga also huge, sprawling through many thousands of pages and many different variations.  The story has its roots in Greek mythology as well as in the Christian ethos.  The Lancelot-Grail alone is several thousand pages.  Burroughs doesn’t seem to have been much concerned with it.  Indeed, most of it would have been untranslated in his time thus being unavailable to him.

     The third great cycle was the strange nineteenth century English pursuit of the Grail in the search for the source of the Nile.  In my estimation a rather peculiar obsession.  This story too occupies several thousands of pages as all the participants recorded their efforts in copious detail.  Livingston, Stanley, Burton, Baker and Speke have written magnficent narratives.  Speke walking the Nile North after just having discovered the source actually ran into Baker following the Nile South.  A remarkable accidental encounter that goes unnoticed.  The best overview and history of the quest is Alan Moorehead’s The White Nile of 1960.  He provides an adequate background for these modern knights in seach of an unlikely Grail.  The Tarzan oeuvre might be indluded as a fourth cycle based on cycles one and three.

     The first and third epics then involved ERB intimately.  The Tarzan series is based on the Africa of the Nile Quest while framed in the literary construction of the first.

     Burroughs then dissolves his story after the Bansuto attack then telling the story of the several participants on the way to Omwamwi Falls in the manner of the Homeric Returns.  He then reassembles them less Obroski at the Omwamwi or Murchison Falls on the Nile.  Thus the river cascading from the plateau is actually the Nile.  What he calls the Thames on the plateau of the City of God must be indeed a substantial stream.

     We have already dealt with the fate of Stanley Obroski and Tarzan.  After the last Bansuto attack the Arabs agreed to take the midnight to six watch.  During the night they folded their tents and silently stole away taking Rhonda, Naomi and the map with them.

     Orman decides to go off in pursuit of them alone.  Bill West convinces him to take himself along so the two abandon the safari to pursue the girls and Arabs.

     Tarzan neutralizes the Bansuto by having them promise to be kind to Whites so the remaining safari members are able to somehow get their trucks and equpment to the Falls unmolested,  that leaves the girls, the Arabs and Orman and West.

     After leaving Obroski shivering with fright in a tree Tarzan comes upon Orman and West as they are being attacked by a lion.  Plummeting from the convenient tree Tarzan dispatches the lion, immediately disappearing back into his tree.   This is the first incident of the cast mistaking Tarzan for Obroski.  I happen to think Burroughs handles this confusion extremely well.  After all, Burroughs has firmly established Obroski’s cowardice with the safari members.

     Orman and West’s astonishment at the seeming Obroski feat is very genuine.  Later when Tarzan supplies them with a buck while translating Arabic from Atewy their astonishment can’t be more complete.  Very effectively handled.  Having supplied them with food Tarzan points them in the right direction and gets them started with a swift kick so that leaves the Arabs and the girls to account for.  This also begins the comparison of the qualities of Rhonda and Naomi.

     The Arabs have the map to the valley of diamonds that they believe is genuine and indeed it is.  Unable to read English, the language of the map, they make promises of freedom to gain the cooperation of the girls.  Rhonda scoffs at the genuineness of the map believing it a movie prop.  However they can locate their position according to the landmarks provided by the map.  Astonishingly they are able to locate all the landmarks which lead them to the Omwamwi Falls.

     Naomi accepts her captivity while Rhonda plans escape.  She effects this by saddling a couple ponies at night  while driving the rest of the herd off.  This episode is also well handled and quite believable given that this is a fantasy novel.  The net result is that Naomi is recaptured while Rhonda makes it to the falls where the story is forwarded by her capture by the Apes of God.  Another little joke, I presume.

     Following both the map and Rhonda the Arabs and Naomi arrive at the Falls.  The action then finishes the parallel story to Tarzan and Obroski  of the girls and begins the right second ring story of The City Of God.  This is a magnificent story full of many twists and surprises.  In our day this stuff has been used over and over so that the imaginative feat is diluted or lost.  If one places one’s imagination back in 1933 one can marvel at Burroughs; ingenuity while seeing how disappointed ERB was that the novel fell flat.  Such is life.

Posted in Consciousness, Doppelganger, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Emasculation, ERBzine, H.M. Stanley, Homer, King Arthur, Louis B. Mayer, MGM, Mythology, Psychology, R.E. Prindle, Subconscious, Tarzan, The Iliad, Trojan War, Uncategorized, Unconsciousness, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Part 5 Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review

May 19, 2008

 

A Review

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18 Tarzan And The Lion Man

Part 5

by

R.E. Prindle

First published on the ezine, ERBzine

Tarzan, Obroski And Burroughs

 

     Burroughs has been ridiculing Obroski right along as an arrant coward.  Wherever the action is, Stanley isn’t.  When it’s over he shows up ready to fight.  When a call for the safe job of kitchen help is made after the porters desert Stanley raises his hand.

     The cowardice is in contrast to his magnficent physique.  Standing 6’8″ or 9″  in his bare feet while his strength is as prodigious as that of Tarzan.  No one in the safari has yet seen Tarzan but he and Stanley are as identical twins.  When Stanley becomes fever stricken and disappears from the story the movie cast will confuse Tarzan for Obroski providing some amusing moments.

     Over the oeuvre Burroughs uses the divice of a Tarzan double a number of time  times.  Esteban Miranda in Tarzan And The Golden Lion/Ant Men, here as Stanley Obroski and again in Tarzan And The Forbidden City  as Brian Gregory stand out.  The doubles are quite obviously aspects of Burroughs’ own character.  As the doubles are all cowardly, inept or both one has to assume they represent Burroughs as he perceived himself before becoming a success while Tarzan represents Burroughs as a success.  There was obviously a constant psychic tug of war between the two Burroughs.  This was something ERB was desperately trying to resolve in favor of the Tarzan persona.

     The quesiton is, was he ever successful in resolving the problem by psychologically integrating his personality?  At several times in the corpus he seems to have succeeded even to the extent of killing off his old persona.  But then there are doubts and Brian Gregory appears a few years later.

     If I live long enough I will try a comparison of Miranda, Obroski, Gregory and Burroughs.  Notiice the progression of the double from Spanish to Slav to Anglo. The Spaniard was the epitome of worthlessness at the turn of the century while the Slav though higher was despised.  Gregory as an Anglo would indicate that Burroughs may have reconciled his self-esteem at least.

     As a more or less irrelevant aside it is known that Tennessee Williams (1911-83) was a Tarzan fan.  He was twenty-three years old when Lion Man was issued while A Streetcar Named Desire was staged in 1947.  It may seem tenuous to make the connection between the names of Stanley Obroski and Stanley Kowalski but there it is.  There are resemblances between Stanley-Naomi and Stanley-Blanche allowing for the fictionalizing powers of Williams.  There is no proof that Williams specifically read Lion Man that I know of but it is neither impossible or improbable given his admiration for the character.  Perhaps the germ of Stanley-Blanche was placed in Williams’ mind in 1934-35 germinating away in his subconscious to blossom eleven or twelve years later.  I don’t say it’s so but it is worth investigating.

     In the construction of this novel the story of Obroski and Tarzan forms Ring Three.  The story moves from Ring Two, The Safari and will segue into the inner ring.

     In Chaper 8, The Coward, Burroughs devotes six pages to explaining or rather justifying the character of Obroski.  In justifying Obroski Burroughs is justifying himself which is why he took such pains with this book.

     During the last Bansuto attack in Chapter 8 Obroski panicked.  As the Bansuto attacked from one side Obroski ran off in the opposite direction.  Unfortunately the Bansuto were on both sides and Obroski ran into their open arms.  Now cornered Obroski fought from reflex:  pp.  46-47:

     Death stared him in the face!  Heretofore Obroski’s dangers had been more or less imaginary; now he was faced with a stark reality.

     Terror galvanized his mind and his giant muscles into instant action.  He seized the black and lifted him above his head; then he hurled him heavily to the ground.

     The black, fearful for his life, started to rise.  Obroski fearful for his own, lifted him high overhead and again cast him down.  As he did so a half dozen blacks, closed upon him from the tall surrounding grasses and bore him to earth.

     His mind half numb with terror, Obroski fought like a cornered rat.  The blacks were no match for his great muscles.  He seized them and tossed them aside, then he turned to run.  But the black he had first hurled to the ground reached out and seized him by an ankle, gripping him; then the others were upon him again and more came to their assistance…In all his life Stanley Obroski had never fought before.  A good disposition and his strange complex had prevented him from seeking trouble and his great size and strength had deterred others from picking quarrels with him.

     So, while Obroski was a coward when he had time to consider, in the grip of terror he was quite capable of using his great strength and size to fight back.

     His cowardice was not his fault or part of his nature.  Burroughs reflects further.   p. 45:

     We are either the victims or beneficiaries of heredity or environment.

     Obroski was obviously the result of nurture.  Thus we have no responsibility for what we are and can take no credit as we are either victims or beneficiaries.  This is a fairly serious position statement.

     Stanley Obroski (Burroughs) was one of the victims.  Heredity had given him a mighty physique, a noble bearing and a handsome face.  Environment had sheltered  and protected him throughout his life.  Also everyone with whom he had come in contact had admired his great strength and attributed to him courage commensurate with it.

