Burroughs Books

These last words of Burroughs will have great poignancy for his fans, but might not be all that meaningful to the casual reader. He writes about mundane everyday occurrences, memories of his eventful life, makes extensive literary references and provides loving descriptions of his cats. For me, the Burroughs magic is here in abundance and this book helps to complete the big picture of his life and work. It's not all smooth sailing, though, as his repetitive railings against the "war on drugs" can become a bit tedious. Obscure references are explained in the explanatory notes: I was interested to see he was a member of IOT (International Order of Thanateros - see the books Liber Kaos and Liber Null & Psychonaut: An Introduction to Chaos Magic) and friends with V. Vale (See Re/Search Publications like Industrial Culture Handbook: Re # 6/7 and Re/Search #14: Incredibly Strange Music, Volume I (Re/Search ; 14)).

Some sections are funny, some are sad (especially where he writes about Joan Vollmer and his family) and some very interesting from a literary perspective. There are powerful passages of great beauty that stick in the mind. His love for his cats and for other animals like lemurs is very moving and shows that he may have been larger than life, but in the end he was very human. So, to wrap it up: Last Words is essential reading for the Burroughs enthusiast and the Burroughs scholar, to finally understand the man and his writing. Phew ... I am relieved, to know how much he loved some people and his pets, in the end.

Queer

Junky

There are Burroughs fans who love this novel, but I'm not a big fan of this particular story. You can read about it in the reviews of much cheaper editions than this one. Just a reminder that McClurg is the first edition and G&D's are reprints. "All Lustadt was in an uproar. The mad king had escaped."

great book, but unfortunately the binding broke as it is like 40 years old. literally.

Another Caspak book, and another main character. A fan of 'B' names for this series, was Burroughs, as this one's name is Bradley.

Taking a trip out from Fort Dinosaur with a party of other men, things turn sour when they run into a tyrannosaur.

When they run into the winged men called the Wieroo they don't have too many fans, either.

Even the best ¨critical¨ ¨theory¨ is just stuff that's been made up to sound big and clever - and this anthology's no different. Some of the pieces are better than others - in that they correlate more with my personal prejudices. One might expect a book about WSB and Globalisation to critique Burroughs's engagement with the Control Machine: Nike/Gap ads, work with corp-rockers U2 blah blah, publication by Murdoch and so on. Strangely this is all omitted. There's not much point pretending it didn't happen just coz it's too hard for you. At least WSB never pretended he was a lefty like these guys do.

"Tarzan the Magnificent," the 21st book in the Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, consists of two novellas: "Tarzan and the Magic Men" (1936) and "Tarzan and the Elephant Men" (1937), the latter of which is a minor sequel to "Tarzan and the City of Gold." In the first novella the American travel writer Stanley Wood tells a fantastic story of another one of those lost cities in the heart of Africa, where women warriors are ruled by an evil magician and there is a great diamond called the Gonfal with hypnotic powers. Tarzan dismisses the story until he sees the Gonfal at work. The result is a standard ERB adventure yarn: Tarzan goes to the lost city to rescue another lost Englishman, resists the charms and powers of a savage queen, so on and so forth. Burroughs has been using this formula since "The Return of Tarzan" when the Lord of the Jungle first encountered La, the beautiful high priestess of the flaming god of Opar. The second novella returns us to Cathne, the City of Gold, and Athne, the City of Ivory, where Tarzan takes on Phoros, the dictator of Athne. This means more political intrigue in the effort to put Zygo on the throne of Athne and another gladiator fight in the arena between the Lord of the Jungle and Hyrack. The second story really has nothing to do with the first and really constitutes little more than ERB tying up some loose ends from "Tarzan and the City of Gold" (which was also something of a misnomer of a title since all the action is in the City of Ivory in both stories).

Zero Character Development; Tarzan fights dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures.
If you have read less than a hundred books, and you are under 20, and you like Tarzan, you will love this! Look for the book with a cover illustration by Boris (it shows a dinosaur).
Edgar Rice Burroughs is great!

Comes across a bit like watered down Burroughs, but this writing is interesting because it's so stripped down--acoustic Burroughs--lacking the electrical force of the explosion of images, and rape and plundering of words which typifies Burroughs--but while retaining Burroughs' subject matter.

This first piece in this book however is the exception--"Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986"--lays out Burroughs' position on America rather sweetly.

A note to real Tarzan fans: DO NOT bother reading the last Tarzan book, the missing manuscript finalized by Joe Lansdale. The book is really awful, it has totally lost the Burroughs original touch and feel. I was SOOO disappointed after reading the book that I was really furious. It was hard to recognize this Tarzan as the same person Burroughs was writing about. You have been warned!

I did not necessarily have high hopes for this book. As a pre-teen and teenager I was in love with the writing of Burroughs and Robert E. Howard, as well as their most famous characters, Tarzan and Conan, respectively. And I have had a lot of respect for the company controlling Burroughs's copyrights for not dumping a lot of Tarzan pastiches on the marketplace as has happened with Conan. But having watched hack after hack literally destroy Conan, my expectations for this book were fairly low.

