The Sixties And The Negro Revolution

Part 3a

Terraplaning Through The Ozone

by

R.E. Prindle

 

Always keep in mind 1954’s Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. The Board Of Education of Topeka as the basis of our interpretation of the Negro revolution. There are other things to consider. In that era before the internet, indeed, even as television networks were only developing, magazines were a key element in forming public opinion. Liberalism, even Communism, was the lens through which events were viewed. This was usually disguised as tongue in cheek conservative criticism.

The most important purveyors of this sort of public opinion were Time, Newsweek and Life. The first and last formed the Time-Life group of magazines all of which were very influential while disguising their Liberal bias very well. Life was the first to bite the dust probably being replaced by T-L’s People Magazine that more or less covered the same ground in a more contemporary fashion. Far back but vying with these was the William F. Buckley fronted National Review. Buckley was the most pernicious of all posing as the consummate Conservative while guarding the Liberal agenda from Conservative inroads.

These were New York based magazines so that it is not surprising perhaps that they were staffed mainly by Jews, including the National Review, hence Left Wing although disguised as right wing or objective, and heavily pro-Israel, Negro and definitely Jewish. It might seem odd that all pushed a Jewish agenda but then as New York City was 25% Jewish let’s just say they had a foot in the door.

Until Time-Life was absorbed by the Jews in the TL-Warner Bros. merger the Luces, Henry and Claire Booth who founded the empire ran a fairly useful organization. I read Time religiously and believed in the veracity of the magazine until I learned in their account of Howard Hughes departure from Las Vegas that they fabricated the story completely. Pure fiction and that this was done routinely.

Nevertheless as publishers of outstanding illustrated history books in extended series and phonograph record collections of very high quality they did their best to educate Americans of their past.

I finally chucked Time Life in after buying their mail order library, The Time-Life Reading Program. This was a series of 108 titles sent four volumes bi-monthly. They became progressively Red oriented, that is propagandistic. I read the first eighty or so titles then stopped although I have the full set of 108 less the replacement title of one volume.

As they were located in New York City they were enablers of the various revolutions giving national prominence to what were local situations. Andy Warhol would have remained a relative unknown except for Time while a relative nobody like Edie Sedgwick went nationwide with Life’s picture essay of her. Even Ed Sanders of the Fugs made the cover of Life as T-L constantly hyped the Greenwich Village Bohemian culture, enabling that culture to conquer America.

Newsweek was a Time wannabe that didn’t have what it took. One picked it up when Time wasn’t around which was rarely. Newsweek has gone defunct while pursuing a far left Jewish agenda. The signs are that Time sabotaged by the Jews through their merger will probably soon follow under Jewish editorship.

As commentary magazines there were Harpers, Atlantic, The Reporter and a host of others but they were minor in distribution compared to the giants Time, Life and Newsweek.

Time is of the essence of the period.

Movies and TV

Just as one’s dreams form a parallel reality alongside one’s waking life so movies and TV play a key role in the formation of one’s public life somewhere between dreams and waking reality. Contrary to claims made by the industry movies were not about entertainment but were purely propaganda disguised as entertainment. No serious history or study of movies exists to my knowledge although specific movies are being injected into articles as alternate reality. While movies may not be actually real they nevertheless create real memories and very influential memories that do affect your actions. And memory is the basis of consciousness. The memories are so powerful that one may adjust one’s personality to reflect what is on the screen. Thus when M.A.S.H. was on TV any number of Hawkeyes stalked the land assuming that persona. The Hawkeyes then cast the people around them in the various roles behaving as if those roles were real in fact. What a curse that was.

There was a changing of the guard that occurred in 1962. Within a few days of each other two movies were released the one being The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and the other Ian Fleming’ Dr. No. The former was the swan song of the old American mores while the latter established the new Freudian/Reichian pornographic image of the New America.

Liberty Valance featured the two aging stars of the thirties and forties John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart while being directed by the old warhorse, John Ford. Dr. No introduced Wayne’s successor Sean Connery. It was like Zeus replacing Cronus in the Age change from Taurus to Aries.

The two female leads also heralded the change. Vera Miles as the beautiful Hallie Stoddard Aryan model of Chivalry of virgin sensibilities exited stage right while like Aphrodite of old the new model woman Ursula Andress rose nearly nude from the sea as the pornographer’s delight. Indeed, soon an area legal for pornography would be created within a twenty mile radius of the Hollywood studios ensuring that pornography would triumph in America’s theatres.

Thus violence was personated in the form of James Bond (Sean Connery) and pornography in various forms of Bond heroines who might all have been named Pussy Galore were united. The future was cast. Out with the chaste and demure Vera Miles and in with the lusty, busty, big-assed Bond heroines chasing the Big Dick. I knew something had happened but I was left scratching my head.

Nineteen sixty-two also produced the morally relativist masterpiece Mondo Cane. The movie had tremendous impact as it demonstrated that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Sixty years later its images flash through my mind

Thus the Jews through Freudian/Reichian psychoanalysis triumphed over and displaced Aryan European Chivalric mores.

Now, Freud and Reich were motivated by Freud’s total misunderstanding of the Unconscious. Freud looked inside himself and extrapolated his malaise as the normal for mankind irrespective of race or religion. If Freud was the Jesus of psychoanalysis then his disciple Wilhelm Reich was its St. Paul.   While Freud was rejected by Aryans Reich was able to translate sex and violence into something palatable for them.

While most people know Freud, at least by name, many fewer have heard of Wilhelm Reich. Reich was a disciple of Freud. While Freud dressed his discovery of the psycho-analytic method in a lot of mumbo-jumbo he essentially deified his own subconscious desires for sex and violence and passed them off as universal. He didn’t take those desires to their logical conclusion however while Reich did. Reich’s vision was pure sado-masochistic sex and violence and by sex I mean merely fucking.

While this had been what Freud meant, when Reich held up his mirror for Freud to see Freud was revolted by himself and cast Reich from his organization. At that time his group was all Jewish as it was realized that psycho-analysis was a Jewish affair.

Reich continued on and wed Communist violence to his psycho-sexual political creation. Where he would have gone from there having been discredited by the psycho-analysts isn’t clear but that scourge who destroyed America without lifting a finger, Adolf Hitler, came to power in Germany. The German States were the center of the psycho-sexual scum.

As Hitler was antagonistic to Jews in general, when he came to power in 1933 all this intellectual treyfe with the exception of Freud, and he was to plague England, fled to the United States settling in its two culture forming centers, New York City and Los Angeles. Reich, the King of Scurf, was one of these figures. Hitler’s revenge on the United States.   He remained on the East Coast peddling his sex and violence.

If Freud had rejected Reich US authorities followed suit in spades. They were so repelled by Reichian theories that, this is truly remarkable, they not only arrested him as a criminal lunatic throwing him into prison but actually collected his books and burned them. This was in anything goes America too.

The only thing other than Reich that the US was intolerant of was Jewish comic books that were also banned. The Jewish Horror comics such as William Gaines Tales From The Crypt were sado-masochistic, violent and pornographic while possible inspired by Reich’s approach to psycho-analysis.

I was an avid reader from eight to twelve of all the Gaines comics which I considered outre and even as I read them thought to myself that they shouldn’t allow them for little kids like myself. But, I read them eagerly. Still I didn’t know that what I was reading was sado-pornographic stuff. Didn’t know either term at the time. Apparently our parents did. These were vivid, vivid stories. Great pictures. Many of the images linger on. Perhaps I was revolted because I have always rejected pornography as a mental malaise. Not that that does me or anyone else any good because every Hollywood movie has a pornographic base while many for general distribution are worse than anything Gaines published. His line was named, humorously I hope, EC- Educational Comics. Believe it or not.

At any rate not all Reich’s books were burned as they were revived in the Sixties forming the basis of Bohemian sex and politics notions. So a new synthesis began to form, began to jell in the Sixties. The adoption of a new set of mores. It was realized that movies were an unrivalled propagandistic tool.

Dusan Makajevic, a Yugoslavian film maker made a perfect visualization of Freudian/Reichian sexual politics in his movie of 1971: WR: Mysteries Of The Organism. The modern world in a nut shell, no pun intended I don’t recommend it as without proper education its sexual presentation will certainly be misunderstood as pure pornography. Of course it is, but only as a visualization of the Freudian/Reichian unconscious and its consequences. E. Michael Jones gives an extended literary version in his Libido Dominandi that I do recommend. Perhaps read it first.

So, now, we have the perfect propagandistic tool that functions through both the conscious and unconscious minds in hands of Jews indoctrinated in Freudian/Reichian psychology. After WWII and the discovery of Hitler’s death camps the Jews became absolutely hysterical. Even though American Jews had never been in any danger, not even remotely, they now saw White Americans as potential if not actual Fascists intent on destroying them. This was serious.

William Paley of CBS, himself a Jew, believed American death camps were so imminent that he capitalized the careers of prominent Jewish performers- actors, comedians and such- and sold shares in their future incomes to gentiles. By this ploy he believed that when the round up came these few Jews would be spared for economic reasons. This is serious, indeed.

In any event the path to survival in their mental state was to divide and discombobulate. The Negro as a tool was at hand. While the Judaeo-Communists of the twenties and thirties had always used the Negro to sow discord and confusion, in the post-war US their effort was stepped up. The movies were the perfect vehicle to divide and control America. Hence we had all those horrid Sidney Poitier movies shaming Whites and glorifying Negroes. By 1960 this was nearly in full spate.   Miscegenation was a popular device so there were numerous Negro male/White female pairings. Remember the movies are a third reality somewhere between waking and dreaming providing both conscious and unconscious very real memories from faked reality. What was seen wasn’t true but was accepted as such by suggestion. This is serious business while presented as entertainment, it was actually behavior changing propaganda.   New mores for the masses.

The dialogue, then, was controlled and directed through films, the third reality.

And then there was Brown vs the BOE. The greatest divisive decision ever made and taken full advantage of by the Jews. Here was a way to protect themselves from a nation, they thought, of Hitlers thirsting for Jewish blood. After the great preliminary battles of the Fifties came the Sixties and the wedge that split the nation- the Civil Rights Battle.

 

Marianne Faithfull:

The Faerie Queene Of The Sixties

by

R.E. Prindle

Chapter VIII

Changes

Would anybody like to try the changes I’m going through?

–Donovan.

In Her Glory

In Her Glory

Life at best is difficult. Change after difficult change presents itself.  Of necessity life is lived on the fly.  One must always deal with fixtures and forces one cannot comprehend on first confrontation.  In a way then we can hardly be responsible for the decisions we make unless we have enough experience to interpret that with which we are confronted correctly.  At any point a controlling psychological fixation through misinterpretation may cause to act against our best interests.  All further experience then will be interpreted through and disturbed by one or more fixations in our subconscious of which we probably are not aware.

Sexually Marianne was probably confused by the sexual scenes she observed at her father’s Braziers Institute contrasted with her subsequent teaching of abstinence at St. Joseph’s Convent School.  The confusions conflicted her sexual attitudes in later life, attitudes she was unaware of and never resolved.

Young Marianne

Young Marianne

Once she left her father’s governance passing into that of her mother’s she lived not in poverty but in relative hardship; luxuries if experienced at all were few and far between yet she did received an upper class education and outlook at St. Joseph’s.

Her mother was  apparently strongly Bohemian having been involved with the stage pre-WWII.  She encouraged Marianne in the Bohemian direction which Marianne found congenial, sought and never abandoned.  The girl was interested in the stage while becoming a Joan Baez style folk singer after leaving convent school in Reading at seventeen.

While not beautiful in any classic sense she was yet attractive with a great figure making her a desirable sexual object.  The sixties was the decade of wide open sex making all women mere sexual objects.  Her first reaction was to seek a stable married life choosing John Dunbar as an appropriate husband.  Dunbar was Bohemian in outlook while apparently headed for an academic career.

At this point fate intervened.  At a party with Dunbar she met the record producer Andrew Loog Oldham who perceived her persona as a marketable commodity  in the pop music world.  As an added bonus Marianne could actually sing, having performed as a folk singer.

She was still an impressionable girl of just seventeen just after the Pill had been introduced with little ability to successfully traverse the changes she would be called upon to go through.  These would be formidable and rapid calling for huge energy reserves on a day to day basis.  Not an enviable situation.

While most musicians go through a relatively long learning process and struggle to succeed Marianne struck gold the first time out without even trying.  Her first minimal three minute effort, if it was an effort,  established her as the pop princess or queen of the generation.  Her innocent convent school persona was perfect in a vulgar world.  But it was a persona at odds with the one Marianne would seek and embrace- she became the devil with a blue dress on.

While the music or, really, record business seems very attractive from a distance it is literally vile from the inside.  Everything connected with it is dishonest, the record companies, musicians, lackeys, the whole number.  Nobody remains unstained.

It is truly a man’s world, even a gay man’s world, in which the men have no respect for womankind.  Women are expected to merely service the sexual desires of the male performers.  They have no use beyond that.  Thus one has the phenomenally debauched groupie scene that amazed the world during the sixties. After that there was no longer anything amazing.

Having witnessed sex acts at Braziers of numerous descriptions the pop music world satisfied this side of Marianne’s psyche.  At the same time a desire for a chaste life pushed her in the direction of marriage with Dunbar which desire she consummated, however Dunbar proved to be not the ideal choice.

While Marianne thought she would be leading a sedate intellectual academic life with him as a professor he turned out to be as much or more a Bohemian as she was.  Quite frankly he failed her.

Having acquired a wife he did not act responsibly toward her.  He was blindsided by her recording success and perhaps belittled by her financial success.  In effect he was supported by his wife which is always a difficult situation.  The changes he faced were in themselves formidable and he didn’t have the character to meet them.  Still, a man doesn’t fill his house with dopers and heroin addicts.  Marianne can hardly be faulted for resenting it after getting up in the morning to find a house full of conked out junkies in rooms littered with used needles.  The transition from Braziers to St. Joseph’s to high degeneration must have been changes hard to adapt to.  Sent her head spinning.

Marianne Searching

Marianne Searching

The change from the straitened circumstances of her childhood and youth still actually in progress to one of affluence in which she could indulge her wildest fancies in buying clothes and more clothes.  Her lack of maturity hurt her badly.  In this case her hero William Blake’s notion that the road of excess leads to wisdom was not quite true, it led to penury.

Not clearly seen by many at the time the pop world split into two streams, the British pop stream of the fifties soon to be extinct and the Rock world  of pop princes and princesses of the future.  The Beatles straddled both worlds while curiously Marianne may have been the first to emerge as a star of the Rock world soon to be followed by the Rolling Stones.

As such even though having only one hit single to her name she was on a par with the Beatles and the Stones while being superior to the lesser groups following in the train of the Beatles and Stones.  Thus in the salon formed around the pop art dealer Robert Fraser she held a place of primacy that she never realized.  Her tragedy was that she was too young and inexperienced to grasp her opportunity making a series of inept decisions while being seen only as so much poontang by the Rockers and of transitory fame by a series of inept managers.

Thus, unable to find someone capable of carefully building her career she did become transitory, or her career going into hiatus, she did lose her place while gravitating to the dominance of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.  Gradually her royalties diminished so that she was financially dependent on Jagger while still married to John Dunbar.  Deep in a milieu of drug users she found their allure irresistible.

However conscious she was that she had been and still was to some extent a celebrity she thought to regain that identity.  Feeling unable to compete with Jagger as a recording star she chose to follow her mother’s wishes and take up acting.  In her enthusiasm to and need to show Jagger that she was somebody too, that she was his equal, as a performing artist she aroused Jagger’s interest in also being a movie star.  He, being a more marketable commodity soon gave evidence of eclipsing her as an actor rather than staying in recording as she assumed he would.

Her own space having been preempted she developed an affinity for Brian Jones of the Stones who was essentially in her situation in his relation to the group.  He too was being forced out thereby losing his identity.

When Brian died she then in sympathy decided to follow him overdosing with pills that would have killed her had not Jagger been alert enough to rush her to the hospital.  As much as anything her suicide attempt was meant to get away from Jagger’s dominance.  That move now being thwarted she had no choice but to walk out which she did in 1970.  Thus began the rest of her life.

II

Marianne The Wild Thing

Marianne The Wild Thing

The Rock and Art scene was a drug scene.  Bob Fraser’s salon centered around Rock musicians was also a drug center.  Fraser introduced members of his salon to all drugs including heroin.  Marianne had a favored position in Fraser’s salon early learning of heroin to which Fraser himself was addicted.  By the time she walked out on Jagger in 1970 she had been addicted for some time.  Heroin was to remain her central fixation throughout her life.

Jagger disapproved of her addiction so she was forced to conceal it from him.  When her royalties decreased she no longer had her own money becoming dependent on Jagger.  Not wishing to plead for large sums of money from Jagger in order to obtain her heroin she prostituted herself to Keith Richard’s factotum Spanish Tony Sanchez.

Sanchez was an aspiring criminal who came to Richards through Groovy Bob Fraser.  Sanchez had met Fraser in a bar after which the friendship blossomed.  Fraser had contracted gambling debts to the notorious Kray Brothers, the criminal kingpins of London.  The Krays were threatening Fraser with grievous bodily harm if they didn’t get their money.  According to Sanchez in his autos Up And Down With The Rollings Stones and I was Keith Richard’s Drug Dealer he volunteered to negotiate the debt with the Krays which he did.

At that time, following their US Mafia model, the Krays were attempting to lift the Beatles from Brian Epstein who also had large gambling debts to them so there is no reason to disbelieve Sanchez.  Following the episode with Fraser Sanchez was employed by Richards as drug/procurer-factotum at the fabulous salary of two hundred fifty pounds a week.  This leads me to believe that the Krays were using Sanchez to infiltrate the Stones possibly with the intent of taking them over.

Sanchez was always resented by Richards and the Stones but he managed to stick with them until the mid seventies when Richards was able to shake him.  In his vanity Sanchez considered himself an essential member of the Stones’ entourage, if not an actual member of the Stones.

Marianne’s misfortune was that everyone wanted to sleep with her, a further misfortune was that she obliged.  Thus she and Tony had a sexual liaison for several years.  This raises the question then whether Tony was also pimping for her.  Certainly as his criminal associates knew he was sleeping with her they would want to also.  Not being a fool Tony may have named a price and received it.  Whether he or she could have successfully resisted is open to question.  The US Mafia certainly used their female artists to gratify their desires.

In the mid sixties additionally, once again, through Fraser Marianne had become part of the Satanic crowd.  Through Fraser she was introduced to the arch US Satanist, Kenneth Anger.  Through them she was introduced to the writing of Great Satanist of the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley and also the writing of the nineteenth century French arch Satanist, Eliphas Levi, not Jewish despite the name.  And then the modern Satanist classic the Russian Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita published in 1968.

Also in this period she became involved with the Satanist Process Church Of The Final Judgment.  Marianne downplays her involvement with Satanism but it was much more serious than she is willing to admit.

Playing against this background Marianne renewed an acquaintance with the Irishman Lord Patrick Rossmore.  He was 43 to her 24.  I merely mention this, it makes me no never mind what the ages are so long as the couple is comfortable with each other.  In this case they weren’t comfortable.  The two, in a sort of a farce became engaged but never married parting as they met in a friendly sort of way within several months.

While Mick was aggressively dominating, Marianne seems to have chosen Lord Rossmore because shy and retiring as he was she could dominate him.  According to Hodkinson the couple rarely saw each other, he being in Ireland while Marianne remained in London closer to her dope supply.

True to her interpretation of William S. Burroughs degenerate novel, Naked Lunch,  she led a totally debased and degraded life as a street junkie or, at least, her version of it.  Remember it was her movie of Marianne and she was pretending to be a sociologist.  She cultivated the friendship of total degenerates such as the artists Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud.  She also became friends with the total junkie, writer Alexander Trocchi.  Also at this time becoming fast friends with another lowlife, Henrietta Moraes who she says was a close friend until she died.  Marianne was able to sink to lower levels than any of these people and gloried in it.

It was during this period of 1970-71 that she says she sat on the wall in Soho staring into the bomb crater.  In his first biography Hodkinson scoffed at this.  According to him this wall was a waiting station lined with junkies alert for their supply.

By 1971 the Stones had become tax exiles in the South of France so that Spanish Tony was with Keith no longer able to supply Marianne with her drugs, thus, we suppose, the wall.  As Marianne had no regular income during this period, although adequate royalty checks still arrived irregularly, there does arise the question of how she paid for her dope.  As a junkie Marianne had no qualms about running up tabs she couldn’t pay and apparently didn’t.  At one point she boasts she left New York owing several dealers 20K each while flippantly adding she had no intention of ever paying.  Whether she succeeded or not is not known.

Marianne vehemently denies that she resorted to prostitution although there is a fair amount of circumstantial evidence she did.  A careful reading of her second auto, Memories, Dreams And Reflections, gives some hints.  At one point she retorts to an admirer that she is not a two-bit prostitute, that it would take 200 pounds to be with her.  Perhaps a joke but the price sounds right, her retort has the ring of authenticity.

In the same auto she claims first hand acquaintance with all the working girls of the area.  There is only one way such first hand knowledge could be obtained.  There is or was a video on the internet in which a camera had been placed within a building between two half open doors.  Marianne dressed in some pretty snappy expensive looking working girl gear walks in front of the camera, notices it, shows alarm, then quickly turns a corner then flattening herself against the wall to peer back at the camera.  It seems evident that she was going to or returning from a job.

She seems to have worked from 1970-71 through at least 1974 through her association with Madeleine D’Arcy.  In 1971- during the recording of Exile On Main Street when Tony Sanchez accompanied Keith to the South of France Tony met Madeleine with whom he fell deeply in love and had a relationship with her in France.

Upon returning to England he apparently resumed some sort of relationship with Marianne as well as Madeleine.  Marianne in her turn began a lesbian relationship with Madeleine, perhaps to spite Tony, who she despised personally, or so she says.  Tony was angry at the relationship.

It then appears that Marianne and Madeleine functioned as high price prostitutes or perhaps call girls between ‘72 to ‘74.  In ‘74 Madeleine as Marianne recalls had gone back to turning fifteen pound tricks in Brighton.  ’Going back’  implies that formerly she received higher payouts, perhaps 200+ as Marianne received.

As she hadn’t heard from Madeleine for a little while she called at her apartment.  When no one answered she called a couple bravos to break down the door.  One was a Maltese pimp and drug dealer.  At that time in London the Maltese are said to have controlled crime in the West End.  That Marianne could call on them to supply help implies a certain degree of familiarity with the underworld.  The other person’s  identity Marianne doesn’t indicate so there is the possibility it could have been Tony.  When no one answered the door the two men broke it down.

Entering the apartment Madeleine was found dead on her bed.  She had apparently been beaten to death although not molested as she was artfully laid out in a beautiful full gown.  Thus whoever killed her loved her.  This points to Tony although the crime was never solved.

So, if Marianne says she never turned to prostitution perhaps not, but there is sufficient evidence to indicate she did.  The whole period from 1970-1974 is very hazy in her memoirs.

While she was supposedly incognito on the streets of Soho, as if Marianne could ever be incognito,  lost to view of the music world, Michael Leander, who had been her producer suddenly got the idea to make an LP with her so he beat the bushes, scoured the walls so to speak, like any good detective, tracking her down in Soho supposedly sitting on her wall staring into the bomb pit.  He induced her back into the studio where they recorded the LP Rich Kid Blues, a return to Marianne’s folk roots.

For some reason the record was shelved not being released until decades later.  After this she took up with Oliver Musker who she was associated with for the two years from ’72 to ’74.

III

The Myth Of Marianne

Down And Out In Soho

Down And Out In Soho

For all her emotional problems Marianne was a bright girl.  She read.  Among her readings were those of the psychologist C.G. Jung.  Among Jung’s ideas was that of the personal myth.  By that he means everyone must have a personal myth to survive, to make sense of what one is doing or what is happening to you.  This was more or less the same notion of Andy Warhol’s that if you don’t like the way your life is going pretend it’s a movie.  That’s a sort of displacement so what’s happening is just a script that was written for you.  Your own personal myth.  Lots of people were living in their own movie.

It seems probable, in observing Marianne’s life, that she came across Jung’s observation and set about creating her myth.  For proper understanding I quote Jung: p. 197 of the Red Book as quoted in the introduction by Sonu Shamdesani:

I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness:  “what is the myth you are living?”  I found no answer to the question and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust…

So in the most natural way, I took on myself to know “my” myth– so I told myself– how could I, when treating my patients, make due allowance for the personal factor, for my personal equation, which is yet so necessary for a knowledge of the other person, if I was unconscious of it.”

During the period of 1970 ‘72 Marianne had fallen on the hardest times, the lack of a model for her life.  It seems obvious that the wall bit is perhaps a metaphor for her mental state while sunk into her heroin addiction which perhaps had led to other unsavory activities.

If she really thought she was incognito amongst the street people and shopkeepers who she tells us were wonderful to her, what would have been just another junkie earning money by any means necessary, she is either misremembering or was oblivious to the truth.  Marianne was a nationally recognized figure on TV and records who had won the hearts of the people.  If anything, one can only think that they wondered how she could have fallen so low but in a manner they still revered the image she had been.  On the other hand she says guys drove by and yelled ‘you dirty slag’ out the window.  Marianne was in denial.

Without a myth of herself that was all she could do.  I don’t know when after her fall from grace in 1967 she had read Jung to conceive of creating her myth but the period after 1970 has certainly been mythologized.  Remember she titled her second auto Memories Dream And Reflections  which just happens to be the title of Jung’s own auto without the And.

As it was necessary for Marianne to form a new persona after the Redlands bust it appears that the persona began taking shape during this period of extreme depression from ‘70 to ‘72.  When she met Musker and perhaps even Leander recorded Rich Kid Blues with her, she began to form the myth and regain an identity and perhaps sanity.

Musker led to Ben Brierly which was a key recovery period and then later she grabbed hold of the supreme works of despair and depression, the works of Brecht and Weil.  God, that’s hurting.

All her associates  in the mid seventies were Creatures From The Black Lagoon.  Black Lagoon was one of the great psychological sci-fi parodies of the fifties.  Freud’s vision of the unconscious dominated the period so in Lagoon some ‘scientists’, always portrayed as evil themselves, discover a black lagoon in the Brazilian jungles.  The circular pool, of course, represents Freud’s vision of the unconscious in which demons and monsters lurk so the Creature, stirred up by the scientists, perhaps it may be read as psycho-analysts, emerges in all his horror dripping with weeds from the black lagoon. Coulda been me I thought as I sat watching.

So, Burroughs, Gysin, Ginsburg, Corso, Bacon, Lucien Freud,, Moraes, all the people a reasonable person would run from.  No matter how attractive they may appear on the printed page they were much less so in person.  I’ve met a few of them and, shall we say, I knew I would never fit in.

Marianne did fit in.  She was beginning to reconcile her Braziers Park sexual education with her high Catholic teaching.  Andy Warhol said if your life is not going as you like it, pretend it’s a movie.  Marianne was in the unique position where she could live her myth in movies, on the stage and on phonograph records as well as in real life.  In her mind she could make it work but real life upsets things once in a while.  Plus Marianne in her reading read William Blake whose line ‘the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ was the mantra of the whole junkie crowd as well as Marianne’s.  Who would be seduced by bull shit like that?  Beaudelaire, Rambeau and the French Symbolists also provided such like justification for the path she was on.  Thus Marianne was able to justify her myth by such philosophy.

