Edgar Rice Burroughs And The Accreted Personality
by
R.E. Prindle
Book Two
Ed And Emma
Part VII
The Big Change
For a convenient date, in 1920 the post French Revolution age came to an end and the post-Bolshevik Revolution began. For all practical purposes the Communists had ended the Bourgeois Era. The technological era that began c. 1900 now began to mature.
The impossibility of heavier than air flight conquered by the Wright Bros. in 1903 would in a scant twenty-some odd years in the very near future evolve into supersonic flight. By 1950 not only would the Cape to Cairo flight be a reality but the London to Cape flight would be a fact. Vitamins would be discovered. A mere twenty-seven years in the future the discovery of DNA would begin the revelation of the human genome. The future was glittering like mica in granite. Science fiction was slowly becoming the most important fiction genre.
Just as Ed’s life had forced a succession of personalities on him beginning at eight or nine so the discontinuity of 1920 would obliterate the twenty four years he had spent in the nineteenth century and the twenty years of early twentieth century technology. There was no time to prepare. The future, as it were, was on him. The New Era but not as anyone had imagined it.
The insane politics America had been preparing through unrestricted unlimited immigration was upon it. The nut cake experimentalists had forced both prohibition and the female vote through at the same time. And then there was the income tax that became a political weapon that destroyed the whole notion of wealth. Huge fortunes were reduced to a shambles by various forms of taxation meant to ‘redistribute’ the wealth. Despoiled people like W.R. Hearst, a Liberal bete noir, who had been protected by their wealth were brought crashing to the ground. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs as absurd as it may seem would be levied a heavy ‘excess profits’ tax.
Yea, verily, the last were becoming the first and the first were becoming last. Culture was in a shambles.
And at this time Ed moved to Los Angeles to begin a new life, assume a new personality. A life that began as the realization of all his dreams but one. The missing dream was sexual satisfaction; but he would try.
His intent as he came West was to begin a new life as, get this, a hog raiser. His idea was to obtain twenty acres and raise prize pigs. It seems like a stretch but if one remembers in Little Lord Fauntleroy, Fauntleroy’s newsboy friend went to California where he became a successful ranch manager. Ed had read the book many times so, perhaps, under personal and societal stresses he thought to live the fantasy.
He was at a financial peak having just earned a hundred thousand dollars in one year with every indication that such prosperity would continue for a few years at least. But he had not had time to assimilate two new realities- The Communist and Jewish Revolutions.
Of course the Communist Revolution had been brewing for some time. For at least thirty five years the turmoil had been increasing. The Haymarket Riot had been a precursor. Jack London’s The Iron Heel had appeared in 1908, Thomas Dixon’s Comrades in 1909. In 1916 Dixon had published The Fall Of A Nation in which the US was undermined by Communism; after the fact of the Bolshevik Revolution Dixon had been ready with his play Bolshevism On Trial.
Combined with and leading the Communist Revolution was the Jewish Revolution. The Jews hoped to realize their Messianic dreams of a thousand year reich held for centuries even millennia through the combined efforts of the people rather than a single savior. This Revolution was hoped to be realized between 1913 and 1928. While the terminal date was optimistic the beginning date of 1913 was activated.
Neither Dixon nor Ed understood what a game changer the Russian Revolution would be in the US. Freedom of speech disappeared over night as Communists and their fellow travelers punished writers who deviated from their ideology while the Jews were ever on the lookout for evidence of anti-Semitism which was very broadly construed. Thus both Dixon and Ed would be punished for dissenting from either’s plans.
As the Bolshevik Revolution triumphed in Russia in 1917 so by 1919 the frontal assault was being undertaken against American institutions. Imitating American political forms the Jews drew up a Jewish Bill Of Rights nearly mocking the US Bill Of Rights. The Jewish Bill of Rights along with a questionnaire was sent to all prominent Americans of which the creator of Tarzan was one.
If you failed to respond in the approved manner or not at all this placed you in the category of anti-Semite. So, while Ed responded he questioned a few tenets thereby placing himself on the Hollywood blacklist. He found himself there with Henry Ford and this will lead us to some interesting subterranean history that one might say was forgotten but the question is was it ever recognized?
The Judaeo-Communist war against the reputations of those who questioned either’s motives did not end in the twenties and thirties as one might suppose but continues to this very day.
Among other efforts to further discrediting these bete noirs of the post-war period has been an effort by a current Jewish professor at Case Western Reserve by the name of Richard Slotkin. Now, unless you’re investigating the dark corridors of subterranean history nearly everything I’m going to talk about here will be new to you. Just as the Catholic Church has its index of forbidden literature so do the Jews. Over the years editions have been published of what is termed arch anti-Semitic literature. These books are always worth investigating.
