The Return of Tarzan

Merton Public Libraries were running an outreach operation from the waiting room of the southbound platform at Raynes Park the other night when we came through and I picked up a couple of books, one the Tarzan illustrated. The idea is to read and recycle at a recycling point of your choice, possibly the very same waiting room.

This Tarzan was originally published in 1913 or so and this copy was a recent reprint from Penguin Classics; it is not at all clear what if any permission was needed from http://www.tarzan.org/ - an interesting site in its own right where you can read all about the early publishing history of the Tarzan stories, which did not include Penguin. What is more, Penguin Classics was a rather highbrow operation when I was little, Russian novelists and Greek playwrights sort of thing.

An interesting light read, something of a precursor to the Bond stories of my own younger days. Particularly interesting in the way that readers are attracted to, maybe identify with, someone who is both very civilised - with, say, impeccable manners with women when in Europe - and very uncivilised - with a taste for meat so fresh that it is still warm when in the heart of darkness - at the same time. Again, rather like Commander Bond, the killer in a penguin suit, lounging around at bars and casinos in between kills.

Interesting also in its take on the inhabitants of the heart of darkness, a mixture of noble savages (untainted by love of the gold which abounded in a mountain up the road) and bad savages (very hairy and with short bandy legs). There were also noble Arabs living in the north and bad Arabs living in the south, these last being greedy & cruel slavers all. Furthermore, it is sometimes suggested that the morals of the animals were better than those of many of us humans, the savagery of their goings on, with much rending of live flesh with naked teeth, notwithstanding. Some of the animals could even talk in a limited way (and Tarzan even knew their lingo). Although, I should add, that the most evil of all were two dastardly Russians, this despite the fact Russia was about to become our ally in the forthcoming Great War.

I don't know whether ERB should get a plus mark or a minus mark for having his apes talk. A plus mark for allowing that animals are not as dumb as they look at a time when most people thought that they were very dumb, a minus mark for eventually being proved wrong, with the consensus only recently emerging that apes do not and cannot talk in any very meaningful way: possibly up to elementary sentences but probably not up to talking about things which are not present. They can, however, lie, lying having evolved earlier than one might have thought.

Nor do I know how well it would all go down now, with us all being so much more knowledgeable, with most of us, for example, knowing that sun loving & murderous ancient Mexicans probably did not live in Africa at the same time. Nothing that a bit of editorial touching up here and there would not deal with, but Penguin have chosen to reprint the integral & unabridged original text. Very proper of them too. We await the edition with scholarly apparatus - in the way of 'Les Éditions de la Pléiade' - with interest and meanwhile one wonders whether this sort of thing has found its way into the syllabi of aspirants to degrees in English Literature.

Perhaps the bit of editorial touching up is what gave us Indiana Jones.

PS: I remember that the roughly contemporary explorer Nansen said that he found the taste of very fresh flesh - in his case very young sea birds - rather odd. I think he preferred to let it go cold before eating it.