Fri 30 Aug 2024
Diary Review: EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS – Tarzan and the Forbidden City.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews[8] Comments
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS – Tarzan and the Forbidden City. Tarzan #20, Ballantine U2029, paperback; 1st printing thus, March 1964. First published in rather different form in Argosy as a six-part serial under the title The Red Star of Tarzan. March 19, 1938 – April 23, 1938. The story is a revised version of the radio serial, “Tarzan and the Diamond of Asher,” written by Rob Thompson in 1934. First hardcover edition: ERB Inc., September 15, 1938. Many reprint editions.
Tarzan is asked by his friend Paul d’Arnot to help Brian Gregory’s father and sister in their search for the lost explorer. They have a map he sent, and a description of the lost city of Ashair, which contains the fabulous Father of Diamonds. Others know of the diamond, however, and are determined to get there first. An uncountable number of kidnappings, captures, and other forced separations keep the party divided and working to save the rest, until final victory.
There is same formula here that Burroughs is famous for, but the buildups often lead to quick letdowns, or nowhere at all, as if he [Burroughs] were a bit tired of it. Tarzan is a superman – without him the group would have been quite helpless, facing total disaster by the second chapter. Flashes of surprising humor shine occasionally, with apt comments on religion (page 134) and Hollywood (page 176). Not to be read critically.
Rating: ***
August 31st, 2024 at 4:55 pm
Always much more to my preference than Lord Greystoke, was “Bomba” ; 14-year-old South American counterpart to Tarzan, by Roy Rockwood.
‘Rockwood’ was multiple scribblers found in the stalls of the Strathmeyer stables.
But truly the last word in exotic jungle action. Volcanoes, floods, tribal wars. Ants. Poisonous flowers. Jaguars and anacondas in every tree. Croc-filled swamps. Mayan catacombs crawling with vipers.
And unlike Tarzan, Bomba was always on a quest –searching for his lost parents. Makes a difference.
August 31st, 2024 at 11:16 pm
My first Tarzan novel at around fourteen so I read it totally uncritically and enjoyed it that way. Burroughs was often criticized for the fresh-water sharks in the book, which ironically proved closer to the truth than he could have imagined (bull sharks swim up certain estuaries into lakes and often get eaten by crocodiles).
I tend to think of this as generic Tarzan, and a decent introduction for modern readers and I admit at fourteen the ironic ending about the “Father of Diamonds” was perfectly satisfying, and as mentioned above the attempts at humor mostly work.
The twenty-four part radio serial is available complete and well worth listening to with Burrough’s son-in-law playing Tarzan. This was also loosely used as the plot for THE NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN with Herman Brix (Bruce Bennett), the Forbidden City moved to Central America.
Lazy,
I can’t be as enthusiastic about Bomba, the later editions you read may have been expurgated, but even compared to Tarzan the racist tripe in the original Bomba stories is hard to swallow easily the worst in the history of genre. The worst in the Burrough’s stories is tame in comparison.
Maurice Gardner’s island hero Bantan is a decent variation of Tarzan and I found Roy Meyers hero raised by dolphins fun (DOLPHIN BOY and DAUGHTER OF THE DOLPHIN). Robert Moore Williams Jongor mixes Tarzan with dinosaurs and of course Charles Stilson’s arctic Tarzan Polaris.
Probably the best of the Tarzan imitators was William Chester’s Kioga (ironically also played by Herman Brix) a white child raised by a lost Indian tribe while for African adventure C.T. Stoneham’s Kaspa and the pulp Kigor as John Peter Drummond were both better written than most, and in Kigor’s case featured a heroic and intelligent Chieftan as Kigor’s friend, appearing more often than Tarzan’s Waziri allies.
Philip Jose Farmer’s LORD TYGER is a fascinating take on what a real Tarzan might be like, and of course Tarzan features in different guises in many of his books from the porn classic A FEAST UNKNOWN and the Holmes pastiche ADVENTURE OF THE PEERLES PEER to the time travel novel TIME’S LAST GIFT.