Two authors who published in 1916 and 1920 have been anathemized as arch anti-Semites a notch below Adolf Hitler. These men are Madison Grant and his book The Passing Of The Great Race and Lothrop Stoddard and his books The Rising Tide Of Color Against White World Supremacy, The New World Of Islam and The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace Of The Under Man. Mr. Slotkin in his book revives the discussion of these two authors and associates them with Edgar Rice Burroughs as though all three were involved in some White Supremacist conspiracy to bring Hitler’s version of the thousand year reich into existence while causing the My Lai massacre.
I would have known nothing of this had I not discovered the Jewish Classics Of Anti-Semitic Literature. Having learned I decided to investigate.
My first reaction, even second reaction was that the two authors had nothing to do with Ed. But then my study of Ed’s 1924 novel Marcia Of The Doorstep led to the discovery that a large part of the story was based on three theatrical articles in Henry Ford’s collection of Jewish studies titled The International Jew as well as three more that were based on The Jewish Bill Of Rights mailed to all those prominent Americans.
Before we get to an analysis of Grant and Stoddard we have to examine certain aspects of the career of the organizer of psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud, over the years from 1895 to 1917. You see, in subterranean history one dark corridor leads into another something like the corridors beneath Ed’s imagined city of Opar. Sometimes you have to keep your hand on the right hand wall so as to find your way through the labyrinth.
Most people think of Ed as a dummy without a real thought in his head. In fact he was interested in psychology and did have some background in it. If one takes for instance the labyrinthine corridors that constantly recur one should ask what they represent. Ed knew they represented the subconscious. He indicates his knowledge of the subconscious for instance in The Gods Of Mars when fighting in the Thern chambers. Then the symbolism with La beneath the labyrinth of Opar in Tarzan The Invincible is more than striking.
La had been deposed by the rebels and placed in a cell within a chamber guarded by a lion. The lion had urinated and defecated creating an almost impenetrable barrier between Tarzan and La. As La represented Tarzan’s Anima the imprisonment of La in such deplorable conditions and the difficult path to her is very symbolic, while revealing Ed’s knowledge of psychology.
Sigmund Freud was the mastermind who brought the current situation into existence beginning about 1895 when he joined the International Brotherhood of B’nai B’rith. Here he said he found a society of like minded men in which he was very comfortable. Like minded in what way? In the sense that they wanted to destroy Aryan Europe and remake it under a Jewish sovereignty. As Barbara Spector of the current Judaeo-Swedish organization Paideia puts it the idea is to replace Aryan knowledge with Jewish knowledge. If so, this gives some meaning to the Nazi resistance to Judaism in the twenties and thirties and the resultant Final Solution. Thus, while the world’s attention was focused on the flamboyant figures of Lenin and his group in the political field, Freud and B’nai B’rith were quietly working out psychological problems, setting up the intellectual infrastructure for the aftermath of the Revolution. I suspected for some time that Freud was only revealing a fraction of what he had learned about the functioning of the mind.
This was confirmed on a reading of Marie Bonaparte’s psychological analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and stories. Marie Bonaparte was one of Freud’s coterie of female protégées. His harem so to speak. Marie Bonaparte was a Grecian Princess whose devotion inflated Freud’s ego more than somewhat. Her analysis also indicated that Freud’s disciple Otto Rank, frequently disparaged by other psychoanalysts, was much more important to Freud’s theories than he is credited.
Bonaparte’s analysis from whom she credits Freud for her most significant interpretations demonstrates the profound level of psychological manipulation available to Freud and which he employed. Without awareness of Freud’s lower researches one might as well not have a mind one would be so defenseless.
It seems more than probable then that such organizations as the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith was Freud’s brain child. And from that sprang the whole method of attacking Aryan institutions. Freud’s theories might even be construed as a sneak attack. While some, such as the English writer D.H. Lawrence, understood Freud’s goals and methods only too well, the majority of psychologists were looking at the scientific aspects of what Freud publicly proclaimed.
Hence the turn of the century was widely recognized as a turning point, the high water mark of Aryan success. The tide had turned. And then in 1914 the greatest disaster ever to overtake the Aryan world happened when the Central Powers took on the Allies in WWII. The Great War was virtually the suicide of the Aryans.
Now, in conjunction with Freud and B’nai B’rith Jewish religious fundamentalists moved into the sciences to corrupt the science according to religious doctrines. The area now to concern us will be anthropology. Ed’s stories are very easily fitted into an anthropological context. Once you accept that he is writing within the context of the problems of his day the stories begin to make more sense.