     Never until the past few days had Obroski been confronted by an emergency that might test his courage, and so all his life had been wondering if his courage would measure up to what was expected of it when the emergency developed.

     He had given the matter far more thought than does the man of ordinary physique because he knew so much more was expected of him than of the ordinary man.  It had become an obsession together with the fear that he might not live up to the expectations of his admirers.  And finally he became afraid- afraid of being afraid.

     It is a failing of nearly all large men to be keenly affected by ridicule.  It was the fear of ridicule, should he show fear, rather than the fear of physical suffering, that Obroski shrank from, though perhaps he did not realize this.  It was a psyche far too complex for easy analysis.

     It is impossible to know for certain at this time what psychology texts Burroughs had been studying but ‘a psyche far too complex for easy analysis’ points in the direction of Freud, Jung or both.  ERB seems to have been involved in Depth Psychology of some sort.  David Adams finds traces of Jung.  I am not prepared to concede so much at present but David may be much more sensitive on that score than myself.  I don’t rule it out although I would lean more to Freud as the better known.  Still, as I find ERB to be a very inquisitive guy there is no reason he couldn’t have known of both.  Either would likely have been mentioned in his varied reading and we know he was an omnivorous reader.

     At any rate it seems clear that Obroski’s heredity was overridden by the conditioning of environment.  Unable to overcome the conditioning or hypnotic suggestion he became as we find him.

     There seems little doubt that here ERB is explaining himself.  Obroski and Tarzan are identical in stature and abilities but in order to realize his Tarzanic potential he must overcome his environmental conditionings and assume his proper being.

     Whether the emergency Tarzan/Burroughs is facing in his difficulty with MGM or something else it seems likely MGM as the struggle is placed in the context of the MGM/BO Studios filming Trader Horn/Tarzan, The Ape Man.

     So Obroski is captured by the Bansuto and made prisoner in their village.  Here he encounters Kwamudi, captain of the safari Blacks and a couple porters who had been captured after deserting.  Obroski learns that the Bansuto are cannibals and that he will be the man who came to dinner.

     Burroughs gets in some sly humor here.  Bound and starved Obroski complains about his treatment.  p. 51:

     “This is no way to treat people you’re going to eat.”  grumbled Obroski.  “You ought to get ’em fat, not starve ’em thin.”

     ERB has already given notice that he is in psychological mode.  He says that Obroski’s psyche is too complex for easy analysis, whatever that might be.  That’s what we all say and it’s bosh.  When I was younger I thought my psyche so unique and complex I wanted to offer myself to science as a specimen.  As my own self-psychoanalysis evolved I realized the only thing that made it so complex was the resistance involved in facing the fixations.  So with Burroughs.  In a few pages he lays out out completely the problem he is facing in symbolical or dream imagery.  Only resistance anf fear prevent him from breaking on through.

     A psychoanalyst could lay your whole problem before you but if you weren’t ready to deal with it, in other words, overcome the resistance, you wouldn’t be able to see it.  You’d think he was talking about someone else.  So here ERB lays out his whole problem before you but if you weren’t ready to deal with it, in other words, over come the resistance, you wouldn’t be able to see it.  You’d think he was talking about someone else.  So here ERB lays out his whole problem.  Whether he resolved it is a matter of debate.  David Adams thinks not while I have not yet made up my mind.

     The problem he is dealing with is his central childhood fixation of John The Bully.  I have already gone into this in Doubles and Insanity but it won’t hurt to give a variant interpretation as this very key incident meets with a lot of resistance from Bibliophiles  on its own.

     As has been noted Burroughs was plagued by dreams of appearing naked in public.  Nakedness is a significant theme in the oeuvre.  Tarzan himself runs around naked except for a skimpy g-string; so Tarzan’s natural condition and Burroughs dream fears mesh.  He has made a virtue of necessity.

     In psychological terms John The Bully so emasculated Burroughs that he lost his offensive and defensive armor which is to say to the civilized man his clothes.  Burroughs always says of Tarzan that his veneer of civilization went no deeper than his clothes.  Nothing could be clearer than the relationship to ERB’s situation on the corner.  ERB explains the nature of nakedness to the civilized man.  p. 58:

     “He says for you to take off your clothers, Bwana.”  said Kwamudi,   “he wants them.”

     “All of them?” inquired Obroski.

     “All of them, Bwana.”

     (Note the excruciating deliberateness as ERB painfully drags this scene out.)

     Exhausted by sleeplessness, discomfort, and terror, (Here ERB makes excuses for himself.)  Obroski had felt that nothing but torture and death could add to his misery, but now the thought of nakedness awoke him to new horrors.  To the civlilized man clothing imports a confidence that is stripped away with his garments.

     So, in real life, Burroughs had been psychologically stripped naked by John having lost his self-confidence.  This is an accurate understanding.  When he constructed his alter ego, Tarzan, he made him naked in his uncivilized state, hence full of self-confidence though naked, but then clothed him handsomely in his civilized state in which he was uncomfortable.  Thus ERB attempted to resolve the problem.

     Now when John bullied ERB he forced a split in his personality.  while his physical self was humiliated his psychological self split off symbolically taking to the trees for refuge.  Hence Tarzan’s fabulous arboreal exploits while he views so many scenes from above in a tree.

     Now comes the very interesting scene in Rungula’s village where Tarzan suffers the shock of recognition as he looks down on his own replica from the tree to the ground.

     Tarzan is in no rush to visit Rungula’s village, perhaps indicating resistance.  Here’s how ERB describes it.  p.61:

     Tarzan of the Apes was ranging a district new to him, and with the keen alertness of the wild creature he was alive to all that was strange or unusual.  Upon the range of his knowledge depended his ability to cope with the emergencies of an unaccustomed environment.  Nothing was so trivial that it did not require investigation: and already, in certain matters concerning the haunts and habits of game, both large and small, he knew quite as much if not more than many creatures that had been born here.

     For three nights he had heard the almost continuous booming of tom-toms, faintly, from afar; and during the day following the third night he had drifted slowly in his hunting in the direction from which the sounds had come.

     Surely an old jungle baby like Tarzan could understand the language of the drums?  That is called procrastination.

     And so on the third day ‘He was arisen.’  Hmmm.  In Tarzan Of The Apes the birth of Tarzan replicated that of Moses and now Obroski is to die while a new Tarzan arises a la Jesus.

     I had my attention called to this Moses part while visiting a Jewish site.  The writer was marveling that Superman was Jewish and that his birth replicated that of Moses which it does.  I had always thought that the two teenage Jewish boys who created Superman were replicating Tarzan’s birth and that may be equally true.

     In the Moses story he is born to a Jewish woman who places him in an ark  then puts it in the Nile on which  he floats downstream to be rescued by an Egyptian princess who rears him among a different people.  This story presupposes that heredity overcomes environment which is nonsense.  One is not born a Jew one is educated into the identity.

     Superman is born a Kryptonite, placed in a rocket ship that crashes into this goyish earth couple’s backyard.  They then rear the Kryptonite child as their own who then has a double identity as an ineffective Earthman while retaining his Kryptonite powers.  Thus the Jew represents himself as superior to the goy.

     Tarzan too is born to a human mother who dies.  He is lying in his cradle when the ape, Kala, snatches him up rearing him as her own.  The different people Tarzan grows up with are apes.  Thus he too has a double identity.

     All three stories are identical while Moses is first, Tarzan second and Superman third.  Thus in his first incarnation Tarzan appears to be a Moses figure.

     In Lion Man Tarzan apperas to be born again when he absorbs his other split off half- Obroski.  Thus on the third day Tarzan assumes a Christ like identity.

     Many have noted that the intitials of John Carter and John Clayton are JC and they call attention to the fact that they are the same initials as Jesus Christ.

     So, here we have Tarzan, a walking dead man so to speak, who after three nights -Good Friday to Easter Sunday- looks down on the other half of his split personality and recognizes himself.  The two halves then begin a process of amalgamation becoming one again.  So Tarzan/Burroughs is born again or arises from the dead.

     Tarzan then unites the Old  and New Testaments being at one and the same time both Moses and Jesus Christ.  The old Adam and the new Adam.  Fairly astonishing stuff.  What does it mean?

     Tarzan then hauls Rungula up into his tree i.e. John the Bully is brought up to Burroughs split off personality where Tarzan demands that he release Obroski i.e. John restore Burroughs other half to himself while at the same time making him promise to be always kind to Whites.

     Obroski then leaves Rungula/John’s village where he joins Tarzan.  Thus Burroughs symbolically reunites his split personality or in other words appears to integrate his personality.  At least he makes the attempt.

     At the very least he has analyzed himself to the threshold of integration.  Whether he actually stepped over the threshold is open to doubt.  As a comparison let us examine Feodor Dostoievsky’s great nineteenth century novel Crime And Punishment.  There is no direct evidence that Burroughs might have read the book but the possibility exists that his curiosity led him to this very famous 1866 novel.  If so, Dostoievsky’s analysis of Raskolnikov might have influenced ERB on the unconscious level.  I had to read the novel three times to get a conscious grasp of it.

