Brother Men: The Correspondence of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston [Paperback]

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Author), Herbert T. Weston (Author), Matt Cohen (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2005

Brother Men is the first published collection of private letters of Edgar Rice Burroughs, the phenomenally successful author of adventure, fantasy, and science fiction tales, including the Tarzan series. The correspondence presented here is Burroughs’s decades-long exchange with Herbert T. Weston, the maternal great-grandfather of this volume’s editor, Matt Cohen. The trove of correspondence Cohen discovered unexpectedly during a visit home includes hundreds of items—letters, photographs, telegrams, postcards, and illustrations—spanning from 1903 to 1945. Since Weston kept carbon copies of his own letters, the material documents a lifelong friendship that had begun in the 1890s, when the two men met in military school. In these letters, Burroughs and Weston discuss their experiences of family, work, war, disease and health, sports, and new technology over a period spanning two world wars, the Great Depression, and widespread political change. Their exchanges provide a window into the personal writings of the legendary creator of Tarzan and reveal Burroughs’s ideas about race, nation, and what it meant to be a man in early-twentieth-century America.

The Burroughs-Weston letters trace a fascinating personal and business relationship that evolved as the two men and their wives embarked on joint capital ventures, traveled frequently, and navigated the difficult waters of child-rearing, divorce, and aging. Brother Men includes never-before-published images, annotations, and a critical introduction in which Cohen explores the significance of the sustained, emotional male friendship evident in the letters. Rich with insights related to visual culture and media technologies, consumerism, the history of the family, the history of authorship and readership, and the development of the West, these letters make it clear that Tarzan was only one small part of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s broad engagement with modern culture.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“As a modern mythmaker and one of the bestselling and most reproduced writers in English, Edgar Rice Burroughs deserves richer treatment than he has received, and several tendencies in the study of American culture—particularly the emphases on empire, masculinity, and popular culture—suggest that he will be more and more prominent in scholarly discourse. This book makes Burroughs accessible to a very broad range of scholars.”—Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights

About the Author

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950), most well known as the author of the Tarzan books, was one of the bestselling American authors of the early twentieth century. Millions of copies of his books sold during his lifetime.

Herbert T. Weston (1876–1951) was a businessman in Beatrice, Nebraska.

Matt Cohen is Assistant Professor of English at Duke University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 328 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (April 13, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822335417
• ISBN-13: 978-0822335412
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,290,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Taxonomy Of A Friendship, October 27, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Men: The Correspondence of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston (Paperback)

Reading the personal correspondence of the great US author Edgar Rice Burroughs, you feel like a voyeur, for his detail is almost astounding and sometimes you are taken back to a day far removed from our crazily sped up world.

His correspondence with his prep school pal Herbert Weston isn't especially shocking, but it's affectionate, like looking into an old yearbook and seeing the silly inscriptions. It sounds to me as though they kept up writing to each other for nearly thirty years just for old times sake. If you were looking, as I was, to get more insight into Burroughs' writing process, you're out of luck; mostly it's him trying to cheer up Weston, whose business goes through rough times, and also, rather charmingly, he tries not to show off too much when the success of the TARZAN and JOHN CARTER novels makes him into a world famous personality--and a whole city, Tarzana, named after his creation. Meanwhile in Nebraska Weston just bumbles along, stumbling across "Ed"'s name constantly whenever he picks up the newspaper or reads a magazine at the barber shop. The most exciting part of the whole book comes when Weston proposes to buy "Ed" a Lincoln in Nebraska and drive it out to Tarzana--this scheme will save Ed about 1,000 in sales tax. I won't give away the spoilers, you'll have to read the book yourself to see what happens.

Outside of the Lincoln caper, the only thing that really lights a fire under Weston's ass is the death of Teddy Roosevelt, a lion among men I suppose. It was like the way some people here in the 21st century cried when Reagan died. Also intriguing is the unfolding account of the ways both men coped with the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, and how they quarrelled and didn't speak for ten years, then started writing again before the 2nd World War. Time speeds on by, doesn't it?

Editor Matt Cohen provides helpful and informative notes; the volume is nicely illustrated with vintage photos of both families. Cohenis the great-grandson of Weston and relates, amusingly, the story that he came home from grad school and told his grandma that he was looking into cases of emotional and homosocial friendship between American men of 100 years ago and out of the blue she said, "Well then, why don't you go up to the attic and pore through Dad's old letters from Edgar Rice Burroughs?" Talk about buried treasure! The Westons had kept these letters in perfect condition, and happily enough when it came to it, young Cohen found that the Burroughs estate was willing to cooperate fully.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A window into friendship and life, October 29, 2005

By 

Mignon A. Keaton - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Brother Men: The Correspondence of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Herbert T. Weston (Paperback)

I picked up Brother Men not knowing what to expect, but figuring it would be a quick and amusing read. What I found was a window into life as it was passing for Weston and Burroughs, not as it was remembered. This collection of letters spans the birth of two generations, two World Wars, and the trials of profit and loss. The conversation is friendly, comic, insightful, and random! At times I had to remember that the characters were real and that the letters existed. I actually was sad to end the book knowing that in a few years after the last letter this friendship would end. I think the book is great if you are a Burroughs fan, interested in history, or just enjoy how human relationships evolve. I highly suggest reading the introduction BEFORE and AFTER reading the letters.