We return now to the anthropologist Madison Grant and his Passing Of The Great Race. In Jewish eyes they are the great race, but Grant was talking about the Aryan race or the Nordics. Aryan and Nordic are two terms that constrict Jewish throats. They form the conflict between European and Jewish knowledge; science versus magic or the supernatural. One can easily see the threat of science to magic and hence Judaism.
Grant called his book The Passing Of The Great Race because the Great War was destroying the very flower of the Aryans no matter which side they were dying for. Thus the entire ‘race’ was suffering irreparable losses.
Within this concern Grant employs the scientific anthropology of his time beginning with the researches of the great English anthropologist Francis Galton. Grant traces the migrations of the various Aryan peoples from their origin in Central Asia throughout the world and their absorption by numerically superior races.
Although Grant only obliquely hints at Jews a couple times he ignores their ethnicity completely merely including them in what he calls the Alpine Race. And in truth, according to Jewish legends the Jews are not a race per se having evolved as a mere religious splinter group from the Semites of Mesopotamia c. 2000 BC. No different a situation actually than the Scientologists of today.
Scientifically Grant was correct. There is really nothing about his book that a scientific observer could find to be anti-Semitic. However in a Freudian religious interpretation the volume is an extreme threat to Jewish claims of uniqueness. Thus, following Freud the anthropology of the Jewish Franz Boas deflects anthropology from the scientific basis such as Grant’s to the religious basis of Jewish fundamentalism in that all men were created by god on a specified date hence being all the same with the exception of the Jews who are semi-angels sent to earth to bring the knowledge of god to mankind, in other words, the Chosen People. Hence we have magic versus science.
While we can’t be certain that Ed read Grant, the author was a close associate of Teddy Roosevelt of whom Ed was in thrall. That would have been a recommendation while the thoughts expressed by Grant don’t differ widely from those expressed by Ed.
Shortly after Grant’s opus was published Lothrop Stoddard (1883-1950) began his anthropological series led by his The Rising Tide Of Color Against The White World-Supremacy (1920), The New World Of Islamism (1921) and The Revolt Against Civilization: The Menace Of The Under Man (1922). At the same time, in 1920, Henry Ford began his series of exposes of Jewish machinations in the Dearborn Independent collected into the four little volumes of The International Jew. And then, because of his 1919 response to the Jewish questionnaire Edgar Rice Burroughs was blacklisted in Hollywood.
How do all these strands relate? I’m going to have to go into more detail than I wanted to bring Ed into this larger picture. The Small in the Big Picture.
2.
The Small In The Big
During the Middle Ages the Jews seeking a refuge found one in the poorly organized and thinly populated spaces of what would become known as the Pale Of Settlement when the whole area came under Russian sovereignty after the First Partition of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century.
The whole area between the Baltic and the Black Sea in the strip that included Poland Byelorussia and the Ukraine became the designated settlement area for Jews. They were forbidden Great Russia. Prior to Russian annexation of these territories Jews had led a semi-autonomous existence under the Poles. The Russians refused to acknowledge this autonomy demanding that the Jews as well as all subject peoples assimilate to Russia. The Jewish fancy is that they can only be subject to ‘God’ and ‘his laws.’ Hence the governance of all others is rejected. Thus, about 1800, began the century long conflict between the Russians and the Jews that resulted in 1917 in the victory of the Jews over the Russians. Like the Amalekites of old the name of Russia was obliterated replaced by the Union Of Soviet Socialist Republics while the Czar and his entire family were erased from the face of the earth, hurled down a mine shaft.
Beginning about 1871 the Jews discovered America; as steam had replaced sail wholesale emigration became possible (steerage). Thus an accelerating stream crossed Europe to Hamburg from Russia. Over the next forty years roughly half of Russia’s Jews emigrated. The infra-structure had been put in place to receive the entire remaining population beginning in 1914 but the Great War disturbed that plan while the doors to America were slammed shut after the War.
The way had been prepared for the Russian Jews, so to speak, by the German Jews who had emigrated after the failed revolution of 1848. The German Jews were among the most eminent bankers of the US controlling enormous sums of money.
Thus the transfer of half the Russian Jews combined with the economic power of the German Jews gave the international Jewish community a power base on each side of the Atlantic. Thus the First Russian Revolution of 1905 was engineered from within Russia while the Russo-Japanese War of 1903-05 resulting in that revolution was brought about by the US Jews.
For a few previous decades the International Jewish Government had been run by the Alliance Israelite Universelle from Paris. In about 1900 this government was transferred to the US becoming the American Jewish Committee. Jewish affairs were then led from the US under guidance of its President, the banker Jacob Schiff. Schiff obtained the money to lend the Japanese by raiding the reserves of the Equitable Assurance Society creating quite a scandal and investigation. This came to naught needless to say.