     The novel concerns the character’s dependence on women.  Raskolnikov is dependent on his mother and sister who make tremendous sacrifices of their own well being to put him through law school.  Raskolnikov resents his dependence yet can’t tear himself from it even when offered a simple and easy opportunity to do so.  His solution to his psychological problem bypasses analysis for an impossible external one.  He decides to symbolically kill his mother and sister hoping thus to free himself.  Psychologically this is not a viable method.

     As his victim he selects an old female pawnbroker.  This woman has large assets stored in her apartment.  Thus Raskolnikov takes valuables from her in lieu of the money he is receiving from his mother.  In the process he kills the old woman and when her daughter appears he kills her too.  Thus he has killed surrogates of his own women.   The pawn broker’s  body lies before him.  To free himself, according to Dostoievsky it is necessary for him to step over the body thus completing the crime.  Raskolnikov cannot do this, walking around the body instead thus negating the benefits of his murder.

     In Burroughs’ case his imaginary alter ego, Tarzan, convinces Rungula/John to release Obroski/Burroughs from custody.  In other words, exorcise the fixation.  However, psychologically Rungula/John cannot do this.  It is necessary for Burroughs to confront his fixation and recognize it thus negating the hypnotic suggestion that made it his fixation that he is a coward thus freeing himself.  That is the only way it can be done.  Thus as Raskolnikov did not step over the pawnbroker’s body so Burroughs does not cross over the threshold of integration at this time.

      Instead his imaginary self, Tarzan, attempts to teach his temporal self, Obroski, to be brave and fearless.  Hence, in what might be seen as high comedy, Tarzan introduces the Faux Lion Man to the real lion.  However Tarzan advises Obroski to be careful around Jad-Bal-Ja’s new love of whom Tarzan has no experience.

     As soon as Tarzan disappears Obroski/Burroughs who had been freed by John scurries for the security of the lower terrace where he cowers until the Big Bwana’s return.  Subsequently he catches fever not unlike Raskolnikov, if Burroughs read Crime And Punishment.   Tarzan entrusts the unconscious Obroski to a native chief to nurse.  From that point on Tarzan assumes both identities as the movie company who have never seen him and are unaware that he and Obroski are twinlike mistake him for Obroski which Tarzan lets them do.  Obroski then dies.

     If Burroughs thought he had solved his problem by wishing himself into the role of Tarzan he had to be mistaken.  As Jung pointed out in Mysterium Coniunctionis one cannot will one’s fixations away.  No matter what temporary success you may enjoy the fixation will out.

     In the role of Tarzan Burroughs set himself an impossible task to perform.  Tarzan is an ideal to hold before oneself for emulation’s sake but an impossible role to fill.  Burroughs admitted this in his posthumously published novel Tarzan And The Madman in which in the end he simply gets into a plane and flies off into the sunset.

     The story of the two Lion Men forms the third ring in the story.  We will now examine the inner ring, the center of the storm, and then the other side of ring three, the parellel story of the two female lookalikes, Naomi and Rhonda.

Advance to Part 6: The Center Of The Circle

         

 

Posted in Animus, C. G. Jung, Consciousness, Doppelganger, Edgar Rice Burroughs, ERBzine, Freud, Jesus, Louis B. Mayer, MGM, Psychology, R.E. Prindle, Reviews, Subconscious, Tarzan, Uncategorized, Unconsciousness, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Part 4, Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review

May 17, 2008

 

A Review

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18 Tarzan And The Lion Man

Part 4 of 10 parts

by

R.E. Prindle

First published on the ezine, ERBzine

 

The Safari To The Capture Of Stanley Obroski

 

     I consider this novel to be the magnum opus of the Tarzan series.  If it doesn’t have everything it’s not lacking anything essential.  Like most of Burroughs’ stuff the story expands in the transition from the page to the mind.  This one blossoms into a giant bouquet.  The enormous spectacular story is condensed into a hundred eighty-five pages.  As always the pace is astonishingly rapid while entirely coherent; nothing is left our nor is the story jumpy.

     Do the critics condemn ERB?  Well, he was somewhat of the same mind as H.G. Wells of whom it was said:

“…he…had a horror of being ambushed in the grove of academe.  ‘Better the wild rush of the Boomster and the Quack,’  he told Henry James in 1912, ‘than the cold politeness of the established thing.’

As quoted by W. Warren Wagar, H.G. Wells:

Jouranlism and Prophecy 1893-1946, Houghton Mifflin Co. 1964, p. 12

     ERB put it a little differently when he explained that every once and a while an important novel came along but that those were few and far between.  Even time erases that significance except for the specialist.  Burroughs is still read both by the specialist and the hoi polloi.

     That this book was important for the author is evident by the extended period of time of writing, for him, of 110 days that he took to write the novel.  He wanted it to be his major best seller in which hope he was disappointed.

     After a very amusing, even funny, first chapter ERB got his story rolling in the chapter titled ‘Mud’ in which in a masterful five and a half pages he introduces his story in media res, places the scene and introduces several key characters.  The atmosphere is terrific.  In just five and a half pages!

     The amount of content in the first paragraph is actually astonishing.  p. 11:

     Sheykh Ab El-Ghrennem and his swarthy followers sat in silence on their ponies and watched the mad Nasara sweating and cursing as they urged on two hundred blacks in an effort to drag a nine-ton generator truck through the muddy bottom of a small stream.

     The quote features a unique spelling of Sheykh which ERB didn’t use again reverting to the usual Sheik  An oddity.  Plus he couldn’t have gotten more letters into the Sheykh’s title.  That the Sheik and his followers are not good guys is indicated by the word ‘swarthy.’  If you’re swarthy you’re bad.  ERB confirms this as he contrasts the idle Arabs on their ponies with the ‘mad Nasara sweating and cursing.’

     Arabs don’t do the work of the world, they get others to do it for them.  Thus for a thousand years they had depopulated Africa in the search for slaves to fetch and hew.  Their contempt for the mad Nasara, or White people, who are working alongside the Blacks is apparent and accurate.  ERB is a superb multi-culturalist who has studied cultural attitudes, in fact, he could have invented the term.  He is not of either the utopian or sentimental multi-cultural schools however but of the factual kind.

     In the next two pages ERB instroduces the female leads Naomi Madison and Rhonda Terry while quickly establishing their characters.  Then he quickly brings attention back to the Arabs.  p. 12:

     Naomi: …It is no more your fault that you can’t act than it is the fault of that sheik over there that he was not born a white man.”

     “What a disillusionment that sheik was!”  exclaimed Rhonda.

     “How so?”  asked Blaine.

     “When I was a little girl I saw Rudolph Valentino on the screen, ah, brothers, sheiks was sheiks in them days!”

     “This bird doesn’t look much like Valentino,” agreed Blaine.

     “Imagine being carried off into the desert by that bunch of whiskers and dirt!  And here I’ve been waiting all these years to be carried off.”

      Once again we are advised of the unsavoriness of the Arabs while ERB evokes the sentimental memory of Valentino, the female hearthrob whose funeral in 1926 was swamped by adoring admirers.

     He contrasts the film variety to the real thing by portraying the real thing as ‘whiskers and dirt.’  In the novelistic manner he also gives the premonition that Rhonda will be carried off by this repulsive speciment.  We are alerted to watch for when.

     Then the spotlight is turned on the Sheik who explains the Arab presence:

“Which of the benat, Atewy, is she who holds the secret of the valley of diamonds?”

     Thus we are advised again what to expect but not when.  The secret is, of course, a map of doubtful authenicity.  The map serves the function of the Jewels Of Opar, the locket of Ant Men and Kali Bwana of Leopard Men.  It is full of astonishing surprises not least of which is that it is an authentic map.  Working all that out must be part of the reason the book took 110 days to write.

     ERB then once again denotes cultural differences between the Arabs and Whites.  Not in any sense derogatory to the Arabs but merely noting cultural differences in interpretation.  Once again this novel will be an exploration in multi-culturalism

     ERB then introduces the director, Tom Orman.  p. 14:

Sweating, mud covered, Mr. Thomas Orman stood near the line of natives straining on the ropes attached to a heavy truck.  In one hand he carred a long whip.  At his elbow stood a bearer, but in lieu of a rifle he carried a bottle of Scotch.

     Well, that’s quite a description.  Orman is down in the mud ‘working’ which might be commendable by Western standards but not Arab and the long whip indicates he is a cruel taskmaster, once again by Western standards, and the bottle of Scotch gives the reason why.  After some quick but comprehensive scene setting and character sketching the safari gets underway.  By now we know everything we have to know to get a complete image of the story in our minds.

     There may be people who say ERB can’t write but I defy anyone to do a better job in as few pages.  Henry James would have taken a hundred fifty and accomplished no more.

     In the next seven pages ‘Poisoned Arrows’ ERB rings the story to a crux, even a mini-climax.

     ERB once said that he learned Greek and Latin almost before English and that it affected his writing.  I found that difficult to understand until I recently read Erling Holtsmark’s  Tarzan And Tradition.  Holtsmark points out that Burroughs used the ring construction of the Iliad and the Odyssey  of Homer rather than the current construction of a sequence of events leading up to a grand climax and out.  As one is used to the modern usage of the climax the ring construction makes Burroughs read awkwardly.   If one bears in mind the ring construction the stories become more comprehensible.

     In Lion Man ERB constructs a perfect ring novel.

