Customer Reviews

The Origin of Tarzan; The Mystery of Tarzan's Creation Solved

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Artamian does a fabulous job of infering that ERB must have read (1) Paul Du Chaillu, a French non-academic who did the first field-work and specimen collection of gorillas in French Gabon in the mid 19th C (available from Amazon), and (2) J W Buell's "Heroes of the Dark Continent" of 1889 (one in the Auctions as I write this). He also has some excellent stuff on the place of ERB & Tarzan in early 20th C society; why Tarzan has lasting appeal; the child-hero myth; and a wonderfully concise critique of ERB's writing style. He gets a bit silly, however, trying to locate the Greystoke cabin using a too-literal analysis - Tarzan and D'Arnot couldn't have walked for many, many weeks through THIS part of Africa because ERB didn't mention the three rivers and the impassable swamp here. Hello! This is FICTION we are talking about here! He also concludes that ERBs "great apes" are a "composite or a photographic montage of the gorilla, the mbouve and the koola" but he makes no attempt to tell us what animals Du Chaillu was describing by these terms, only that they were "two brand new species". I suspect he is talking about Pan troglodytes verus, a west African subspecies of chimp and possibly Pan paniscus, the bonobo, but it is too small to fit the description. Du Chaillu would have only encountered the Western lowland subspecies of gorilla - Gorilla gorilla gorilla (see Kingdon's field guide). Artamian also sidesteps ERB's separation of apes (mangani) and gorillas (bolgani) as different species. Conclusion - ERB created a fictitious animal, and no it don't fit reality, but it's a great freakin story anyway.

Artamian then hi-jacks the thing for the last ten pages with his own spiritual philosophy and a waffle about Jungian archetypes and how the world has gone to the dogs because the hard light of science has made everyone disbelieve and oh! what a mess we're in! This stuff is very far removed from ERB's (and Tarzan's) no-nonsense, sceptical, good-old-common-sense approach to life. He does, however, point out that the old-fashioned values of selfless heroism and nobility that Tarzan personifies will almost certainly outlive the current fashion in sneering anti-heroes.

Charles Berlin, who wrote the other review here, told me his source for the William Mildin story is an article called "The Man Who Really Was... Tarzan" by Thomas Llewellan Jones in a March 1959 issue of "Man's Adventure" magazine. Let's hear it for Chas! We're talking REAL obsure stuff here. Mr Artamian, who prides himself on finding the TRUE source of Tarzan while other ERBologists (good term Sarkis!) have missed the mark, may just have... missed the mark. I hope there are old copies of "Man's Adventure" in the library in Wasilla, Alaska. If so, I await the next edition with much glee.

Great piece of research... but that accursed elusive shipwrecked sailor story! Damn!

THE AUTHOR FAILS TO BRING UP THE STORY OF WILLIAM MILDIN, THE EARL OF STREATHAM, A CHILD WHO LIVED WITH "APES" AFTER BEING MAROONED ON THE AFRICAN COAST IN THE 1800'S---A SUPPOSEDLY TRUE STORY THAT BURROUGHS "VAGUELY" REMEMBERS READING. EVEN IF ERB DIDNT READ THIS TALE, ITS AN AMAZING COINCIDENCE THAT THIS STORY WAS PUBLISHED IN AT LEAST TWO SOURCES IN THE PERIOD BEFORE BURRROUGHS WROTE TARZAN.

saddly i report on the passing of sarkis atamian on 12/27/2005..
after a long illness and being unable to finish origins #2...
hail and farewell...ken humphreys