Thus the Japanese were able to war on Russia resulting in their victory of 1905. Schiff then arranged for the peace treaty to be drawn in the US under the auspices of Theodore Roosevelt under the guidance of Jews who participated in the negotiations. So Russia was taken to the cleaners.
Now, the Jews in America were US citizens while to the Russians more importantly they were American Jews conspiring with Russian Jews. They therefore forbade US Jews entry into Russia. The US Jews then claimed all the rights and privileges granted to US citizens including the right to enter Russia as US citizens whether they were Jewish or not.
This conflict of interests caused great friction between the US and Russia. In 1913 the Jews succeeded in exacerbating the situation to the point where diplomatic relations were broken off between Russia and the United States for their sole benefit. Thus the two percent, the tail, wagged the dog of the 98%. Between 1913 and 1917 there were no diplomatic relations between the two countries.
This situation then was portrayed correctly in Ford’s The International Jew.
Now, the Jewish Revolution advanced by the logic of ‘by any means necessary.’ Think about that: ‘any means necessary.’ That means by any method that produces effective results. No morality when necessary; sanctimonious morality when that works. Once again this was all organized by Freud and the International Brotherhood of B’nai B’rith from Vienna. What the American Jewish Committee in America did was in conjunction with Vienna, Paris, Moscow and wherever.
In Russia, then, where the Jews had seized the reins of government the means was one of murderous brutality while the revolutionaries flooded back into German and Hungary in the attempt to seize power in Central Europe while at the same time denying what they were doing. That attempt was blocked by Hitler and the other Volkist Partys.
In the United States it was impossible to actually seize the reins of government although that was tried and denied and events had to proceed by other means but the Jewish Revolution was one revolution going on in both the US and the USSR. This is what Ford meant by ‘the International Jew.’
In 1913 the socialist revolution in the US advanced when Woodrow Wilson stole the election through the antics of Peck’s Bad Boy, Theodore Roosevelt. Otherwise he would have lost the election by 60% to 40%. With the accession of Wilson Jews flowed into Washington to share government al control with the Wilsonian Socialists. It is no coincidence that the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith came into existence at the same time. The ADL rapidly seized power and by the end of the war was pretty much in the unassailable position they are today.
To be brief, a great many of the wartime agencies were under the control of Jews including the all important War Industries Board in charge of reorganizing the industries into soviets. The WIB then was in the process of socializing industry when the end of the war aborted that plan. The WIB was the bedeviling agency that alerted Ford to the Jewish threat. This threat was exacerbated after the War when he received his copy of The Jewish Bill Of Rights to which he reacted defensively by buying The Dearborn Independent and beginning his series of articles exposing Jewish machinations.
So we are now at 1920 and a new America with a combined Jewish-Socialist government. The only real problem Woodrow Wilson had with Bolshevism is that he too had a messianic complex and wouldn’t cede the leadership of the Revolution to Lenin.
This became a moot point when he was incapacitated by his stroke and the repudiation of the socialist Democrats by the election of Warren G. Harding in 1920. It was the return to normalcy as Harding put it. The Jews were expelled from Washington for twelve years returning with the Wilson Redux administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Alright. There’s the broad outline of the subterranean history before glossing over by the official ‘victor’s’ version.
As the Jewish opponents such as Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, Henry Ford and Ed Burroughs couldn’t be eliminated by the means of murder, defamation and character assassination were the means conveniently accessible.
III
The conflict was and is between Aryan Knowledge and Jewish Knowledge. That is, between Science and Magic or magic in its religious manifestation. In anthropology Grant and Stoddard represented Science while Boasian anthropology represents the magical or religious point of view. Thus while there is nothing overtly anti-Semitic, that is say anti-Jewish, in Grant or Stoddard the scientific approach is that per se. There is no room for magic in the Scientific approach. Therefore Grant and Stoddard had to be neutralized. Freud and the B’nai B’rith had devised the method of merely defaming anyone they wanted to neutralize by the accusation of anti-Semitism. This was done. By 1940 neither man had an ounce of credibility while Boasian anthropology was the standard.
While Ed has always been considered an ignorant boob who knew how to write wild action stories, as I have been trying to point out in my essays he was an exceptionally well informed person on all the issues of the day. Thus his stories are founded on sound scientific principles no matter how he distorts them for the amusement of his readers.
Ed did read Grant and Stoddard generally sharing their views. In that sense then his critic, Richard Slotkin, is right. However Slotkin is a Jewish fundamentalist religious writer forwarding Boasian anthropology whether consciously or not.