Marianne could thus justify sexual excesses, perhaps even prostitution, as drinking the cup to the dregs on the path to wisdom.  At the same time she was able to split her personality in a Braziers/St. Joseph’ contrast so that she could remain ‘pure’ while sympathizing with the plight of all those unfortunate prostitutes she knew so well.  That actually was a sort of Rich Kid Blues so Leander was perhaps more prescient than Marianne thought.

Marianne who had many acting offers during these years and at least one serious role with Roman Polanski all of which she blew ostensibly because of her heroin addiction but also possibly because as she felt so degraded she didn’t think she deserved success because of Redlands.  At any rate she was the darling of the counter culture and remains so down and out or not.

Oliver Musker an old Etonian met her through Christopher Gibbs who paled with Bob Fraser at a party in 1972 so she wasn’t so incognito that she wasn’t attending parties.  Still her addiction was obvious enough that Musker wanted to save her.  Therefore he took control and put her in rehab.  But what’s rehab to an addict?  Perhaps a time out.  Of course Marianne says Musker saved her life.  Well, romance, romance, romance.

Musker was an apparent stable interlude in Marianne’s self-destructive course.  He kept her on a more or less even keel for these two years.  No less destitute than she had ever been Marianne accepted a role filmed in India titled Ghost Story.  Not quite the hardship Marianne attests, indeed, very glamorous to anyone in her fan base and elsewhere.

She and Musker traveled to India and from there to Hong Kong.  So she was leading a life many could envy.  Not too much is available about Musker but he apparently found India congenial as a business opportunity.  He currently runs a furniture factory out of Delhi.

But he was an overbearing, dominant sort enforcing his will with violence.  He knocked out Marianne’s upper two front teeth.  When he tried to manage Marianne’s career  he became too much for her and they parted company. Or, perhaps, Musker was just a crutch to get her over a very rough patch.  By 1974 perhaps she thought she no longer needed him.

And then as part of the road of excess leading to the palace of wisdom Musker was a type of male and as part of her identity she was to experiment with different types. That would lead to her future second husband Ben Brierly.  The music scene about to transit the very destructive Punk era so, perhaps Marianne saw it as chance to revive her recording career.

As I see it Marianne went into shock after Redlands.  The shame of the Mars bar bit was too much for her psyche to handle.  The court’s denial of the chance to defend herself and possibly explain was an egregious insult that she could find no way to handle.  This kind of shock takes time to digest and find some way to regain one’s composure.  Thus Marianne’s life from that point to her suicide attempt in 1969 can be explained in that context.

Her rejection of Mick can largely be explained as the aftermath of Redlands.

Marianne had been used as sex object once she entered the record industry.  It was a role she didn’t reject apparently being a hot mama.  But as one matures one finds ways to use as well as be used.  Thus after 1969 Marianne turned predator using her sexual desirability  to turn predator herself.

She stayed with Lord Rossmore after leaving Mick while she used Musker to regain some balance although kicking heroin is just a mirage junkies pursue.  One grows weary of their stories  of becoming ‘clean.’  At best after Musker she discovered her limits although she really tested them.

While I don’t think it’s true, Marianne felt that Mick was a superior musician to herself. Marianne let the notion destroy her self-confidence.  Jagger is no singer, has no voice, is a mediocre lyricist, can’t dance but is a great showman with a burning desire to corrupt society.

Marianne’s problem was that she couldn’t find the proper agent or musical guide.  Issuing four albums in 1965 was a crass error for which she was apparently responsible.  She took no time to enter the spirit of the songs while many of the backing arrangements are revolting.  Nevertheless she was Marianne.

Having felt herself overshadowed by Mick she now picked the poor shlub Ben to musically dominate and overshadow in revenge on Mick.  As she left Musker she was emerging from the horrible reaction to Redlands while finding a musical persona to allow her to go on living the pop life she had learned to appreciate.

In keeping with her newly found myth combined with the Blake/Symbolist fantasy of plumbing the depths in search of the pearl of great price she embraced Brierly’s punk life style living in squalor in desperate squats.  During this period she was forming the persona that would emerge with her 1979 release of Broken English.  That record reestablished her musical credentials while providing her with a substantial cash windfall.  She might as well have worked for nothing as she took a 90K check and promptly blew it on clothes and drugs.  In some ways Marianne was a real slow learner.

She was able to disburse her cash faster than Edie Sedgwick threw away her 80K inheritance.  Edie had no hopes for another windfall although Marianne did.

Broken English was a boundary line between the middle Marianne and what came after.

Marianne Soldiers On, A Real Trooper

Marianne Soldiers On, A Real Trooper

Chapter IX will follow but I have other projects first.

Looking For A Miracle

The Sixties And Its Religion

 by

 R.E. Prindle

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

The deliberate pursuit of whatever type of sex is considered deviant by one’s own culture is part of the program of spiritual seekers as far removed from each other in time and space as Tantric Hindu, California Satanists, Daoist sorcerers,  Siberian shamans, and paunchy English “witches”, with their scourges and “sky-clad” retreats in the New Forest.  To break tabu is a necessary stage in vama marg tantric ceremonies, for instance, in which dietary and sexual tabus are deliberately broken one after another.  It is recognized by these technologists of the spirit that deviation from socially accepted mores is a powerful tool for awakening the sleeping powers within us, provided that this deviation takes place within the occult engines they have designed.

Peter Levenda- Sinister Forces, Book III, pp. 211-12

     The key to the Sixties is Sigmund Freud.  The Sixties was when Freud’s schemes came to fruition.  He turned Aryan civilization on its head.

As unpleasant as it may be to recognize Freud was Jewish and his activities were based on his Jewishness and the age old prophecies that govern Jewish activities.  Freud’s father came from the Galicia that was a stronghold of Hasidic magical Judaism.  Freud himself was a student of the magical Zohar and Kabbalah.

Along with them he acquired the Jewish hatred of the Other, specifically Europeans or Aryans.  He identified his psyche with the Semite Hannibal who attacked Rome- Freud’s symbol for Europe.  In actuality Hannibal defeated Rome in the field.  The Romans retreated within their walls refusing to come out and fight.  Unable to sustain his army Hannibal was forced to vacate Italy.  Thus, although he had won all the battles he couldn’t win the war.  This was a real dilemma Freud had to solve and he did.

Freud began his career as a biologic researcher looking for eel gonads.  Seeing no route to universal fame from that research he became interested in psychology.  Here was some room to move.

Freud was born in 1856 in the midst of the great unfolding of the Aryan mind.  He became associated with a fellow Jewish doctor, Joseph Breuer, who had become involved in researches into hysteria.  This led Freud to the center of research in hysteria at the Salpetriere hospital run by Jean-Martin Charcot in Paris when Freud was about thirty years old.  He could only afford Paris for a few months but they were eye opening months.  He learned the nature of hypnotism and its control element- suggestion.  This would be the stratum on which he built psychoanalysis.

Following Charcot Freud’s first book is an analysis of hysteria.  The book caused no stir.  Turning to associate Breuer and his proto-psychoanalysis Freud studied the nature of dreams.  He characterized dreams as the ‘royal road to the unconscious.’  Following Sherlock’s advice Freud carefully studied the literature on dreams which was fairly extensive.  His dream book flopped failing to make Freud a household word.

While issuing a steady stream of articles he contributed his greatest work in the form of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in 1901. In 1905 he contributed the useful Jokes And Their Relation to the Unconscious and another significant work that gave a clear indication of Freud’s direction Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality. This small volume finally created the fire storm he had been trying for. At the time the book was considered close to or actual pornography. At any rate it attacked prevailing European or Aryan morality breaking all sexual tabus.

While one may argue that Freud’s was a scholarly approach there is undeniable smut to it.  Freud in general reveled in smuttiness.  He always leaves you with a slightly sickened feeling.  There was controversy then as well as now as to his intent.

D.H. Lawrence who was no stranger to sexual theory and controversy denounced Freud in The Plumed Serpent for wishing to destroy prevailing European morality let alone reforming it.  In this opinion he was correct.  Both Sexual Theory and his Theory of the Unconscious and mass hypnosis would be his primary weapons.

Freud, contrary to popular opinion was not the originator or the discoverer of the unconscious nor even an early investigator.  The unconscious had been a hot topic in European thought ever since Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris in mid-eighteenth century.  There were many different ideas concerning the nature of the unconscious but by 1915 Freud had swept them off the board so that by the end of The Great War his perverted version stood alone.  The question was how to use this tool he designed to destroy the conscious mind and manipulate the unconscious to attain his and Jewish ends.

In the nineteenth century the only mass media that could be used to manipulate public opinion, the unconscious, was the newspaper, but the newspaper requires consciousness making access to the unconscious difficult.  It was only in the twentieth century that the great media capable of manipulating the unconscious directed arrived.  Perhaps the most important of these was modern advertising that arose alongside the movies to be followed by radio, talkies and television.  Color photo magazines are not to be overlooked either.  Photographic images go directly into the unconscious.

Of these media the most overlooked is the power of advertising to quickly change mores, for it was mores that Freud had to alter or modify, the way of looking at and thinking about things.

Freud had a nephew in the US by the name of Edward Bernays.  Bernays being Freud’s wife’s maiden name.  Eddie Bernays became a publicist with George Creel and the Committee on Public Information during WWI turning to publicity as a vocation after the war.  Thus he became a premier advertising consultant.  His influence today is greatly overlooked.

The CPI was a tremendous propaganda, indoctrination and conditioning machine.  The Wilson administration bludgeoned the American public into its party line.  Bernay’s would use those techniques to change the mores of the American people post-war following Freud’s ideas.  First he visited his Uncle Sigmund in Vienna where they had long summer walks and quiet talks.  What was said isn’t known but can be inferred from Bernay’s subsequent career.

According to Wikipedia quoting his daughter Anne Bernays felt that the public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon,’ and he feared that [the American public] could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so that they had ‘to be guided from above.’

Of course, who is to judge who is the wrong man and on what basis as well as the wrong or right thing.  Who is the infallible ‘above’  who is going to force his candidate on the erring people?

In other words, Bernays wanted a dictatorship of virtue.  Unable to disturb the political system in one fell swoop it would to be don incrementally.  Using techniques imbibed from his uncle’s political agenda Bernays did just that experimenting first through the commercial field.

Old fashioned advertising in print, as radio and TV hadn’t come into existence as yet, consisted of long prose pleas trying to persuade the conscious mind.  When color printing came into common use an attractive image coupled with product ID and snappy slogan, or propaganda,  would prove to be more effective.  Thus to promote Lucky Strike cigarettes there was an incredibly attractive slender woman smoking a Lucky with the slogan ‘Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet.’  The ad then carried a number of subliminal  messages as well as the plea.

When Bernays began his work the Aryan female ideal was the Arthurian conception portrayed most notably in the Pre-Raphaelite paintings.  Virginal and desirable as a wife.  Freud’s sexual goal was to invert that image to turn Aryan women into sluts.  Smoking in women was considered sluttish at the time just as cosmetics were symbolic of the prostitute or painted woman.  Good girls didn’t wear lipstick.  Bernays through his advertising techniques was to change all this.

Meanwhile back in Vienna, Freud was developing techniques to change the mind.  As always an avid student of literature Freud latched onto a small book by the Frenchman Gustav Le Bon titled:  The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.  Freud incorporated Le Bon’s studies into his own Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.  By ego he meant group ego not the individual ego.

The analysis of Le Bon meshed with the advertising propagandistic ideas of his nephew.  Freud then combined their work with his understanding of sexuality, drugs and his version of the unconscious  to undermine Aryan civilization.  Remember he was successful in imposing his vision of the unconscious as the only version of the unconscious on the entire psychological and psychiatric discipline, hence society as a whole.

Aiding the effort was the triumph of  Adolf Hitler in 1933 in Germany.  Hitler’s anti-Jewish stance drove the whole horde of Freud’s disciples out of Europe to the United States.  While Freud knew what he knew the other members of his psychoanalytic order didn’t.  I don’t mean to be unkind to Freud’s personal lumpenproletariat but they just didn’t grasp what he was talking about.  Nevertheless they were accepted at face value becoming not only influential but directors of US culture during the fifties and sixties after which their prestige began to wane.

Most of them settled in the two culture capitols of the US, NYC and LA so that the media took their lead from them.  While few, if any, understood Freud his vision of the unconscious as a discrete entity extraneous to the mind and actually the body while controlling one’s actions to the exclusion of the conscious mind was readily accepted and adopted as was his notion of repression in a completely distorted form.

The reality of Freud’s vision of the unconscious was quickly picked up by sci-fi writers who turned out a stream of such novels as  Jack Schaefer’s I Am Legend, Jack Finney’s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.  Not that we consciously understood at the time.

The State of Israel had come into existence in 1948 setting the Middle East ablaze in a series of wars.  The 1956 war was a turning  point for the Jews.  They had been shamed by their non-resistance to the death camps so the ‘56 war allowed them to assert their manhood and become fierce warriors driving US tanks and jet fighters.  The war also had intellectual consequences.

Aryan Europe and America had astounded the world by its astonishing scientific discoveries and intellectual development unshared by the rest of the world including the Jews.  Emboldened by their military success they set out to reassert their pre-scientific religious dominance they felt they had enjoyed throughout history until the nineteenth century.   Indeed a Jewish woman named Barbara Spectre has established the Paideia Foundation in Europe to claim a parity between what she calls Jewish Knowledge and Aryan Knowledge.  She specifically says that the future will not be like the nineteenth century when science wrested the crown from the Jews.

This is apparently not the first such crisis of the Jewish mind.  A site called Jewniverse published a short piece credited to Daniel M. Bronstein on 7/19/13.  I reproduce it here in full:

Quote:

Talmudic lore offers many episodes of rabbinic sages intellectually defeating the luminaries of the Hellenistic world.  Far less common are instances of rabbis dismembering their pagan nemeses.  So 2nd-century Rabbi Joshua Ben Hananiah really stands apart.

Acting on Roman Emperor Hadrian’s dare to abduct Athens’ top philosophers, Ben Hananiah traveled all the way to the celebrated city-state and coerced a local into revealing the secret location of the philosophical academy.

Upon reaching the heavily defended abode, the esteemed rabbi tricked the academy’s elders into killing the guards.

In a match of wits, Ben Hananiah demonstrated his intellectual superiority while exposing the vapidity of Greek wisdom.  After kidnapping 60 of Athen’s best, he brought the scholars before Hadrian, who placed their fate in the sage’s hands.

Using what can only be called magic, Ben Hananiah caused the philosophers’  shoulders to be violently wrenched from their bodies.  All of them were killed.  Other sages, like Hillel the Elder, have been praised for almost superhuman patience.  But Ben Hananiah’s actions present another view of the sages: as people who were extraordinary, but flawed.

Unquote.

Of course Plato’s academy had neither a secret location nor was it heavily guarded but it makes a good story that flatters Jewish sensibilities, apparently of a highly bloodthirsty order.  Thank god he didn’t pull Moses, trick and send ten plagues on the poor nitwit, stupid Platonic academicians.  How Barbara Spectre is going to replicate Rabbi Hananiah remains to be seen.  Let’s hope she doesn’t operate in the same realm of fantasy as the good rabbi.

Just as Moses through Yahweh destroyed Pharaoh, as Rabbi Hananiah demolished the hated Platonic Academy so Freud had calculated the destruction of nineteenth century Aryan science.

Nineteen-sixty was the critical year.  Western American society reached its apex in that year, but the demands of the scientific attitude exceeded the ability of the body politic to rise to it.  The people slipped back to a pre-scientific mentality.  Whether we saw it or not the crash of Western society that resulted in the Manson murders and the Rolling Stones at Altamont began in 1960.  Actually the much celebrated Woodstock concert of ‘69 was evidence of the intellectual retreat also, a premonition of Altamont.

By 1960 TV had reached a certain level of maturity.  During the fifties when programming was developing most locales had only one or two networks while there was some concern TV wouldn’t make it commercially.  By 1960 the three networks and independent system was in place.  The sitcom and drama setup was well organized.  Hollywood had learned the Freudian formula of using the medium for indoctrination and conditioning.

The fifties had been the great creative period for science fiction both in literature and movies.  This whole body of outstanding material  was now mined by TV.  Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone successfully invaded the minds of millions while the gold standard was probably Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek.  Both producers were Jewish.

It is impossible now to recount the propaganda, indoctrination and conditioning of the many, many series and thousands of episodes representing tens of thousands of hours of viewing that made war on established beliefs gradually weaning the multitudes from old mores to new.  Mostly the old mores with different content much as new religions build their religious edifices on the old religion’s sites.

The new religion was Saturnic or in another word, Satanic and the hallmark of Satanism is violence.  Few people now remember the TV series, Bus Stop, but that show was a direct assault on established beliefs and attitudes toward violence.  Incredible gratuitous mindless violence for the time far surpassed today when sadistic pornographic violence with nudity or nakedness perhaps a better word, thrown in.

One of the Twilight Zone episodes was a depiction of Charles Beaumont’s short story The Howling Man, the script also written by him, in which Monks somewhere in Ruritania had captured Satan and had him safely locked in a cell where he howled incessantly all night long.  A passing traveler asks for a night’s lodging.  Against their own strict rules forbidding it the Monks weakened and allowed him in carefully explaining to him to pay no attention to the howling man in the cell.  No good deed shall go unpunished.  The traveler naturally listens to the Howling Man’s pleas releasing him.  Satan laughing maniacally shouts Fool and rushes out the door.

Beaumont had divined the situation and put it into symbolic story form.  In the TV episode the sorry Fool spends his life searching for Satan to put him back in his cell.

It is prescient that Beaumont wrote the story in 1959.  By 1966 Ira Levin would develop the theme further when he wrote Rosemary’s Baby about the birth of the son of Satan who replaced Jesus that was made into a very influential movie a year later by that evil presence Roman Polanski.  We’ll get to that.

As is well known Sigmund Freud was a cokehead, a drug addict.  He well knew the deleterious effect of drugs on the mind and morality.  Dreams may be the royal road to the unconscious but drugs are the destroyer of morality.  The Unconscious corrupted by drugs is the end of all law and order.

As Freud, the old cokehead, said there are no coincidences so it follows that the drug explosion of the Sixties is the effect of a premeditated cause.  After all, Arnold Rothstein, a Jew, did organize the drug distribution network of the US in the 1920s.  It can also be no coincidence then that Dr. Feelgood, Max Jacobson, latched onto amphetamines as the great corrupter of society.  Jacobson also claims to have conferred with Freud in Vienna.  Getting underway in the US in post-war NYC in the forties, by 1960 Max was dispensing amphetamines by the gallon.  Imitators sprang up who poured their own gallons of amphetamine into the veins of New Yorkers.  This is fact, now  it should come as no surprise then that by 1966 NYC was overrun by criminal behavior, that seemed to explode in that year.  Or shall we say lack of morality caused by drugs.  In essence New Yorkers could no longer tell right from wrong.  Satanism ruled.  It should be needless to add that Dr. Feelgood was a Jew.  There were many factors causing the erosion of morality in the Sixties not all pertaining to religious developments that are our interest here.

The rise of science caused the intellectual disenfranchisement of all religions but more particularly within the Aryan ranks in which science developed, hence Aryan’s became disenchanted with Christianity while Jews and Moslems reinforced their belief systems against science.

Aided and abetted by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity the notion of moral equivalence took hold.  This was, one might say, cemented by the movie Mondo Cane of 1962.  While moral equivalence should have applied to all religions or moral systems it was turned exclusively against Aryan belief systems.  Movies and advertising reflected the animus against Christianity, Aryans and what Negroes called White Supremacy, that is, White rule and knowledge- science or in Negro terms, Acting White.

With all systems supposedly equal or morally equivalent while consciousness, that is objectivity was suppressed in favor of complete subjectivity or the Unconscious was endorsed, it became an easy matter to inject voodoo, witch craft and Satanism into Aryan belief systems.  Now, the transition to a satanic sensitivity was fully supported by movies and advertising as well as print media.  In 1966 the cover of Time Magazine proclaimed the message ‘God IS Dead’ in black. To the informed that was not a revelation as old gods do die while history is littered with the remains of old gods as epitomized by Shelley’s Ode to Ozymandias.  To the religious Time’s announcement was a huge blasphemy but then, the jury was still out concerning on which side the Luce’s were.

As if in celebration of the Luce’s announcement the Jew Ira Levin published his novel Rosemary’s Baby that concerns the birth of the Son of Satan although definitely by maculate means.  The novel was a commercial success bringing  the little Satan Roman Polanski on the scene who turned the novel into his equally successful movie in the year of revolution, 1968.

The impact of Polanski’s movie was quite extraordinary.  Certainly in the aftermath of the movie Satanism had been, one might say, popularized.  Of course Levin and Polanski didn’t create modern Satanism but they contributed to its manifestation.  The voo doo Saturnian cult had taken root on the East Coast being prominent in NYC.  Santeria as well all the Negro voodoo cults in the New World, of course, derived from Yoruba practices in Nigeria.  The Yoruba people combined aspects of Christianity with their own Yoruba beliefs themselves derived from Greco-Roman religious practices to create a very hybrid religion based completely in magic which through slavery passed into the New World.

Scientology, created by Ron Hubbard, one of those called UFO religions, in the forties somehow gets mixed up in this.  Certain disaffected members established their own church in England in ‘63 called the Process Church of the Final Judgment.  This outfit tried to combine Satan, Lucifer and Jesus into one religion.  No science involved here.  Charles Manson at the end of the decade would be influenced by both Scientology and the Process.

The idea was that Jesus said, Love your enemy.  Satan was the enemy of Jesus so Jesus was compelled to love Satan.  So the two along with Lucifer combined to share humanity so that virtue and evil were morally equal bringing in relativism, so right and wrong are irrelevant because what one calls right another calls wrong and vice versa.  So the law was that ‘it’s all good.’  Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.  Everything is permitted.  A recipe for disaster no doubt.  A state of social confusion had been created, almost a state of sustained hysteria.

After 1966 LSD became significant reifying whatever beliefs one had into stone.  The fact is that nothing can be gotten out of a mind other than what is in it.  Education is everything.  To really expand one’s consciousness one has to develop it.  With drugs learning stops, especially with LSD.  If anything one only reifies one’s existing opinions.  One may think one is talking to God but notice that God isn’t saying anything back.  You’re only having a dialogue with yourself.   You don’t need LSD to do that.

A biker by the name of John Griggs dropped a tab, saw God, changed his ways and began his own religion based on LSD called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love.  Begun in the LA coastal town of Laguna Beach the cult, or more aptly perhaps, commercial enterprise expanded up and down California and into Oregon where it was especially prominent in Josephine County of Southern Oregon.  It is said the BEL dominated or controlled the marijuana, hash and LSD supply of the West Coast but rather strangely none of the authors concerning themselves with the Process Church or Manson’s Family have heard of it.  These authors seem to think that the Process had a monopoly on that drug trade although dealing with biker groups.  Perhaps the role of the biker BEL wasn’t apparent to them.  All three ‘religious’ groups mentioned above were seriously involved in drugs and hence lead a Freudian unconscious life.

The Process Church founded by Robert and Maryanne DeGrimston in London in 1963 as an offshoot of Scientology soon moved to the sinister sounding site of Xtul on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.  There its Satanic, Luciferian and Jesusite form took shape.  As one can see, under the influence of Freudian psychology and the rejection of the conscious mind science had been discarded while consciousness has regressed some thousand years more or in some cases less.  Magic and superstition have once again taken center stage.  Behind the magic cults lay the teaching of one Aleister Crowley of the Golden Dawn and the infamous OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis) with its emphasis on sex magic(k).  The K Crowley added to distinguish his magick from stage magic.  May not look like much of a distinction but it is significant.

So, in 1967 we have Charles Manson being released from prison just as the Hippie thing with its legions of underage runaway girls took shape in the Haight-Ashbury district of the city of San Francisco.  The Haight was a hustler’s paradise and Manson was the man to mine that particular mountain.

More than anything the Hippie phenomenon was a symptom  of the rejection of science, or objectivity and the conscious mind in favor of superstition, subjectivity and the unconscious mind of Freud.  In connection with Freud it should be remembered that the motto of his 1900 book The Interpretation Of Dreams in his Latin quotation from Dante’s Inferno was Flectere si nequeo Superos,  Acheronta movebo which translated means:  If I cannot move heaven, I will stir up the underworld.

Freud had failed at the conscious level of science, which he attributed to anti-Semitism, so when he became aware of the unconscious through Breuer and Charcot he had found his underworld.  But that hell was part and parcel of his upbringing as Judaism is pure subjectivity hence rampant egoism capable only of creating a hell on Earth- hence Hollywood.

The Unconscious in Freud’s vision was the source of Satanic magic.  Hence it can be little wondered that at the very least per the Process Church the world was shared by Jesus and Satan with the Jesusites compelled to love their enemies and presumably turn the other cheek which is to say that Satan Rules.  In his own way the great Satanist Aleister Crowley had won the battle sharing the triumph with Freud.

By the way, the Process Trinity mirrors Greek mythology in which Zeus is the god of Heaven, Poseidon the God of the waters and Hades the god of the underworld.  Earth was the common property of all three.  So the Process reflects old age beliefs.

Because of the horrific nature of his Satanic practices all the attention has been focused on Charles Manson who identified himself as both Jesus and Satan.  Half or better of the biker groups derived their identity from Satan- Hell’s Angels, Straight Satans, Satan’s Disciples, etc.

In point of fact Manson was not doing anything his betters , i.e. Roman Polanski et al., weren’t.  The whole of Hollywood film was involved in Satanic practices.  Nor were Satanic practices new to the LA basin.  All of this cult stuff, snuffings and all was common knowledge in the fifties when I was there in the Navy.  I have no doubt it dated back through the forties and thirties.  Read Raymond Chandler and let your imagination go.  Watch the movies closely.

Manson said the reasons for the Tate-La Bianca killings were not what was thought but that he was no snitch.  It also means likely that these unknown forces were doing their best to help him once arrested as evidence disappeared, police bungled the process so that Manson and the Family might have beaten the rap except for the persistence of Bugliosi.

Manson appears to have been associated with the Polanski clique involving a large selection of A-list Hollywood.  They were involved in drug related Sado-masochistic practices and filmed themselves doing them.  Not surprisingly Manson was doing the same with his group.  Perhaps under the influence of hallucinogenics the significance  of a filmic trail didn’t seem so important.  In any event the police confiscated hours of Sado-masochistic  films from the Polanski residence.  Not unusually these have disappeared although they were offered for sale by the police.

In addition there were huge dope deals on the table that if Polanski wasn’t involved in he was well aware of.  His close friend Frykowski, a Pole from Red Poland, was involved in a scheme to distribute the amphetamine MDA and that would have been through the Polanski residence.    Shortly before the murders a dealer accused of burning them in a dope deal was brought to the residence where in the course of a large party he was strung up and tortured.

A few days later when Polanski was out of town Manson instructed his devotees to strike.  The result was horrific.  While it is said that the dope dealer Frykowski was the actual target it was the horrific death of Polanski’s pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, that garnered the headlines.