     The opening and closing Hollywood scenes form the outer ring.  Thus once Burroughs wrote The Conference he was obligated to write a closing Hollywood scene.  The safari sequence is balanced by the story of God.  The story of the twin Lion Men is balanced by the story of the twins Naomi and Rhonda just before the story of God.  The inner ring of the concentric circles is the transition from Bansuto territory to the Omwamwi Falls.  If one reads the novel with this construction in mind it reads very smoothly.

     In addition it appears that ERB was writing a movie scenario as each chapter represents a scene in a movie.  After all ERB appears to be telling MGM how to write a truly imaginative movie quite superior to the rather commonplace story of Cyril Hume.  Hume essentially wrote an H. Rider Haggard story based on The  Ivory Child leaving out the imagination.  ERB even supplies snappy dialogue that would come across well on the screen.

     So, in this scene the Bansuto of Rungula begin a series of guerilla attacks to set up the next scene ‘Dissension’ while allowing ERB to develop characters and internal tensions.  In Dissension the porters warn that they will desert if Orman doesn’t retreat and take the longer way around.  Also ERB develops the relationship between Obroski and Naomi while once again contrasting the characters of Naomi and Rhonda.

     ERB makes an interesting comment in this chapter.  On p. 26 he says:

     “No,” (Naomi) acquiesced thoughtfully, “that wouldn’t be good.  He’s (Orman) got a nasty temper, and there’s lots of things a director can do if he gets sore.”

     “In a piture like this he could get a guy killed and make it look like an accident.”  said Obroski.

     She nodded.  “Yes.  I saw it done once.  The director and the leading man were both stuck on the same girl.  The director had the wrong command given to a trained elephant.”

     Here ERB must be alluding to Kamuela Searle who appeared in the 1921 film Son Of Tarzan.  Accounts vary but according to Porges, Edgar Rice Burroughs: The Man Who Created Tarzan, p.20:

     Kamuela Searle, handled roughly by the elephant that was carrying him, sustained injuries which resulted in his death.

     If that is true ERB is explaining why Searle, bound to a pole, was dropped.  ERB may be giving us some very pertinent inside information.

     The chapter also shows Obroski and Naomi in the girl’s tent when the drunken Orman bursts in.  Naomi is shown as cowering while Rhonda with presence of mind orders Orman out of the tent.

     Chapter 5, Death, introduces Tarzan into the story in a rather unusual way for the Big Bwana.  p. 20:

     While the camp slept, a bronzed white giant, naked but for a loin cloth, surveyed – sometimes from the branch of overhanging trees, again from the ground inside the circle of sentries.  Then, he moved among the tents of the whites and the shelters of the natives as soundlessly as a shadow.  He saw everything, he heard much.  With the coming of dawn, he melted away into the mist that enveloped the forest.

      This seems more like a movie stunt than the real Tarzan.

     A number of porters desert and the column is attacked once again.

     In Chapter 6, Remorse, in three and a half pages the Arabs learn the whereabouts of the treasure map, setting up the abduction of both Rhonda and Naomi because the two are identical in appearance.  Orman gives up drinking.

     In chapter 7, ‘Disaster’, the next to worst thing that could happen happens, the porters all desert during the night.  The company slogs on with tensions increasing.  They leave the forest into a grassy area in which they feel safe.  This corresponds to the scene in Trader Horn when the Blacks chase Horn’s party after they leave the village with Nina T.  Instead the safari is attacked by the Bansuto in force.  Fearing the grass might be fired they push on into the forest.  Here they discover that Stanley Obroski is missing.

     This is the transition point from the second ring into the third ring.  Chapter 8, The Coward, is devoted to examining Obroski’s state of mind which we will consider in a moment.  While in Chapter 9 the Arabs abscond abducting Naomi and Rhonda while stealing the treasure map.

     Thus Chapter 8 sets up the third ring dealing with the adventures of Stanley Obroski and Tarzan while Chapter 9 leads into the inner ring or center of the story.

      Up to this point following the classical ring model ERB has ordered Ring 1:  The conference in Hollywood, 2.  Brought the safari to the center of Africa, set the stage for Ring 3 and the center of the ring, all in thirty-eight pages.

     Further he has created a viable movie scenario with both story and dialogue.  It was apparently common usage for one writer to create the story and another to write the dialogue.  So in Tarzan, The Ape Man Cyril Hume had written a commonplace story while Ivor Novello wrote some limp dialogue.  Here Burroughs has written an exciting story with much snappier dialogue than Novello.  He seems to be taking MGM by the hand to show them how.

Now to part 5, the story of Stanley Obroski and Tarzan.

 

Posted in Doppelganger, Edgar Rice Burroughs, ERBzine, H. Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Louis B. Mayer, MGM, Muslims, Porges, R.E. Prindle, Reviews, Tarzan, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Part 3 Tarzan And The Lion Man: A Review

May 16, 2008

 

A Review

Themes And Variation

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18  Tarzan And The Lion Man

Part 3 of 10 parts

by

R.E. Prindle

First published on the ezine- ERBzine

 

Part 3: The Source

 

     Unlike the rest of Burroughs’ novels you don’t have to look very far for the main source of this one.  While Tarzan And  The Leopard Men was heavily influenced by the MGM movie Trader Horn Lion Man is the story of the famed MGM expedition to Africa to film it.

     In Chapter 1 ERB provides  a fictional account of the decision to make the expedition.  In the next few chapters he gives a fictional account of the safari.  Excising the story within the story Burroughs’ account is reasonably accurate, allowing for a little authorial license that is.

     The safare was active for seven months in 1929.  The safari was a cause celebre in Hollywood as the expedition ran up what were enormous costs for the time.  While they were in Africa Black Friday, the collapse of the stock market, occured plunging the nation into depression so that money became of more consequence to MGM.  There was speculation that the dirctor, W.S. Van Dyke would bankrupt the company.  Like Howard Hughes’ famous difficulties with Hell’s Angels of 1930 the bills kept rolling in but when the receipts were counted like Hughes’ movie there was a tidy profit left over.  If nothing else the hullabaloo was mere advance publicity and cheap at the price.

     MGM even liked the movie so much they did it again in 1953’s Mogambo.  While I see Mogambo as a remake of Trader Horn the movie site lists its antecedents as Red Dust, 1932 and Congo Maisie of 1940.  Haven’t seen either. 

     The 1929 expedition was incredibly audacious.  On the liner notes of my VCR copy of Trader Horn MGM describes the expedition like this:

     When this landmark film ws made, parts of Africa were still uncharted.  The savannahs teemed with big game, the rivers with crocodiles and snakes.  Few Europeans or Americans dared enter what was then called the Congo.

     That was true and still is, MGM rushed in where few Europeans and Americans dared to tread.  Africa was to transit from the stone age to the age of science in the blink of an eye.  As Van Dyke noted, barely pacified, already the Kikiyu or Kukuas as Van Dyke called them were organizing resistance.  A mere savage like Jomo Kenyatta was attending Oxford University in England.  Truly astonishing that a stone age African with no familiarity with either techonology or science could be listened to attentively by the most highly educated Europeans.  What could Kenyatta actually understand?  Would they have given equal attention to the mutterings of an Appalachian farm boy?  The mind boggles.

     It had been a mere forty years since Henry Morton Stanley had covered the same ground to relieve Emin Pasha.  Only Forty years earlier Stanley had been the first Euro-American to penetrate the Ituri Rain Forest  Only forty years earlier Stanley could claim the discovery of the fabled Mountains Of The Moon.  In the interim few Euro-Americans had been there.  Gosh, even the great beast the Okapi had just been discovered in the Ituri..

     Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda were now occupied by British governors.  The ancient kings of Uganda and Unyoro were no more.  As Van Dyke states, the Africans were held down by the few Europeans with an Iron Hand.  Ah, you say, the European Iron hand.  Abominable.  But when weren’t the African tribesmen held down by an Iron Hand.  But then it was Black or Moslem and not White.  The venerable ancient kings of Uganda wanted to hold a funeral for some distant relative during the time of Stanley so they selected a couple thousand Ugandans, slit their throats and dumped them in the grave as company for their dead relative.  The Ugandan king slaughtered a few of his own people in an attempt to amuse Stanley.  TV had not reached Uganda back then.

     King Mteses’ gangs roamed the countryside after dark murdering any citizens they met.  Well, that was normal.  Now White Bwanas arrested troublesome tribesmen and threw them in jail for a period rather than killing them.  That wasn’t normal.  Dead men file no complaints.

     So a benign rule in White hands was less desirable than a malign rule in Black hands.  Such is the way the human mind works.  In the African case the native king owns everything including oneself and that is acceptable.  In another invaders occupy a few thousand acres producing food that makes you better fed than ever you were on your own and that is bad.  Better savagery among equals than civilization as an inferior.

     Africa was not yet familiar with the wheel when a guy with the nickname ‘Woody’ shows up with nine-ton genearator trucks.  Sound trucks!  The talkies had been around only two years and they already had sound trucks.

     Van Dyke in his justification of himself to MGM in his Horning  Into Africa has this to say.  p. 212:

    On the screen we had over thirty-five varieties of African big game, with our actors working in the scenes with them.  We had the dances, the songs, the native life of over fifteen African tribes, and on our film was a thin dark strip running down the edge which constituted the sound they made in all their different activities.