Fortunately, I was somewhat surprised. While it definitely lacks Burroughs's tone in many places, it's relatively true to the original character. Lansdale appears to be a decent enough writer and I think he has a lot of respect for the Tarzan mythos. He wisely introduces one of my favorite characters into the storyline, Jad-Bal-Ja (the golden lion), but I ultimately wasn't overly impressed with what I considered the science fiction aspects of the story, e.g., the bug-like monster.

Not that Burroughs didn't frequently troll the waters of science fiction in Tarzan, it just seemed to lack a degree of originality. The downer ending was also something of an oddity. Admittedly, "Tarzan of the Apes," the one that started it all, had a downer ending, but for the most Burroughs generally wrapped up his Tarzan stories with a semblance of "everything is now right in the world." Okay, so maybe I'm being picky.

I do recommend this book. It is an entertaining read and is never boring. I guess anyone who tries to pick up where my favorite authors left off is usually going to face some negative criticism.

First, let me say I like Lansdale's other work, and I respect his clear love for Burroughs' characters. Still, he was not the author to finish Burroughs' final Tarzan novel--if anyone was. Much as with that other pulp-era barbarian, Conan, Tarzan is at his best when handled only by his creator. For anyone else to write a Tarzan novel--even one begun by Burroughs himself--is the equivalent of invading a man's home and sleeping with his wife: It's just wrong. For the most part, the story's a by-the-numbers Tarzan novel without the sexually charged tension of Tarzan's encounters with La or Nemone or the breathtaking pace of Burroughs' midperiod Tarzan adventures. As conceived by Lansdale, Ur is a moderately interesting city, though a bit dark for a Burroughs novel. Also, Lansdale cheats us of the seemingly promised confrontation between Tarzan and the giant king of Ur, while the language Tarzan uses is out of line with Burroughs' creation. Finally, having Tarzan meekly submit to Fate and walk to Pellucidar is something the Burroughsian Ape-man would never do. Overall, while this book is a noble effort, it falls short on too many levels to be really worth the effort other than as a curiosity.

I eagerly awaited this book for about 15 years, ever since I learned that there was an unfinished Tarzan story by Burroughs, but I was quite disappointed by what was done with ERB's manuscript. Compare Lansdale's version with the synopsis of ERB's 80 page manuscript in the appendix to the Porges biography of ERB. Lansdale really butchered many elements already worked out by ERB. I understand it's very hard to match the quality of ERB's storytelling, and I don't like to overly criticize people, but it doesn't seem that Lansdale even tried to write a decent book. It reads to me like a hack job, with little regard for style or the character created by ERB. For example, would ERB have written "Keep your mind off the loincloth, dear?" I don't think so. Nor is ERB's Tarzan a braggart. His character is existential. But not so existential that he would just give up on Jane and enter Pellucidar. In the Dark Horse 4 part serial version of this book, there are so many errors as to believe that Lansdale was half asleep when he wrote this. For example, there are characters in certain scenes which are actually someplace else in Africa in a different part of the storyline. Tell me Lansdale didn't just write this book as quickly as he could. As for the reviewer who criticised ERB's supposedly dense style and praised Lansdale's stilted 3 word sentences and then said, "Well, I've read all the Tarzan, Barzoom, and Pellucidar novels at least twice, so I guess I'm well-informed also"... All I can respond to that is, if you've read Burroughs' Mars books so many times, why don't you know how to spell Barsoom? And one more thing, ERB's style is elegant, the thing which makes his stories immortal. Philip Jose Farmer should have been given the chance to finish ERB's last Tarzan novel (I'm not referring to his Tarzan pastiches A Feast Unknown and Lord of the Trees, which were meant to be humorous, not true adaptions of ERB's character). At least he understands the character better (read THE DARK HEART OF TIME for an example of this). This book gets 2 stars, not for Lansdale's efforts or lack thereof, but because of the occasional glimpse of a paragraph penned by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Master of Adventure.

Same old sceanrio in a Tarzan story, spend your valuable time reading the earlier books in the series, you'll be happy you did!

Back to the Stone Age follows the adventures of Lieutenant von Horst of the airship O-220 in
Pellucidar as he attempts to find his fellow crew members after being separated from them during
a titanic herbivore stampede caused by hundreds of saber-toothed tigers conducting a mass
slaughter. Getting lost in Pellucidar, Edgar Rice Burroughs' world within our world, is rather easy to
do since it is virtually impossible to get one' bearings there. The Sun remains fixed in the center
of the sky and the horizon curves upward so even the tallest peaks tend to merge into the
background. This sort of enviorment tends to lead to much aimless wandering about, interrupted frequently
by the most unlikely of coincidences as characters separate and meet again a timely manner. This
precludes a coherent plot structure, but Von Horst does have some interesting adventures.

Allready sai

Even though it was clear by the time ERB wrote this, the Pellucidar books were starting to falter, I greatly enjoyed this book. I have a few reasons for this: One, Von Horst (or Von) is a likeable hero who isn't quite as gratuitously stupid as some of Burroughs' other heroes. For another, I just liked the spunky, matter-of-fact heroine, La-ja. She's easily one of ERB's best heroines despite being cast in the standard mold of such a character. While parts of the book seemed overdone (ie, the Mammoth Men portion), others were quite appealing(the Gorbuses, Von's living death in the trodon cave). For me then this was a satisfying read that more than paid off when in the end Von finally fought Gaz. Surely not among ERB's best but definitely far above his worst.