Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography Of Lord Greystoke!

Tarzan is alive. Philip Jose Farmer spent decades developing this enticing notion that the Lord of the Jungle fabricated by Edgar Rice Burroughs over a century ago was not only based in no small part on a real man but a real man who thanks to African magic was still very much alive and would be for centuries to come. To that end Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke from Bison Books is an outstanding read for anyone fascinated by ERB's legendary Ape Man like I am. Farmer was compulsive in his fascination with Tarzan and spent long hours writing up articles to explain this and that detail about his legend. He takes that compulsive power and writes a biography for all of us to enjoy which seeks to not only convince the reader that Tarzan is real but that most of his many adventures in the depths of Africa really happened (to greater and lesser degrees). 

ERB then is reduced to a role he actually creates for himself in the context of the Tarzan tales, a documenter of the events as he learns them. His information according to Farmer was by its very nature incomplete and because ERB sought like Tarzan himself to keep his real identity a secret many adjustments were made to the "facts" to hide things that might reveal just a little too much. As they say on the vintage cop show Dragnet - "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." So Tarzan is real but that's not his name and neither is it Greystoke. Jane is real but that might not be her name. Opar is real but it's not quite as resplendent as ERB makes it out to be. La is real and she tempts Tarzan mightily but what happens to her is a mystery. Korak is real but he is not who you think he is. 

Mostly Farmer says the events of the first two novels in what he dubs "The Epic" are mostly true. After that it gets a bit more elusive. Pal-Ul-Don is not exactly what we think it is but there just might be dinosaurs of a sort. Lost kingdoms exhibiting traits of Crusaders and Roman Legions might be real but not on the scale we read about in the novels. The Leopard Men are real but the Ant Men are fiction. On and on it goes as Farmer deals in grand details with the events of Tarzan's life putting the novels and events into an order. The great apes which raised Tarzan are not quite what we thought they were, but neither were they civilized. Poor Jane comes in for some hard use but never does Farmer reject the essential love story which nests at the core of the Tarzan mythology. 

The book proper is followed by Addendums which add even more details to the events. One is an essay by a named Professor H.W. Starr who posits many of the connections which inspired Farmer to begin with though he reaches some slightly different conclusions. The longest Addendum, the second one is a crushingly detailed listing of the expansive genealogy of Tarzan's family including all the elaborate connections which make him a key member of the Wold Newton Family. (Briefly the Wold Newton Family is a conceit on Farmer's part that many of the world's famous historical and fictional figures are part of one elaborate family tree and that certain members were exposed as a group to nurturing radiation from the Wold Newton meteor which grants them superhuman gifts.) The Bison edition which I took great pleasure in reading this time also includes "Tarzan Lives - An Exclusive Interview with the Eighth Duke of Greystoke" and "Extracts from the Memoirs of "Lord Greystoke" which were both key elements of The Man Who Met Tarzan which I looked at last week. With both these volumes one has most of Farmer's key speculations about ERB's legendary creation.

The volume from Bison Books also includes a Foreword by Win Scott Eckert and an Introduction by Mike Resnick. These two essays serve well to put the Farmer focus on Tarzan into a working context for a new reader. Reading this work is rather like visiting the inside of Philip Farmer's hefty imagination, fully informed by robust readings and perfectly willing to take leaps of fancy which allow the whole Wold Newton enterprize to prosper. Philip Jose Farmer never broke from his pose that Tarzan was alive. If he could believe then so can I, and after you read Tarzan Alive - A Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke so might you. 

But PJF was not done. His next stop logically enough was Doc Savage. More on that next week. 

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