To return to Henry Ford. Ford’s contact with the Jewish socialist government of Woodrow Wilson convinced him and the majority of US industrialists of the dangers from both Jews and the Wilsonian socialists. While the history has been suppressed and the connections between the International Jewish machinations have never been explored, the Jews were engaged in furious activity, at least until the immigration door was closed beginning in 1921 which frustrated their efforts.
Having been made very wary of Jewish activities then in the last few months of the War and the very alarming year of 1919 when both Ford personally and his company were under attack one can only guess at his reaction when he received his copy of The Jewish Bill Of Rights. One doesn’t have to guess as to the consequence because they were spelled out in the Dearborn Independent beginning in 1920.
His articles, of course, brought the entire International Jewish government down on his head. How much this diverted his attention from his business isn’t clear but in the years from 1920 to 1927 the auto business got away from him as Chevy and General Motors took dominance from him. The Model T was an anachronism by 1927 when Ford shut down his plants for over a year to redesign and update the car as the Model A.
Is it coincidence that he threw in the sponge on the Jewish front in 1927 when he could no longer divide his attention between his anthropology and his business?
Ed had received his copy of The Jewish Bill Of Rights in the Spring of 1919 and rather than wholeheartedly endorsing the Bill’s absurdities made a few pointed objections. This immediately put him on the Hollywood black list of anti-Semites. Combined with his avowed anti-Communism he was then hit from two sides. His income was to be denied him.
Ed put himself in an incredibly vulnerable situation when he bought Tarzana. Rather than buying his twenty acres to raise prize pigs upon his arrival in LA Ed bought the incredible five hundred acre plus Otis Estate that he renamed Tarzana.
He was coming off his best year so that at a purchase price that didn’t exceed his income by that much it probably looked like not that much of a stretch. However Ed was never a practical guy as Emma knew so well. He had never been a farmer, stock breeder or orchardist in his life and now he attempted all three at once. Nor did he have a plan as to how to go about it. He spent money extravagantly as though he had millions in the bank.
It is true that you would have to have been very prescient to understand the deeper meaning of the Communist triumph in Russia that gave them the means to carry the Revolution to the world but the events of 1919 should have given cause for reconsideration. But, Ed was very busy living his life. He probably didn’t have time to think about it that much. Things only become really clear in retrospect.
However, his enemies were watching his every move, quickly perceiving his vulnerability, moving to exploit it. His lack of attention to detail didn’t hinder their plans. His income was immediately attacked making it impossible to sustain his expenses.
The publication of his 1922 novel The Girl From Hollywood that detailed some unsavory aspects of the film capitol at a time it was already beset by scandals such as those of Fatty Arbuckle and the Taylor murder was not well received. Thus after 1922 his movie income dried up with no movies being made until 1927. To compound the problem Ed took the whole year of 1924 to write his literary novel Marcia Of The Doorstep in which he tried to flatter his way back into Hollywood’s good graces. The effort failed when no publisher could be found including his own, McClurg’s.
After a good start in England and Germany his English publisher showed little interest, making no real effort to sell the author. The German market was doing very well for him when it was brought to the attention of the German public that Ed’s pro-ally novels of the war period conflicted with the aims of the Central Powers. Ed’s German sales then tanked so that his income was seriously impacted. One can be sure the objections were Communist inspired and managed.
While he had incurred indebtedness and heavy expense with the Tarzan Estate he now found he was beyond his means. He had to scrabble to save himself from bankruptcy and ruin. It was at this time that he incorporated himself as ERB, Inc. transferring his copyrights and other valuable assets to the corporation out of reach of his creditors. He also tried to develop the Caballero golf course while creating a subdivision of part of Tarzana.
In a really desperate attempt to find quick and easy cash he tried to find oil on Tarzana. That failing he could be seen in the oil marts of LA trying to cook up some deal. Apart from some memorable experiences that he never converted to stories nothing came of it.
Another ploy to raise money was to force McClurg’s to publish many of his lesser works of the second decade that McClurg’s thought lacked sufficient commercial appeal of which opinion they were proved right.
Ed also turned his hand to a couple Westerns and his two Apache novels that he found difficult to get published and when published met with slight success. They are good enough as far as that sort of fiction goes but Ed had so successfully established his reputation as a fantasy/sci-fi writer that he had typecast himself leaving no room for other genres.
For myself, to illustrate the attitude, when I as a young Tarzan fan discovered that he had written Martian novels I was so scandalized that I refused to accept the fact. Tarzan was so sacred I didn’t think Ed had the right to write anything else. If I had known of the Westerns/Apache novels I don’t know how I would have reacted. So, his fans may have been conditioned to the Tarzan/Martian novels so that they would tolerate nothing else.
Whether Ed’s concentration was affected by his financial and political/social woes or not, the mid years of the decade were relatively unproductive for him.