     …on our film we had a thin dark strip running down the edge which constituted the sound they made in all their different activities….  Think of it.  Stone age Africans captured as stone age people by equipment of which the Africans could have no concept, no possible way of accounting for, let alone understanding it, that might have as well have been the work of aliens beamed down from outer space or one of Bertie Well’ visitors slipped through the plane of a parallel universe.  Was there any difference between Wells’ English visitors to his utopia of 1923 when he viewed the men of a parallel universe as gods and the Hollywood Mutia and Riano saw when transported from or ‘beamed’ down from Africa?  Not much I would say.

     If the Africans thought Henry Morton Stanley was supernatural what in the world did they think of Woody Van Dyke, his cameras and fleet of trucks.

     What did Van Dyke think about, talk about, such an excellent adventure?  p. 26:

     I did not realize what he meant by the adjective “amazing”.  It made me think of certain American film producers.  The only thing about it that had been amazing, to my mind, was its inception.  After all, for a Hollywood producer (Irving Thalberg) to conceive the idea of sending twenty-five or thirty Hollywood motion picture actors with ninety-two tons of equipment into the center of Africa, to go prancing around over the thorn bush terrain, considering the great cost in dollars and cents involved was a rather amazing idea.  Nobody but an adventurer would have thought of it, no one but a goof would have tried to do it, and no but a clown could have gotten away with it.

     Van Dyke considering the term ‘amazing’ further:

     Previous to our debut the largest safari to enter Africa had been that of Prince Edward, a stupendous undertaking with about a dozen whites, fifty blacks, ten or twelve cars, and possibly seven or eight tons of equipment.  His safari had not been underway many days when his Royal Highness was called home by the illness of his fathr, King George, but the fact that the white hunters had maneuvered such a large safari over several miles of Africa without a casualty and with no one dying from fever was considered remarkable.

     We had been in Africa more than seven months with thirty-five whites, one hundred ninety-two blacks, thirty-four cars, one generator truck and two sound wagons.  The speedometers on the cars showed that we had traveled over nine thousand miles of African soil, to say nothing of rail, lake and river travel and distances covered on foot, and we had brought everyone back- black and white.

     And furthermore they not only had it on a film strip, which was old technology by white standards but unimaginable by African standards and running down that strip of film was a thin black line indicating sound.  What would a stone age African think seeing and hearing himself on film going around and around on reels like wheels which in themselves had been but recently seen in Africa.  Jomo Kenyatta was at university in England.  They would have laughed at that Appalachian farm boy if he showed up for registration.

     So, MGM and Van Dyke provided ERB with a readymade story of epic proportions.

     We know he read the book.  The question is did Van Dyke regale him with other stories and details during ERB’s five week stint on the MGM lot, a little additional color not found in the book.

     Now we can turn to Burroughs’ story and align it with that of Van Dyke.  ERB is writing a novel so he doesn’t have to stay too close to the facts, he can play fast and loose with them.  Let’s see how he does.

     In the first place he converts the story from that of Trader Horn to Tarzan, The Ape Man.  Rather than filming Trader Horn they are filming the story of a feral boy who was raised among the lions.  p. 9

     “Joe’s written a great story- it’s going to be a knock-out.  You see this fellow’s born in the jungle and brought up by a lioness.  He pals around with the lions all his life- doesn’t know any other friends.  The lion is king of beasts; when the boy grows up he’s king of the lions; so he bosses the whole menagerie.  See?  Big shot of the jungle.”

     “Sounds familiar.”  Commented Orman.

     Yes, it does sound familiar, ERB says with tongue in cheek and a wink at we readers.  It sounds familiar to us too.  As the Lion Man the studio has picked Stanley Obroski, a giant cowardly fellow.

     As Harry Carey, a bete noire of ERB, played Trader Horn Burroughs may be projecting a little Carey into Obroski’s cowardice as vengeance although one assumes that Johnny Weissmuller is the model but Obroski isn’t that similar to him either.

     As a leading lady ERB creates Naomi Madison.  I’m sure there are a lot of insults and jokes about MGM in the book.  A lot or most of them may be lost on us today.  However Naomi may have been modeled on Irving Thalberg’s wife Norma Shearer.  Naomi=Norma.

     Some say Shearer made it on her own while there are those backbiters who say she got all those plum roles because she was married to the producer, Irving Thalberg.  I’m not too hep on early thirties films but it is possible a little favoritism may have been involved.  In the novel Burroughs casts Naomi in a rather unfavorable light as the lover of Director Orman.  Perhaps Thalberg saws such things in a negative light.

     It may be possible that Shearer was or was reported to be seeing someone on the side.  If so, ERB was taking some chances.

     He does have her down as having been a hash slinger before becoming The Madison.  There was a period in New York when the Shearer family was down at the heels when Norma was seeking theatrical work that she waited tables.  Bringing up that fact would not have endeared ERB to the Thalbergs or MGM.  Norma would probably have been more dangerous than Irving.

     The Thalbergs wouldn’t have mattered too much because Irving had a heart attack in 1933.  When he returned to work several months later Mayer had stripped him of his position.  He became just another producer for a couple years before he died in 1936.  Shearer got no more roles, plums or otherwise.  So as it turned out ERB wouldn’t have had to worry about either.

     ERB doubles Naomi with a stunt woman named Rhonda Terry.  As no comparable figure was on the safarie she must have been only necessary for the story.

     Van Dyke organized and led the expedition being the supreme authority, the actual Big Bwana.  As might be expected of a safari of this size and complexity there were numerous problems naturally occurrring while Van Dyke himself as a Hollywood director trying to realize his vision of the movie was rather cavalier with the landscape.  The native hierarchy was in disarray from the time of Stanley now having a Birtish hierarchy overlain on the native.  But the British had only been there for a couple decades while the native revolt led by Kenyatta and his Kikiyu was already underway.  As Burroughs indicates Leopard Men were roaming Africa while the Kikiyu would erupt as the Mau Mau only twenty years hence.

     The African chiefs considered every human, every animal, every stick or tree on their territory as their personal private property.  There hadn’t been enough time as yet for that understanding to die out.  And now we have a real muilti-cultural conflict brewing.  Van Dyke shows up with a fleet of cars and trucks such as was new to the sight of the Africans.  Van Dyke proceeds to drive these trucks all over Kenya, Uganda, the Congo and Tanganyika as they were then known.  Along the way he chops down trees that don’t belong to him, if you see what I mean, as though he was the sovereign of the land and not the chiefs.

     From the African point of view the man was contemptuous of Africans and disrespectful.  Van Dyke, in what we must assume was his innocence, was completely unaware of his desecrations.  His culture was not only White American, which would have been insult enough to the Africans, but he was of the fiilm capitol of the world, Hollywood, which respects no man or mountain in making a movie.  Van Dyke’s mind functioned on one premise alone- make this movie.

     At one point he wanted to shoot a scene near Lake Albert, probably didn’t even make the final cut.  At that point of the lake a volcanic dyke serveral feet high formed a barrier preventing access.  There was no way to get the trucks and equipment over the barrier.   The solution seemed rational to Van Dyke.  When no one was looking he got some dynamite and blew a big hole in this barrier.  Problem solved from Woody’s point of view.  I don’t know what the Africans thought about this desecration of the landscape but Van Dyke does report what seems to be a fair amount of unrest among the African bearers.

     In Burroughs’ story the movie company goes directly to the Ituri Rain Forest but Van Dyke began his filming at Murchison Falls where the  Nile flows from Lake Victoria.  After having brought his crew and equipment to the railhead at Jinja he crossed the lake to Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda.

     He wanted to film at Murchison Falls where, as he says, the entire flood of the Nile passing from Lake Victoria passes through a gorge only fifteen feet wide.  As he said a good broad jumper could leap the Nile at that point.  If he wanted to take the chance.

     Now, the British had determined the area at the foot of the falls to be so infested with the sleeping sickness bearing Tsetse flies that they had made it off limits to man and beast.  Well, Woody had a movie to make and wanted to make it in that exact spot.  In fact several scenes in Trader Horn are filmed there.

     Disregarding what we must assume were the real dangers of the place Van Dyke cajoled an exception for this safari taking his cast and bearers into this Tsetse infested area.  It will be remembered that Edwina Booth, the female star, was incapacitated for life because of diseases contracted in Africa.

     What seems normal to a movie maker may seem bizarre to a less interested observer.  Van Dyke wanted a crocodile scene involving an island.  There was no island where he wanted so he loaded the spot with fill until there was one.  Another neat job of problem solving.  Then he wanted a large nuber of crocodiles around the island so he slaughered game as lure for the crocs.  They came, they saw, the ate, but they wouldn’t spend the night as Woody wanted.

     So now Woody shoots some more wild life to lure the crocs to the island while he built a large barrier.  Once the crocs were within he closed the gate.  Well and good from Woody’s point of view but from the multi-cultural point of view of the crocs they either just broke through or climbed the six foot barrier.  Wasn’t high enough.