We have an interesting thing happening here that seems to have gone unnoticed.  It was a transition of consciousness that affected every member of society though few actively participated.  As an example to illustrate what was happening from 1967 through 1969 I quote from an online publication by an anonymous author concerning the transition from the Weimar Republic to the Nazi Government of Germany.    (    hppt://thespawnofthesphinx.com ) chap.17, p. 4:

Quote:

In his book, “In The Garden Of The Beast”, Erik Larson relates first hand accounts of what it was like to be an outsider (in particular the American Ambassador and his daughter) observing Hitler’s rise from Chancellor to tyrant in 1933.  It was during that year that Germany became absolutely transformed.  “It was like watching a dear friend go insane.” as one outside observer put it.  After the great transition and assimilation, German’s collective mind was “coordinated.”

Larson quoted:

“Beneath the surface, however, Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life.  It had occurred quietly and largely out of easy view.  At the core was a government campaign called Gleichshaltung- meaning ‘Coordination’- to bring citizens, government ministries, universities, and cultural and social institutions in line with National Socialist beliefs and attitudes.

‘Coordination’ occurred with astonishing speed, even in sectors of life not directly targeted by specific laws, as Germans willingly placed themselves under the sway of Nazi rule, a phenomenon that became known as Selbstgleichschaltung, or ‘self-coordination.’  Change came to Germany so quickly and  across such a wide front that German citizens who left the country for business or travel returned to find everything around them altered, as if they were characters in a horror movie who come back to find that people who once were their friends, clients, patients, and customers have become different in ways hard to discern.  Gerda Laufer, a socialist wrote that she felt ‘deeply shaken that people whom one regarded as friends, who were known for a long time, from one hour to the next transformed themselves.”

Unquote, unquote.

The same thing happened in the US in the fifties as Jack Finney recorded in his Body Snatchers, is happening again here at the end of the sixties and is happening now as Obama/Hitler transforms the Aryan mind.  We now have a call for a ‘meaningful dialogue’ on race which means ‘accept our views or be punished.’  There is no dialogue just an order from headquarters.

On a longer wave than Germany one entered the fun house in 1960 and through a bizarre series of dioramas one exited into an entirely different world in 1970.  On the shorter wave the rapid transition took place from 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby to the Rolling Stones fiasco at Altamont in December 1969 which had been scheduled for December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, but was delayed by a day to December 8th.

As Dylan sang, there was something happening here but few if any knew what it was.  There was no way for anyone to gain sufficient facts to interpret the whole but those with certain roles observing specific parts knew what to do.

Thus the public had no idea what Manson was doing before or after the Tate-La Bianca killings.  The killings themselves obscured everything.  Manson based his attitudes on Robert Heinlein’s  novel of 1961 Stranger In A Strange Land.  Stranger was one of the formative novels of the 60s fitting right in with the psychedelic revolution even though Heinlein had a forties-fifties mentality while adding numerous terms to the vocabulary such as ‘grokking’ and ‘water brother’.

One can imagine Manson reading it in his cell.  Then when he was released actually being a stranger in the very strange land of Haight-Ashbury.  At the same time he realized it was a parallel universe designed with him in mind.  He combined aspects of the two lead characters, the human Valentine Michael Smith raised on Mars and his terrestrial guru Jubal Harshaw.  Jubal means father of all, a role Manson assumed.  He also named his son Valentine Michael.  Smith transformed terrestrial culture as so in his way did Manson.

While on Mars Smith learned the Martian method of mind and body control which Manson adopted and extended to his disciples.  After the killings Manson began living out some desert fantasy in Death Valley.  It was there he really overstepped the bounds bringing the Park Department down on his head which then led to his charge of the murders, but it’s the desert adventure that interests us here.  While the vast majority was unaware of the Death Valley escapade detailed in Ed Sanders, The Family, (make sure you read the first edition) Mansonites saw and learned.  In the desert Manson nearly created his own country living by his own laws.  Unfortunately his prison mentality kept him from grasping his full opportunity .  He was too much the outlaw.

While I didn’t realize it at the time his influence spread up the coast to Eugene, Oregon where I was living at the time.  Those were rough and rowdy times.  There were many crimes, frequently using shotguns.  An especially outlaw area was called Fall Creek.  At one time a truck with a light rack pulled up before a camp site turning the light rack on the campers from the road.  They stood like deer staring into the lights.  The occupants turned rifles on the campers man, woman and children and mowed them down.

As far as I know the police chose not to apprehend them.  It would have been easy.  A brown pick up with a light rack in a small town?  I knew the truck while finding a brown pick up with a light rack should have been easy.  Couldn’t have been more than one in the county.

I was lured out to the area once with my wife by a couple posing as friends.  All of a sudden at eleven o’clock at night they shooed us out of their house.  As one neared the highway a narrow stone bridge crossed Fall Creek, almost a ditch at that point.  As we approached a guy came up from under the bridge, stood in the middle of the roadway waving his arms.  I wasn’t going to stop and there was room to drive around him.  No sooner had I crossed the bridge than another guy came up from under it bearing an automatic with what looked like a silencer on it.  Both began calling me names.  So, I at least, would have been murdered on the spot.

As a footnote Diane Downs of the famous murder case in the same area said she was stopped by a guy waving his arms in the middle of the road.  She was disbelieved subsequently spending her life in prison.  I know she was stopped and I believe her story.  What the DA’s problem with her was I don’t know but she was sure railroaded.

The revolutionaries flooded into the hills above Fall Creek building concrete bunkers a la Manson that they stocked with food and weapons in preparation for the Day.  Strange robberies and shootings happened fairly frequently.  There were Manson cultists around for several years.  They may still be there, or here, actually, but I no longer have reason to be in contact with them.

Of course, Manson combined Heinlein with the various Satanic cults, the writer of the Spawn Of The Sphinx calls them UFO cults, to create his unique mixture.

Manson has taken the rap for what was going on but as I have indicated Polanski and a large part of Hollywood were as deeply connected to Satanism as he was.  Remember actually billions of tablets of prescription amphetamines and barbiturates were being sold annually in addition to the hundreds of millions of hits of illegal LSD, marijuana and God only knows what.  Frykowski was negotiating to become a large distributor of the amphetamine MDA.

Drugs were not solely a Hippie phenomenon; drugs were endemic.

Polanski, who can possibly be seen as a successful Manson, continued his nefarious career being arrested in 1977 on charges of child porn or statutory rape.  While it is said that the girl’s mother rented her out for the purpose the charge was still statutory rape.  Remember Manson said that the Tate-La Bianca victims were into kiddie porn.  Polanski believing he would be sentenced to hard time, possibly even being in the same prison as Manson, who knows, took it on the lam.  Today he is a fugitive from justice living in Europe where he has powerful protection.  Still makes movies though.

The Manson trial was docked in December being very much in the news at the time of Altamont, as was the Zodiac killer, so there was a certain atmosphere surrounding the concert.

The last half of ‘69 was in some ways the apex of Aryan consciousness while at the same time its nadir.  Even as powerful rockets were propelling a manned vehicle to land on the moon carrying an astronaut to leave a footprint three inches deep in the lunar dust the unconscious was burying the conscious mind on Earth.  A giant step forward for mankind on the moon while a two thousand year regression on Earth.

Almost simultaneously as the lunar module blasted down on the moon a half million of what used to be the hope for America’s future gathered in a muddy field in New York to show a level of culture not seen since the Anabaptists four hundred years ago.

While my generation celebrates Woodstock as the high point of Sixties culture I can see it only as an embarrassment.  Not wishing to go into detail I will only mention one thing.  Columbia Records released an album call Beautiful People, an ironic insult to the Woodstock Nation as Hippies called themselves in mockery of the Jetset beautiful people.  But, if you look at the album cover closely, in the upper lower quadrant you will see some guy standing up haveing sexual intercourse with a sheep.  Beastiality as well as NAMBLA maybe endorsed by some but damned if I’ll join in.

I know I’d never be forgiven for saying so but I consider Woodstock to be the penultimate nadir of the Sixties.  The nadir was, of course, Altamont, Satan’s triumph.

While the Rolling Stones, under whose auspices the event occurred refused to take responsibility for it, the Stones were as responsible as Levin, Polanski, the Process Church and Manson for the rise of Satanism.

The Manson trial was about to commence.  Manson to a large extent incorporated Rock into his philosophy although basing his notions more on the Beatles Double Album than the Stones.  Also bear in mind that Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land was his bedrock.  One could only hope that he had been captivated by the bible of evildoers, The Catcher In The Rye.

The character of society changed greatly after 1968 almost like Nazi Germany.  Sixty-eight was the year of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the horrors of which in China are still unlearnt in Europe and the US.  The Cultural Revolution was global.  Sixty-eight was the year of Mao’s Little Red Book and his red and gold portrait pins.  Sixty-eight was the year SDS exploded and the formation of the idiot Bomber Billy Ayers’ Weathermen organization as well as the Jewish Defense League, its offshoot The Jewish Defense Organization and the criminal activities of Rabbi Meyer Kahane.  Over the period of a couple years there were thousands of bombings in US cities.  So many that very few were ever publicized.

While the Tate-La Bianca killings dominated the headlines organizations like the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Black Panthers and numerous cults such as The Process Church were stirring up the folk.  One was practically dizzy.  In action at the same time as Manson the Zodiac killingts of the Bay Area where Altamont would be held were going on.  There was just way way too much for people to absorb or begin to understand.    As most people were busy trying to live their lives all this crazy activity had remarkably little effect.  It was just ‘news.’

Apropos of Altamont the Stones were relatively heavily involved in Sastanic matters, that, if I am right came to a head at Altamont.

Marianne Faithfull and Jagger had been familiar with Satanism before the Redlands bust.  Anita Pallenberg, formerly with Brian Jones and then Keith Richards, was deep into Satanism.  At one time she had Brian and herself dress in Nazi uniforms.  The Nazis were a fascination of the Process Church so rather than being an innocent lark she may have been showing the Church she was in a position to influence the Stones.  Indeed, they were in awe of her.

Through the art dealer and man about Hippiedom, Robert Fraser, Marianne and Jagger had met the arch American free lance Satanist Kenneth Anger, with whom they were deeply involved, and who was associated with the arech US Satanist, Anton La Vey.  La Vey would play Satan in Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.  That would imply that Polanski was involved in Satanism leading back to the Tate-La Bianca killings.

Post Redlands, Mick was thrown into a frenzy of hatred of society probably having thought he was a notch or two above the law immune to arrest.  Indeed he thought the enforcement of the law against him was a violation of his ‘freedom.’  Marianne had been a bit of an innocent, too naïve for her own good.  Mick now enraged turned to Satanism posing as Satan himself in his song Sympathy For The Devil of 1968.  He allowed the Stones to be featured in Jean Luc Godard’s bizarre revolutionary movie titled One+One subsequently changed to the title of Jagger’s song.  Marianne would let herself be exploited  in a couple of French films while becoming involved with the Process Church itself while starring in a Satanic film of Anger’s.

It is said now that Satanism was a minor flirtation on their parts but the indications are that the involvement was much deeper and more serious, especially on the part of Marianne that was reflected in her persona and activities in the first two years of her parting with Jagger.

It was perhaps the Process that alerted Marianne to the publication of a Soviet Satanic novel The Master And Margarita published in early 1968.  The novel has since attained a high cult status in the US and GB while becoming an industry in the former USSR.  A number of films of the novel have been produced in Europe.  A much overrated literary effort, in my opinion but a key Satanic document.

Marianne pressed Jagger to read the novel as he was about to begin production of Donald Cammel’s movie Performance, also a Satanic film, shot in the summer of ‘68, that revolutionary year.  The movie would not be released until 1971 so has no effect on the period.

Whether or not Jagger or Marianne took their Satanism as more than a hallucinogenic lark the effect of their Satanism on their fan base was intense.  Jagger was viewed as the Great Satan or, at least, a wannabe.

So the aura surrounding Altamont was imbued with Satanism.  Haight-Ashbury was Satanic.  Satanic was.

The Altamont was an almost perfect Satanic location.  The Altamont is a pass over the hills surrounding the East side of the San Francisco Bay, the East Bay.  To the North of the pass lies Contra Costa County; to the East is Stockton, Sacramento, Modesto,  and the Central Valley.  To the South are barren hillsides, desert for miles all the way to San Jose and beyond.

The pass is only a thousand feet but very windy while when the pacific fog comes in at night cold and dewy.  Today, they’ve covered the area with wind turbines, must be more spooky than ever at night.

When I was in the Navy in the late fifties I used to hitchhike back and forth from San Diego and Oakland every weekend.  I would have a friend  drop me off at the thousand foot level to begin the return trip.  Gloomy place but a quick place to pick up perhaps a very decent ride.  The demolition derby grounds were off on the right side going down, maybe at 900 feet.  Real desert.

So, through a series of misadventures, given only a couple days to set up this site straight out of hell, cold enough to freeze a witch’s tit the Stones held a free concert.  There was no parking, cars strung out along the side of Highway 40 for miles.

Everything was jerry built.  The stage was so low and surrounded by so many Hell’s Angels that few could even see the stage in the dark.  The sound was terrible.  Out into the darkness stretched a couple hundred thousand drugged shivering people.  I mean it gets cold and damp there any time of the year and this was December.

So, picture the symbolism.  The chief Droog, the Great Satan himself  is going to take the stage surrounded by Hell’s Angels and begin shouting out ‘Let me introduce myself…’  OK.  Hello, Satan.

Well, now.  Jagger and the Stones had been positioned as the bad boys of rock n’ roll by their first manager, Andrew Loog Oldham back in ‘64.  Their reputation kept getting worse and now they have improved this rep to being the house band of Hell, Satan’s own rock n’ rollers.  Huzzah!  ‘I’m a man of wealth and taste…’

There’s a Negro in a green suit who has pushed himself stage side, right behind the not so straight Satans, the Hell’s Angels.  I mean, these guys had a worse reputation in the Bay Area than Satan himself.  They used to have their club house just down the street from me.  We will never know the Negro’s motives but he does have something on his mind and he has a pistol in his pocket.  Are we looking for trouble, do you think?  He’s apparently been waiting for the moment Jagger opens his mouth to introduce himself.  Jagger begins belting it out and at that moment Meredith Hunter, for that is the Negro’s name, whips out his pistol.  Waving it in the air he begins a charge through the Hell’s Angels for the stage.  There’s a few Angels between himself and Mick who cut short Meredith’s pilgrim’s progress.

No one can say for certain that he didn’t want to put a bullet between the Great Satan’s eyes but I am positive his intent was not to take out six Hell’s Angels and then run like hell.  I’m not a gambling man but I would wager on that.

The Angels were cranked out on drugs, pot, LSD, crank or something while getting high on being tapped for the very important function of furnishing security for The Greatest Rock And Roll Band On The Entire Planet and, perhaps.- the Universe.

Wham!  Bang! Oh God!  Meredith today rests for all eternity on the Altamont or for however long it takes Time to wear down those hills to sea level.  If not Meredith, then his shade.

As Jagger made a dash for the helicopter somewhat reminiscent of the last evacuees from Saigon he was heard to mutter, ‘Something weird always happens when we play that song.  Could have a clue, Mick.  A Clockwork Orange wasn’t released for another couple years but that was the popular impression of you up on the screen, Mick.  Bad boy, bad boy, the bad boy of rock n’ roll.

Nor did Jagger abandon the persona after that disastrous experience.  He developed his ambi-sexual persona further appearing on stage as a sadistic agitator lashing the stage with his studded belt.   The Chief Droog.

Thus by the end of the sixties the suppression of the conscious rational mind had been accomplished  in favor of the vision of the unconscious as a satanic separate being whose external control of the individual  was irresistible.  Sex and drugs were used to place a generation beyond redemption.

In support of sex and drugs, TV and movies pounded out the message that rage and violence were the proper responses to one’s inability to realize one’s fantasies.

While some may pooh pooh the advancing Satanism of the Sixties and on to the present time TV and movies did advance the agenda into the present.  As incredible as it would have been to a person of the fifties when the mention of leg for lower limb was still frowned upon, copulation, not simulated even, but actual, is shown commonly on TV and in movies.  Murder as an occupation or even pastime has openly been promoted on TV shows such as Dexter that celebrates a serial killer and portrays him sympathetically, even as a hero to emulate.

In the series Breaking Bad a mild mannered high school chemistry teacher gets into manufacturing meth and slowly turn into a Death Dealer not unlike Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Dexter TV series is a very special case as it seem to have been designed around the philosophy of the Process Church and that of Manson.

Dexter develops around the career of serial killer, a Death Dealer in the Process term.  It is nothing less than  a series of snuff films recording many, many ritual killings.  The ritual theme is highly developed.  The ritualistic aspects are quite startling while many of the settings are quite Satanic.

The question of incest is raised as Dexter and his sister are quite close and as the series develops they become romantically in love.  Then Dexter involves Deb, the sister,  in his ritual killings.  This cause a moral conflict in her character against her love for her brother.  After an attempt to resolve the conflict by an attempted suicide and killing of Dexter by driving the car they are riding in off the road into a lake.  She is rescued by a convenient observer then goes back to save her brother.

Both are under the care of a female psychologist who his fully aware of Dexter’s career because she analyzed Dexter’s father who had trained his son but then committed suicide when Dexter’s avidity for the kill disappointed him.  The series is really astonishing.  The psychologist is then converted into an accomplice of Dexter.

In a touching scene reminiscent of the Egyptian statue of Isis beholding her son as the father stands behind her throne, one watches as the sister/wife psychologically accepts the role of serial killer, justifying it in her mind, very well acted, now Dexter’s full accomplice.  The psychologists nods her assent as Deb wonderingly says:  The family that kills together stays together.

Thus the whole philosophy for which Manson has spent his life in prison is legitimized for public emulation.  Charles Manson told his Family: You can’t kill kill.  And there on your television screen in an incredible reversal of morality in the short space of 60 years from 1960 to the present you have the rejection of God for Satan.  If in the Sixties only 2% of the population according to Scientology could be cold blooded killers the entire population of the United States, potentially,  has been indoctrinated and conditioned to kill.  It only remains for Dexter, his sister and their psychologist to become cannibals.

Thus, through the efforts of Time Magazine, Ira Levin, Roman Polanski, The Process Church and numerous other Satanic cults aided by the Sado-masochists of Hollywood Satanism has slowly displaced Godliness.  Satan has murdered Jesus.  The unconscious of Freud has displaced the conscious mind of the Aryan past.

The road to chaos has been paved.  Can the momentum be stopped?

Marianne Faithfull: The Faerie Queene Of The Sixties

by

R.E. Prindle

Chaps. 3, 4,5

Chapter 3

zzzzMarianne1

Of all the performers of the Rock era Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney have been the most successful while I would give the nod of most successful to Jagger. One must admire the way he learned the ropes and then used them to strangle others as he had been strangled. Mick in his own way was the Midnight Rambler and the Street Fighting Man. Don’t think I blame him; you either rule or are ruled. But, one does have to live with the reputation one creates.

Mick began cultivating his image from the beginning. As this story concerns Mick’s relationship to Marianne I will concentrate on aspects of their sexuality. Andrew Loog Oldham made a movie of the Stones’ January 1965 Irish tour. Unfortunately he sold the rights to it along with the Stones 1963-70 master recordings to Allen Klein along with, by the way, the first Marianne Faithfull masters. Klein then became the Stones’ manager.

The movie disappeared into Klein’s archives to surface in November 2012 when the Klein estate released it to DVD. It can now be purchased as I did. The DVD features both the Abkco edit and Oldham’s original Director’s Cut.

Mainly a concert film it also features group member interviews and Richards and Jagger cutting up. While they were horsing around they appear to improvise a song with the lyric: I’d rather be with the boys than here with a stupid girl like you.

While Jagger has always cultivated an ambiguous image he has also announced a record of having had sex with four thousand or more different girls. That’s only eighty per annum over fifty years so I imagine that shows an admirable restraint. Yet, at the same time Mick has always been misogynistic while always seeking to emasculate or squash his closer women under his thumb. In fact Mick probably has a domination or emasculation complex. He may have rather been with the boys but in his competition with them he sought to emasculate or squash them too. One of the favorite forms of emasculation and domination is to take other men’s women from them.

Thus when he took Jerry Hall from Bryan Ferry he quipped he had to do it to save her from going through life as Jerry Ferry. One winces when one reads of Eric Clapton begging Mick not to take Carla Bruni from him. Mick even took one of Eric’s temps, Catherine James from him.

Mick And Chrissie

Mick And Chrissie Shrimpton

Mick And Chrissie Shrimpton

When Mick first enters the scene for Andrew Oldham he is in an alley fighting it out with Chrissie Shrimpton, the model Jean Shrimpton’s younger sister. If one reads more deeply into that situation it shows a very cruel sadistic streak in Mick, quite shameful in a celebrity of Mick’s first magnitude of brightness.

Chrissie began the relationship as a strong willed girl battered by and battering Mick. In that day before the change in sexual mores girls weren’t quite so sexually open so Chrissie didn’t want her parents to know she was shacking up with Mick. They insisted to Mick that they not. As a humiliation tactic to break the girl down he let it be known to her parents that in his eyes she was little more than a common whore and she and they should see it that way too as he was in fact shacking with her.

Gradually the monster beat her down completely destroying her self-respect then, more than publicly, he broadcast his triumph on records and over the radio with such songs as Stupid Girl and Under My Thumb which their whole circle knew referred to her. Dylan would later use the same tactic against Edie Sedgwick when he wrote Like A Rolling Stone to break her down.

Both Chrissie and her parents believed Mick and she were to marry but having crushed her beneath his thumb, as it were, with a toss of his curly locks Mick sneeringly walked away adding insult to injury. Cruel in this instance it became psychotic with repeated use.

Years after word got back to Mick that Chrissie had a bundle of his letters, and, now this is unforgivable, without a word to her he immediately set his attorneys on her threatening an expensive law suit while demanding she return his letters. Even though Chrissie had not intended to publish them, still shaking this long after Mick’s brutal treatment, Chrissie without delay forwarded her letters from Mick to him. Shameful.

Mick And Marianne

 

Mick And Marianne

Mick And Marianne

Mick then turned his attentions to the Guinevere, the Ophelia, the Faerie Queene of pop music, our own Marianne. While I’m sure Mick was somewhat enamored with Marianne I’m also sure he had a couple ulterior motives. Marianne was married to John Dunbar at the time while living with Mick so Mick had the pleasure of emasculating and humiliating Dunbar.

At the same time I’m sure he was envious of Marianne’s fame which was probably greater than his at the time. No room in the spotlight for two. He couldn’t stand that Marianne was getting even more press than himself. Thus he undertook to destroy her career. In the process he emasculated her and humiliated her to an astounding degree.

Marianne and Mick were playing with psychologies in a very destructive manner. The events I am going to describe did incalculable damage to their psyches while altering the direction of their subsequent lives dramatically, especially Marianne’s. Of course, few people seem to realize they have a psychology or how it was formed, what expectations they devised. Those hopes and dreams were more especially dashed when they turned to drugs. That was certainly the case with Marianne.

I don’t know how seriously Marianne took her Medieval interest and reading but she was influenced by her Arthurian studies. Like the most or possibly rest of the generation she was also influenced quite heavily by Alice In Wonderland and Peter Pan, probably both books and movies.

The key for the generation in Peter Pan was his refusal to grow up or accept adulthood. It was quite fashionable at the time to pretend that you would always be young, keep in contact with your ‘inner child.’ I was a victim of the psychosis myself.

At any rate Marianne was influenced by all three. Thus, when she and Mick met she quizzed him extensively on his knowledge of King Arthur to see how much he knew as though that litmus test would seal his fate. Mick passed and Marianne moved in still married to John Dunbar. Thus her life clashed with her Catholic upbringing. At first Marianne had royalties coming in from her records enabling her to maintain a certain independence but gradually the royalty checks decreased making Marianne financially dependent on Mick.

At the same time Mick was under no obligations to Marianne and observed none. How this clashed with Marianne’s Arthurian expectations in an atmosphere of Peter Pan and Alice she doesn’t go into but there must have been a severe disappointment as Mick treated her as a mere possession.

While in California he was the object of desire for all the groupies including the doyenne Miss Pamela- Pamela Des Barres nee Miller- of Frank Zappa’s girl group the GTOs (Girls Totally Ornery or else in reference to the hottest car of the period, the GTO). Miss Pamela as well as the rest of the California groupies studied to come up with better and better more outrageous sexual thrills with which to astonish the boys in the band which easily surpassed the imaginations of the boys in the band including Mick.

Mick returned home and demanded of Marianne that she perform these tricks which astonished Marianne no less than Mick had been astonished. However she believed the tricks degrading. Marianne quite rightly refused to perform them.

But the repertoire of the boys in the band kept expanding so that the home girls were led to view new horizons. Group sex and that sort of thing became the norm.

As with all loosely knit movements or phenomena this sort of reputation brought more and more of the sado-masochistic libertine drug oriented element gradually forcing out the less inclined to sexual erotica just as bad money drives out good money. Rock and Roll became progressively more degenerate from 1964-65 on until it was disgraceful to be associated with it.

Mick and the Stones were leaders of this degeneration whether the Stones embraced sexual sado-masochism personally their public persona was based on it making them leading corruptors of youth and society in general. They did as much or more to change the sexual mores of the present than anyone. Their LP cover for Black and Blue was the apex of this very sado-masochistic misogynistic persona. The cover caused me all kinds of trouble in running my record store.

As one presents oneself so must one be.

Chapter 4

The Redlands Bust.

Many psychologically devastating events happened to Marianne in the years from 1967-70. It is very difficult from this perspective to evaluate some of them. One can’t tell how Marianne’s renunciation of her career affected her mind. After all in 1964-65 and 66 she went from just another teenager to superb success far beyond her expectations financially, while becoming the female idol of the youth of England and a phenom in the US- ultimately the Faerie Queen of rock and roll. That’s really only two short years until the Redlands bust.

In those two years she passed through several sexual transmogrifications. She went from virgin to the most outre of sexual practices. Its all very well to say that this was her decision but as Paul McCartney said of his own experience in Miles’ biography it was impossible for him to resist peer pressure, especially in the use of drugs. He was ‘forced’ to try heroin even though he was dead set against.

So peer pressure on Marianne and any young girl to be sexual ‘free spirits’ was impossible unless you were prepared to accept group rejection. The same with drugs that couldn’t be resisted so that when depression set in she ended up addicted to the greatest depression drug available- heroin. It was up to Mick to give what protection he could. Regardless of current sexual nonsense it us up to the man to guide his woman.

Now, the era began in relatively clean-cut innocence . It was never quite so white bread as it is depicted, trying to escape the sleaziness, even then, was no easy matter. Then as the decade wore on it all got worse, then it got disgusting. First pot, pills and amphetamines, then LSD that came on like a hurricane. LSD more than anything else conditioned you for cocaine that in at the end of the decade, at least on the West Coast where I was. Remember that there was no national consensus in the US
In 1964 or so when the ‘counter-culture’ hit in the Bay Area it was a very local manifestation not shared by the East Coast the Mid-West or even for that matter LA. LA was never hip in the way the Bay Area was. While the Beatles are credited with introducing long hair, when the Charlatans came down from Virginia City they had hair and they must have been growing it long before the Mop Tops showed up.

The West Coast could not tolerate New York groups. Mafia outfits like the Rascals nee Young Rascals and Vanilla Fudge made the West Coast puke. There really wasn’t any place for The Velvet Underground either. Of course the British groups that had their own sound that really couldn’t compete with that of say, The Doors, an LA group. The LA groups being more commercially oriented pretty much shoved the Bay Area groups aside, although were a couple of real successes. I don’t include freak groups like the Grateful Dead as commercial successes. Cults are cults.

