The story has been portrayed countless times – movies, cartoons, comics, Disney, radio, even on the stage. Little baby Lord Graystoke, born on the Africa coast. His parents, shipwrecked, die when Tarzan is but an infant. He is found and raised by apes. He becomes lord of the jungle. He meets and falls in love with Jane. Remember? If this is the extent of your Tarzan lore, then you are on par with me before I picked up the Tarzan series. I had seen, and liked, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, with Christopher Lambert. I had caught bits and pieces of the old Tarzan movie with Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan on cable a few times. However, I had never read the original books until now.
Originally, Tarzan was created and released by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, as a pulp magazine, and the story reflects the adventure stories of that period. These two books cover the original Tarzan story, from his birth until…. well, you will have to find out. These books are well worth the read – they are classic adventure tales. Fast action, suspense, and a few cliffhangers thrown in for good measure are what you can expect here. However, make sure that you suspend reality for a bit when reading. They implore some of the characteristics of many of the adventure stories of the time period – the characters in the book are treated as if they are the only characters in the world. Chance meetings are the norm here, and if you try to rationalize a few things, you could probably ruin the story for yourself pretty easily.
Tarzan reads like a superhero novel, and in many respects, that is what he is: chivalrous, noble, intelligent, heroic, and superhuman. He kills gorillas with his bare hands, hunts lions with just a knife and lasso, and roars like a bull ape after killing his foe. The other thing to note about this, the original Tarzan, is that he is infinitely cooler than any Tarzan out there. From his monogrammed luggage to him drinking absinthe in bars, he's the very essence of the hip European gentry in the early 1900's.
So, in conclusion, if you haven’t read this, and you are looking for a couple of good books to read to take up a week or so, grab these. They are certainly classic adventure stories. They are not deep, are very fun, and make you want to keep picking them up to see what happens next.