His McClurg’s contract expired toward the end of the decade. Not surprisingly, perhaps, given the political situation, none of the major publishers were interested in him forcing him ultimately to begin self-publishing commencing in 1930. In this he was successful but more of that later.
As the twenties began then Ed was under assault from the Communists because he was anti-Bolshevik and under a black list in Hollywood because he failed to endorse the Jewish Bill Of Rights.
At the same time his sexual needs were reaching a critical point. Ed was not getting any younger while his marital situation provided him no satisfaction and the need ‘to live’ a little before he died began to occupy his mind.
Thus personality reformation was forced on him from all sides.
Part VIII follows.
Post II: The Chessmen Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
January 13, 2009
A Review
Edgar Rice Burroughs On Mars
The Chessmen Of Mars
Post II
Part I
The Dance Of Barsoom
See Post I for Intro.
The twenties were a difficult financial period for ERB, indeed, as was the rest of his life to be. The substantial sums he had made in Chicago were spent before he left. ERB had saved nothing. He arrived in LA with no other resources than his current income. That income was very substantial by any measure but unequal to ERB’s massive spending capabilities so that at the time he wrote Chessmen he was already strapped for cash and headed for deep debt.
Always envious of the fabulous sums paid Zane Grey by the slick magazines ERB wanted to sell this story for ten thousand dollars to one of the big slicks. There were no takers so that the story went to the pulps for thirty-five hundred. Adding insult to injury he was told that the stories were too preposterous to be considered.
Part of ERB’s literary problem was that genre categories were not yet well developed. H.G. Wells’ early sci-fi efforts were labeled Fantasias, a term that could be understood by the literary arbiters, while still considered what we would call today, literary fiction. Even George Du Maurier’s trilogy of essentially science fiction novels- Peter Ibbetson, Trilby and The Martian have never been considered anything but literary fiction. They are three terrific stories of psychological dissociation while it would seem certain that Burroughs read them and was probably influenced by them. I can heartily recommend them. Very choice.
So the genres were taking shape at the period but had not yet evolved as they would during the thirties, forties and fifties until today fantasy, horror and sci-fi dominate the fiction best seller lists. If Chessmen was thought preposterous in 1920 one wonders what his critics would have thought of such movies as The Exterminator or The Predator. God, those people were so awkward and unevolved. Well, it’s the price you pay for being an innovator. Remember what the Pope told Galileo.
So, ERB was stuck in the pulps. Perhaps smarting from this rejection ERB would try to break out of his pulp rate with several realistic novels. the first was The Girl From Hollywood, a very decent attempt at a literary novel, that ERB’s long time publisher refused to publish. Following in the burro tracks of Zane Grey ERB wrote a couple of Westerns only one of which he could get published at the time. I read a lot of Westerns in the fifties while a kid. I thought ERB’s efforts were as good as what I read then. They’re all potboilers, even the so-called classics.
He even attempted a couple of Indian epics that I found so-so but I know other people who liked them a lot. Not so critical as myself, I guess. Oh, right, he couldn’t get Marcia Of The Doorstep published either. So he was type cast as a sci-fi/fantasy writer. At least he knew he could do that very well.
Zane Grey wrote some pretty strange Westerns. He himself was quite a womanizer and his novels pander quite successfully to the distaff side. He knew women well. Probably that was why he was paid those great prices by the Saturday Evening Post et al. Oh heck, ERB was just too outre for the Post.
In Chessmen ERB gives feminine appeal his best shot. I would imagine he was trying to reach the ladies when he describes Tara’s fabulous bath. Either that or he was trying to titillate us boys. Worked with me. But let’s assume he was trying to broaden his appeal as the title was offered to the slicks.
Chessmen was based on his three favorite novels as are all his books- The Viginian, Prince And The Pauper and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Thus Tara teases Papa John as her ‘Virginian.’ We are then introduced to Gahan of far Gathol. ERB presents him first in his princely guise as, indeed, he is a prince of Gathol. ERB chooses to present him as a fop dressed all in diamonds and platinum. Tara forms an ill impression of him as she thinks no real fighting man would dress in such a fashion. Shortly Gahan will exchange his dress duds for the plain leather gear of the Martian mercenary thus changing from prince to pauper. Of course he will resume his role of Prince by novel’s end.
Fauntleroy was born to the manor in England but spent his youth learning what it meant to be a real American boy before reassuming his English title. Ah, American dreaming.
Recalling his battle for Emma’s favors with Frank Martin Tara has been betrothed since at least young girlhood to Djor Kantos whose father is friends with the family. So like ERB Gahan has to overcome this parental resistance. Speaking of Frank Martin Chessmen is the only novel I can recall in which the hero doesn’t get bashed on the head two or three times.