     W.S. Van Dyke was one determined guy.  He had a movie to make.  His next step was once the crocs got inside and they wanted out at, oh say, 2:00 AM, Woody got his whole crew of actors armed with torches and poles to place themselves between the crocs and freedom to force them to stay inside.  In a quite thrilling description he tells of stuffing burning torches down the throats of crocodiles.  When he said stay, he meant it.  Harry Carey, apparently some sort of testosterone driven madman, was a stalwart but Van Dyke even had Edwina Booth on the barrier torch in hand.  Van Dyke lauds his crew as well he should have but one is struck by a certain degree of lunacy.  Or, perhaps, Scotch.

     Burroughs draws inference away from Van Dyke by making Tom Orman a different physical type but as ERB was working from Van Dyke’s Horning Into Africa and possibly personal communication from Van Dyke, or members of his crew it is impossible for Orman not to reflect W.W. ‘One Shot’ Woody Van Dyke.

     Burroughs makes Orman a drunk or at least a real tyrant when he has been drinking.  Van Dyke records some heavy drinking of his own.  He slipped right into the colonial practice of’Sundowners’, that is when the sun went down the bottle came out.  There may be some factual basis then for Orman’s behavior.

     Orman heads for the Ituri through an area he has been warned not to go that would correspond to Van Dyke’s insistence on filming at the Murchison Falls where he ws forbidden to go but overcame the injunction.

     The attack of the Bansutos is ERB’s invention however there were a couple serious native disaffections in the safari.  Late in the expedition the Kikiyu show up, which I would think meant that they were unhappy with the expedition while Van Dyke describes them as a surly lot.

     In Burroughs’ story the safari falls apart after the Bansuto attack but then at the end of the story he reforms the safari at the Omwami Falls in the story or Murchison Falls in fact.  The party atmosphere at the Falls may reflect his impression of Van Dyke’s account.

     It was probably with a sigh of relief that the British bid farewell to this troublemaking Hollywood film crew.  Or perhaps, just perhaps, they wired MGM to get these people out of here.  I don’t know but I wouldn’t be surprised.

     So far as I know the only two accounts of Van Dyke’s excellent African adventure are his own and that of Burroughs.

     It is a pity MGM didn’t have the foresight to compile an extended account of the safari with hundreds of pictures.  In the liner notes to my VCR copy they say:

…director W.S. Van Dyke and his heroic cast and crew camped there for a year, hauling eighty tons of equipment through the equatorial jungle.  They battled disease and predators, to risk their lives to film this story of two men- legendary trader Alfred Aloysius Horn (Harry Carey) and his naive protoge Peru (Cisco Kid Duncan Renaldo)- and their struggle to reclaim a beautiful woman (Edwina Booth) who was lost in the jungle as a baby and raised by indigenous tribes.

     True enough as far as it goes.  Van Dyke’s obviously sanitized narrative takes it a little further, Burroughs’ fiction may reveal a little more, but Edwina Booth who was never able to work again adds another detail.  She petitioned MGM for compensation but MGM refused to consider it for this heroic, crocodile battling member of the cast who battled predators and disease and lost.

     What a fabulouss story.  ERB had a lot to work with and turned out a fabulous effort.

Next Part four of ten parts: The Safari To The Capture Of Stanley Obroski

 

    

 

     

Posted in Doppelganger, Edgar Rice Burroughs, ERBzine, H.M. Stanley, Louis B. Mayer, MGM, Mtese, Mutesa, R.E. Prindle, Reviews, Tarzan, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Part 2 Tarzan And The Lion Man A Review

May 16, 2008

« A Review: The Sonderman Constellation By D.A. Adams
A Review

Part 2 Tarzan And The Lion Man

 

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#18 Tarzan And The Lion Man

Part 2 of 10 parts

by R.E. Prindle

Doubles And Insanity

First published on the ezine- ERBzine

 

Sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming.

-Tarzan

Penguin Dictionary Of Symbols p. 306

Doubles:  In every culture artists have depicted double-headed creatures, SERPENTS, DRAGONS, BIRDS, LIONS, BEARS and so on.  This is due neither to mere love of ornamentation nor to some Manichean influence, the creatures so depicted all have a bipolarity, both benign and malign, and this is described in their individual entries in this dictionary.  It is very likely that it is this double aspect of the live creature which is suggested by its depiction with two heads. For example, the lions strength symboizes both sovereign power and a consuming lust, whether it be for justice, or for the exercise of absolute authroity in a bloodthirsty tyrant.  Similarly, ribbons or wreaths depicted round a person’s head may symbolize, if they form a CLOSED circle, confinement in difficulty and misfortune, but if broken, release.

Sometimes duplication serves merely to re enforce and redouble the meaning attached to one of the POLES of the symbol.

Traditonal religions generally thought of the soul as being the double of the living owner, able to leave the body at death, in dreams or through magical practices, and to return to the same or some other body.  Mankind thus provided its own self-portrait in duplicate.  In any case, instances of hysterical or schizophrenic duplication of personality are well known to psychotherapy.

German Romanticism endowed this notion of a person’s double (Doppelganger)  with tragic and fatal overtones….It may sometimes be our complement, but it is more often the foe with whom we are lured to fight….In some ancient traditons, meeting one’s double is an unlucky occurrence, and is sometimes even a presage of death.

—————

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Lion Man is overwhelmingly a novel of doubles or duplicity.  The number of things doubled is bewildering.  I deal only with the most obvious here.  The reason Burroughs concentrates on doubling, I believe is because he discovered the double meaning of the terms of the contract he signed with MGM.  He was stunned by the duplicity.

On p. 154 Burroughs comments on duplicity such as he found at MGM.  Remember he names them BO or Stinky studios in the novel.

Tarzan was suspicious.  He saw a trap, he saw duplicity in every thing conceived by the mind of man.

Thus having been betrayed Burroughs is now alert seeing doubling or duplicitness everywhere.

St. John, the illustrator of the book also picked up on the aspect of doubling.  This novel was so extremely important to Burroughs, he even issued it on his birthday, September 1st, 1934, that he asked St. John for something different for a jacket illustration.  St. John concentrated on the Obraoski/Tarzan doubling, producing a Janus like cameo of Tarzan/Obroski facing in opposte directions.  As in the Penguin definition representing both characters of the Lion Men Tarzan and Obroski.

In this case the two faces represent the earlier cowardly Bureroughs who has to die and the strong masterly Tarzan figure Burroughs wishes to be.

Thus, before considering the story it would be fruitful to examine ERB’s use of doubling and confusion of reality, or in other words craziness, madness or insanity.

It is obvious that when ERB is passing rhough a period of extreme stress Tarzan loses his memory and/or doubles- that is to say splits his personality in a hysterical or schizophrenic way.  At this point in his life Burroughs is enduring the stress of sexual conflict – the change in affections from Emma to Florence- as well as the extreme stress of having lost control of his creation and actual alter ego to MGM as representatives of his Judaeo-Communist enemies.  In point of fact, as Burroughs may have realized, the battle, even the war, was lost.  As MGM’s 1936 movie Tarzan Escapes, indicates Tarzan/Burroughs had been captured.  Hence the tenuous grasp on sanity in this book.

In Burroughs’ mind and in fact he had been trapped by duplicity, itself a form of doubling.  When Tarzan, having climbed the Stairway To Heaven finds the front door standing open he scents a trap but as his intention was to enter anyway he enters.  He is now only in the antechamber of fate, he could still back out.  He notices six doors of which Door #3 is standing open.  He does try the other five doors but they are locked.  Entering Door #3 he begins the descent down a dark stairwell.  He encounters another door.  Rather than checking the door first he merely enters to have the door click shut behind him.  The wall is smooth, there is now no way out.

This scene may well be a fictionalized account of his negotiations with MGM.  The Studio, perhaps representing Door #3 was offering him a contract which no other studio, doors 1,2,4,,5,6 was willing to do.  Granted not everyone can spot a sterling opportunity that is staring them in the face but it does seem odd that no other studio was interested in a proven character.  After all Twentieth Century-Fox was working Charlie Chan movies hard and doing well.  But all doors were closed to Burroughs/Tarzan except Door #3, MGM.  Not a bad thing on the surface of it as MGM was far and away the best studio in Hollywood.

So Burroughs entered into negotiations with MGM in the same manner as Tarzan descended the dark staircase in which he couldn’t see very well, i.e. Burroughs didn’t understand the clauses.  Like Tarzan ERB didn’t exercise caution and while the door snapped shut trapping Tarzan so Burroughs signed the contract which he represented as the prison Tarzan found himself in.

The reader may find the above farfetched but remember the first third of the story is an account of MGM’s Trader Horn expedition that he ridicules.  This book is about MGM.

Before dealing with the main doubles of the story let’s consider the story within the story- a form of doubling itself.  We have God on Earth doubling God in Heaven.  This becomes the source of many jokes.  Stress or no stress Burroughs doesn’t lose his sense of humor.  God’s castle is known as Heaven thus doubling Heaven.  The Stairway to Heaven doubles Jacob’s Ladder thus calling to mind the biblical story.  Tarzan then doubles Jacob.  That’s just part of sly old Burroughs’s humor.

God himself has created a parallel universe doubling England, London and the Thames.  Thus the gorilla plateau is called England while they live in London on the Thames River.  Thus a doubling of Africa and an island off the coast of Europe.

