Edgar Rice Burroughs died on this day in 1950. I was two years old.
A decade later, or close to it, a friend and I were rummaging through some boxes of magazines and books looking for old copies of my father’s stash of Playboys.
I’ve recounted before I how instead found a cache of Ace paperback editions of Edgar Rice Burrough’s novels, replete with Frank Frazetta covers. I loved those covers…
I’m almost positive my first Burroughs novel was At the Earth’s Core.
And this is probably the first “adult” novel I ever picked out and read on my own. Almost certainly. It certainly marked a shift in my reading from children’s books, to something new.
As I’ve said any number of times before I cannot overstate the importance of Science Fiction in opening vistas for me in a life that was very constrained by poverty and my father’s constant moving on to new possibilities. And it was Burrough’s who brought me to Science Fiction.
This morning I read Burrough’s biographical sketch at Wikipedia. It contains a famous quote where Burrough’s commented about spending a lot of time reading pulp fiction and then deciding “…if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines.”
To my mind many years later Burrough’s was just a hack. Important to me, but still, a hack. However the author(s) of the Wikipedia article give a bit more sympathetic analysis. For instance when addressing his plots, they reflect how:
“Certainly the most evident feature of Burroughs’s novels is their frequently formulaic nature. There are plentiful mad scientists and mad queens, strong but honorable heroes, and a nearly certain guarantee that the hero of any novel will fall in love with a woman who sooner or later turns out to be a princess. Unlike a lot of recent fiction, the main characters are never equivocal about their good or bad natures. While the plot structures are therefore predictable, they are nevertheless satisfying, accounting in large measure for their continuing success. There is a Horatio Alger-like implication that honesty, courage, and hard work will eventually succeed (e.g., John Carter‘s frequent exclamation, “I still live!”) and that scheming, avarice, hatred, and laziness will not. And even this formulaic nature, not original with but perfected by Burroughs, has had a host of imitators, right through to the Star Wars films, which include many of the famous Burroughs tropes, such as the princess in distress (Princess Leia) rescued by the hero.”
That gave me a moment of pause…
They, the author(s) also attempt a sympathetic analysis of his racism and sexism. And these “isms” in Burrough’s books is inescapable. Their assertion is that he carried most of the general racial and sexual stereotypes of his time and place, but was remarkable in the number of noble and frequently heroic individuals in those despised categories that he portrayed throughout his many novels. In particular, this was true of Native Americans. They also suggested he grew over the years, particularly after moving to California, and some of his racism muted over time. I briefly looked around the web and this seems a generally accepted view.
Not to let him completely off the hook. He was a racist, a sexist and an antisemite. And there were plenty of people from his time and place who saw through the privileging of European derived cultures, and while fewer, still a number of people who saw through gender steryotyping. It’s just, as much of life is, that some nuance needs to be seen as we note his terrible shortcomings.
And not to let me off any hooks I need deal with. Still, as I look back as honestly best I can, it doesn’t seem the racism and sexism particularly infected me, not at least in such a way that when other views were presented I wasn’t open and with only a little pain able to absorb them. At least so far, it appears, so good…
But this reflection allowed me to realize how other currents of his stories probably actually influenced me to the good.
In particular I think about that line in the analysis of Burrough’s plotting, that “There is a Horatio Alger-like implication that honesty, courage, and hard work will eventually succeed (e.g., John Carter’s frequent exclamation, “I still live!”) and that scheming, avarice, hatred, and laziness will not.” Not deep and nuanced thinking here, but that doesn’t mean these aren’t important values…
And, Lord knows, I wasn’t going to get them from my father.
And, obviously, these values need some nuancing and even relativising. One can, after all, be honest, courageous and hard working, and can still fail.
But, still…
Real values. Should be held up. And for me, this is probably a main place they were…
So, not only did Burrough’s open a world of the imagination for me, he probably was also one of the important figures giving me some of the values I hold to this day.
And, Edgar, beaten and bruised, I still live!
So, once again, thank you!
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