At the ball being given Djor Kantos fails to claim Tara in time for the first dance so that Gahan leads Tara in the Dance Of Barsoom. Some sort of Grand March. ERB explains that before Barsoomian youths can attend balls they have to first have learned three formal dances- The Dance Of Barsoom, that of their country and that of their city. After that they can take up stuff like the Martian equivalents of the Grizzly Bear, Bunny Hug, Charleston and Black Bottom. Kids being kids on Barsoom the same as on Jasoom.
While the concept is quite charming one wonders of the source. Burroughs himself was no slouch concerning the hit parade.
I think we can trace the rigamarole back to the patron saint of old timey music, Henry Ford.
Amongst all his many other enterprises Henry was revolted by the music and dances of the Jazz Age as the twenties are sometimes known. Even though his very own flivver is billed as being responsible for some new objectionable habits and traditions Henry clung stubbornly to the old. Thus in full revolt against the Jazz Age Henry was promoting the dances and music of his youthof around, oh say, 1880 or so.
Ford had begun his publication of the Dearborn Independent in 1920 making him a newspaper man also. It seems clear from internal references in Marcia Of The Doorstep that ERB was following developments in the Independent. He would then certainly have learned of the evils of the new music and the virtues of the old.
Just as Henry Ford was trying to rivive the old dances on Jasoom, on conservative, behind the times Barsoom Jazz has never even been given a chance. The Dance Of Barsoom is just as fresh and lovely as the first time it was danced millennia before. Martian kids didn’t mess with tradition so much so Gahan led Tara in that lovely old relic of Mars- The Dance Of Barsoom.
Pledging his love during the dance Gahan was sternly rebuffed by Tara.
The preliminaries finished the story begins in earnest.
The following day Tara is fascinated by a cloudy stormy sky which is such a rare occurrence on Mars that she had never seen one before. As I mentioned in the intro ERB borrows the next sequence from Baum whose Dorothy was wafted to Oz on a tornado. Tara ascends into this tornado like storm where her flier is caught by the winds and she is driven before them. When she lands she had been driven like Dorothy to Oz to a far land that has been all but forgotten if it had ever been thought of.
The hero and heroine of Chessmen are Tara of Helium and Gahan of far Gathol, or rather, they are the Anima and Animus of ERB. ERB always writes Anima and Animus novels. As dreamers will he may have recognized the X chromosome or Anima in the green pastures of his sleep or, it is quite possible that as a Latin scholar at Chicago’s Harvard School he was required to read the myth of Psyche and Eros from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. I only mention a couple of possibilities. He may or may not have been familiar with Psyche and Eros but he was certainly familiar with the fairy tales derived from it such as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.
While Apuleius is given credit for the story his version is certainly only a redaction of the tale or philosophical speculation dating much further back in history. The Ancients were well familiar with the concept of both the male and female versions of the Anima and Animus. In popular mythology the male chromosome is represented by the Goddess as X chromosome and the Bull as the y. The female is represented by the two snakes as in the pictorial representations of Crete. It will also be remembered that the Greeks imported Cretan priests to manage the Apollonian shrine at Delphi.
The myth is that the two aspects were once united then driven apart wandering the world in search of each other. Duly at long last they do find each other are reconciled and allowed by the Goddess of Love to reunite. Thus the stories of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty evolved from Psyche and Eros and who knows how many other stories besides those of Burroughs.
The question is was Burroughs only following a plot line, a pattern he had absorbed or was he consciously aware of what he was doing? Had he thought the problem out? Just as Tarzan and Jane were apparently mismatched in Burroughs’ dreamscapes so were ERB and Emma in real life. In Tarzan And The Golden Lion Tarzan and Jane had no sooner returned home from Pal-ul-don than Tarzan fled to his Anima in far off dreamland Opar leaving Jane/Emma to more or less shift for herself in a very dangerous world. Misfortune usually hit her too.
In ERB’s dream couple of John Carter and Dejah Thoris the Anima and Animus seem to be united although we see little of Dejah Thoris in the series and not at all in this novel. Even their son who may represent ERB is not present at all. Even with Carter and Dejah Thoris the classic separation and reuniting form a major part of the Martian Trilogy.
In this dream tale with Tara and Gahan ERB follows the classic formula- separation, the long pursuit and final reconciliation. He appears to know what he is talking about but since he never discussed his ideas on the subject we can only infer that he did or doubt or deny that he did. The psychological motifs he expresses throughout Chessmen leads me to believe he did.