But to the point, boy, LSD. Owsley Stanley kept the West supplied and how. By the time of Altamont and Stonewall the atmosphere was really foul. And then it got worse still.

About the time of the Redlands bust society and the police were losing their patience. Kesey and Leary had them terrified. The drug thing kept growing. When one says that marijuana was generational it is true only to the extent that a significant minority of the generation smoked it. The hippies were only a small and despised part of the generation but they, we, made a lot of noise and got a lot of notice. Without the radio, rock and corrupt record companies the Movement probably wouldn’t have broken the bounds of Bohemia. But, the time was ripe for the Bohemian conquest of America. That was led from New York, principally by Andy Warhol.

The records made the Bohemian life seem very glamorous. Thus the cops focused on groups where actually the greatest drug activity was located and the propaganda the strongest. As the groups began to make good and even big, very big, money they were the natural prey of the drug dealers. And don’t underestimate the role of LSD. The groups also chose to flaunt their drug use- ‘I’ve got to be free to put anything into my body and life I want to’, disdaining the law, the police and actually common decency. This was the case with the Stones and it’s the flaunting, not the use, that got them in trouble.

In 1967 they naturally were set up. Brian Jones in an interview, barroom chat actually, with News Of The World reporters boasted of his drug use. The journalists then attributed the statements to Mick, whether from ignorance or design I leave to your imagination.

When Mick read the article he was indignant. As I said, while Mick and the rockers thought they were big because of records, radio and TV they were actually socially marginal and not particularly appreciated. Musicians get no respect outside their own circle.

Rather than evaluate his situation, considering that he was doing drugs and everyone knew it thus making him an obvious target, he foolishly brought suit against the newspaper. You don’t have to be brilliant to know News Of The World wasn’t going to let that one fly. Hey! Hey! What’d I say! Mick was sleeping or day dreaming.

The police wanted to get England’s bad boys anyway. There may or may not have been collusion between the News Of The World and the police but the way the raid was conducted indicates there was.

Shortly before the bust some guy named Schneiderman drops from the sky with a brief case reportedly filled with whatever you required. Mick, Marianne and Keith and a couple others, I will mention in the next section, were having an LSD weekend at Keith’s house, the Redlands. Schneiderman insinuated himself into the party with his briefcase while probably being in the employ of the News informed them and they in turn notified the police.

For Schneiderman allegedly having a briefcase full of drugs there were remarkably few drugs in evidence at the bust. Jagger was booked only for possession of four pep pills bought legally in Italy, while Keith had no drug charges at all except for being charged with ‘knowingly’ providing a place where pot was smoked. Robert Fraser actually had heroin jacks of his own on him but Schneiderman produced nothing from his briefcase and indeed no drugs were visible in it when the police required him to open it. No drugs were seen only packaging that were assumed to contain drugs by the Bohemians. In any event he hopped the first flight to elsewhere.

While Marianne had no drugs concealed on her person her situation was the most tragic of all. The Faerie Queen would lose her official status.

When the cops came calling the crowd was of course flipped out on LSD but then that was always the danger; the cops would come calling when you’re least prepared to deal with them. Come on, this was just one of the hazards of using illegal substances. And naturally, you tend to be flippant, wise cracking and mocking. Very bad behavior in such a situation when maximum seriousness is the order of the moment. It’s not like everyone didn’t live in fear of being busted. They used to call it deep paranoia.

Marianne whose clothes had become wet from walking in the rain laid them out to dry dressing in nothing more than some sort of rug wrapped around her. Well, what is one to think of a nude woman amongst a bunch of men; what is this Dejeuner Sur L’herbe redux? Even if two thirds of them were screaming fairies as they were, how is one to know that and what to think?

It was said that Marianne let her wrap slip giving the coppers an eyeful. Of course the cops were square and the gang was hip but squares outnumber hips by a very large margin while as Roger Miller sings: Squares make the world go round. And a good thing too. Roger said that hips have too much water for their land; this was a gathering of pretty watery people. Oh, OK, my people, but folks you have to be realistic. That’s what hip means in my book.

And then someone probably at News Of The World concocted the story that Marianne had a Mars bar slipped between her legs and that Mick was grazing away at it. Preposterous, wouldn’t you think? Boy, now that was a blow that will getcha and you’ll be down for a long time too. As might be expected Marianne was devastated. Boy, that opened a lot of anfractuosities in her brain. A hit like two trains running in opposite directions at top speed on the same tracks over a two hundred foot high trestle. That’s a big crash and a long way to tumble, buddy.

It ended any hope Marianne may have had of appearing on a stage. Can you imagine stepping up to the microphone and being showered with Mars bars. Oh no, no,no, better to board a rocket ship for…oops…Mars.

Marianne and Mick may have thought they were handling it well but the bile and psycho-somatic reactions entering the sub-conscious aren’t so easily dismissed. This horror was merely added to their childhood fixations.

In the turmoil of the months succeeding this mind wrenching event fixations would only worsen. Of course the intent of the establishment was not so much to succeed in jailing them but making an example of them while hopefully destroying their careers. The bust should have been career destroying but for the generational gap. When a teacher chastises a student the other students smirk but don’t disown him. After busting Mick and Keith the establishment then went after the more fragile Brian Jones, the guy who got this whole thing rolling by shooting off his mouth. If the three could have been jailed they wouldn’t subsequently have been allowed to enter the US or so it seemed. No one could have forecast the incredible changes that were about to occur that essentially placed the Stones above the law.

Chapter 5

Enter Donald Cammell And His Movie Performance

zzzzMickandCammell

One reads many amusing reasons for the incredible social disintegration of the sixties. One of the most preposterous to come to my attention is the notion that it was caused by lead poisoning.. There’s a hobby horse for you. While I couldn’t rule it out I think lead poisoning would be among the most obscure of reasons. No, the sixties was no more an aberration than was Hitler’s Germany; like the latter it was the result of long historical development, a part of psychological history.

If one reads a good deal with the purpose of understanding the historical background of the sixties things begin to take form. Then if one tries to make one’s intellect rise and float over the information gleaned from that reading patterns will form, a map of the past will appear. Then of course one notes nodes and axons, connections that require further reading and rereading what’s already been read so that a fair approximation of what happened can be more or less confidently stated. Much of it will be subterranean history that doesn’t make it to the history books.

Such is the psycho-sexual mind set that began to develop oh, say, about from 1890 on which a key node was from 1900 to 1920. Western understanding of the human mind developed fairly rapidly from the mid-eighteenth century rapidly gaining momentum after say 1860 and the spectacular doings at Paris’ Salpetriere mental hospital under the tutelage of the amazing Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot.

While his investigations were of a psycho-sexual nature they were not perceived as such except perhaps by a transient student by the name of Sigmund Freud. Sometime after Charcot’s studies toward the nineties people calling themselves sexologists, sex therapists and sex magicians began to appear.

Along with Freud who might be called a sex therapist two leading figures slightly earlier than he were the German Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) and the Englishman Havelock Ellis (1859-1939). In the academic scientific or pseudo-scientific manner all three made their contributions although Freud managed to incorporate their discoveries or understandings into his system acquiring preeminence in the field.

Goerg Groddeck and Wilhelm Reich, two of Freud’s disciples also gained prominence in the sex therapist field.

On the religious or supernatural side the most prominent and influential of the sex magicians was the so-called Magus Aleister Crowley and his organization of the Golden Dawn.

With the exception of Krafft-Ebing all were out to overturn European sexual mores, designated disparagingly as Victorian. Of course there was never a time when men and women didn’t behave sexually because…well, how could they? The real goal then was to disturb prevailing sexual mores and replace them with sexual license. This essentially came to fruition in the 1960s when the influence of Freud and Crowley were at their peak. The two principal cultural nodes of the US, New York and Los Angeles, were flooded with European Jewish émigrés of the Freudian school while Aleister Crowley had established himself and his Golden Dawn in Los Angeles.

The corrosive sexual mores of Freud and Crowley were aided and abetted by the rise of the equally corrosive drug use and, of course, ‘lead poisoning.’

Our next object then is to discover who Donald Cammel might be.

Searching For Donald

Cammell is the central figure in this little drama so we will begin with him although even though the Stones biographers don’t delve into these other characters they are integral to the social scene of Mick, Marianne and Keith. It appears that Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts served a peripherals to Mick primarily and Mick and Keith secondarily. Oldham tried to make himself a third but apparently was incompatible or other interests pulled him in a different direction. By ‘67 he would be out of the picture.

In Marianne’s biography she makes it sound like Cammell was a stranger to the group while actually he was well known to Bob Fraser, and Chrissie Gibbs who were at the Redlands bust and quite familiar with Mick, Keith and Marianne. They all knew each other before the movie began to be filmed.

Cammell was older than the three being contemporary with the first generations of rockers; he was born in 1934 in Scotland. He came from a well to do family immersed in the occult; his father actually knew Aleister Crowley and wrote a biography of him. One may then assume that his father was something of a sex magician as Marianne’s father was a sexologist. It was impossible to escape Freudian influences from at least 1920 through the fifties. So some reference to repression and the unconscious is inevitable.

Cammell’s father was likely familiar with Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis with its emphasis on psychotic sexual practices. All the sexologists and magicians immersed themselves in bizarre sexual practices. If a reader counters that all sex is legitimate it shows how perverted he or she is. No argument from me, we know where each other stands.

As Cammell was born in ‘34, in ‘44 he would have been 10 and 20 in 1954. Thus he would have been aware of the war between the ages of 4, 5, 6, or so and 10 but perhaps in a muddled and uncomprehending manner but in ‘44 and ‘45 he would have been aware enough to partially comprehend. Certainly when the Big Baby turned Hiroshima to ashes in August of ‘45 something would have registered affecting his mind and outlook.

I was 7 in ‘45 and while I have a clear remembrance of VE Day I don’t have any recollection at all of the Bomb or if I do it had little or no significance to me. I have never had a horror of the A-bomb.

Obviously something other than lead poisoning affected the psyches of the crop of kids from ‘33-’34 to 1942-43. It may have had something to do with the total destruction of the world capped by the Bomb. What a terrific exclamation mark to the end of hostilities. What Cammell’s reaction to this destruction was isn’t clear to me while it probably wasn’t clear to himself.

After the war he experienced rationing during the whole of his teen years. He was probably less affected than others as he became prosperous in his teens on his own as a painter. He was successful as a portrait painter. From the pictures I’ve seen he was more than talented while possibly possessing genius. His mind already exhibited an extreme darkness with sexual confusion easily perceived.

Much of the following information comes from web sites such as the fabulous Another Nickel In The Machine that records the history of London, Sam Umland’s 60X50 and many others. I have not read Umland’s biography of Cammell as yet.

Cammell divorced his first wife and then married a very successful model, the American Deborah Dixon, moving to Paris where they both lived. Cammell apparently was supported by his wife.

Bored with painting, not unlike Andy Warhol, he began to take an interest in film. There is nothing like a movie to exhibit one’s sexual fantasies in real life; indeed a movie is a record of the unconscious. Cammell and Dixon were sexually compatible taking an interest in anything remotely copulatory. Cammell’s first few attempts at filmmaking were not successful or, at least, lacked box office magic.

Along with his lack of interest in painting and his attraction to the movies Cammell gravitated toward the pop world of rock and roll seeking out Jagger. Where was a sexual degenerate to turn? The bad boys of Rock, the Rolling Stones, Mick, Keith and Marianne at least. He found Mick and Marianne’s talked about sexual escapades irresistible. He was undoubtedly attracted by Mick’s dope legend also. Mick claims not to have been an excessive user of drugs, which may be true but I doubt there was anyone at the time who didn’t think he was a heroin addict and druggie par excellence.

As an artist Cammell was acquainted with Bob Fraser and that pop art crowd. Both he and Fraser were known to the infamous crime lords, the Kray Brothers. The Krays, of course, were homosexuals as were Fraser and Gibbs. Mick’s legend is that he is bi-sexual, at least, so there is no reason that he wasn’t sexually involved with the bunch in some manner.

Cammell and Fraser also knew the Satanist and sex magician, the American experimental film maker, Kenneth Anger, as did Mick and Marianne. Fraser introduced Anger to the underground film crowd.

In addition Anita Pallenberg knew Cammell from her pre-Brian Jones, Keith Richard days. She was shown the script in the south of France the year before filming began. So, unless I have seriously misread Marianne’s first auto-biography, Cammell didn’t just show up one day with a movie proposal; it was actually old home week.

Cammell did go on to make an additional three or four movies of which I have seen two, Demon Seed and Wild Side. The last movie has escaped my vigilance so far. Wild Side is a virtual remake or variation of Performance. Demon Seed that I will review in an addendum to Chapter 5 is actually a great movie handling a major sci-fi them to perfection.

Just prior to the beginning of filming in 1968 Mick impregnated Marianne. This is 1968 and if Marianne hadn’t been on the Pill she would have had a number of children now in addition to Nicholas her child by John Dunbar. The question then is why she allowed herself to get pregnant at this time. She was still married to Dunbar so one must think he must have suffered humiliation and emasculation to have another man impregnate his wife. Perhaps Mick’s emasculation genes or maybe just a drug haze.

At any rate Marianne was exiled to Ireland while filming was going on. One can only imagine the anxiety she felt separated from her lover in her condition. One doesn’t have to imagine; she suffered a miscarriage.

Point Blank
The Movie

In 1967 the English director John Boorman had filmed a movie that took
Cammell’s mind by storm. The movie was Point Blank starring Lee Marvin as the protagonist Walker. Cammell recommended that all the cast see the move and bear it in mind. It might be advantageous to review the movie here.

Point Blank was only Boorman’s second effort. Unsuccessful on release it has apparently become a cult classic. His movie is obviously a dream sequence or nightmare. Nothing is real. This indicated by the hero’s name of Walker. He has only one name, no first. No one even knows what his first name could be. The name seemed significant to me but I hadn’t a clue as to what it could mean. Well, you know, when the student is ready the teacher will appear. While writing this piece I was also reading Denis Machail’s 1941 biography of J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. There on page 190 was the explanation of Walker. Barrie had written a play titled Walker, London. That was a telegraphic address.  Quote:

Two impudent jokes in one, the second even more mysterious then as it is now. For the word ‘Walker’ is still in the dictionary- “interjection (slang) expressing incredulity and suspicion of being hoaxed” but when was it last used? Not during the present century, one would say; yet before that there was a time when it was the very crystalization of Cockney humor. “Walker!” you said, to show that you could never be caught with chaff. It was the standard answer to the attempted leg pull. It was also one of those blessed with with which any comedian could bring down the house.

So now the viewer knows he is being hoaxed and can suspend belief. The plot involves Lee Marvin as Walker who takes part in a heist then is shot by his partner who runs off with Walker’s share or 93,000 and adding insult to injury Walker’s wife. The rest of the story involves Walker trying to retrieve his money forget the wife. The story is told through a series of frustrations to a paranoid Walker. So, we have a dream study of a frustrated paranoid.

The opening and closing settings are the same; the walking or exercise area inside Alcatraz prison. The joke seemingly being that one walks around and around, never getting anywhere while returning to the same place. Cry “Walker” and then start laughing like a Cockney at the joke.

Alcatraz, the Rock, is of course a small island in the middle of San Francisco Bay between the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge. Established in 1934 it was closed in 1963, so the filming was done in a closed facility and before the Indians occupied the island claiming it as their heritage. The filming was done, then, in vacated premises.

As a dream story it concerns the psychic life of Walker. It’s all going on inside his head. The prison, castle or house represents the psychic the self so that Walker lives a bleak, barren, paranoid inner life.

A helicopter lands in the enclosure, picks up a package and leaves a bundle of money. Walker and his pal Mal (mal, French for bad) kill the messenger while robbing him. Walker is then examining an empty cell signifying his empty life when Mal with Walker’s wife looking on puts a couple bullets in him leaving him for dead while appropriating Walker’s share of the money and his wife. Thus we have some basic paranoia that, of course, might possibly be true. As his wife would say later, Walker just kind of left her cold.

Left for dead Walker somehow recovers while being compelled to take the only way off the island available to him- swim for it. Another grim joke as legend has it that no one who tried ever succeeded.

The rest of the story concerns surmounting the treachery and double crosses Walker encounters in trying to recover his money. He finds his wife, abandons her and takes up with her sister. While he seems a little obsessive-compulsive in the matter, the money in fact represents his lost identity, purpose in life or masculinity. The recovery of the money is central for his personality.

As in the Cockney joke whenever he shows up people exclaim “Walker!” If you’re in on the joke it might be funny. Angie Dickenson makes up the sex interest as Chris as there is no love interest. Just a four letter word in this movie. The three kingpins Walker must knock down are Carter, Brewster and Fairfax. Ironically Carter and Brewster are disposed of by their own team when Walker’s paranoia protects him while the others take the hit meant for him.

The actual climax takes place in Brewster’s house when Walker and Chris have spent the night together, the only consummated sex in the movie. As Walker is walking out the door Chris asks what her last name is. Walker doesn’t know and neither do we. Walker counters, seemingly weakly, does she know his first name. Either check mate or an uproarious joke to Cockneys. But as Walker in joke is a hoax or a put on then it doesn’t matter anyway. Dreams are like that, they follow a different logic than the waking mind.

The denouement returns to the opening at Alcatraz but now Walker is more canny staying out if sight. The drop is made, Brewster calls to him to come get the money. But, as when Walker was supposed to get the money from Carter, after he survived the assassination attempt, the bundle proved to be waste paper, Walker’s paranoia saves him again. A shot rings out and Brewster takes a long walk off a short pier never to return again. Now enter Fairfax who is the head man and the assassin who shot Carter and Brewster and would have shot Walker. Fairfax shouts Walker several times that in another century would have brought the house down.

Walker’s paranoia prevents him from taking what might be money in the bundle but is probably waste paper so that as the bundle of funny paper represents his ego he is left stranded in the haunted empty house of Alcatraz representing his mind for one presumes the rest of his life.

The movie was a box office failure, except for the few like Cammell but holds up well as a psychological thriller. That is what Cammell saw. So, now, he’s basing his own movie ‘Performance’ directly on Point Blank.

Performance

He gathers together essentially the ‘gang’ to make his movie. Even Deborah Dixon took part. He already knew and was friends with James Fox as was apparently Mick, cast as the criminal Chas. Cammell had known Anita Pallenberg in Paris where it is said she formed a brief menage a trois with Cammel and Deborah. Chrissie Gibbs was the set designer…Mick was an old friend, a few outsiders and Cammel had his movie.

Mick sent Marianne to Ireland for the duration. Keith who was shacking with Anita was so unhappy about Cammell’s pairing of Anita with Mick that he found it impossible to visit the set. Instead he brooded outside in his car sending Bob Fraser in to keep tabs until Cammell banned him from the set.

I can’t be sure that Cammell understood the Cockney meaning of Walker but he so admired the character that he based Mick’s role on Walker giving Mick the single name of Turner. No first name. Turner is also meant to be significant. A turner is a sort of acrobat. The word could also be used in the sense of changeling, or perhaps in the homosexual sense or turning a man gay. Turner does turn Chas. from a tough guy to a passive fairy, his sort of changeling. Turner changes the tough hoods into faggots. Probably then that is the meaning of the name. So maybe Cammell was in on the Walker joke.

As the movie is permeated by sex magic and sex as a sort of therapy the influence of Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, Freud and especially Aleister Crowley is very apparent. Kenneth Anger was around at the time while being known to all the participants thus reinforcing the Crowley connection.

All the sex therapists were concerned with aberrant sexual practices that the movie concentrates on. Cammell elaborates the sexual implications of Boorman’s Point Blank, while the decaying mansion obviously represent Cammell’s mind. In the end the sex therapy or magick doesn’t seem to work as Turner turns suicidal obsessed with a death wish.

Boorman’s crime angle comes in through Chas. In order for Fox to appear authentic Cammell actually required him to live the criminal life under the tutelage of a mobster, even to the extent of taking part in actual crimes. Of course, madness is the theme of the movie but even madness can go too far.

Chas. has offended the criminal chief, based on the Kray Bros., who has commanded a man hunt to track Chas. down. When he is located he is summoned to his execution. Turner says: Don’t leave me, take me where you’re going. Chas. says ‘You don’t want to go where I’m going.’ Turner: ‘Yes I do.’  Chas. then blows Turner’s head off, gets into the car and the car drives off, as he looks out the window we see Turners face. Thus the turning or change is complete as each becomes the other.

The version now available for purchase or rental is apparently much different from the original. While even the available version is violent and pornographic the original must have anticipated the current pornographic output of Hollywood . While I wouldn’t call Performance tame almost every movie you see today is as or more explicit. At any rate the movie has no redeeming moral value. If you want porn plain and simple, there it is.

The legend has it that the movie changed the lives of the participants. Perhaps so, but perhaps not. Michele Breton was already a lost child and stayed lost. Anita, no stranger to drugs moved into intense familiarity. James Fox, who was criminally mistreated by Cammell, gave up movies for ten years but he says he was already fed up with the seedy side of movie making so perhaps Performance just capped it. Keith? God, what can you say? Who was going to keep him from drugs? If Cammell was already inclined toward suicide he topped himself off in 1996 finally taking Keith’s advice.

But, now, Mick and Marianne. Mick was advised to play himself but Marianne wisely overruled that advice perhaps saving Mick’s sanity but still leaving him off balance. Marianne advised him to adopt some of the fey characteristics of Brian Jones’ character along with some of Keith’s tough guy stance. Not too difficult as that is the way Mick already appeared but it permanently shifted his personality in that skew. Nevertheless Mick has always remained supremely functional.

As to Marianne, how did she relate to Mick’s rejection of her by sending her to Ireland and the subsequent miscarriage of her child. That is a lot of psychological battering. I think that it is certain that as 1968 progressed she was already in a depression and sinking rapidly. While she was able to hold on for another year or so, by 1969 she would be spinning out of control as further events tested the strength of her mind.

A Review

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#16 TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD MEN

by

R.E. Prindle

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Part III

This Silent River Of Mystery And Death

In our hour of darkness,

In our hour of need…

–Trad.

A.

     Leopard Men is an exceptionally dark novel.  There is nothing about it that isn’t horrific, a sort of Gotterdamerung.  There are probably more people killed in this novel than any other of Burroughs’.  The threat of rape hangs heavy in the air.  Old Timer/Burroughs is going through more major changes trying to burst his chrysalis.

     Through it all runs the thread of religion; and not just one religion but three religious systems.  There is the animistic religion of the Africans; a Semitic style religion of the Leopard Men and an esoteric interpretation  concealed in a gorgeous wealth of symbolism.  I will consider the last in Part B.

      ERB’s life was reaching a crisis, he had the MGM contract to worry about, his ongoing war with the Reds and now his sexual crisis that had been roiling beneath the surface for nearly fifty years and was about to bubble over.  Hence the novel is filled with murky, rasty sexual symbolism welling up from the subconscious disguised as religion.

     For supposedly being an escapist writer without either serious purpose or intellectual content when one parses out any of his stories one is amazed that such serious purpose can be successfully disguised as escapist.  ERB shares this ability with Homer of the Iliad.  Since no one seems to have penetrated beyhond the surface glitter from one hundred years ago to this day I hope I will be pardoned for making the attempt.

     ERB’s style of plotting is so diffuse that it is very difficult to grasp the focal point which unites the various strands of his story.  In some incredible way he has half a dozen stories running concurrently each with a different point  and different conclusion.  One has to follow the bouncing ball.  In Jewels Of Opar the uniting theme is the story of what happens to the Jewels.  In Ant Men one has to follow the trajectory of Tarzan’s locket.  In this one the key is Kali Bwana.  ERB seems to favor this linking approach.

     Leopard Men has two main stories, that of Old Timer and Kali Bwana with its subplots as well as the story of Tarzan And The Leopard Men.  As the story opens Tarzan is in Leopard Men territory far from home.  One wonders what Tarzan is doing in this country?  Naturally Burroughs presents his information on a need to know basis.  We apparently don’t need to know until p. 108 when after Tarzan regains his memory from yet another crushing blow to the skull we are told:

     During the long day Tarzan’s mind was occupied with many thoughts.  He had recalled now why he had come into this country, and he marveled at the coincidence of later events that guided his footsteps along the very paths he had intended on trodding before accident had robbed him of the memory of his purpose.    He knew now that depredations by Leopard Men from a far country had caused him to set forth upon a lonely reconnaissance with only the thought of locating their more or less fabled stronghold and temple.  That he should be successful in both finding these and reducing one of them was gratifying in the extreme, and he felt thankful now for the accident that had been responsible for those results.

     Thus as Tarzan regains his memory he discovers that he had destroyed the stronghold of the Leopard Men.  In rescuing Old Timer and Kali Bwana he will also destroy their temple.  A good day’s work.

     With this story of his quest and triumph we have a second examination of religion, a continuation of the exploration begun in Tarzan Triumphant in the first half of 1931.  The reference to the accident that led to these results may be a reference to the incident in Toronto in 1899.  He and Emma both believed it resulted in his writing career.  Perhaps the signing of the contract with MGM in April may also be inferred to as an ‘accident.’  Much research into his relations with MGM and these critical five or six years of his career is necessary.  Certainly by late July and August as he was writing this story the realization of the meaning of the contract he had signed was seeping in.  By 1933’s Tarzan And The Lion Man he was fully aware.  Subsequent to that discovery he formed an ill advised alliance with his new wife’s ex, Ashton Dearholt, to film the ‘real’ Tarzan.  That in its place.  For now his troubles were not on the laps of the gods but on the desks of Irving Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer.

     If negotiations began on April 4 and were completed and signed on April 15 that means that neither ERB nor Rothmund read the contract very thoughtfully.  They certainly didn’t take it to an attorney.  As in Lion Man ERB complains of the duplicity of men; he was finding out what the terms of the contract meant.  Perhaps in Leopard Men he was getting glimmers of the shape of things to come.

     As in Triumphant the two Midian peoples obviously represent Jews and non-Jews, us meaning the Jews and them meaning the rest of the world as per Rabbi Schneerson’s division of mankind into two different species, us and them.  I will treat the Utengans as us and the Leopard Men as them  which is what ERB intended.  The connection of the Leopard Men to the Jews can be established by two references connecting them to Hollywood:

     Gato Mgungu had never had the advantages of civilization.  (He had never been to Hollywood.)

     And on p. 66:

     Perhaps his reasons might be obvious to a Hollywood publicity agent.

     I’m sure you moved out of the way so ERB’s sarcasm didn’t splash on you.

     His letting his contempt for Hollywood which he had suppressed since 1922’s Girl From Hollywood show now and his associating it with Thalberg, Mayer and MGM is evidence of his frustration.

     When Van Dyke returned from Africa he brought his gun bearer Riano and the actor who played Renchoro, Mutia, with him for the finishing scenes.  It seems likely that ERB would have sought an introduction to these two ‘real’ Africans.  One can only imagine what these two bush Negroes who had never conceived a world larger than their own Jungle thought of the twentieth century in the bizarre world of Tinseltown.  How did these minds that had probably never seen a wheel prior to Van Dyke’s expedition react to what must have seemed to them a parallel universe straight out of Wells.  Place yourself in their position and your head will spin.  One wonders, even, having lived naked all their lives, how they reacted to dressing every morning and wearing Western style clothes all day.  Did Tarzan’s experience in the shower in Tarzan Goes To New York have anything to do with these two noble savages introduction to civilization?  Possibly the reference to Gato Mgungu’s never having been to Hollywood may refer to ERB’s observation of Riano and Mutia.