Just as God in Heaven in the biblical story created Man so God in this story has hybridized gorillas into a new species of gorilla men.  The hybrid gorillas are doubles of both gorillas and men while God is a double of man and Gorilla.

In this dizzying array of doubles the gorillas are not just a doubling of men but a doubling of the fifteenth century court of Henry VIII of England.  They have been altered by the use of deathless genes  or, atually, DNA, which was unknown to Burroughs at the time but the nature of which he dimly perceives.  The DNA has been inserted or spliced into the genes of the gorillas, thus the gorilla Henry VIII is actually, Henry VIII.  The Fifteenth century is doubled in the twentieth century while the political scene of the twentieth duplicates that of the fifteenth.  ERB may here be influenced by Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stanger with his notion of ascending and descending staircases of time.

During this phase of the story within the story Tarzan is actually himself while posing as, or doubling, Stanley Obroski thus actually being self contained twins; in other words the personality formerly split between he and Stanley Obroski is reunited with Tarzan dominant.  Thus Tarzan redeems Burroughs’ former shamed self.  At this moment Stanley is dying of fever and when he does the double disappears leaving Tarzan or Burroughs then undivided.  The dead body of Obroski is shipped back to the States while Tarzan remains in the jungle.

The story within the story is a stunning achievement whose genius has gone unrecognized.

b.

The most obvious examples of doubling is in the main characters.  As incredible as it may seem not only are Tarzan and Stanley Obroski so close they can’t be told apart but so are the female leads Naomi Madison and Rhonda Terry.

I’m sure there are doubles I’m missing here but even Tom Orman, the Dirctor, is a double of himself when he’s under the influence of alcohol.  Drunk he becomes a different Tom Orman than when sober.  Obroski himself is two people.  An errant coward when he has time to think he become ferociously brave when his back is against the wall and there is no time for reflection.

Naomi Madison who has become a prima donna or an artiste was at one time a waitress in a cheap restaurant which role she is forced to assume again which is another form of doubling.  In this joke Naomi is an insult to Irving Thalberg’s wife, Norma Shearer, whose early career is duplicated.

Also this movie Tarzan is a doubling of the literary Tarzan so both Obroski and Tarzan are doubles of Johnny Weissmuller who played the MGM Tarzan.  As Burroughs suggests in this novel he was half out of his mind from the terrific stresses.  The stress did produce however a terrific novel.

It would seem that Burroughs was Tarzan and Obroski as twin aspects of his own Animus while Naomi and Rhonda represented the twin aspects of his Anima.  Naomi obviously represents Emma while Rhonda is an extension of La of Opar combined with Florence.  Naomi disappears from the story apparently replaced by Balza, The Golden Girl, while Burroughs marries Rhonda to Orman.

As regards the doubling of Tarzan who is actually a double of Burroughs himself, Bibliophile David Adams has emphasized that Tarzan usually views from above so that it might be the time to look into this aspect of the character.  In Lion Man Obroski is captured and held prisoner by Rungula, chief of the Bansuto.  this whole scene of Obroski with the Bansuto is one of the numerous variations of the theme of Burroughs humiliation by John the Bully.

Burroughs was plagued with the dream, as he notes the dream frequent among dreamers, of going naked in public.  It is a frequent dream because multitudes of people have suffered similar humiliation as his.

ERB has Obroski stand before Rungula who demands his clothes, in other words his defensive and offensive armor, that without which Obroski is exposed defenseless to the world, he loses his ‘front.’  John had symbolically stripped young ERB.  Burrughs describes his humiliation in excruciating detail as Obroski does a virtual striptease.  First his shirt on down until Burroughs makes a joke of his gaily printed boxer shorts.  While the Bansuto would not have understood the signficance of the shorts ERB takes a certain pleasure in humiliating himself further.  To cover rhis nakedness Obroski pleads for the proverbial fig leaf and is given a skimpy dirty g-string.  Thus when he is led out for torture he fights the Bansuto naked but in a Tarzan guise.  Heck, Tarzan, who is not civilized in the jungle, walks around naked anyway.  Although the natives themselves are naked Obroski is civilized while they are savages.  Having been subdued Obroski is lain before Rungula.  By this time Tarzan is in a tree, apparently planted there for his convenience.  He looks down on Obroski in amazement to see a replica of himself.  p. 104:

In the light of a new day Tarzan of the Apes stood looking down upon the man who resembled him so closely that the ape-man experienced the uncanny sensation of standing apart, like a disembodied spirit, viewing his corporeal self.

What Burroughs is describing here is the splitting of the personality.  He may have the correct psychologically sequence, first the stripping of the armor- i.e. emasculation, and then the disembodiment, the dissociation of the mind and body.  The mind unable to deal with the reality seems to leave the body rising above and looking down on the humiliation of his poor self.  This theme runs all through Burroughs work although this is his most exact and detailed description.

Obroski has been led out to be tortured to death and eaten by Rungula the cannibal chief.  Usually Tarzan is placed in an arena to fight one or more wild beasts.  In a normal confrontation Obroski is a coward which is to say he is unable to defend himself.  In other words his subconscious mind has been conditioned to accept the dominance and authority of hte oppressor.  In still other words in a state of terror his subconscious had been accessed to accept certain hypnotic suggestions.  But, with his back to the wall his instinct of self-preservation overrules the hypnotic suggestion and he fights like the proverbial cornered rat.

In this instance he used his full potential to fell a whole battalion of Rungula’s men, performing authentic Tarzanic feats like lifting men above his head casting them among his foes.  At the time Tarzan is looking down at him he has finally been subdued lying at Rungula’s feet.

You know whre I’m going , don’t you?  Right.  that street corner in Chicago where John the Bully confronted young ERB.  Burroughs didn’t fight like a berserker though, he ran.  (Chief Run-gu-la?) But that was when he split his personality being able to look down on his corporeal self like a disembodied spirit.

As the Penguin Dictionary says:  Instances of hysterical or schizophrenic duplication of personality are well know to psychotherpy.  There are many examples of this phenomenon.  Here are a couple to show how it works.

When a person is enduring an unbearable situation in which he is powerless to resist, rather than believe the situation is happening to him he does split off a psychological projection of himself as a disembodied spirit who sympathetically views his now alter ego’s humiliation.

For instance when Jean Genet, the author and playwright was at the Mettray Reformatory he was caught out by a gang of homosexuals and gang raped.  As the rape progressed, escape being impossible while becoming so unbearable for him, to retain his sanity he split off a projection, a disembodied spirit, if you will, that floated above the scene.  Thus Genet was able to actually observe his rape without participating in it.  As he watched he muttered ‘Poor Jean, poor poor Jean.’  Thus the mind provides a somewhat feeble defense but one that allows one to keep one’s sanity after a fashion.  Of course the hypnotic suggestion  from this terrifically shameful event caused him to relinquish his will to the oppressor, part of the deal to keep one’s sanity.  Genet’s character was changed for life; he became a homosexual who had no will to resist that of men while becoming an active agent in his future degradation.  He was always able to rationalize his actions so that they seemed right.

I will use my own experience as a second example.  In kindergarten the elite group forced a confrontation with me in which they lost and looked bad.  Circumstances removed me to a different school before they had a chance to relaliate on me.   But then in second grade I was returned to that school.  At that point they were waiting for me.  This situation is more analogous to Burroughs than Genet but all three involve a rape of the mind which is what emasculation is.

The general conclusion is that my and Burroughs situations are normal, they happen to everyone.  Perhaps.  And everyone reacts in their individual way but everyone reacts.  A few years later and I would have been able to handle this situation without a problem as would have been true with Burroughs.  Remember with Burroughs however that while John the Bully only threatened him in 1884-85 fifteen years later in a similar to identical situation he had his head broken thus reinforcing the original situation.

In my case the situation formed my central childhood fixation as did Burroughs’.  My subconscious was opened to admit certain hypnotic suggestions which were fixed in my subconscious.  It then closed but refused to allow me to remember which of course is why the situation became a fixation, or suggestion I could not refuse to observe.

At recess in the second grade a group of, shall we say, twelve formed a semi-circle around me.  Like Burroughs I am compelled to make excuses for myself.  For the previous year I had been shuttled between foster homes and thus I had no support or defense.  I was alone.  In kindergarten the boy, the leaderof the pack, had ordered two new kids, the first Negroes in the school, to sit on the sandbox and not move during recess.  I took the Blacks’ side offering to fight the leader.  He, standing at point, declined combat stepping back into the support of his crowd gathered behind him.  That was his mistake.  He and his crowd had realized this.  Now in the second grade the boy still refused to challenge me individually.  Now they formed a semi-circle around me while their leader stood at keystone, still enveloped by his gang so that, I presume, they could fall on me if I resisted.

They all beamed hatred and contempt at me.  I was unable to resist the projected hatred of the boys and girls while at this date having only the vaguest or no notion of what I was guilty of, I was ordered to take a step forward which to my eternal shame I did.  In midstep I was ordered to stop and stay in that suspended step throughout recess.  To my shame, I did.  He said:  You’re going to have to be our nigger now.  The shame killed my personality, my identity, my ego.  I assumed the role of ‘nigger.’  Terror opened the way to the subconscious and the suggestion, you are a nigger, among others was entered.  Like Jean Genet a projection of myself arose above to say something like:  Poor kid, poor poor kid.’

