Tarzan Forever : The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan (Hardcover)

by John Taliaferro (Author) " If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor," Edgar Rice Burroughs..." (more)
Key Phrases: bull ape, jungle tales, cave girl, Los Angeles, New York, John Carter (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
He didn't begin writing fiction until he was almost 36 years old, with a mediocre track record in school, the army, and business. But once Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) found his calling, it took him barely six months to produce one of the most enduring characters in popular culture. Tarzan of the Apes was a smash hit all around--in the pulp magazine where he first appeared, in book form, and eventually in a series of movies. As in his previous book about "America's Cowboy Artist" Charles M. Russell, Texas-based journalist Taliaferro displays a healthy appreciation for the work of a mass entertainer without making exaggerated claims for its artistic merits. The biographer also knowledgeably describes the publishing environment in which Burroughs operated, showing how the managerial skills the author acquired in a long string of boring jobs helped him squeeze every nickel out of his literary creations. This all-American moxie linked Chicago-born Burroughs to his readers, who also shared his fascination with exotic places (from Africa to Mars), heroes distinguished by brawn and brains, and heroines as scantily clad as possible. While the text capably chronicles Burroughs's personal affairs, Taliaferro sensibly keeps his focus on the fascinating role the Tarzan creator played in our collective fantasy life and in the development of commercial culture. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Burroughs (1875-1950), the prolific pulp novelist whose Tarzan saga unfolded in adventure tales and movies, sold 60 million books during his lifetime, making him the bestselling American author of the first half of this century. While Taliaferro, former L.A. bureau chief at Newsweek, acknowledges the mediocrity of Burroughs's fiction, and fully exposes the pulp writer's racism and outlandish political beliefs, this low-key bio is also a compelling case study of the mushrooming of popular culture. In 1923, the one-time pencil-sharpener salesman became one of the first writers to incorporate, overseeing an empire encompassing story syndication, ranching and real estate. He struck lucrative deals to turn his lord-of-the-apes yarns into motion pictures, plays, a radio show and a daily comic strip. He also licensed Tarzan statuettes, Tarzan ice cream and Tarzan board games. Burroughs emerges as a predecessor of Walt Disney, whose life often seems as improbable as his fantastical plots. A frequent school dropout, rejected by the Rough Riders in 1898, he took a string of dreary jobs and failed in two marriages, finally turning to writing in his mid-30s. A rabid eugenicist, he advocated sterilization of "instinctive criminals" as well as "defectives and incompetents." He "never set foot in Africa," according to Taliaferro, but at age 66, he traversed the Pacific as the oldest American correspondent to cover WWII. Taliaferro convincingly portrays the adventure novelist as a vain workaholic who lived beyond his means and kept churning out material to finance his tastes for cars, thoroughbreds and even an airplane of his own. Despite the myriad poor films and imitators Burroughs inspired, Tarzan lives on, and his fans will find this entertaining, warts-and-all bio irresistible. Photos.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (April 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068483359X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684833590
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,906,719 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Did Mr. Taliaferro really read ERB's works?, January 25, 2002

By	T. A. Stock (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I found Tarzan Forever well written, and often very entertaining and interesting, but very often just plain dead wrong - from badly and broadly misinterpreting texts, such as Lost on Venus (which Taliaferro just didn't get), to many specific mistakes.

Taliaferro regards Lost on Venus an example of Burroughs "climb[ing] on his favorite high horse, eugenics." (page 265) Specifically, Taliaferro refers to Burroughs' creation of Havatoo, a city-state in which eugenics has run amok, concluding that this nightmare city was an ERB utopia. But the depiction of Havatoo is Swiftian - gullible Carson can see only roses at first, but finds after many hair-raising adventures that the Havatoo are as spiritually dead as a race of zombies that occupy a city on the other side of the "River of Death" which separates the two cities. Utopia? Not even close!

And here's an example of a specific error: Taliaferro cites Carson's knowledge of aeronautics as the fact that persuaded the rulers of a kingdom on Venus to spare him. (page 266) But aeronautics came up much later. It was Carson's knowledge of astronomy that saved him. An unimportant detail, maybe, but Taliaferro's book is rife with such errors.

A mistake I found even more annoying - if not downright devious - was Taliaferro's claim that "on the final page" of Apache Devil, Shoz-Dijiji (the Apache Devil of the title) tells his sweetheart, Wichita Billings, "that he is white, nimbly sidestepping the unspeakable eventuality of miscegenation, a well-exercised Burroughs taboo." (page 224) This is as untrue as it is ridiculous! Shoz-Dijiji only tells Wichita he has a secret (i.e., that he is "white") to tell her later. But he never utters his secret to Wichita on the final page - or any other page of Burroughs' novel. In fact, Wichita professes her love for him despite his American Indian heritage. More to the point, as Taliaferro himself notes, Shoz-Dijiji's mother was "one quarter Cherokee." (page 216) Thus, Shoz-Dijiji, one of Burroughs' noblest heroes, not only is mistaken as to his racial heritage, he is also the product of the so-called "Burroughs taboo" against miscegenation! Here, we find a familiar Burroughs theme - individual honor and integrity are what matter, not the color of one's skin.

Those who have aired the tired old claim that Burroughs was a racist, and Taliaferro is solidly in this camp, have simply not been willing to recognize the subtleties of the Burroughs canon (yes, even adventure yarns can be morally ambiguous and complicated). Instead of reading Burroughs' works carefully, with an ear for the era in which they were written, Taliaferro and others skim the books and draw hasty, misinformed conclusions.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent, June 18, 1999

By A Customer

Anyone who believes Burroughs is a racist fails to understand the era in which he wrote. One must remember that by today's standards even fictional heros such as Buck Rogers and the more contempory James Bond could be considered racist and sexist. This book gives credit to Burroughts imagination and the fact that he estabished the basis for today's "super heros." His writing is crisp and his plots were very imaginative. This bio does him justice and is better than the one previous effort I am aware of. This is a keeper

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, not apologetic, June 28, 1999

By A Customer

I must admit that the only Edgar Rice Burrough's novel I truly enjoyed reading was "Tarzan of the Apes". One reviewer of this book called ERB a hack writer, and that is probably true, but the first Tarzan novel was definitely not a "hack novel", or else we wouldn't be reading it as a classic some 90 years later. On the contrary, "Tarzan of the Apes" is an important social commentary. The writing of Taliaferro's "Tarzan Forever" may be a little choppy for the first chapter or so, but once the author gets into it, it gets much smoother and is very readable. I didn't find Taliaferro at all apologetic for ERB's views on eugenics, or his racism either. I thought the author was very honest and upfront about this aspect of ERB's personality. I found "Tarzan Forever" a very engrossing biography and suggest it whole-heartedly.