     There is some wonderful stuff going on here.  If Hollywood wasn’t centered on pornography and its concomitant degraded sadistic violence with a little imagination they might be able to put together a good movie or two from this material.  Do I digress?  Ah, then I digress.  But back to the story.

     As with ‘them’ elsewhere the Utengans are good men going about their business while the ‘us’ or Leopard Men are a destructive force in society.  ERB has displaced the two religious systems to Africa where he presents two rather derogatory versions of Africans.  He is uncharacteristically derogatory of the Blacks.  Perhaps his concentration on so portraying the Africans was the result of his rage at the Scottsboro Boys.  On p. 92 he says of the orgy of the Leopard Men:

     He saw that religious and alcoholic drunkenness were rapidly robbing them of what few brains and little self-control Nature had vouchsafed them, and he trembled to think of what excesses they might commit when they passed beyond even the restraint of their leaders; nor did the fact that the chiefs, the priests, and the priestesses were becoming as drunk as their followers tend but to aggravate his fears.

     ERB in his evolutionary mode had always considered the African to be less evolved but this is subjective observation and not an objective one.  The bold statement ‘what few brains  and little self-control’ may have been his personal opinion but doesn’t look well in print.  I can’t imagine how it got beyond the Ballantine censors.  I think it probable that his anger over the Scottsboro affair caused him to lose his customary discretion.  In doing so he would be giving fuel to his detractors which it is never wise to do.  When it is said that this is his worst novel I believe it is because of passages like this.

     One wonders why the delay in the book issuance until 1936 and why then.  Among other reasons one may have been that by 1936 the Communist campaign to embarrass the United States over the alleged injustice to the Boys was reaching a peak.  Perhaps one intention of ERB was to show by the African example that Negroes were by nature of feeble intelligence and little self-control.  If so, risky business for ERB.  However throughout the novel a series of Black men is slathering at the mouth to rape Kali Bwana, recalling the train incident of the Scottsboro Boys.

     ERB also introduces the concept of religious drunkenness which can exist quite independently of alcohol.  Indeed there are many who can maintain a perpetual religious high.  The bizarre statements of Rabbis Schneerson and Ginsburg can be attributed to religious drunkenness.  In their religious enthusiasm they have certainly set aside reason.  So once again a greater depth of thought is revealed than is usually attributed to Burroughs.  Just two words- religious drunkenness- reveal a fair amount of thought and study.

     During the great storm the Leopard Men catalyze the story by the ritual killing of a Utengan named Nyamwegi.  While the storm is raging Tarzan who has taken refuge beside the bole of a great tree has it blown down with one of its great lower branches landing on his head.  One admires the tensile strength of the Big Bwana’s skull.  Apparently a big eighteen wheeler laden with thirty tons could roll over his head, the only possible result being a temporary loss of memory.  Burroughs is going through another period of great stress so Tarzan does wake up in a world he doesn’t recognize.

     A Utengan passing by notices the Big Bwana pinned to the ground on his back by the tree, not on his head, thank goodness, but somewhere over his body.  No broken bones, luck is still with the Big Guy.  As he had his bow and quiver slung over his back as he was pinned one has to think he’s in a fair amount of discomfort.  Orando, the Utengan, is about to eliminate Tarzan from the story, which would have left a gap, when he has the suspicion that this might be his Muzimo.  Orando had just been praying to his Muzimo to aid him in his hunting, perhaps Muzimo is the hunter after whom this chapter is named, and lo, he now appears.  ERB goes to some lengths to demonstrate the superstitious nature of African religion.  He really seems to be making an effort to belittle the African in this novel.  Orando’s suspicion is confirmed a few moments later when by a series of coincidences  Tarzan seems to answer when Orando  calls him Muzimo.  As Tarzan has no memory of another identity he assumes the role of Orando’s Muzimo.  This is really quite well done.

     A Muzimo is a sort of guardian angel, a spirit of an ancestor who looks after you.  Tarzan really fills the role performing natural- for him- feats that Orando believes are supernatural.  Tarzan, or Muzimo, directs the entire successful attack on the Leopard Men’s stronghold.

     Tarzan’s role of Muzimo is a story within the story within the story which based on Trader Horn.  If one keeps diving we might even find another story within the story.  The story of Tarzan as Muzimo is quite independent of the story of Old Timer, the Kid and Kali Bwana.  As we will learn when his role of Muzimo ends, Tarzan’s reason for coming to Utenga was to search out the Leopard Men.  The fact that Old Timer, Kali Bwana and the Kid are there is mere coincidence.  Their stories only become meshed at the Leopard Men’s temple which inadvertantly brings all together.  Even then, after regaining his memory, as Burroughs explains, they are of little interest to Tarzan.  The connection is only racial which is very weak.  Really the devil is in the details; a whole lot of devils.

     ERB has established the conflict between the superstition based animistic religion of the majority  culture and the horrific satanic religion of his minority culture.  He may be ‘fictionizing’ here the real life situation between the Western dominant culture of Christiantity, which he would still believe superstitious, and its recessive Jewish sub-culture.  I’m not clear how closely he intends the comparison.  At first sight Orando’s mistaking Tarzan for his Muzimo or guardian angel seems ridiculous yet even at this moment seventy percent of Americans believe in guardian angels.  The figure would probably have been a few percentage points higher at that time.

     Also, the Scopes Monkley Trial in Dayton, Tennessee was as recent as 1925-26, so the conflict between science and superstition in the US was by no means a settled matter.  The analogy between African and American culture may be sardonic.

     Just as the Utengans probably represent the Christian culture of the West so the Leopard Men may represent the minority Jewish Culture.  Just as the Leopard Men had adherents functioning secretly within the majority culture directing affairs so did the Jewish Culture in the West.  Just as the Leopard men had organizatonal representatives distributred amongst all the tribes across Africa functioning toward a common goal so Jewish Culture was represented in every culture of the Western world.  Just as the witch doctor Sobito manipulated the affairs of the Utengans from within for the benefit of the Leopard Men so the Jewish Culture through the ADL/AJC  manipulated Western Culture for its own benefit.

     In the twenties and thirties the International Jewish Conspiracy phase of Jewish manipulation was the prevailing fear.  The struggle to deny the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion had not yet been effected although well along.

     It seems clear to me that Burroughs always has ulterior motives in his novels.  He is not simply telling a story for entertainment.  Burroughs must have been puzzled by the attitude of the majority culture.  While Science was daily discrediting the supernatural yet the majority of the majority clung to, not so much outmoded religious beliefs, as a religious cast of mind.  The belief in Christianity was being steadily eroded as based on superstition yet rather than abandoning religion Americans frantically tried to incorporate science into religion.  Thus one has the strong religious quality of Liberalism that encourages the defamation of Christianity yet pursues a religious agenda based on wishful thinking.

     It is very strange, more than passing strange, that while Westerners reject Christianity they have reverence for Judaism and Moslemism.  While Christianity represents an anterior stage in the psychological development of mankind, the former two are even more primitive, magical and superstitious.  One has to laugh out loud at Rabbi Schneerson’s attempt to incorporate genetics into his religious system while the Moslem clerics are unfathomable by both Scientific and Liberal ideas and notions.  Yet Liberals attack Christianity while endorsing Judaism and Moslemism.

     Burroughs pits his alter-ego Tarzan and the majority against the minority religion launching an all out attack.  Tarzan, whose memory is gone, accepts his role as Orando’s Muzimo.  Curiously Burroughs describes Tarzan’s tan as so deep that he is the same skin color as Orando yet retains his status as ‘White.’  Possibly Orando was better able to accept Tarzan as his Muzimo because of the skin color.  Tarzan becomes Muzimo being in fact Orando’s guardian angel until he regains his memory at which point he becomes again his own man pursuing his own interests.  While he is Orando’s Muzimo he is a spectacular guardian angel directing Orando’s quarrel with the Leopard Men to a successful conclusion which as we are told his original intention was the suppression of the Leopard Men.

     Tarzan foils the Leopard Men’s advantage in Utenga by exposing the witch doctor Sobito as a Leopard Man as well as the spy Lupingu.  He is instrument in the deaths of both.  His task is made easier because Orando believes implicitly in whatever his Muzimo says.  Thus, while there is a natural explanation for what happens the results appear as genuinely supernatural to Orando and his tribesmen.

     This is all handled very cleverly by Burroughs as he lets the reader see what is happening as he also shows Orando’s superstitious interpretation.  It’s actually pretty funny.

     By following Tarzan/ Muzimo’s advice the Utengans catch the Leopard Men coming back from a ritual orgy while hung over and either kill or scatter them, men, women and children.  There was no one left alive in their village.  Thus the majority expel their troublesome minority or sub-culture from their midst, perhaps as ERB wished the majority culture of the United States might do with its troublesome minority culture.  He may have used Africa as a metaphor for the United States.  In any event Leopard Men seems to be a continuation of Triumphant on the religious level while being perhaps the most detailed examination of religion that ERB ever did.  But you can see why his Liberal detractors would call this his worst novel.

     At the time of writing Leopard Men the most recently issued story was Tarzan The Invincible.  Tarzan Triumphant had been written and probably submitted to Blue Book but it wouldn’t be published until 1932-33 while the book edition was published in 1932 so there couldn’t as yet have been a reaction to his portrayal of the two Midian cultures and Abraham son of Abraham and his followers of Paul.

     Perhaps ERB found his religious portrayal of Triumphant too clumsy so he refined it in Leopard Men.

B.

The Goddess Kali

Riders On The Storm

     If  you don’t enter as an initiate you won’t get the story.  The symbolism in this story is so strong and complete that it should be a standard psychological textbook.  Burroughs writes as though he had just come from a course in esoteric symbolism.  He continues this throughout the story too.  I don’t know if I can do this justice but I will try.

     Burroughs has entered the defining crisis of his life, thus the novel is full of symbols of life, death, sex and regeneration.  ERB feels that he is being born again, the butterfly emerging from the cocoon.  The very name Kali Bwana is the primary symbol.  Kali is the Hindu symbol of life, death and regeneration.  Her image is as dark as this story.  This story, as it were, emerges from the very bowels of the pit, the viscera of frustrated desires and hopes of their fulfillment.  Very frightening actually.  I can see how on one level so many people would consider it ERB’s worst.  It isn’t easily understandable..  The story deals with primal needs and desires that would drive a man insane.  Indeed, Kali Bwana considers Old Timer insane.  He himself says that maybe he is crazy.  He makes psychotic statements and is on the verge of criminal sexual behavior throughout the book until the very end when he is reformed.  This is an extremely violent but regenerative story.  Sort of like Walt Disney on steroids.

     Kali Bwana is the joy of man’s desiring.  A platinum blonde, her beauty apparently disintegrates all men’s self control as she inspires dreams of rape rather than courting.  Old Timer himself has rape in mind all through the book.  No man or animal in the story every thinks of honoring her femininity; their only thoughts are to violate her beauty to gratify their illicit lustful desires or, perhaps, to cannibalize her beauty and make it their own possession.  This is serious stuff.

     As Kali she is the mate of Shiva.  while Shiva is usually depicted as a handsome young man serenely playing the flute while all goes to hell around him Burroughs represents him as the Leopard god of the cannibalistic, criminal animist or nature cult.  Thus, Kali Bwana is captured by the Leopard Men to serve as high priestess to their Leopard god thus forming an Anima and Animus.  Burroughs does an excellent job of presenting both the barbaric splendor and degradation of the cult or religion.

     The story is set by the book’s opening,  one of attempted rape and violence set amidst a terrific storm  in a sort of swamp like atmosphere.  One feels this is not an ordinary storm but one fraught with significance and meaning.  It is a life changing storm.

     The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols which I use here for reference is readily available.  It discusses storms on p. 941:

     The storm is a symbol of a theophany, the manifestation of the awesome and mighty power of God.  While it may herald a revelation, it can also be a manifestation of divine anger and sometimes of punishment. 

     Creative activity is also unleashed in a storm.  In a cosmic upheaval beyond the power of words, life itself was born. 

     And then Burroughs refers to the storm as a hurricane.  The Penguin dictionary says this of that, p. 533:

     Hurricanes are almost Dionysiac orgies of cosmic energy.  They symbolize the ending of one period of time and the beginning of another as tireless Earth repairs the damage.

     So now we have the figure of the eternal female, the symbol of birth, death and regeneration coupled with storm and hurricane symbols also denoting major epochal changes.  The impact is increased by the whole being expressed in a half dozen pages, very compressed.

     It should be noted that Florence Gilbert represents Kali Bwana and Old Timer is obviously ERB.  the changes are happening to him.  Florence/Kali is both repelled and passive.  Perhaps because of the ripening romance between his wife and ERB Ashton Dearholt had taken her on a motor tour removing her from the scene probably hoping separation would end the affir.  According to the ERBzine 30s Bio Timeline the Dearholts returned to LA in May just as ERB was completing Triumphant and before he began Leopard Men.  If he had been fighting his feelings for Florence her return was obviously more than he could deal with hence this terrific storm and the overwhelming number of female symbols in the novel.

     At the same time as the rape attempt the Leopard Men corner Nyamwegi, a Utgengan returning from a date with his girl friend.  Amidst the multiple bolts of lightning which illuminate the entire sky and tremendous crashes of thunder the Leopard Men gruesomely and bloodily murder the boy removing body parts.

     ERB accentuates the ferocity of the storm and hurricane by saying that the lightning bolts were numerous and continuous, filling the entire sky.  The Penguin dictionary, p. 606:

     Lightning symbolizes the spark of life and powers of fertilization.  It is fire from Heaven, vastly powerful and terrifyingly swift, which may be either life giving or death dealing.

     And on p. 607:

     As the weapon of Zeus, forged in FIRE (symbol of the intellect) by the Cyclops, lightning is the symbol of intentive and spiritual enlightenment  or the sudden flash of inspiration.  However, while it enlightens and stirs the spirit, lightning strikes down the drive of unsatisfied and uncontrolled desire…

     So after this storm all will be changed; there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth.  Kali Bwana has averted personal disaster while Nyamwegi has met his end.  Nearby in another part of the forest Tarzan and Nkima crouch beside a forest giant to wait out the storm.  Here the hurricane topples the tree uprooting it.  Tarzan tosses Nkima out of the way but is himself struck by a branch, one assumes one of the big ones of the lower terrace.  Once again the Big Fella is given a case of amnesia so that he is not aware of his racial affinity to the Whites aligning himself with the Blacks.

     In another part of the forest, not too far away, Old Timer and the Kid are discussing their fortunes apparently unaware of this massive storm.  As Old Timer sets out on the trail of ivory on the morrow he hears a shot which leads him to Kali Bwana.  All the elements of the New Day are in place.

     The action takes place not only in the forest but in the Ituri Rain Forest, the forest of forests.  In Western symolism the forest is where the lost man wanders in search of his redemption.  One has to find one’s way out of the forest for personal redemption.  Thus Old Timer and Kali lose their way wandering around in the forest hopelessly lost.  At one point Old Timer can’t see the constellations to navigate at night.  At another the forest is so dark he can’t see the sun to navigate by it.  Both he and Kali have to be rescued by Tarzan after he regains his memory.

     As David Adams has pointed out Sheeta the panther is always associated with the Anima or female.  Usually Sheeta is described as a panther but in this novel Sheeta is the Leopard.  The smell of Sheeta is overwhelming throughout this novel.  In this case I think we may be sure that Sheeta represents the fear of the feminine.  Tarzan and Nkima are inseparable in this novel.  Throughout the entire novel Nkima complains about the small of Sheeta who wishes to devour him, in other words, to emasculate him.  So Burroughs is afraid of what is happening to him in regards of Florence.  When Tarzan recovers consciousness after the battle with the Leopard Men the first thing he does is call Nkima.  The little monkey in his place on Tarzan’s shoulder reminds one of the Egypian Ka or double.  Tarzan the fearless and Nkima the fearful.  Burroughs as a child confronted by John the Bully.

     As an aspect of Tarzan’s- and Burroughs’- character Nkima probably represents his more chicken livered side.  There is no record of Tarzan ever having fear, he doesn’t even know the meaning of the word, but Burroughs did hence Nkima who knows nothing but fear.  Neither Tarzan nor Burroughs have ever been what one would call ladies men hence if not fear of the feminine at least an apprehension of it.  As Burroughs is now reaching a major crisis of his life having now to choose either Emma or Florence it is not to be wondered that the forest reeks of Sheeta.  Indeed, the Leopard Men themselves are symbols of the feminine and they intend to sacrifice Old Timer.  Thus one has the leopard as Leopard god and Kali Bwana as his Leopard goddess.

     The tremendous rainfall, itself a symbol of regeneration and fertility from the male sky god would create a steaming swamplike atmosphere as it fell on Mother Earth while the temple of the Leopard God itself was in a crocodile infested swamp.

     First the Crocodile as symbol, Penguin p. 244:

     The crocodile which carries the Earth on its back, is a divinity of darkness and the Moon, whose greed is like that of the NIGHT which each evening devours the Sun.  From civilization to civilization and from age to age the crododile exhibits a high proportion of the countless links in that basic symbolic chain which belongs to the controlling forces of death and rebirth.  The crocodile may be a formidable figure, but this is because like all expression of the power of fate, what he displays is inevitable- darkness falling so that daylight may return, death striking so that life may be reborn.

     In other words, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.  Poor Emma.  Obviously for ERB he is killing his past so that his future may be born.

     The temple is in the center of a swamp so deep withing the forest that the sun never shines on it.  The swamp is the quintessential female symbol.  It is in the Lernean swamp where Heracles has to battle with the Hydra.  Hydra=the water of the feminine and the irrational.  Each time Heracles cuts off one of the seven heads another grows in its place until he cauterizes each severance with fire, that is the power of the male intellect.

     Thus, one has crocodiles, leopards, water, swamp, the river and Stygian darkness.  if you can’t rise above the fear of the feminine, you will be swamped, drowned in her waters.  The only entrance and exit is this slow moving river is obscured by the forest.  This river of mystery and death, this impenentrable forest.  The River is the last of the great symbols we will consider, Penguin p. 808:

     The symbolism of rivers and running water is simultaneously that of the ‘universal potentiality’ and that of the ‘fluidity of forms’ (Schuan) of fertility, death and revewal.  The stream is that of life and death.  It may be regarded as flowing down to the sea; as a current against which one swims; or as something to be crossed from one bank to another.  Flowing into the sea it is the the gathering of the waters, the return to an undifferentiated state, attaining Nirvana.  Swimming against the stream is clearly returning to the divine source, the First Cause.  Crossing the river is overcoming an obstacle, separating two realms or conditions, the phenomenal world and the unconditioned state, the world of the senses and the state of non-attachment.

     Then this from Burroughs, p. 191:

     The sun was sinking behind the western forest, its light playing on the surging current of the great river that rolled past the village of Bobolo.  A man and a woman stood looking out across the water that was plunging westward in its long journey to the sea down to the trading posts and the towns and the ships, which are the frail links that connect the dark forest with civilization.

     If one looks at this novel from an esoteric symbolic point of view the symbols tell their own story.

     As Old Timer says Kali means Woman.  At the beginning we have Woman and the Shaggy Man.

     I haven’t given the symbolism of the Shaggy Man yet so using the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols again under the heading Rags and Tatters, p. 782:

     (Rags And Tatters) are the symbol of anxiety and lesions of the psyche as well as that material poverty which, in folktale, is sometimes adopted as a disguise by princes, princesses and wizards.  It denotes simultaneously poverty and anxiety or cloaks inner riches under an appearance of wretchedness, thus displaying the superiority of the inner over the outer self.

     Thus Kali- the Woman- the symbol of death, birth and regeneration, and The Shaggy Man or the Frog Prince, the Hero in disguise, waiting to be regenerated by the kiss of the ultimate Woman.  A classic fairy tale, actually, with a tip of the hat to David Adams for insisting on the fairy tale connection.

     The Man, the Woman, the Storm with a tremendous display of  Lightning, Thunder, Wind and Rain completely transforming both the physical and psychic landscapes bringing the Man and the Woman together.

     The Woman is then captured by the repressed sexual desire of the Leopard Men who wish to install her as their Goddess.  The Woman or Kali is stripped Naked and then adorned with various attributes of the Leopard Cult.

     As in various myths, fairytale and folklore stories the Man and the Woman (the Anima and Animus) have been separated by Fate and must fight through all obstacles to be reunited.

     Kali (Woman) is led through the teeming, steaming forest with a rope around her neck to the big river down which she is canoed to a smaller stream, ‘the silent river of mystery and death’ in the darkest, swampiest, most crocodile infested part of the darkest of dark forests.

     Abandoning all other concerns the Shaggy Man pursues Kali to the village of the Leopard Men where he is taken prisoner, then taken down the silent river (the Styx?) to be sacrificed.  By a miracle the two escape only to be separated again while the Shaggy Man is taken back to the temple of the Leopard Men.  Kali, Woman, is captured by a Black chief to serve his sexual needs.  Rape again.  White=Light, Black= Darkness.  Thus the ever present threat of rape seems to be about to be fulfilled.  But no, the elder wife of the Black chief objects to the White Woman.  Out of the pot and into the fire.  The Woman is left with Pygmies who are even more vile than the Blacks.

      But now a Deus ex-machina, Tarzan, has released the Shaggy Man.  Hot in pursuit he follows Woman to the Pygmy camp.  He madly attempts rescue which is successful once again because of the Deus ex machina.

     It’s not over yet folks.  ERB can make any 192 page story go on for a near eternity.  Together again Kali and the Shaggy Man are once more torn assunder when the Deus ex machina sends an ape who captures the Shaggy Man.  Makes you breathless, doesn’t it?  Deus once again reunites the Woman and Shaggy Man.  Now, if you will notice the Shaggy Man forces a kiss on Woman.  His act of violence shames him so that he finds redemption in his remorse.  Thus the kiss of Woman has returned the Frog Prince to his rightful form.

     As the story ends the two are about to leave the dark forest for the light of civilization down river.

     Thus one has the classic myths- Psyche and Eros, Perseus and Andromeda and many others, numerous fairy tales -Cinderella, one which ERB has used before, and much folklore.  It is done very well, too, if you’re following the bouncing ball.

     It is noteworthy that the work of another great author is misunderstood too.  I refer to the ancient poet Homer.  While Homer’s reputation is very great no one understands the Iliad.  The adventures of the Gods and Goddesses are beyond the comprehension of classical scholars.  Thus they prefer the Odyssey which is written in a more comprehensible if pedestrian style.  If I remember correctly the Five Foot Shelf excludes the Iliad while containing the Odyssey.  While both are attributed to Homer they must have been written by two different mind sets.  The psychology of each is too different to have been written by one mind.  Besides the Iliad concerns the middle part of the Siege of Troy while the Odyssey skips all the way to the story of only one of the Returns.

     There are similarities in the way Burroughs and Homer tell their stories but to avoid argument Homer is incomparably the greater.

     Nevertheless Burroughs has masterfully used a set of symbols to supply a very rich subtext to this story and he has done it intentionally.  He does know whereof he speaks.  I don’t think there is any doubt that he has studied Esoterica.  Probably the topic was of life long interest both in the old kook capitol Chicago and the new kook capitol of Los Angeles.  (Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb.)

     There was a lot of esoterica going on in LA.  The Golden Dawn of Aleister Crowley was out in the desert at Barstow, Manly Hall was advising the movies on estoteric matters, the Vedantists were established and the Theosophists had a terrific college in LA.

     Anybody who thinks ERB wasn’t interested in such things doesn’t know how to spell Edgar Rice Burroughs.

     While ERB wouldn’t touch a religious theme unless ‘highly fictionized’ he managed to highly fictionize all manner of religion in this great novel of his mature period.  He was working at break neck pace too.

     Love this stuff.

     On to Part IV which will deal with the cast of characters.  Inevitably there’s a certain amount of repitition but I try to cast the stuff in different highlights, crosslights and aspects.  This stuff deserves a thorough examination.

 

Tarzan And The River

Part II

Edgar Rice Burroughs In Aspic

by

R.E. Prindle

When ‘Omer smote his bloomin’ lyre,

He’d heard men sing by land and sea:

An’ what ‘e thought ‘e might require,

‘E went and took- the same as me!

The market-girls an’ fishermen,

The shepherds and the sailors, too,

They ‘eard old songs turn up again,

But kept it quiet- same as you!

They knew ‘e stole, ‘e knew they knowed,

They didn’t tell, nor make a fuss,

But winked at ‘Omer down the road.

An’ ‘e winked back= the same as us.

-Rudyard Kipling

I want a dream lover,

So I don’t have to dream alone.

–Bobby Darin

 First published  in the Burroughs Bulletin

Spring 2003 issue.

Last Night He Had The Strangest Dream

     As an author Edgar Rice Burroughs belongs to the generation of writers who wrote between the wars.  He is or should be placed beside Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, P.G. Wodehouse, H.G. Wells, John Dos Passos and John Steinbeck, among others.  Further, of all those authors ERB was the best selling writer in the entire world.  His reign came to an end in 1939 and then only after his talent was dissipated.  This is a remarkable achievement against some very qualified and important writers.  One doesn ‘t often hear of Steinbeck societies.  Hemingway or any of the others but Burroughs societies exist in many countries around the world.

     I consider myself an intellectual and literary snob, yet I acknowledge ERB as important an intellectual and literary figure as any of the savants mentioned above.  ERB did not parade his knowledge and savvy as most writers are wont to do.  He incorporated a fairly deep understanding of many contemporary issues without a hint of the lamp.  Tarzan Triumphant is a case in point.  Obviously the two religious groups in the novel refer to Jews and Christians, but there is no reference to either sect.  One is left to infer that the Old Testament crowd led by Abraham, son of Abraham, is of the Old Testament while their rivals are New Testament.  In so far as ERB allows the story to involve religious discussion, the moral is ‘a pox on both your houses.’

     Even more remarkable is that over the writing of the published twenty-one Tarzans before 1940 all the novels are interrelated.  ERB was able to keep his Tarzan facts in order over a twenty-seven year period of writing while being involved in the writing of dozens of other books.  In point of fact the Tarzan oeuvre is a roman a fleuve- a river novel.

     A River novle is a series of novels which traces the course of a nation, people, a family or an an individual over a period of at least decades.  The first novel ever written was a River novel, that was the story of the Greek invasion of Troy.

      The two surviving complete books of this remakarble story are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.  Moreover, many fragments exist predating the events of the Iliad and after.

     Perhaps the most prodigious of all River novels is the Vulgate Lancelot chronicling  the adventures of King Arthur and his knights.  The story runs on for thousands of pages.

     In modern times Alexander Dumas’ five volume epic concerning the adventures of the Three Musketeers constitute a River novel.  Trollope wrote two, that of the Pallisers and the Barchester series.  The model for the twentieth century was Remembrance Of Things Past by Marcel Proust.

      Edgar Rice Burroughs has always been treated frivolously, yet the Tarzan oeuvre is a work of some magnitude which does not compare unfavorably with Proust.

     Proust’s work looks backward as he relives his life trying to make order of his psychology.  Burroughs’ Tarzan oeuvre records his psychological development on a current basis as it evolves year by year.

     ERB’s work is characterized as imaginative fiction while Proust’s is considered realistic fiction.  In other words, realistic fiction builds on real life experience in real life situations, while the imaginative writer is compelled to ‘invent’ incidents.