The suggestion was so horrific to me that I immediately forgot it or, perhaps since that ego died the incident was not part of the life of the survivor.  The memory was accepted and encysted in my subconscious what Freud and Jung would call the unconscious.  I not only forgot the situation but I forgot the faces and names of the kids involved.  I could not remember them from that day forward although I could talk to them as though I did know them.

The consequence was that I had to do what I was told to do by nearly anyone.  Much the same as Burroughs who wrote a medieval story, of which he knew nothing, at the suggestion or command of Metcalf and wrote Son Of Tarzan which he later regretted, and Tarzan And The Ant Men at the suggestion or command of Bob Davis.  Buroughs became a variation of the dependent personality as did I.

On the one hand my conscious mind understood the proper means of defense but as I began to do so my subconscious mind overruled or shoved my conscious mind aside and obsequiously obeyed.

This plight was only changed when I succeeded in integrating my personality in the year of around forty-two.  That is to say the subconscious contents of my mind centered around the cyst of my central childhood fixation was made manifest to my conscious mind allowing the subconscious to be integrated into consciousness.  Where the ‘Id’ was ‘Ego’ shall be, as Freud put it.

Burroughs in  Lion Man at fifty-eight is describing the same situation as that experienced by Genet and myself but in a different way.  Like myself and Genet he would have been easy to direct.  So at that age he had not yet exorcised that particular demon.  As ERB kills Obroski off in this novel assuming both identities while discarding that of Obroski, returning the corpse to Hollywood, becoming solely Tarzan of the Apes one wonders if he succeeded in integraing his personality at that point.  That is what he is describing.

His experiences with John The Bully, the splitting of his personality explains why Tarzan observes from above rather than as a participant on the ground. In Lion Man perhaps agitated by the movie duplicate of the literary Tarzan he brought the situation of John the Bully to consciousness. Rungula the Bansuto taking John’s place while the aspect of Tarzan or his split off alter ego watches from above while Obroski fought like a berserker on the ground but was overcome by numbers or in the John situation, size.

Thus Tarzan spies on the safari from the trees by day while walking rhough the camp at night.  Having dealt with his humiliation in some way in Rungula’s village, when Orman and West are threatened by a lion Tarzan plummets from his tree to kill the lion on the ground then without a word vaults back into the tree.  Orman and West mistake him for his lookalike Obroski.  Thus we have the beginning of the reuniting of the split personality which will continue in the Heaven of the gorilla god.

Burroughs was under such extreme stress from both his sexual desires and the MGM betrayal that he must have felt half mad.  While he and Rhonda are captive in Heaven he says:  Sometimes I think I must be dreaming.  A statement that seems to be out of character for the Big Bwana.  The scene might be interpreted as ERB’s Anima and Animus being imprisoned while on one level God might represent MGM.

Tarzan comes into contact with Stanley Obroski which Tarzan finds amusing and lets them do.  Both women pinch tmeselves to see if they are dreaming or mad as well they might.  Tarzan rejects Naomi which must have confused her as she and Obroski were in love with each other.  Having ditched Naomi Tarzan/Obroski goes back for the wise cracking Rhonda.

Then too Burroughs actually describes Tarzan as a madman at one point.  This would be tantamount to describing himself as mad.  Indeed the whole novel centers on mad or insane happenings.

The madness or insanity would be an aspect of Tarzan’s viewing from above as a disembodied spirit.  The splitting off of the aspect from his and ERB’s personality would be the result of the extreme stress of the moment that produced the feeling of dizzying  madness.

Burroughs handling of the stress in what I consider a very extraordinary novel is abolutely masterly.  I can’t think of a finer science fiction story that the story within the story of God’s in his Heaven and all’s wrong with the world.

ADDENDUM

David Adams who had an advance copy of this piece brought up the point that perhaps Tom Orman in his drunken state was a comment on Emma’s drinking problem.  A scenario instantly suggested itself.

Imagine Orman in his drunken state as a personification of John Barleycorn.  Imagine sweet sober Naomi as Emma in her sober state and Obroski as Burroughs in his non-Tarzan, actually Obroski state.

John Barleycorn claimed Emma as his own as Orman claimed Naomi.  Barleycorn is a jealous man and won’t tolerate Burroughs as a lover of Emma.  So the couple have to sneak a moment or two when John Barleycorn isn’t around.  In other words, when Emma is sober.

As Burroughs fictionally represents the situation Obroski/Burroughs is visiting Naomi/Emma in her tent.  they appear to be in love and accord.  Orman is drunk in his tent and isn’t expected to be abroad.  Then Obroski hears the drunken Orman approaching the tent.  Unable to stand up to Orman Obroski obsequiously flees.

So in real life Burroughs and Emma are getting along fine until Emma hits the bottle conjuring up John Barleycorn.  ERB can’t compete with the bottle while Emma becomes verbally abusive under the influence just as Orman used the lash on bearers while drunk.  ERB can’t take it so like the bearers he vanishes into the night.

I think it may be a viable scenario although obviously ERB’s version of the truth.

End of Part II.  Part III, The Source follows.

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Anima, Animus, Consciousness, Edgar Rice Burroughs, ERBzine, H.M. Stanley, Heracles, Louis B. Mayer, MGM, Mythology, R.E. Prindle, Reviews, Structural Psychology, Subconscious, Tarzan, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Part 2 Tarzan And The Lion Man A Review

Exhuming Bob VI Ramblin’ Jack Elliott And Bob Dylan

February 21, 2008

Exhuming Bob VI

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott And Bob Dylan

by

R.E. Prindle

 

     I had the privilege the other night of viewing The Ballad Of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott which was filmed by Jack’s daughter.  A little on the lengthy, repetitive side, could have used a judicious edit or two, but a very

Ramblin' Jack In Cowboy Persona

Ramblin

creditable and enjoyable effort.  She is to be commended.

     The movie helped to put into perspective Bob in his relation to both the New York folk scene and Elliott himself.  Both Jewish their careers have had great similarities from childhood to the present.  Currently they are running parallel with the money going into Bob’s pocket.

     Both have aspired to be cowboy or Western singers and both have succeeded.  Elliott in his Ramblin’ Jack role and Bob in his Texas Bob Dylan persona.  Both have tried to efface their Jewish heritage actually modeling their faces along cowboy lines.  In the movie the transition from the Jewish face of Jack’s youth to his current cowboy face is readily apparent.

     Elliot was born Adnopoz and Dylan was born Zimmerman.

     There appears to be some real hard feelings towards Bob by Ramblin’ Jack.  The cause is not far to seek.

     Elliott was himself a disciple of Woody Guthrie as is Dylan.  The difference is that Elliott had a ten year start on Dylan.  Thus while Dylan was still in high school Ramblin’ Jack was over there in London town recording those records on Topic that would show up in Minneapolis in 1960.  At that time the succession of Guthrie-Elliott-Dylan began, at least in Bob’s mind.  If anybody else didn’t know what difference did that make?  Already making a model of Guthrie Bob added Elliott and stole copies of the Topic records from a fellow named John Pankake and Bob was off to the races or at least New York City.  By one of those strange coincidences, genuine in this case, Bob arrived in the Big Apple from the West at the same time that Elliott’s ship from London town docked New York City from the East.  East met West so to speak.  Now Bob not only had Elliott’s records to practice from but the living model himself.  Ramblin’ Jack was living the exact life that Bob wanted to lead so Bob moved right in on him to learn everything he could.

     When Jack left America’s sunny shores he was a nobody.  He arrived in England just as the great Lonnie Donegan was introducing the Skiffle craze.  Jack snapped right in there like the interchangeable part of an automobile.  They liked him.  They liked everything about him.  Made him so comfortable he invited his friend Darrel Adams to come over and sing with him.  Darrel did.   They made one of those Topic records together that Bob stole from Pankake.

Caricature Of Bob

Caricature Of Bob

     Well, to make a long story shorter those recordings found their way from London town to New York City making Jack a celebrity in the burgeoning New York folk scene.  Jack was a hero.  Bob got close to him.  In one scene Bob is on stage telling Darrel Adams in the audience that he has a record of Darrel and Jack’s.  Thus no further proof is needed that Bob stole Pankake’s records and wouldn’t give them back.

     Over the course of a few months Bob studied Jack’s act and by the end of those months he was a Ramblin’ Jack Elliott in a Bob Dillon disguise.  I never realized how completely Bob became Jack until I saw the movie.

     At the time Jack didn’t think much of Bob’s stealing his act but over time he seems to have developed hard feelings towards Bob.  He was real resentful in the movie.  Did an interesting but bitter version of Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright.  Were you listening Bob?

     The fact of the matter is both Bob and Jack knew where they were going and they were going to different places by the same route.  Bob wanted to be a star and Jack wanted to ramble.  So while this single persona in two forms was a star ramblin’ round the world the other side was an irresponsible troubador ramblin; his serendipitous way round the highways and byways of Americky.

     They both got what they wanted so there’s no reason for Jack to be bitter about the boy he called his ‘son.’  The only one with the right to be bitter is John Pankake who lost those great Topic records.  But nowadays who’s ever heard of John Pankake?

Posted in America, Bob Dylan, Folk Music, Jews, R.E. Prindle, Reviews, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »
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