How many here knew Tarzan was based on a book series?

I will be the first to admit I had no idea. Until several months back when I bought a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes the only Tarzan I remembered was the shaggy haired romancer from the Disney flick in the early 2000s. Let’s crack that up to literary ignorance and leave it.

Did you know he fights his own father in the movie? Clayton is the bad guy in the film; however in the novel Clayton is the last name of the family from which Tarzan is stolen by the apes. Major mistake on the part of Disney there. That could cause Tarzan serious psychological damage–not that he has much to fret over being raised by monstrous apes until he is in his mid twenties.

But Mowgli seemed to fair all right…

The book is pulp fiction–not the Tarantino movie…the genre–and is written in a style which I find mildly distracting at times. Burroughs likes to use one complex sentence to construct his paragraphs; and he will place them one after another in some sections. This can detract from the story a little; although he is skilled in creating the one sentence paragraphs and attaches a strange fluidity to them.

As I am reading Tarzan is slowly developing as a character–in his younger years he learns how to tick off all the apes. And I am currently awaiting the arrival of the woman who will educate Tarzan in his humanity and come to love him. Will it be Jane? Will it be a woman who had no presence in the Disney movies at all?

I can only read and wait and pound on my chest.

Think daily, 

A Southpaw