     Thus while the realistic writer draws primarily from personal experience and observations, the imaginative writer has to draw from published sources of either fiction or nonfiction or convert real life experiences  into symbolic form.  The latter is more true of science and fantasy fiction.  If the science fiction writers of the forties and fifties hadn’t had a couple thousand years of esoteric literature to draw on there would have been little science fiction.  Of course the writers so disguise their sources  that without an extensive education in esoteric writings oneself the stories seem incredibly original.

     Borrowing from every source is extensive.  For instance, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End is the same story as H.G. Wells’ Food Of The Gods with different detailing.  Wells himself extrapolated his story farom Darwin’s Origin Of Species and The Descent Of Man.  Darwin of course turned to nature, the ultimate source of suggestion, for his story.

     That Burroughs borrowed extensively and sometimes blatantly is of little consequence, especially as his original contributions were so extensive and satisfying.  As the opening poem by Kipling indicates, at least he was honest enough to admit of outside influences.

     The Russian Quartet, or first four novels, is a tentative beginning to the Tarzan oeuvre.  It is possible that the first novel, Tarzan Of The Apes, was just an attempt to express certain ideas about heredity and such related topics that ERB wanted to say with no thought of sequels.  The story itself is absurd enough that it seems a miaracle that it was accepted and published.  It is perhaps less surprising that it was so readily accepted by the reading public as the great figure of Tarzan rises shining from the pages.  One ignores any story telling flaws to get a glimpse of the bronzed forest giant, the great Tarmangani, the jungle god, the Lord of the Jungle, Tarzan.  A writer should be so lucky to come up with such an archetypal figure.

     Return and Beasts find Burroughs groping for a direction.  Beasts is is heavily influenced by H.M. Stanley’s writing on Africa as well as that of Mungo Park, not to mention Edgar Wallace’s Sanders Of The River.  The story of Paulevitch’s experience in the jungle was obviously taken from Mungo Park’s Travels In The Interior Of Africa.  Beasts itself which also has a lot of Defoe in it, is absurd to the extreme yet somehow redeems itself as one becomes entranced by the outrageous notion of apes and men row-row-rowing their boat down the stream.  Somewhere either before the beginning of Beasts or after the end, ERB interweaves the story of Barney Custer and the Mad King and the Eternal Lover to bring his own psychology into the Tarzan character.  Thus ERB pictures himself as the Son Of Tarzan in the novel of that name.

     Having resolved, after a fashion, his conflicts with this father and somewhere in that tremendous gush of writing having integrated his personality, ERB then turns to himself as the conflicted Animus of Tarzan the Hero and Tarzan the Clown to resolve that psychological dilemma over the next seventeen volumes published during his lifetime.

     The Russian Quartet was written over a period of three years.  The eight novels between Son and Lost Empire were written over fourteen years.  Whether the ‘Lost Empire’ refers to Emma and Opar is open to conjecture.  In any event Lost Empire signifies a terminal junction in ERB’s psychology.

     Then as the problems of his Animus and Anima resolve themselves ERB rapidly turns out six volumes over four years.

     He had difficulty writing Tarzans while struggling with his psychology but wrote quickly once he had made up his mind.

     From 1934 in psychologically related volumes to 1938 he published the three additional novels of Quest, Forbidden city and Magnificent.  The psychologically relevant Madman was discovered and published in 1964, fourteen years after his death.  Perhaps the thought the novel was too personal and painful to publish himself.

     As noted “Foreign Legion’ is a propagandistic after thought to the oeuvre.

     As ERB didn’t begin writing until he was thirty-six it is fair to say that his writing represents the effort of a mature mind.  This is even more evident when one reflects that the majority of the Tarzan oeuvre was written between the ages of forty-one and fifty-eight.  Lion Man, which is the culminating volume of ERB’s psychological odyssey was written at the last age.

     The novels written between 1930 and 1934 which I consider excellent work and the best of the Tarzan oeuvre are the ones most often dismissed as repetitious.  One of the very best, Tarzan And The Leopard Men, is, oddly enough, often dismissed as ‘hack work’.  Very strange.

     But to return to Opar and move forward from there.  From 1912 or 1911 if you consider from the first moment ERB put pen to paper to 1915, things developed very rapidly in ERB’s mind.  The rich experience of his lifetime, all his opinions, thoughts and fancies were so compressed within his skull that as I say he erupted with more than the force of Spindletop.  It took him three years to cap that gusher and then the flow was strong and steady until 1934 when he realized himself.

     Return was written in 1913 when his Anima, La of Opar, first pops up.  She then disappears until 1916 when wife Emma apparently sneered at the wealth ERB had laid at her feet.  She would not so soon forget the first twelve years of her humiliation.

     Her rejection of ERB the Hero must have hurt Burroughs to the quick.  Following Return he wrote The Mad King in which after numerous trials and tribulations and after he had disposed of Custer’s inept doppelganger, the Mad King, Barney Custer and the Princess Emma were reconciled.  In all likelihood the story was a day-dream of wish fulfillment in the Freudian manner because in The Eternal Lover which followed quickly Barney Custer goes to Tarzan’s Equatorial estate but with his sister Victoria and not the ‘Princess Emma’.  His marital relationship is obviously still very troubled.  As noted, The Eternal Lover is a myth of the nature of Pysche and Eros, the Anima and Animus.

     Interestingly, Boy Jack’s wife, which is to say ERB’s at the end of Son of Tarzan is no longer a princess but the daughter of a general.  Emma had apparently been demoted in ERB’s emotions.

     In a psychological quandary ERB has Tarzan leave Jane in 1916 to return to Opar and La for more gold to lay at Jane/Emma’s feet.  This story is crucial for the rest of the oeuvre.  ERB’s dream lover, La, spares his life and offers to marry him or in other words take him away from Jane/Emma.  At this point in his life ERB is faithful in body if not in spirit.  He declines her offer having his faithful Waziri stagger back to Jane under a load of one hundred twenty pounds of gold each.

     Apparently the wealth of Opar of which tons of gold remained to be tapped as well as bushels of the very largest of diamonds (move ahead to the Father of Diamonds in the Forbidden City) is not enough to assuage Jane/Emma’s anger at Ed’s failure for the first twelve years of married life.  She rejects ERB’s present income.  This must have been a staggering blow for Burroughs who at this point in his life wanted to abandon his clown role for that of the hero.

     He had already begun Jungle Tales Of Tarzan, which he managed to finish, otherwise from Jewels of Opar to Tarzan the Untamed there is a hiatus in Tarzan novels for thirty-nine months.  For over three years he and Emma were apparently at a stalemate making it impossible for him to write further Tarzan adventures.

     When Tarzan returns it is as The Untamed and he and Jane have been separated, possibly for good as Tarzan has no idea where she is; common report is that she is dead.

     One may infer that the marriage is all but over.  It takes another twenty-three months before Tarzan The Terrible appears.  Tarzan goes from Untamed to Terrible.  Apparently ERB and Emma are now temporarily reconciled as Tarzan finds Jane in the forgotten land of Pal-ul-don (paladin?) and he, she and Jack go swinging down the jungle trails to return to Equatoria.  the family is reunited.  But is it?

     After the passage of twenty-two months Burroughs follows Terrible with Golden Lion.  Now the title Golden Lion is somewhat misleading as the Lion doesn’t play that large a role in the story.  The Lion seems to have sprung from Burroughs’ subconscious as a defense against the Lion of Emma.  In this story Tarzan leaves Jane for a fairly extended visit to his dream lover, La in Opar.  They are together for some time as they adventure into the adjacent lost valley called The Valley Of Diamonds.  (Once again, see Tarzan And The Forbidden City.)  Possibly the Father of Diamonds represents the Jewel of Great Price which turns out ironically to be a piece of coal.  This was after ERB left Emma for Florence.

     Golden Lion introduces the great doppelganger of Tarzan, Esteban Miranda.  I am absolutely fascinated by this character.  Miranda looks, talks and walks so much like Tarzan that not only can’t Jane/Emma tell them apart but Miranda even fools the faithful Waziri.

     Golden Lion is paired with Tarzan And The Ant Men.  You have to read both to get the whole story.

     Esteban Miranda is a London actor, a clown and a cowardly fool.  ERB goes to great lengths to deliniate the character of this unpleasant but goofily amiable alter ego.

     In the confusion Miranda is captured by a savage tribe of Blacks where he is spared because of his resemblance to Tarzan.  He escapes finally although he is a blithering idiot who has lost his memory.  Get that!  Even Tarzan’s doppelganger loses his memory.  I haven’t been able to fugure out ERB’s problems with his memory yet.

     He is discovered by the Waziri where he is once again mistaken for the real thing.  He is taken to the ranch house where Jane nurses him back to health.  Still mistakes him for the real Tarzan, he is about to be embraced lovingly by Jane when the terrible, untamed Tarzan appears through the French windows.  Tarzan himself had been off having incredible adventures with the Ant Men returning just in the nick of time.

     Here apparently Jane rejects Burroughs the Hero in favor of Burroughs the Clown of the first twelve years of her marriage.  This is something which ERB can’t forgive.  His resentment turns into a divorce about ten years later.

     There is then another long hiatus of approximately forty months before Tarzan returns as Lord of the Jungle with Jane in a very subsidiary role.  So in twelve years Burroughs wrote only about five Tarzan novels.  Then between 1929 and 1934 he whipped out an additional seven.

     The change of pace was caused by the quickening resolution of ERB’s psychological dilemma.  He was obviously living his life vicariously as Tarzan.

     It is this development of his psychology recorded through Tarzan that makes the oeuvre the most fascinating of River novels.

     Let us understand that a writer, any writer, is always discussing his own psychology.  this applies both to so-called non-fiction as well as fiction.  Properly speaking there is no such thing as non-fiction.  The difference between the two is that in non-fiction a writer describes actual events through a prism of so-called objectivity.  In other words in writing about Edgar Rice Burroughs I am bound to adhere to the facts of ERB’s life and I cannot invent details to improve the story.  However, in actuality I see what my own psychology has prepared me to see.  My psychology, that is, in conjunction with my intelligence and emotional perspicuity.

      Anyone who has read the autobiography of Frank Harris knows that his favorite adage is that no man can see over the top of his head.  Therefore it behooves every man to broaden and develop his experience so that he can stand as tall as possible.  In that way he can at least hopefully see over the heads of all his fellows.  I was once fortunate enough to try this on a crowded street in Hong Kong where I stood head and shoulders above my fellow Chinese pedestrians.  You could see the heads and shoulders of all the American sailors inching slowly along like icebergs in a sea of Chinese.

     But seriously, one must develop one’s intelligence and that is exactly what Edgar Rice Burroughs did throughout his life.  ERB was an avid reader both of fiction and non-fiction.  He makes frequent allusion to Poe, Wells, Doyle and who I think he respects most, Rudyard Kipling.  If you have read the great African explorers you will have no difficulty identifying sources.  ERB was quick in picking up new titles also.  Forbidden City was, I believe, based partially on Digging For Lost African Gods by Byron Khun de Protok published in 1926.

     ERB was also forced to respond to hectoring outside criticism.  I’m sure he little knew the effect that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 would have on him personally, but by 1933’s Leopard Men he was thrown on the defensive by what H.G. Wells called the ‘Open Conspiracy’ or the Red Revolution.  I will deal with it in the last essay in our series called ‘Star Begotten.’

     All of Burroughs stories are many layered if you care to look beyond the surface details.  After Golden Lion ERB develops a whole jungle family of attendant animals which follow him through all the stories.  Each novel is merely one episode in the life of Tarzan/Burroughs and each leads to the next novel in true River fashion.

     This is wonderful stuff.  There is no difficulty understanding why Burroughs was the best selling author of his time.

     After recording the difficulties of reconciling himself with Emma from 1916 to 1928 ERB reluctantly threw in the towel when he wrote Tarzan And The Lost Empire.  The double entendre of the lost empire is explicit in between the lines.  It is not only the Lost Empire deep in the Heart Of Darkness but also his dream of building a great empire with Emma.  The dissolution of his marriage and his search for a real live La of Opar begins with the book.

     At this point he has also come under attack by the Reds who cannot tolerate the success of a Conservative writer.  Consolidating rapidly from 1917 to 1923, by this time the Revolution was in control of publishing.  They could deny access to new conservative writers, creating the myth that all the best new writers were Communist in faith, but they still had to destroy the reputations of older, non-conforming writers.

     I don’t know that any studies have been made of literary or journalistic attacks on ERB, but he responds as though there were many.  In 1929 he took time out from his personal psychology to write a major counter-attack against the Revolution with Tarzan At The Earth’s Core.

     While this may appear to be simply a critique of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, in fact Einstein was as much a political figure as a scientific one.  Both he and Freud were prominent agents of the ‘Open Conspiracy’ along with that literary political agent, H.G. Wells, so that Earth’s Core is a counter-attack on his detractors.

     Then in quick succession ERB turned out Tarzan the Invicinble, (watch the titles) Tarzan Triumphant, Tarzan And The City Of Gold, Tarzan And The Leopard Men and Tarzan And The Lion Man.

     After a long struggle Burroughs quickly resolved his psychological dilemma.  He rectified his Animus, disposing of the clown side of his nature while at the same time reconciling his Anima.  He divorced Emma while marrying what he fancied was a La of Opar in Florence.  The final conflict with Emma is recorded in City Of Gold.  The basic idea for City was probably borrowed from Bulfinch’s The Legends Of Charlemagne.  In Legends, an enchantress has captured many of the leading palladins of Charlemagne which she has imprisoned in a city of gold.  The medieval writers borrowed the story of Odysseus and Circe from Homer.

     In Burroughs’ story the enchantress Nemone has ‘captured’ a bemused Tarzan who may escape any time he chooses but he elects to stay around to see what will happen.

     Lion Man is notable for the way Burroughs blends psychology, fiction, the movies and how the movies affect the perception of reality of movie-goers.  Film, which was developed during Burroughs’ young manhood, had a profound effect on the movie-goer’s ability to distinguish real life from movie fantasy.  Burroughs was qite precocious in understanding this.  There are earlier references to the matter in his work but here he gives it a full scale examination, both as when the fictional Tarzan replaces the even more fictional Obroski in Africa and when as a Burroughs doppelganger Tarzan mixes on set with the movie people in Hollywood where they fail to recognize him as the real thing, Lion Man is perhaps the most interesting of all the Tarzan novels.

     After Lion Man, which both rectifies his Animus and reconciles his Anima, his motive for writing fast and furious disappeared.  In fact, his subject matter disappears.  He had in effect run out of material.  Tarzan’s Quest and Tarzan And The Forbidden City record his lingering problems with his two ladies at the age of sixty-three.  You can see why he wrote it as a farce.

     Tarzan And The Madman caps the story of his pschological development although he did not publish the novel during his lifetime.

     At the end, as is not unusual, he returned to the beginning as in The Mad King.  The totally farcical Forbidden City is an example of what his writing might have turned into if he had been allowed to publish under his pseudonym, Normal Bean.  As a comic novel, Forbidden City is actually very funny, if absurd, as Tarzan is driven from pillar to post by his two women.  This undoubtedly  reflects his real life situation.  In the end, he says, the fabulous diamond he and everyone else is seeking, the Jewel Of Great Price, is merely a mirage turning out to be as worthless as a piece of coal.

     Both Lion Man and Forbidden City seem to have influenced Aldous Huxley, one of the major intellectual writers of the period.  His novel, After Many A Summer Dies The Swan (1939), has allusions to Burroughs’ two novels.  The theme of ‘Lion Man’ of the mad scientist, God, who reverts to a half-ape, half-man creature is replicated in Swan in which an English nobleman who has lived for two hundred years reverts to an apelike existence.

     That the theme may be more than coincidental is the fact that Huxley incorporates an imaginary University of Tarzana into the story.  Thus one of the great intellectuals of the period found much of deep interest in ERB’s novels while also reacting to Wells.

     Edgar Rice Burroughs was in fact a great literary artist, if a trifle coarse.  He is, in fact, a great talent which if the critics fail to realize it, the people don’t.

     Surviving a hundred years is no small matter, it takes some talent to do that.  Yet, after those hundred years ERB is still an active force in the literary coal mines.  Well, it’s not like coal doesn’t burn with a pure blue flame and under pressure turn into diamonds.

 

Four Crucial Years

In The Life Of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Pt. I

by

R.E. Prindle

Every artist writes his own autobiography. 

Even Shakespeare’s works contain a life of himself for those who know how to read it.

–Havelock Ellis as quoted by Robert W. Fenton

The Great One

     Eighteen ninety-six found Edgar Rice Burroughs confronting the first great crisis of his adult life.  The weight of his childhood experiences pressed on his mind as he turned twenty.  His subconscious mind was directing his actions while his conscious intelligence futilely struggled against it.  He had no plans; nor could he form any.  He was in a state of emotional turmoil.  He obviously did not think out his moves nor weigh the effects of his actions on others.  He was to burn many bridges as he flayed about like the proverbial bull in the china shop trying to find his way out.

     Having graduated from the Michigan Military Academy he had been serving in the capacity of instructor for the previous year.  All his heroes were military men.  He fancied a military career as an Army officer even though he had failed the West Point exam the year before.  Still, he was in a fine position to realize his objective.  Men who could help him were nearby friends.  Captain, soon to be General, Charles King, who had befriended him as a cadet, and the Commandant of the MMA, Colonel Rogers.  All he had to do was to be patient and those men of some influence would surely have obtained an appointment for him.

     They had given a mere boy a position of great trust and responsibility in making him an instructor.  They were military men who judged others in the military manner.  Then in the Spring of 1896 Burroughs did one of the most inexplicable things in a career  of the inexplicable; he abandoned his post.  Without notice to those career officers who were depending on him he resigned his post and on May 13th of 1896 he joined the Army as an enlisted man, a common soldier, a grunt.  Within days he was on his way to his asignment.

     As he was to say of so many of his later fictional heroes: ‘for me to think is to act.’  He oughtn’t have been so precipitate.  He should have thought twice.  He shouldn’t have had to think about it at all.

     If he seriously wanted a military career as an officer he should have known that it is virtually impossible for an enlisted man to rise through the ranks.  Even in the rare cases when this occurs, the enlisted man is always an odd duck between the officer caste and the enlisted men.

     In this case he had not only forteited caste but as far as Rogers and King were concerned he had deserted, the worst crime that a military man can commit.  Both men wrote him off at that time.  Strangely he never understood that his precipitate act would be held against him by those he disappointed.

     Apparently joining in a fit of despair- for me to think is to act- as the date of the 13th would indicate he requested the worst duty the Army had ensuring his desire to fail.  On one level it is almost as though he did have his next move worked out.  Not normally too receptive to the desires or needs of its grunts in this case the Army was only too glad to accommodate him.  Burroughs was sent into Apacheria to a place called Fort Grant in what was then the territory of Arizona.  Neither Arizona nor New Mexico became States until after the turn of the century so Burroughs had actually ‘lit out for the territories’ as Huck Finn would have put it.  There was still some Apache resistance going on, thus ERB was a part of the Wild West.

     According to Philip R. Burger, writing in the Winter 1999 issue of the Burroughs Bulletin, the standard term of enlistment at the time was three years but, as there would be no reason to join the Army except to make it a career, the reasonable assumption for those left behind in Chicago without a word of goodbye would have been that Burroughs was out of their lives.  He was a dead man.

     For those of you who have never joined the services, once you leave you’re out of the lives of those left behind.  Your traditions have been broken.  Even when you come back for leave you are only tolerated as a visitor who will leave, the sooner the better, so you don’t disrupt their lives any longer than necessary.

     Burroughs didn’t even have traditions in Chicago except with a few people.  From the sixth grade on he had a record of broken attendance at a number of schools, from the girl’s school to Harvard School and then back East, to Idaho and on to the MMA.  He would have known but few people well, intimate with none except the lovely Emma Hulbert.

     He could have seen her but rarely over the last years which included high school.  He really had no ties in Chicago.  His relationshlip to Emma dated back to Brown grade school.  At sometime before he began his peripatetic education he began to propose to her.  As he was gone from Chicago all this time it is very difficult to believe that Emma sat home pining.  She must have been dating other boys, however, at the same time she must have been waiting for Burroughs since, at 24, when she married him she was only a couple years from spinsterhood.  She must have been giving her parents some cause for alarm.

     Thus when Burroughs appeared to walk out of her life in 1896 without a word about his intentions one wonders what her response was.  Certainly it was about this time that Frank Martin began to pay his court.  We will learn more of Frank Martin a little later.

     For Burroughs, like so many of us once we were inducted, ERB speedily learned his mistake.  For the men who don’t fit in ‘each fresh move is a fresh mistake.’  He regretted his decision immediately.  For him to think was to act, so from his arrival at Fort Grant he began a petition for discharge.

     As he had been under twenty-one when he joined, he had had to ask his father for his consent.  He now asked him to use his influence to get him out.

     Perhaps we do not have enough information on why he now so desperately wanted out.  In later life this short ten month period of his life would be fraught with great significance in his mind.  Just before he divorced his lovely wife Emma in 1933 ERB took a solo vacation to return to this scene of his young manhood.  That would indicate that Emma and Fort Grant were linked in his mind.

     Two of his Martian novels are associated with the Fort Grant experience.  In his first novel, A Princess Of Mars, John Carter serves in the Army in Arizona, is discharged, then returns as a prospector.  Under attack by Apaches he seeks refuge in a mountain cave in which he leaves his body while his astral projection goes to Mars.  Viewed from one point that’s as neat a description of going insane as I’ve ever come across.

      During his 1933 visit to Arizona, Carter returns to visit a trembling fearful Burroughs in his mountain cabin.  One gets the impression that Burroughs felt like a whipped dog.

     The Apaches made a terrific impression on the young man.  So much so that he could see himself joining them as a Brave as is evidenced by his two Apache novels, The War Chief and Apache Devil.  Then too his two cowboy novels are placed in Arizona rather than in Idaho where one would expect them.

     In his Return Of Tarzan the trip to the Sahara is an obvious reference to Apacheria.  The French government sends Tarzan into the desert rather than the US government sending ERB to Arizona.   In the deseart Tarzan develops a strong liking for the Arabs, much as ERB did for the Apaches.  Tarzan considered becoming a Son Of The Desert just as ERB thought he might become Apache.

     A large part of ERB’s fascination for the military life was based on his respect for Capt. Charles King under whom he had served briefly at the MMA.  King was, I would imagine, a boy’s dream of a dashing Calvalry Officer.  In this wildly romantic period of the Indian Wars, not to mention the proximity of the Civil War, a man who had served at the same time and the same place General Custer must have been held in some awe.  King had also served with and knew Buffalo Bill,  a nonpareil hero of the time and one ERB may have met at the 1893 Columbian Expo.

     Burroughs names two of his characters after Custer.

     On top of all this King was a successful writer of military novels.  He wote an excellent analysis of Custer’s defeat, which is available on ERBzine, as well as a first hand account of the resultant campaign to quell the uprising, Campaigning With Crook.  the latter is a superb recreation of a time and place we’ll never see again.  In just a few words King is able to recreate a Deadwood, South Dakota for which the movies have filmed endless miles of photographs with less result.  His single reference to barbaric cowboys wearing their guns on their hips says more than dozens of Hollywood films.  ERB was also able to capture some of this feeling in his two excellent Western novels as well as his two Apache novels.

     King was prolific writing nearly seventy books in his long career.  I have read only a few, which I find of only of journeyman quality.  King has an emascualted precious style which is reflected in his photographs.  Burroughs enthusiastically said he wrote the best Army novels ever, which may be true, I haven’t come across any other novels of Army life.  among his many novels of Army life are three that deal with the Pullman strike when the Seventh was stationed at Fort Sheridan.  One, An Apache Princess written in 1903 might possibly have been an influence on A Princess Of Mars.

     At any rate King glorifies the officer’s life.  He fooled a young green ERB.  In any event ERB failed to notice the haughty distinctions King drew between the relative status of the officers and the enlisted men.  King had all the prejudices of the officer class seeing the enlisted man as a subhuman species.  Knowing this, as Burroughs should have, I am baffled by his enlisting.

     Perhaps as at the MMA he thought that one entered as a buck private working up to officer rapidly as he had at the MMA.  If so he must have had a very rude awakening.  It couldn’t have taken him long to realize that advancing through the ranks was rare while at the same time a long process for such an impatient lad as he.

     While he was cleaning those stalls he must have had plenty of time to think out his dilemma.  As he thought back over his past actions it must have occurred to him that perhaps he erred in walking out on Colonel Rogers the previous May.  Accordingly on December 2 of 1896 he sent a letter back to Rogers of which the reply is extant.  We don’t know what ERB said but I imagine he was feeling Rogers out to see if he couldn’t get him an officer’s appointment.  Rogers reply was, of course, polite but cool and distant firmly placing Burroughs as oneof the rest of Rogers’ students.  Yuh.  ERB should have thought twice about abandoning his post.

     The many, many references to this period of his life point to a great regret later in life that he had left it.  He associated this regret with Emma.  Perhaps the visit of the officer, John Carter, to him in his lonely cabin in the White Mountains of Arizona represents his lost career as an Army officer but was one of the reasons for his wanting to get back to Chicago that he hadn’t dealt with his relationship with Emma?  Did he now learn that in his absence someone else was playing his old love song to Emma?  Someone who Papa Alvin Hulbert much preferred to ERB?

     It would be interesting to  know what Emma thought when her beau just up and removed himself to Arizona.  Perhaps perplexed but still hopeful she sent him her picture on his birthday in September.  Remember me, perhaps?

     Unhappy with his life at ‘the worst post in the Army’, how one’s attitude changes when one’s dreams are realized, he petitioned his father to use his influence to return him to civilian life.

     Surprisingly his father was easily able to do this.  By March of 1897 ERB had his discharge papers in his hand.  He was a free man again.  How many tens of thousands of us would have appreciated such an easy resolution to the problem.

2.

     Our Man still didn’t have a plan.  What we he going to do with his life?  Apparently Colonel Rogers’ reply to his letter didn’t apprise him of the facts of life.  Nor did he seem to realize that once you reject the military the Army has no use for you.  At the time, the US Army was very small, perhaps seventy-five thousand men.  The officer corps was about ten per cent or seventy-five hundred men.  This is virtually a club.  The officers would have known each other personally, by name or by reputation. The same was more or less true of the enlisted men.

     Thus Porges records a letter ERB received in 1936 from one W.L. Burroughs of Charlotte, N.C. who probes:

     This morning an old army sergeant whom I soldiered with back in the nineties dropped in my office and our conversation started at Fort Sheridan, ILl. when the 7th US Cavalry and the 15th U.W. Infantry left that post for Arizona and New Mexico.  He asked me if I remembered Edgar Rice Burroughs of  Troop ‘B’ Seventh Cavalry, said he was discharged during the summer of 1896 at Fort Grant, Arizona account of a ‘Tobacca heart’…will be delighted to know for certain that we soldiered with so distinguished a person back in the nineties.

     Whether true or not these men remembered ERB as a malingerer who obtained a fraudulent discharge.  I interpet ‘Tobacco heart’  to be a feigned ailment which would make ‘so distinguished a person’ a sarcastic and insulting remark.  If W.L. Burroughs is correct then ERB got himself out by reasonable discreditable means rather than through the efforts of his father.   Thus forty years on an Army reputation followed ERB.

     Burroughs replied cooly a few days later ‘…seldom have been in touch with any of the men I soldiered with since I left Fort Grant.’  ERB didn’t say ‘AND GOODBYE.’ but I think that is implied.