What are dreams and what is a dream story? Freud originated the rational approach to dream interpretation. ERB gave some thought to the problem. Once can’t be sure he had read Freud’s Interpretations Of Dreams although in his short story Tarzan’s First Nightmare ERB used elements contained in Freud’s theory to explain the causes of Tarzan’s nightmare. At the very least we can say that dreams and nightmares from which ERB suffered all his life were of great interest to him. In the thirties he would buy at least one book on scientific dream interpretation.
What is the basis of dreams? It can only be experiences combined with memory. That’s it. Think about it. You don’t have to look any further. Nothing mysterious about them. The basic problem can be expressed in the question of what is the unconscious or subconscious. Is it some ultra mysterious process of the mind that can’t be penetrated, understood or accurately located? Is it as Freud believed an organ independent of the body and mind yet which somehow controls the actions of the individual from outside him? Or, once again, is it merely a combination of experience and memory, a faculty for interpeting the experiences of the day?
Freud touched on a key concept when he realized that the mind, which never rests, processes the incidents of the previous day in the sleeping and dreaming state. Burroughs also takes this approach in Tarzan’s nightmare whether he picked it up from Freud, Sweetser or realized it himself.
In point of fact experience happens to us so rapidly and from so many angles at the same time that it is impossible for the conscious mind to process it all as it is happening. Can’t be done. So, it follows that the subconscious or back up mind retains, as it were, photographs of the day’s activities that it reviews in sleep for either discarding, repression or action. How many times have you awakened with possible solutions to problems facing you?
The problem with the subconscious mind is that analysis of situations is affected by fixations, more expecially by the central childhood fixation. Childhood is that perilous time of life when the inexperienced mind is subject to being presented with challenges for which it has no programmed or immediately adequate response. Defeated in analysis the challenge is encrypted and encysted in the subconscious where it interprets all similar challenges through the lens of the defeated challenge and response. Thus all those strange compulsive behaviors we have.
As it chances we know Burroughs’ central childhood fixation. That was when he was eight or nine and he was challenged on a street corner on the way to school by a twelve year old Irish bully. Terrified ERB broke and ran apparently thereafter branded as a coward. Thus the central theme of his work is fight or flight and the state of cowardice. He examines the matter endlessly throughout the entire body of his work. These elements are all especially prominent in Chessmen.
We know that ERB was stressed to the breaking point as he wrote in 1921. Whenever he was stressed his personality fragmented, splitting at least once. In Chessmen the Kaldanes are two separate entities, the physical Rykors and the mental Kaldanes. Tara and Gahan, the ritual Burroughs’ surrogates are driven apart by the terrific storm.
This is a dream story abounding in dream images. One can provide an analysis of the storm scene based on the incidents occurring in ERB’s life at the time.
The image presented to us is of this very rare Martian storm of very high winds as in a tornado. Tara although warned against it takes her flier up. Perhaps ERB was warned against buying Tarzana, I would certainly think that Emma was at the least apprehensive. Tara navigates well beneath the clouds but wants to be in a cloud where she has never been before, i.e. Burroughs buys Tarzana. Here she is buffeted about so to escape she rises above the cloud or storm where the winds abate. But she has to get back down so she must reenter the storm. She is then taken by the winds tumbled head over heels by their extreme violence arriving half dead in the land of the Kaldanes.
Now, how does this represnet ERB’s actual situation in dream images.
ERB left Chicago under one presumes, sunny skies. His original intent was to buy twenty acres to raise hogs. Instead he bought over five hundred acres. He then began a massive building and improvement program with what appears to have been a substantial payroll and a not very well thought out plan. He overspent his income so that by 1921 his bills must have been greater than his income forcing him to borrow. He found he had neither the skills nor the talent bo be a ‘Gentleman Farmer’ so that he was forced to auction off most of his tools, implements and livestock in an effort to raise money and cut expenses. Also at this time his sources of income came under attack as the movies refused to film his intellectual properties while his royalties also came under attack.
In what I consider a purely defensive move he was forced to incorporate himself assigning all his income, copyrights and what not to the corporation in an effort to secure the means of his livelihood by putting his income beyond the reach of his creditors. In what I consider a questionable move he subsequently transferred a portion of Tarzana to the corporation. So, shortly after this storm broke on his head he became merely an employee of his corporation.
At the time he wrote Chessmen then he was caught in the turbulence of this storm he had created. Unable to get back down as with Tara he tried to rise above it in some way but was forced back into the problem where he was being blown along head over heels no longer in control of his affairs.
In the relative calm of 1924 he wrote Marcia Of The Doorstep that chronicles and looks back at this period.
Tara’s flight then is ERB’s day to day situation presented in dream images.
The rest of the book deals with past and present in a series of dream images to which we proceed.
I, Dynamo 