September 1st, 2024 at 12:24 am
I can readily believe that the Rockwood series didn’t fare well with critics. In this, I wouldn’t backbite them or second-guess them. They know the terrain better than I do; outdoor adventure is not a genre in which I’m very fluent. Aged 7, I’d read only: Frank Buck, Burroughs, Jim Corbett, Jack London, Ernest Seton. Hadn’t yet gotten to Kipling, Hudson, Haggard, or Fleming.
The Strathemeyer editions which were handed-down to me were just cheap yellow newsprint page stock inside. But they were colorful hardbounds, full-bleed-action-graphics (no jacket). I like the rousing artwork which stayed consistent from title to title.
I found the reading itself crude/simplistic, but swift and vivid. Had never seen any author describe the Amazon. Lots of inaccuracies in those romps but somehow, LATAM just touches my imagination more than Africa does. I’d still stand by ’em even today just for the sheer-fun-factor in the old-fashioned Strathemeyer view of the world.
Tarzan radio serial: agreed, had some fine episodes.
September 1st, 2024 at 7:06 am
Burroughs–like Mickey Spillane, James Hadley Chase, Peter Cheyney, and a dozen others, was an author I rally *wanted* to like.
Back in High school I had already discovered Fleming, Chandler, Hammett, Woolrich, Goodis, and Thompson, and I was convinced there must be some kind of retro/avant-garde poetry undiscovered in the pulp pages.
There was, and it had been discovered, but back in the days before internet–or even low-cost copying that made zines do-able to the masses, I had no way of knowing it.
So anyway, I tried Burroughs, loved THE MONSTER MEN, and plunged into Tarzan, John Carter, The Earth’s Core, etc. and found they were mostly padded with everyone looking for one another and just missing each other enough to prolong things a bit more.
Meh!
September 1st, 2024 at 1:31 pm
“… mostly padded with everyone looking for one another and just missing each other enough to prolong things a bit more.”
Nicely said, Dan. That’s what I remember the most about the ERB books I’ve read, too. Much fun as a kid, not so much as you get older.
September 2nd, 2024 at 12:36 am
Dan,
No question Burroughs depended too heavily on the alternating chapter cliffhanger formula in his work or that most of the Tarzan books are formulaic (it seems like every other book Tarzan runs into a look-a-like who is his twin), but the first five and TARZAN THE TERRIBLE, TARZAN THE UNTAMED, TARZAN AT THE EARTH’S CORE, and TARZAN’S QUEST have good moments.
The offbeat TARZAN AND THE FOREIGN LEGION has my favorite scene in all the Tarzan series when Colonel Clayton shot down behind the lines by the Japanese with an American crew kills a tiger with his knife alone and after one crew member states out loud that he should have realized John Clayton was Tarzan a crew member from Brooklyn blurts out, “Dat’s Johnny Weismuller?”
As I said, I was fourteen when I first read ERB and much more easily impressed.
September 2nd, 2024 at 12:48 am
Lazy,
I was older when I read Bomba, and passages like this defeated me:
“But perhaps their souls were asleep. Ah, that must be it! They were asleep.
But his was awake. At least it was waking. The thought gave him a thrill. Now he was sure he had found the truth. The native’s souls were asleep. The white men’s souls were awake. And he was white!”
Burroughs at his worst never came near that.
September 3rd, 2024 at 10:24 am
“An uncountable number of kidnappings, captures, and other forced separations keep the party divided…There is [the] same formula here that Burroughs is famous for…”
Indeed, the two ERB formulae I best remember from my youthful obsession with his work are:
1) Two variant, and usually competing, parallel “lost civilizations,” in retrospect reminding me of nothing so much as the People’s Front of Judea and Judean People’s Front in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.
2) Dividing the characters into two groups that he follows in alternating chapters.