     So having committed blunder after blunder it would have been wise for Our Man to reevaluate his position.  Strangely he didn’t do this, hoping against hope, as I imagine to pull that particualr rabbit out of the hat over the next few years.  Good luck, Edgar Rice Burroughs.

3.

     For now he could only think of returning to Chicago.  As we know the Burroughs Boys were ranching up in Idaho.  ERB always wanted to prove that he was a businessman.  Why, I don’t know.  The fact of the matter seems to be that the Burroughs family was particularly inept at business.  Papa George T. had been burned out of his distillery while his battery business was steadily running down, due for extermination about a decade later.

     The Boys would turn to dredging for gold after failing at ranching.  Perhaps one of the reasons they failed at ranching was just this operation coming up.  They had bought a Mexican herd, apparently sight unseen.  They were then in Nogales to receive and transship the herd to KC.  I suspect they lost their shirt.  In less than two years they would be gold dredging.

     The world is full of sharpers.  Out West so many salted gold mines were sold to greenhorns that it doesn’t bear telling.  Frank Harris, the British magazine editor in his autobiography has a great story about how he and his outfit lifted a Mexican herd driving it back across the Rio Grande.  I have no doubt that some Mexican sharpers took advantage of the Burroughs Boys.  They would later buy a salted gold claim.

     The herd ERB put on board the train he describes as no bigger than jackrabbits while probably being less well fed.  The death rate of the cows on the trip back to KC was horrendous, while the survivors became starved and dehydrated.  I don’t think the Burroughs Boys did well on that transaction.  You gotta watch your back or, hopefully, see ’em coming.

4.

     Edgar Rice Burroughs came home.  Perhaps he had now reached childhood’s end.  At twenty-one perhaps he now realized that he had a life to lead.  Perhaps.  If so, it was slow dawning.  But then ERB’s was not an ordinary mind, a normal bean as he would have put it.  No, his was a slow ripening melon.  But then, why should everyone develop at the same pace?  If up to this point I seem to have been overly critical of Our Young Man it’s because there has been much to be critical of;  just as there will be more, but he hasn’t done anything really reprehensible.  Your record may not be much better; mine certainly wasn’t.  He’s a good sort of guy; just a little on the goofy side.  Slow to learn.  He doesn’t seem to catch on.

     However he’s watching.  He’s observing.  He’s ingesting and there out of sight he’s digesting all the information coming in.  Plus, he will give it a brilliant interpretation when he egests it.

     These four years would be of great use to him in his writing career.  Always a subtle psychologist ERB was also a skillful employer of the Freudian concepts of condensation, displacement and sublimation and this before he could have read Freud.  An attentive reading of any of his novels always reveals layers of hidden meaning.  Simply put Edgar Rice Burroughs is the most poetic of novelists.

     His poetic tastes weren’t always elevated.  He did have a copy or two of Eddie Guest in his library.  Edgar A. Guest.  Perhaps forgotten today Guest was a people’s poet.  In the 1950s when I spread out the Detroit Free Press on the floor one of the first things I read was the daily poem of Edgar Guest.  Of course, I thought he had written each one the night before.  I marveled at his facility.  Nice homey thoughts though.

     Burroughs tastes ran to the likes of Rudyard Kipling, H.H. Knibbs, Robert W. Service and others of the jingly-jangly people’s school.  Although he did know enough about a high brow like Robert Browning to consider him a bore.  Rightly from my point of view.  He liked Tennyson, who was considered a high brow, also I suspect Walter Scott, Shelley and Byron.  He frequently hints at Longfellow’s ‘Wreck Of The Hesperus’ while he probably had to read Hiawatha in school

     He knows all the popular stuff of the day like ‘Over The Hill To The Poor House’ too while he had probably read that anthem of doomed labor,  Edward Markham’s Man With The Hoe, too.  If that one didn’t gag him he’s not the man I think he was.

     Song lyrics were big with him too.  On his cross country auto tour he mentions three records by name that his family wore out- of course a battery operated portable played in a field with the plows they called styluses (well, cultured people called them styluses or styli, us near illiterates called them needles) in those days they might have worn out a record in two or three plays.  One song was ‘Are You From Dixie?’, another was ‘Do What Your Mother Did; and the last ‘Hello- Hawaii, How Are Ya?’ I guess he liked songs that asked questions.  I’ll examine the lurics a little farther on down the road but when we’re considering the literary influences don’t forget the poetry.  After all ERB wrote a whole book around the lyrics of H.H. Knibbs ‘Out There Somewhere.’

     Just before he returned to Chicago one of the great newspaper literary lights and poets of Chicago Eugene Field had died- 1895.  Burroughs had a collection of Field’s writings in his library while Field, when alive, hung out at the McClurg’s book store.  Perhaps there were sentimental reasons for Burroughs pursuing McClurg’s so ardently as well as practical ones.

     Another Chicago writer among ERB’s collection of books who was reaching an apex at this time was George Ade.  While these Chicago stalwarts are mostly forgotten now they were considered immortal at the time.  Ade especially is a very clever writer with a real skill at turning a phrase.  His  ‘Fables In Slang’ would have knocked ERB flat.  ERB’s own interest in the colloquial, which is very pronounced, may have been influenced by Ade’s style.

     Another columnist of the period, Peter Finley Dunne, with his Irish dialect stuff written around his character Mr. Dooley doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression on ERB.

     Thus while involved in his attempts to correct his mistake of enlisting he was very attentive and observant of the life going on around him in whatever milieu.

     As I mentioned earlier, when you leave for the military your friends edit you out of their lives.  Returning is not so easy.  Even when I returned on leave, actually almost ten months after I left, people demanded almost belligerently, ‘What are you doing here? I thought you joined the Navy.’  After explaining I was on leave, nearly asking permission to hang around for a couple weeks, I was grudgingly given permission but let it be known that if I wasn’t gone I would have some explaining to do.

     ERB has left a record of his reception by his friends in Chicago.   He had sixteen years to let it run around his mind before he wrote it down.  It came out in Return Of Tarzan which, I imagine might be read as the Return Of Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Actually as Havelock Ellis hints in the opening quote, both Tarzan Of The Apes and The Return Of Tarzan can be read as autobiographical sketches from birth to the marriage with Emma in 1900.

     Burroughs describes his reception in Chapter 23 of the The Return.  The jungle is a Burroughsian symbol for society as in ‘It’s a jungle out there.’  Tarzan in the jungle can be read as ERB in Chicago.  Tarzan is resting in the crotch of a great limb of a jungle giant when he hears a troop of apes approaching the clearing beneath the tree.  The tree is a symbol of security or getting out of or above the tumult.  Trees probably correspond to his imagination.

     Tarzan recognized the troop as his old band of which he is still nominally king.  Having been gone for two years he rightly thinks the dull brutes will have trouble remembering him: 

      ‘From the talk which he overheard he learned that they had come to choose a new king- their late chief (the successor of Terkoz?) had fallen a hundred feet beneath a broken limb to an untimely end.

     Tarzan walked to the end of an overhanging limb in plain view of them.  The quick  eyes of a female (Emma?) caught sight ofhim first.  With a barking guttural she called the attention of the others.  Several fhuge bulls stood erect to get a better view of the intruder.  With bared fangs and bristling necks they advanced slowly toward him, with deep ominous growls.

     ‘Karnath, I am Tarzan Of The Apes,’ said the ape-man in the nernacular of the tribe.  ‘You remember me.  Together we teased Numa when we were still little apes, throwing sticks and nuts at him form the saftey of high branches.’

     ‘And Magor,’ continued Tarzan, addressing another, ‘do you not recall your former king- he who slew the mighty Kerchak?  Look at me! Am I not the same Tarzan- mighty hunter- invincible fighter- that you knew for many seasons?’

     The apes all crowded orward now, but more in curiosity than threatening.  They muttered among themselves for a few moments.

     ‘What do you want among us now?’  Asked Karnath.

     ‘Only peace.’  answered the ape-man.

     Again the apes conferred.  At leangth Karnath spoke again.

     ‘Come in peace, then, Tarzan Of The Apes.’  He said.

     So Tarzan and ERB returned to the fold.  However there were two young bulls who were not ready to receive Tarzan back.  We will find that two young men resented Burroughs’ return.  The resentment of the principal young man would nearly cost Burroughs his life while forcing him to commit to a marriage against his will.

     Thus Burroughs was received back into Chicago.

5.

     He would spend about ten months before he uprooted himself once again to make his second visit to his brothers in Idaho.  I should think that this period in Chicago was perhaps the most idyllic of his life.  He found gainful employment with his father at the Battery Company.  However at fifteen dollars a week it was much less than his allowance had been at the MMA.  However he was living and eating at home so one imagines it was all pocket cash which afforded a certain limited affluence.  He could afford to take Emma out.

     Emma appears to have preferred him but he was no favorite of Papa Alvin and the Mrs.  If Frank Martin had begun to pay his court he was much the preferred suitor.  The son of Col. A.N. Martin who was a millionaire railroad man he was to be much preferred to a penniless Ed Burroughs whose father had apostacized to William Jennings Bryan in the election of 1896.  No, Martin should be given the inside track.  Burroughs was forbidden the house in an attempt to disrupt his relationship with Emma.

     The Hulberts looked askance at Burroughs patchy history.  He was less than promising.  While his father had gotten him released from his enlistment, people are wont to say there’s more to that story than meets the eye.  Plenty of room for rumor, if you know what I mean.  ERB probably had to explain a lot.

     So while he could date Emma he couldn’t go hang around all evening every evening as lovers are wont to do.

     So what did ERB do with his spare time.  He obviously read.  H.Rider Haggard was popping them out two or three a year at the time which is clear from the evidence ERB read.  Jules Verne was alive and producing although much of his production remained untranslated.

     There weren’t any movies or television, however there was the Levee, Chicago’s Sin City.  In later novels ERB would show what appears to be first hand rather detailed knowledge of this area of brothels, saloons and gambling joints.  Burroughs was certainly no stranger to drinking and gambling, whether he frequented brothels may not be known but, if you’re in the area….

      In a city of a million six there were only about forty thousand library cards issued but it is probable that one of them was in the wallet of our investigator of curious and unusual phenomena.  He sure knew a lot of odd details.  One of the big intellectual questions is whether or not he knew of Theosophy.  A volume of William Q. Judge, a leading  Theosophist who died in 1896, is to be found among Burroughs’ books.  His first story Minidoka 937th Earl of One Mile which is concerned with this period while unpublished until just recently makes mention in the descent to Nevaeh of the Seven Worlds which is a reference to either Theosophy, Dante or both.

      Again, hanging around a library one might come across volumes of Dante and Theosophy.  Shoot, Tarzan spent his afternoons in the Paris library becoming discouraged by the surfeit of knowledge to be covered.

     And all around him floods of changes were rolling over him.  The world was moving with breathtaking rapidity.  If a guy wasn’t half crazy already trying to keep up would get him the rest of the way.  Actually these four years were the intellectual bottom, in the musical sense, of the rest of Burroughs; life.  perhaps sensory overload occured culminating with his bashing in Toronto and subsequent marriage to Emma so that he was no longer open to new experiences afater his marriage.  Everything after 1900 was interpreted in the light of this experience.  the interpretations were inventive enough.

     His situation might be compared to that of Zeus and Metis of Greek mythology.  Ordinarily when the Patriarchy took over a Matriarchal cult the event was comemorated in a myth of sexual union.

     In the case of Metis, a Goddess of wisdom, she went down into the belly of the monster like a plate of oysters perhaps meaning the Patriarchy had attempted to stamp the Metis cult flat or eat it up as the Zulus would say.  If so Zeus and the boys had bitten off more than they could chew or digest, as it were.

     Metis lived on in his belly giving him unwanted advice until I would imagine the Patriarchy came up with a compromise solution.  Thus Metis gave birth to Athene who was born fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, which is to say that the cult of Metis was transformed into the cult of Athene.  Athene retained all the attributres of the goddess of Matriarchy but ‘she was all for the Patriarchy.’

     So now with Burroughs; he ingested all this experience which he gave a ‘definite impression of fictionalizing’ to appear full blown from his forehead +- twenty years later.

     Porges reproduces a political cartoon of Young Burroughs on page 68 of the First Edition in which Uncle Sam and John Bull are watching a scene.  One or the other says:  ‘How would you like to be a Russian?’

     In the cartoon Russian soldiers are shooting and bayonetting obvious Jews while the Jews are bombing the Russians.  The villains of the first four Tarzan novels, ‘The Russian Quartet; are two Russians Nikolas Rokoff and Paulevitch.  Thus, if the cartoon was drawn in this period, twenty years later the Russians show up as villains.

     Now, among all the ‘minor’ events like the depression after 1893, the Pullman Strike, Coxey’s Army, Altgeld’s pardoning of the Haymarket bombers, the Sino-Japanese war and such like trivia was the infamous Dreyfus Affair in France.

     This minor event involving a Judaeo-French spy was magnified into an international cause celebre by accusations of anti-Semitism.  Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish French army officer who was accused of spying for the Germans or of selling information to them.  Originally convicted and sent to Devil’s Island, a few year later after key evidence was tainted or disappeared and key witnesses had died or been discredited the case was reopened and after a terrific media blitz resulting in Zola’s article with the famous title: J’ Accuse, Dreyfus was acquitted.

     The man convicted in his place, strangely enough, was probably also Jewish, one Walsin Esterhazy.  Supposedly of Hungarian descent, at the instance of the chief Rabbi of Paris he was given financial assistance by the Rothschild family.  It would be very unusual in that case if he weren’t Jewish.

     Burroughs must have followed the Affair Dreyfus closely as it unfolded during the lat nineties.  In 1913’s Return Of Tarzan he chose to fictionalize Esterhazy’s end of the Affair in the character of Gernois.  Burroughs must have studied the Affair because Esterhazy actually served in North Africa where he came in contact with German agents.  Of course, Gernois is compromised by our old friend Nilolas Rokoff, the Russian agent.  Thus ERB combines his dislike of the Russians as eveidenced by his cartoon with sympathy for Dreyfus.

     In real life Esterhazy led a dissipated life which, it is said, led him to be a spy.  In ‘Return’ Gernois is led into syping because Rokoff, the hyper-arch villain had something on him.

     In a sort of editorial comment on Dreyfus ERB has Rokoff tell Gernois:  ‘If you are not agreeable I shall send a note to your commandant tonight that will end in the degradation Dreyfus suffered– the only difference being that he did not deserve it.’

     Thus ERB comes down firmly on the side of Dreyfus.

      For those who will misread racial and ethnic attitudes I believe ERB’s attitude in the Jewish-Russian conflict and the Dreyfus Affair should exonerate him, if the need exists, of any charges of anti-Semitism.  Especially in the light of his portrayal of the worthy Jewish gentleman in ‘The Moon Maid’ trilogy.  It would seem that all of ERB’s later attitudes remain consistent with these brought to fruition between 1896 and 1900. 

Continue on to Part II

 

Flaming Ed Burroughs After The Divorce

by

R.E. Prindle

                                                                                                               WILD THING…

                                                                                                                                                …you make my heart sing!

                                                                                                               WILD THING…

                                                                                                                                                …you make everything…

gro-o-o-o-o-veh!

–Chip Taylor

 

     Somebody once said:  The devil is in the details and so he is.  Too many times we fly right over signficant facts without noticing their import, how they fit into the big picture.

     Such is the case with the little Tarzan Jr story that Burroughs wrote in 1937 in a limited edition of…one.  One copy?  Yup!  It was a special order.  Today the copy is located at the Chicago Museum Of Science And Industry in the Colleen Moore Fairy Castle exhibit.  Who is Colleen Moore and what did she have to do with ERB?  That’s what I asked.  Turns out that she is not an insignificant person in the history of the twenties.  No, no, she was a a somebody, at least to the extent that she earned 12,500 dollars a week in the films.

 

The Flaming Girl- Colleen Moore

    Yes, she was an actress.  She was the woman who invented the image of the twenties woman- the Flapper.  The Flapper knocked Emma, an example of the Gibson Girl, out of the box just as the Gibson Girl had knocked Tennyson’s Elaine out.  The Flapper knocked Emma right out of ERB’s imagination.  Seems that Colleen was selected for the lead in the movie Flaming Youth.  This was a big one.

      The movie was based on Samuel Hopkins Adams novel of the same name written under the pseudonym of Warner Fabian.  Although apparently epochal no copy of the movie has survived.  Those racy scenes have disappeared forever.  Miss Moore may be compared to Brooke Shields of the The Blue Lagoon of our day for impact.  The tone of Flaming Youth may be learned from this quote from the novel:  ‘They’re all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; mayby more than the boys.’  Alright, man!  That’s pretty good pulp style.

      Miss Moore said she chose to play the part as a comedienne.  She bobbed her hair, shortened her skirts and wore unbuckled galoshes that flapped as she walked, hence the term ‘flapper.’  Carefree, and careless and with the image of -easy.  Flaming Youth eager for a roll and tumble.  A thrill seeker at whatever cost.  A role model dropped into the slot from eternity.

     Perhaps Ed Burroughs sat through the 1923 movie two or three times muttering ‘yeah, yeah, that’s a what I want.’  Emma wasn’t quite that way, being a full figured woman with plenty of embonpoint, although reading inferences from pictures she may have tried a bob and weave in an effort to hold on to her man.  There is a photo of Emma which caught my eye because she is so dfferent.  She is leaning over the garden fence of ERB’s latest cottage, one of his umpteenth movies, with bobbed hair and a pleasantly flirtatious look on her face.  ‘Hm, bobbed hair.’  I thought.  ‘That’s different for Emma.’

     By that time ERB had been flirting on the sly with Florence Gilbert, for a little while.  I suspect Emma knew.  She got her hair cut anyway.

     ERB first met Florence in early 1927.  Maybe he was still under the spell of Flaming Youth but something obviously clicked.  A clandestine relationship was begun which would culminate in ERB divorcing Emma in 1934.  He married Florence Gilbert shortly thereafter.  I would have waited a bit myself.  I’m not so impetuous.  More of the cautious type.

     The in 1937 he received a request from the Flaming Girl herself.  Must have made his blood race.  Maybe he and Florence should have waited.  Having  jumped ship once the second time gets easier.  ERB, whether he knew it or not, had now gone Hollywood.  He’d even checked into the Garden Of Allah, a hotel roues favored down on Hollywood Blvd., gone now, in between Emma and Florence.

     If ERB kept all his correspondence as he is said to have done Danton Burroughs should have a Colleen Moore file in the archives.  It would be interesting to open it to see what was up.

     Miss Moore had begun building a Fairy Castle miniature doll house back in the twenties.  She now asked ERB for a miniature book for her miniature library in her miniaturecastle.   ERB complied, composing a suggestive little story which contains enough off color references to make one think he was trying to seduce the exemplar of Flaming Youth.  Born in 1902, Miss Moore was 35 at the time, a most delectable age for a woman.

     A quick review of the pictures of the book can be found on the ERBzine at www.erbzine.com/mag0/0042.html .   I copy the text below.

Edgar Rice Burroughs- Author of Tarzan

Tarzan, Jr.

by

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Illustrated y J.C.B. & E.R.B.

Chapter 1

     The little princess was walking in the garden when a bad thought sneaked up behind her and whispered in her ear, ‘Go into the forbidden forest.’  Hi! Lee! Hi! Lo!  Oh, No!  Oh, No! yodeled the little princess, my mamma said I mustn’t go into the forbidden forest and papa said she ought to know.’

      ‘But, but’  butted the bad thought, ‘Everything that you shouldn’t do, everything you mustn’t do, are in the forbidden forest, and they include about everything it’s fun doing.  Think what a good time you could have.’

     So the little princess put a nutty hamburger in a shoe box for her lunch, vaulted over the garden wall and went into the forbidden forest.

Chapter 2

     The little princess had not gone far into the dark and gloomy wood when she met Histah the snake.

     ‘Have an apple,’ invited Histah.  ‘What for?’ asked the little princess.  ‘It will keep the doctor away,’ replied Histah, pulling on his long black mustache.  ‘But if I eat it, I may need a doctor’ countered the little princess with her left.  ‘Ah, ha!  Foiled again.’ hissed Histah.  ‘Not so fast,’ cried the little princess.  ‘Gimme that apple,’ for the bad thought had whispered in her ear.

Chapter 3

     The little princess was about to eat the apple when Tantor the elephant barged up and took it away from her.  Beat it!’ he trumpeted at Histah.  Then he ate the apple himself.  ‘What have you in the shoe box?’ he asked.

     ‘A nutty hamburger,’ replied the little princess.  ‘Mercy me!’ swore Tantor.  ‘What’s the matter with it? – Dementia Praecox?’  No, just plain nutty,’  replied the little princess.

     ‘Well, you never can tell when it might develop a homicidal mania,’  said Tantor.  ‘Give it to me.’  So he took the nutty hamburger and ate that too.  Then he went away from there to the land of ptomaine.

Chapter 4

     The little princess was very hungry; so she went deeper into the dark, damp wood looking for another snake with an apple.  But she didn’t see Numa the lion stalking her.  Numa, too, was very hungry; and as there are not many callories (sic) in stalks, he planned on eating the little princess.  With a terriric roar he leaped for her.  The little princess turned, horror stricken; when, to her amazement, she saw a bronzed giant, naked but for a G string, leap from an overhanging branch full upon the tawny back of the carnivore.  It was Tarzan Jr.!

     Once, twice, thrice his gleaming blade sunk deep into the side of the great cat; and as Numa sank lifeless to the mottled sward, the Lord of the Jungle placed a foot upon the carcass of his kill, raised his face to the heavens and voiced the victory cry of the bull ape.

Chapter 5

     The little princess was still hungrey.  ‘Let’s eat the Lion,’  she said, unless you happen to have an apple in your pocket.’

     ‘I haven’t a pocket,’  admitted Tarzan Jr.

     ‘All right then’ said the little princess, ‘Let’s skip it.’

     So Tarzan Jr. uncoiled his rope and they skipped and skipped and skipped and skipped and skipped; and then they got married and lived happily for-ever after- and that is what the little princess got for disobeying her mamma and going into the forbidden forest.

End.

     It’s not hard to see what the sly old ERB was angling at.  the dark damp forest is, of course, the symbol for unbridled desires toward which the princess is prompted by a ‘bad thought.’  She was naughty but nice.  The apple is a symbol for sexual intercourse while the snake with the apple was when Adam and Eve realized they were naked hence discovering la difference.

     It will be remembered that the only exhibit at the Expo of ’93 ERB ever mentioned in his stories was the Concourse of Beauty 40 Beautiful Girls 40.  On his cross country trip of ’16 one of the records athe family wore out was ‘Do What Your Mother Did.’  An early Work With Me Annie.  Here the song lyrics are rendered into:  My mamma siad I mustn’t go into the forbidden forest and papa said she ought to know.

     Which leads to a denouement which comes as no surprise.  ‘Unless you’ve got an apple in your pocket.’  The princess says obviously pointing to the bulge in Junior’s G string.  Reminds you of Mae West’s quip:  Is that a roll of nickels in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

     Junior was glad to see the princess so he reached under his loincloth and uncoiled his rope.  Rope is a symbol for…well, he said coyly, it’s a symbol.  And then the two new sweethearts did a lot skipping up and down which is to say they conjugated that verb.

     I would interpret the nutty hamburger to mean ERB was sensitive about being considered a dumbkopf fantasy wirter so he wanted to display a little learning, thus he jokes his way through nutty>dementia praecox>homicidal mania.  For those who insist that ERB was just a simple writer from the gut I again point out that time after time the Man shows an active interest in psychological matters.  He just didn’t boast about it, that’s all.  When you do you depreciate the entertainment value to nil.

     The little story quite cleary is intended to convey the message:  I’m ready if you’re willing.  Flamin’ Ed Burroughs was ready tgo swing and he didn’t mean through the trees this time.  Was marriage an issue?  Well, Junior and the princess married and lived happily ever after.

     Once again I say there should be some correspondence in the archives that might throw some light on this issue which is probably much more complex than it looks at first glance.

     As 1937 began the titillating star of Flaming Youth who had also starred in Naughty But Nice  and other woo-woo flapper epics was between marriages.  Her last movie The Scarlet Letter-  A for Adultery of 1934 had indeed been her last.  Having no longer a career in Hollywood she had retreated to Chicago.

     Her Fairy Castle which had been nearly ten years in the making was finished in 1935.  At that time she took it on the road to raise money for deprived children which she did successfully.  She later would write a book on investing.

     The Castle was complete with its own miniature library so the request to ERB was either an afterthought or the proverbial request for a cup of sugar and he poured on rather thick.

     Perhaps the marriage of Florence and ERB might have ended right there as ERB ran after the even more attractive Flaming Girl of his dreams.  It would be nice if Danton found that correspondence.

     Whatever Colleen Moore’s intent was or whether ERB ever consummated his burning desire may be forever obscured from our sight.  In any event later in 1937 Miss Moore married a Chicago businessman thus closing the door she had left ajar.  After panting up that flight of steps on his hands ERB was blasted.

     As the little book was intended only for the eyes of Colleen Moore the only two things we can be sure of is that she requested the little volume which she was willing to receivew and that ERB was ready to provide a very seductive one.

     In 1937 ERB had come a long way from the righteousness of 1922’s The Girl From Hollywood.  Now he was Hollywood panting after them.

 

Tales Of Space And Time:

Love, Lust And Edgar Rice Burroughs

A Short Story

by

R.E. Prindle

The Image Of Flaming Youth- Colleen Moore

     As they say in Hollywood, this is based on a true story.  Only the facts have been changed to make a better story.  Just as in Hollywood the tale is wholly fiction.  Well, not wholly, there is one true fact included.  I’ll highlight it at the appropriate time.  I have used real names and places so as to cast an aura of truthfulness about a  story that never happened.  No matter,  just as in the movies you won’t be able to tell the difference.  Fact and fiction blend.  It’s just like your memory.

     Perhaps the time is March of 1934 when a now has been actress who had once, in the days when acting really counted in silent movies, been at the top of her craft earning 12,500 smackaroonies a week.  Not small change in those pre inflationary days.

     Sound and the depression had changed all that, plus advancing maturity.  She was no longer in demand.  After her last, The Scarlet Letter the studio head had nearly thrown her torn up contract in her face.  As unpleasnt as that may be life contains such humiliating moments.  Still as Hank Williams song says:

My hair is still curly,

My eyes are still blue,

Why don’t you love me

Like you used to do?

     Love is like that, fleeting.  Box office.  Demand.  Transient things like that.

     Angry at the treatment and now having no future in the film capitol and the hearts of the multitude, with a stamp of her pretty little foot she turned her back on Tinseltown, if not her fans, returning to home town Chicago.

     There she was fondly remembered and even lionized.  She had been the original flapper girl, Colleen Moore, who had created the type for her starring role in 1923’s Flaming Youth.  Twenty-one at the time her success had been exhilarating but she was a tough minded practical young woman; she hadn’t let it go to her head unduly.  She she thought, she had gotten to the top at an age when others were still gazing at the distant snowy crests; she was on top and she would do what she had to do to stay there.

     In creating the role of the Flapper in Flaming Youth she had created a new woman displacing the former ideal of the Gibson Girl.  She had bobbed her hair, raised the hemlines of her skirts, given voice to a careless, carefree, thrill seeking easy party girl who liked to go skinny dipping.  True she was following the script but she had been the archetype of a newer sleazier morality.

     Quickly typecast in the new role her whole career had evolved into the naughty but nice type of girl.  She was the image of the girl who would go all the way.  It had been a burden to bear.  She had quickly retreated into unreality.  Using her new found wealth she had begun building a very expensive doll house which she called the Fairy Castle.  Five hundred thousand dollars worth of Fairy Castle.

Colleen was not as carefree and careless as the image she had projected.  She was a hardnosed investor who turned her own money green.  The five hundred thousand dollar doll house hadn’t actually been made with her own hands  but for her.  She employed experts to design and construct it.  Even as she was paying for it she was providing against an uncertain future.  The house was modular with each room having its own separate container for easy transport.  The Fairy Castle could be broken down and reassembled with ease.

     And now as 1936 approached, just imagine the ’34 and ’35 flipping off the calendar and floating away across the screen, the reason became evident.  No longer a star but still craving the limelight Miss Moore announced that she would take the Fairy Castle on the road to raise money for needy children.  This was the Depression.  There was a sure fire attention getter; she knew how to appear concerned for the young after having been responsible for corrupting flaming youth.

     Over the next couple years she was very successful.  The Castle would eventually raise over six hundred thousand dollars which in today’s equivalents would be several tens of millions.  How much of it actually got to underprivileged kids wasn’t carefully recorded.

     If she wasn’t quite as in the spotlight as in Hollywood, which place she still preferred to drab Chicago which  for personal reasons she couldn’t leave, she didn’t go unnoticed.

     On this occasion in mid-1936 she was gathered with the lights of Chicago for the reception of a rare book collection donated to the Newberry Library by one Mr. Frank Martin.  In truth Mr. Martin would have given much more than a few old books to meet the Flaming Girl but this was unnecessary.  As a reward for the books at his request he had been seated beside Colleen.  He’d been a handsome rogue, you can accentuate the rogue, in his youth and now although almost seventy he still retained refreshing youthful features, full bodied but not stout, a head of glistening silver hair and no paunch, altogether a prepossessing figure of a man.  Much better preserved than Edgar Rice Burroughs as he would comment to his mirror.

     A dissipated life hadn’t hurt him any.  It was true that Miss Moore was half his age but I think I mentioned earlier that Miss Moore was a practical woman; Frank Martin was rich, while at seventy he couldn’t live forever.  After him there was room for one more.

     On the other hand Colleen liked older men.  She herself was Irish, knowing a great many Irish proverbs, which are the most amusing kind, she had selected as her favorite:  ‘It is better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.’  Alas, in her first two marriages she had erred in this dictum much to her regret.  Life, being a little forgiving in this instance, was giving her another chance.

     She waited for Mr. Martin to be seated and then made her grand entrance.  Never truly beautiful, what nature had denied art had supplied.  She passed for beautiful in any man’s eye although the camera would have been less forgiving.  As she approached Mr. Martin an electric spark worthy of a Tesla experiment flew between each as each realized their desires were to be met unless things went terribly wrong which I assure you they didn’t.

     Frank raised his imposing 6’3″ frame from his chair with a grace that was warmly received by Colleen.  They were nearly fast friends before their derrieres touched bottom.

     ‘I can’t tell you how much I admire your efforts for those poor children, Colleen.  May I call you Colleen?’  This was a few years back when manners were different.

    ‘You may call me Darling if I can call you Frank, dear.’  She replied sweetly in her most flaming manner.

     ‘By all means Darling.’  Frank smiled back realizing he was in like Flynn before even Flynn discovered the way in.  ‘Colleen, that’s a grand old Irish name.’

     ‘I am an Irish girl, but Frank, I’ve heard so much about you.’  Colleen ventured, who had, indeed, wasted no time in catching up on the gossip of the last thirty years or so.  As an old roue Frank had left more than a paper trail in the memories of many.  But, that’s gossip, on with the story.

     ‘Thank you Colleen.’  Already Martin who was also Irish had discovered a new love for the grand old name of Colleen.  He put that emphasis on the pronunciation that Miss Moore blushed with pleasure.  ‘We’ve certainly heard here of your wonderful success in the cinema.’  He used the word cinema to raise the cultural value of Miss Moore’s contribution to the developing world capitol of porn.  then he compulusively blurted out:  ‘Did you know my old friend Eddie Burroughs out there?’

     ‘Do you mean Edgar Rice Burroughs?  No, I’ve never met him but I’ve heard his antics discussed a few times.’

     Antics struck the right note with Martin.

     ‘What antics are you talking about?’  Martin followed up, eager for dirt.

     ‘Well, you know he bought the Otis estate?  Apparently he bit off more than he could chew because no sooner had he bought it than he tried to turn it into a movie location for the studios.  Said he wanted to be a businessman.  He was raising pigs, cows, sheep, whatever, in what we thought was a madcap attempt to salvage the place.  Then, of all things, he developed a golf course and something called the Caballero Country Club.  I guess he thought we would all rush to join, and that after he defamed us all with that horrid book he wrote called ‘The Girl From Hollywood.’  What a time we had to get the publisher from continuing to print that.  I was sure he was talking about me.

      Next, this was really incomprehensible, he decided to start some Bohemian Free Love community.  He sold lots and advertised for people who were like minded to him who minded their own business and lived and let live.  You know what that’s a code for and this after writing his horrible Hollywood story condemning the rest of us for practically the same thing.’

     ‘Yes, Ed always was eccentric although he had charm for some people.  Fell a little flat with me.  You never could tell what he was going to do next.  First he was here and then he was there and then he was back again.  Wouldn’t stay home and wouldn’t stay away although we all wished he would.’

     Martin’s eyes set on a scene of the distant past as his brow lowered and lower lip quivered in bitter remembrance.

     Colleen had heard many of the rumors and stories concerning Burroughs.  Martin and Emma Hulbert from 1896 to 1910 and beyond and especially the famous murder attempt in Toronto.  It appeared the gates were open in Martin’s mind.  Without trying to disturb his thought processes Colleen gently insinuated:  ‘Yes, I understand you and he were rivals for the same woman.’

      Martin wasn’t that far gone.  He looked at her sharply but then as he had already conceived in his mind the notion that he was going to marry this woman he thought it perhaps best to get the story of Emma out in the open.  Thus, wheareas he had been before truly speaking from the soul he now feigned the same expression crafting his evidence for his object.

     ‘The man, it hurts me to call him a man, had no use for Emma but as an adornment to his ego.  He had no intention of marrying her he just wanted the comfort of knowing that she was there waiting for him, she was true blue all wool and a yard wide  too.  I was already thirty, hadn’t been married yet, and she, at my age then,’  he wanted to leave a path open to Colleen, ‘seemed an ideal choice.  She was the perfection of the Gibson image, not like…’  Here Frank was about to make a derogatory reference to the Flapper but caught himself in time. ‘…the pale bloodless Elaine of Tennyson.  Quite a wonderful girl really.  You must have heard that Ed divorced Emma for a tramp half his age.  Disgusting.’

     Colleen was half Frank’s age but both seemed oblivious to the incongruity.

     ‘Yes.  There was a lot of merriment over that one in Hollywood.  Dearholt brought home his mistress to live with he and Flo.  Of course Flo would have nothing to do with it.  She already had her net around Burroughs so I don’t see why she ca…’    Here Colleen had to catch herself from seeming too liberal in sexual matters.  Chicago was no LA and while the same sexual misdoings might have gone on there they were spoken of in a different way.  ‘…red whether he had a mistress or not.  Naturally she wouldn’t have wanted a menage a trois.  But wasn’t there something about Burroughs being almost killed in a barroom fight?’

     ‘Oh, you mean Toronto.  What a trip that was.  The Colonel had business in New York so he was taking the car out of the yards for the trip anyway so I asked Burroughs if he wanted to tag along.’

     ‘I hadn’t heard you were that close friends at the time.  I mean, Emma…did he go along with a rival?’  Of course Colleen knew the whole story but led Martin on to hear him  tell it.

     ‘Did he?  He jumped at it.  ‘That’s what I mean, what was Emma to him?  He didn’t even consider her feelings.  And then he was disgustingly drunk from the moment he stepped in the car.  Drank nonstop from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night.  We almost threw him off in Cleveland.’

      Characterization is the thing.  It should be clear that Martin is exaggerating for effect while the truth was Burroughs himself drank

Edgar Rice Burroughs- Author Of Tarzan

only because everyone else was as was the order of the day.  The booze was provided courtesy of the Martins and pushed on Burroughs.  A careful selection of facts produces the desired effect.

     ‘Then by the time we got to Toronto all the sot wanted to do was to go to their version of the Levee looking for whores.  Far a guy who seemed pretty well acquainted with the sleazy side of life he hadn’t learned to keep his mouth shut.  He antagonized a couple degenerate brutes and before Patchin and I could make a move one of them flashed a sap that would have crushed Ed’s skull if I hadn’t grabbed the slugger’s arm deflecting the blow.  Had to run him down to the hospital to get him sewed up.  Bloody mess he was; served him right too.’

     ‘Who was Patchin?’

     ‘Dick Patchin.  He came along too.’

     ‘Patchin.  Patchin.  The name doesn’t ring a bell.’

     ‘He wasn’t anybody.  Just a guy I knew so I let him come along.’

     Martin considerably expurgated the story.  In fact Patchin was a go between who knew a number of unsavory characters, being a borderline thug himself.  At Martin’s request he had hired a couple Chicago thugs to travel up to Toronto to meet the party in the Yellow Dog Saloon.  There while Martin and Patchin stood one on either side of Burroughs to identify him words were exchanged followed by the assault with the spring loaded blackjack.

     Martin’s intent had clearly been to murder Burroughs which the blow would have done if Burroughs himself hadn’t been able to get his arm up in time.

     ‘Ed wasn’t anybody then.  Just a bum not much better than the guy who hit him.  You should have seen the excuse for a suit he wore.  No one could have figured he’d become so famous.’  Martin added in self-defense.  ‘Then we came back and before I knew it he and Emma were married.  Cut me out, just like that.’

     ‘And that was that.’  Colleen smiled.   The comment made Martin realize she knew more than he was letting out as why shouldn’t she, the story had been all over Chicago for decades now. 

     ‘I’m not saying I’m not a sore loser.’  Martin sulked.  ‘I gave him hell until he fled Chicago to the wilds of Idaho where he belonged although he took her with him.’

     A passion seemed to seize Martin at this time carrying him along on a flood of reminiscences.

     ‘And then he came back with her again.  the son-of-a-bitch wouldn’t stay away.  Like a bad penny he had to keep turning up.  A kind of madness got me in its grip then.  I couldn’t leave her alone.  Damn, she was true to him.  I couldn’t control myself.  They never had kids you know, so I thought I still had a chance, like maybe she was waiting for me.  They never had kids until after that night.  She was visiting some friends and I just happened by as she was on the way to the streetcar.  I offered her a ride home and she accepted.’  Here what Martin means is he got out of the car forcing her in which as Emma knew him well she allowed rather than embarrassing him by screaming for help.  ‘Then, I don’t know, something took possession of me.  Happens to everyone.   Rather than driving her home as I intended I drove out into the country.  I just wanted to talk to her.  She told me to turn around but I hadn’t said what I had to say yet.  Then she tarted yelling at me and she hit me.  I lost control of the car.  It took the ditch but fortunately we were thrown clear landing in some new plowed furrows.  Neither of us was hurt. Somebody came along and I got us a ride.  I got her home all right.

     I guess she must have convinced Ed but right after that after eight years of marriage they had two kids in a row, I mean right after each other.  That took care of her figure.  After that I didn’t bother her anymore.  I knew he wouldn’t do right by her though.  I’m just surprised it took so long.  Patchin went to see him after the divorce.  The self-centered son-0f-a-bitch was blithe about the whole thing.  After thirty-five years of marriage and three kids he was glad he’d done it, like she had it coming.  He asked Patchin with a sneer and laugh how I was doing.  He was doing OK.  Hah!’

     Colleen put her hand on his meaning to comfort him but coming across cynically:  ‘Hollywood is full of hundreds of the same kind of story.  Life is like that a whole lot, isn’t it?

     With the suspicion of a tear in his eye and a deep wavering sigh Martin actually more than a little embarrassed by his outburst smiled bravely and said:  ‘Well, enough about me.  How about you?  Where did you go to school in Chicago?

     ‘Oh Frank, I wasn’t born in Chicago.  I was born in Port Huron, Michigan, a grim little town I was glad to get out of.  Dad and Mom moved to Florida which I liked a whole lot better.’

     ‘But I thought you were from Chicago?’

     ‘My uncle Walt Howley was the editor of the Examiner who used his influence to get me a screen test with D.W. Griffith when I was fifteen.  The rest is history.  Over the years I’ve come to consider Chicago my second home so when I left Hollywood I came here.’

     And so the evening wore on very agreeably.

     Frank, who was a real candy and flowers man, proved a most charming and romantic suitor.  Just right for the woman whose ideas of romance were reflected by her Fairy Castle.  In the back of his mind Martin obsessed on his old rival Edgar Rice Burroughs.  He had written finished on that particular book but slowly an idea formed in his mind to finish the job he had begun in Toronto.

     To succeed he would have to lure Colleen into using her charms to lure Burroughs back to Chicago.  Prostitute herself after the fashion of a temple priestess.  People always put different names and constructions on their heart’s desires so one evening in September over a candlelit dinner Frank Martin put it to Colleen Moore like this:  Honey…remember when we were kids and we used to set up a chump by having a message sent to him to meet some girl for a hot date then stood and laughed while he waited in vain?’

     Uh huh, Colleen had heard of such things.

     ‘Ed has married this young woman who isn’t half what you are.  When Patchin was in LA to talk to him he said that Ed just raved about the Colleen Moore of Flaming Youth and Naughty But Nice.  I’d like to play a trick on him but I’ll need your help.’

     ‘What kind of help, Frankie?’

     ‘Well, if  you were to send him a letter asking for him to make a miniature book for the miniature library of your miniature castle and make it sound like you were really interested, you know,  hot for him, he might come back to Chicago to see you and then we could stand him up and have a real laugh at his expense.’

      A little of the romance went flat as Colleen interpreted the request to mean that as Burroughs had once taken Martin’s girl now Martin would take Burroughs’s girl.  Certainly this was part of Martin’s plan but the years had passed since those golden years at the turn of the century.  With the coming of prohibition the Capone Mob ahd virtually seized the streets of Chicago staging murder and mayhem on a daily basis.  The recent Century Of Progress Expo of 1933 had been practically controlled for the benefit of the Outfit.  The thugs of 1893 were real amateurs compared to the professional assassins of the incipient Outfit.  It mgiht cost a little bit but Martin thought a drive by shooting with typewriters might be a fitting end to his nemesis.  He didn’t mention that part to Colleen though.

     Unwittingly Frank had thrown a chill on their relationship.  Romance had flown.  In truth Colleen had had enough of Chicago.  Those mobsters were not pleasant to fend off and they were attracted to the Flaming Girl like moths…naw, that’s too corny.  She now longed to get back to Hollywood but wished to return as a conqueror rather than as a dog with its tail between its legs.  It would never have occured to her otherwise but now as she thought about it, yes, she believed she could take Burroughs away from Florence.  Martin waiting with hope and expectancy didn’t notice the change in Colleen’s voice as she said:  ‘I think I see what you’re after.  I think I could do that, Frank Martin, yes.’

     As Martin left Colleen’s apartment he smiled to himself.  ‘Nearly forty years to get that bastard back but it will be worth it.’

     Colleen composed a very nice letter asking Burroughs for a little Tarzan Jr. book for her miniature library.  The letter breathed romance terms like ‘long term relationship’ which were mixed in such a way to imply more than just an enduring friendship.  You didn’t have to be born at the bottom of a wishing well to get your hopes up.

     When Burroughs received the letter in the future Porn Capitol Of The World he was somewhat puzzled to receive a letter from Colleen Moore.  ‘That’s the Flaming Girl herself.’  He thought.  A faint whiff of pleasing scent was emitted as he slit the envelope open which made him raise his eyebrows.  When he read what he read his eyebrows went way up.  To say that he was steamed would be an understatement.  The man had had a smoldering crush on the image of Flaming Youth Colleen had projected in 1923.  He had seen most if not all her pictures.  Separating a movie image from the real person is not always as easy as it seems espcecially as Colleen had reinforced the image in picture after picture.  Naughty But Nice had all but sealed the image for Burroughs.  He failed to note the romantic allusions in the letter as his sexual fantasies ran away with themselves.

     He imagined himself as the legendary sixty minute man rolling and tumbling all night, night after night with the Flaming Girl.  Who can blame him but that wasn’t how it was.

      He should have studied the Fairy Castle a little more closely.  Instead he put together a fairly salacious little volume dedicated wholly to sexual fantasies without a hint of romance.  I told you this piece of fiction was based on a true story; this is the true part.  If you want to see a copy of the little book, Tarzan Jr., go to www.erbzine.com/mag0/0042.html .  It’s right there.

     So Our Man wrote this up, he and his son John Coleman drew some fairly rasty pictures, and posted it back to Colleen.

     Colleen received the little book which she perused thoughtfully.  ‘Why the old buzzard is just a dirty old man.’  She thought, deeply offended.  She put a mental cross through the name of Edgar Rice Burroughs and tossed the little book in the fireplace.   She stood looking after the little book for a few moments then went over to retrieve it.  Romance was romance but the practical Colleen overrode the romantic Colleen.

     When Martin got the news that Burroughs had taken the bait he was overjoyed.  ‘Verily, I shall smite my enemy hip and thigh.’  He said to himself.

     He left Colleen stepping blithely.  Then he bethought himself to have some nice pasta at this little Italian restaurant not too far away.  He didn’t pay much attention to the gentleman who entered a the same time to also enjoy a nice pasta dinner.  This gentleman was Jackie Inglese who had shown too much independence in intra-mob matters.  Jackie was a marked man and this night was his night to be rubbed out.

      Frank emerged from the restaurant just ahead of  Jackie Inglese.  He was standing there contentedly digesting his dinner with roseate thoughts about those typewriters.  ‘Rat-a-tat-tat.’  He said lifting a finger in imitation of a Tommy gun.

     He was so absorbed in his reveries that he didn’t hear the screech of the tires of a big touring car careening around the corner with a young Sam Giancana behind the wheel.  Jackie Inglese did.  Seizing Frank he pulled him in front of himself as a shield beginning the drop to the ground as a battery of Chicago typewriters poked through the open windows of the speeding auto opened up.  It wasn’t the St. Valentine’s Day massacre to anyone but Frank as two slugs found their to his heart and one went through his brain.  Rather amazing that three Tommy guns unleashing about a hundred rounds of ammunition could only get three into Frank but that’s the way it was.  The earthly career of Frank Martin was ended.  Edgar Rice Burroughs would have to go unavenged in this world.  Tough luck.

      Inglese with a deep sigh pushed himself up from the ground.  Without even a look or a thank you to his savior, Frank Martin, he casually dusted himself off, sought a train for the Coast and stayed there until he cooled off.

      Colleen read the news in the papers with a misture of disgust and relief.  She made no further effort to contact Edgar Rice Burroughs who had disgusted her.  Within a month she had married a local businessman named Homer Hargrave.  She lived happily for a while until the old geezer topped off, she really did like mature men, then with the combined fortunes made her successful entry back into Hollywood taking up a residence on Sunset Boulevard.

      As for Ed Burroughs?  He didn’t go on to bigger and better things.  Like Colleen’s his day was past.  It’s possible he might have done something but the big WWII intervened which was probably more rewarding for him than any woman.  He realized his desire to be a war correspondent.  And then after the war was over disease and old age carried him away.

     His dying thought though was of the fabulous Flaming Girl and what could have been.  It is the kind of thought to hold on to when the lights go out.

Themes And Variations

The Tarzan Novels Of Edgar Rice Burroughs

#23  Tarzan And The Madman

by

R.E. Prindle

The One And Only

 

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been

      In everyone’s life there comes a time to recapitulate.  Tarzan And The Madman was that time for Edgar Rice Burroughs.  The Great Saga began in 1912 and in this novel of 1940 unpublished during his lifetime the long strange trip, to quote the Grateful Dead, came to an end.  The Big Bwana and his imposter got on a plane and flew out of Africa never to return.

     Two more unpublished  novels in his lifetime would follow but they were placed in the Pacific either in or near Indonesia.  The succeeding  Tarzan And The Castaways was also unpublished during his lifetime while Tarzan And The Foreign Legion could find no takers so was published by ERB, Inc.  It almost seemed as though the sun had gone down on the Great Ape Man.

     Of course the movie Tarzan still prospered, first with the great Johnn Weismuller and then Lex Barker.  ERB even tips his hat to MGM by replicating the flight through the fog to the great tabletop of the Mutia Escarpment, an MGM invention.  Thus, the last game is played out on the MGM playing field.  Just as ERB and Florence left LA on a plane so Rand and the Goddess and Tarzan do Africa in this novel. In a short 157 pages ERB  manages to recap the Big Fella’s entire career in print or on film.

     In reading through the book this last time I suddenly realized the significance of all those doppelgangers.  They signified the problem ERB was having realizing his ambition to be the man who was Tarzan.  In Madman he gives up the ghost realizing his failure to become the Man-who-thought-he-was-Tarzan but wasn’t.  Now typing away in exile from LA on Hawaii he throws in the towel.

     As I have tried to show in my other reviews ERB read Robert Louis Stevenson’s  The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde probably sometime before 1890 within four years of its issue.  The book must have been a sensation during his years at the Michigan Military Academy, the subject of endless discussions among the cadets.  As hard as it must be for us to realize what we consider a classic was an exciting new book for ERB.  No movies could be made of it because the technology hadn’t been developed as yet.  Even the primitive Nickelodeons were shimmering a ways into the future.  Yea, verily, the future lay before them.

     The novel was significant enough to be in the first batch of talkies being  produced in 1931.  I’m sure ERB was transfixed as  the story unfolded on the screen.  The theme of psychological doubles had dominated the Tarzan oeuvre from the beginning.  While it seems repetitious to a first reading of the novels the theme is actually developing as the series progresses.   ERB didn’t so much fall back on a cliché  but he was working out a variation on the theme of Jekyll and Hyde.

     He says that he was convinced that every man had two sides to his personality, perhaps not as pronounced as that of Jekyll and Hyde but there nonetheless.  He was aware of his own duality chronicling it in the pages of the Tarzan oeuvre.  The duality is often prompted by a blow to Tarzan’s head.  The blow certainly commemorates the hit ERB took in Toronto while perhaps the aftermath split ERB’s personality so that he became two nearly different people.  Perhaps that’s the secret of his writing career as he said that he was able to disappear into the alternate reality when he wrote.

     Tarzan always had two personalities from the beginning.  He was both a civilized man and a beast.  This undoubtedly represents ERB’s feelings about himself.  Perhaps he had periods when he was something of a wild man, not unlike Tarzan on the Rue Maule in The Return Of Tarzan who became a beast and then shook himself back into a human not unlike the transformation of Jekyll and Hyde.  This type of duality would characterize the Russian Quartet, the first four novels.

     The Tarzan true doppelganger first appeared in Jewels of Opar where having received a blow to the head he loses his memory during which he lived as an uncivilized beast, regaining civilization with his memory, but he had not yet split into two co-existing  separate identities.    That would first occur in Tarzan And The Golden Lion and Tarzan And The Ant Men  when the great character of Esteban Miranda served as a doppelganger.  Esteban was identical to Tarzan in appearance but an arrant coward  compared to Tarzan.  This was a characteristic of all the doubles.  Esteban represented the negative pre-success side of ERB while Tarzan the positive post-success side.  Thus in these two novels ERB is beginning the attempt to become Tarzan- The-Man-Who-Thought-He-Could-Be-Tarzan.

     ERB was very sensitive about his early failings in his relationship with Emma.  In these two novels he offered Jane/Emma the chance to recognize him as the strong Tarzan and not the weakling Esteban doppelganger.  Having overcome the failures of his past he felt he had proven himself as a man and a supreme provider demanding recognition.  Given the decision to make Jane/Emma chose ERB’s former existence, Esteban, thereby sealing her fate.  After her ill fated choice Jane disappears from the oeuvre except for the chance encounter in the succeeding novel Tarzan Lord Of The Jungle whereas the Golden Lion assumes a prominent role.

     While the next double, Stanley Obroski, appears in Tarzan And The Lion Man a double of sorts in the form of Lord Passmore makes his appearance in Tarzan Triumphant.  Another double appears in Tarzan And The Leopard Men when felled by a giant tree in a storm Tarzan blanks out assuming another persona.   Also, in Tarzan And The City Of Gold Valthor serves as a double.  In a strange variation ERB repeats the story of Jewels Of Opar when Tarzan rescues Jane from the Arab boma.  Here, in an exact duplicate of that scene, he rescues Valthor.  Thus Jane and Valthor are connected in ERB’s mind.

     In Tarzan And The Lion Man Burroughs kills off his weaker persona thus assuming the role of Tarzan himself.   Then in Tarzan And The Forbidden City Brian is his look-a-like although the role of double is not explored.  Perhaps this is the initial realization the ERB has failed in his quest to be Tarzan.

     After a decade of trials and tribulations struggling against the Communists and MGM and losing ERB sat down in exile at the beginning of 1940 to write this confession of defeat.

     The man-god Tarzan himself remains the same but The-Man-Who-Thought-He-Was-Tarzan but failed confesses his defeat getting into his airplane up there on MGM’s Mutia Escarpment flying out of Africa forever.  First he was expelled from Opar by the Communists and then from Africa by MGM.

     Although Tarzan was in the plane with him, the Big Bwana shows up again in Africa for a moment in Tarzan And The Castaways.  This novel written in a style entirely different from the rest of the oeuvre was also unpublished during Burroughs lifetime hidden away in a safe.

     In this novel Tarzan is defeated by a Black chief, symbolically perhaps, captured and sold as a wild man, a feral child.  Once again Tarzan has lost his memory reverting to a pure beast or feral boy.  As this novel was written after King Kong and Tarzan ends up on yet another island perhaps ERB was conflating the movie with this novel.   Tarzan is put aboard ship with the other animals destined for the circus and taken from the continent.

     Running all through Burroughs is the ghost of Jule Verne’s Mysterious Island.  Once aboard ship a storm assaults the ship which, signficantly loses its rudder.  Thus like the now rudderless Burroughs the ship is adrift.  In a scene reminiscent of both Verne’s novel and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped the ship is tossed atop a reef while all aboard including a Noah’s Ark of animals find their way to shore as the Castaways.

     Stevenson and Verne were two of ERB’s earliest influences thus ERB returns full circle to his origins.

     In the last Tarzan novel and the last published in his lifetime, Tarzan And The Foreign Legion, at the very end the fugitives from the Japanese army approach the remains of the Mysterious Island that after the volcanic explosition of Verne is a mere spire of rock in the vast ocean.  Not a refuge in the world left for Tarzan or ERB.  Like Capt. Nemo a submarine surfaces to rescue Tarzan and the Legion from a watery fate.

     It seems amazing that as an honorary Frenchman Tarzan was never placed in a situation with the real French Foreign Legion.  Perhaps P.C. Wren had preempted the genre with his magnificent FFL trilogy which left no room for ERB’s imagination to operate.

     The long odyssey had ended.  ERB could not imitate his man-god but he left him to us as an avatar for the coming New Age.  What a long strange trip it was and for us, will be.

Johnny Weissmuller- The Image Of Tarzan

Part II follows.