THE WORKS OF PJF

Letters, Part 4

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

I'm way behind in my novel writing and correspondence, having broken and displaced my left upper arm bone, so I have no time to write articles or short stories for anybody, although I've been asked to do so and would like to. A pin and screw were inserted in the bone, and I'm doing exercises to get the arm back to normal. Also my wife fell and broke her pelvis in three places and nearly died from iatrogenic causes at the hospital. But we are renewing our subscription to the BB and wish all the best to our many friends at the Bibliofiles.

Philip José Farmer

Peoria, Illinois

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The author of TARZAN ALIVE has fallen on hard times, so we hope some of you will send him a get-well card to improve his frame of mind: 346 E. High PointRd., Peoria, IL, 61614-3039).

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

Thanks for your letters of sympathy which I have thoroughly enjoyed. So many things have been happening that I'm still way behindin my correspondence. But I will answer the letters in the near future.My wife will soon be operated on for a hip replacement, which means a delay in letter writting, but eventually ...! KAOR!

Philip José Farmer
Peoria,
Illinois

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dear Howard Wright & Michal Mims,

Thanks for the latest issue of TBG. As usual, it's stimulating.

Ben J. Francka points some errors in the chronology section of my Savage biography. Other Doconados have written me from time to time about errors in the chronology. I'm not surprised. It was written as an afterthought and with the deadline roaring like a tidal wave toward me. If I had to do it over again, I'd skip it, and if the book were reprinted, I'd eliminate it. A major problem was that so many tales were packed into within a relatively short time and that much of the timing of the sequence depended on references to weather at the time. Another is that the writers paid no more attention to chronology than Doyle did in his Sherlock Holmes stories. Now that Will Murray has continued the series within the same time frame, the problem becomes worse.

By the way, "rememberance," which appears several times in this issue, should be "remembrance." Doc wouldn't misspell it, though I suppose Monk would.

A note. If my TARZAN ALIVE hadn't done so well, Doubleday would never have given me a contract for the Savage biography. Its editor and publisher had never heard of him until I submitted my proposal for it. I know that such ignorance is almost incredible, but that's the way it was. And I couldn't, at that time, afforded writing it for a special press. But writing Doc's biography was tremendous fun and fulfilled a life long ambition for me (as did writing ESCAPE FROM LOKI).

I have a bone to pick with the gentleman who doubted (in one of your issues) that ESCAPE FROM LOKI would be included in the Savage canon. Why not? It's a serious attempt to portray the young Doc's character, and it's based on the several novels by Dent to Doc's meeting his future aides in Europe during WWI. I'd planned other novels about Doc's pre-1933 years, including THE CRIMSON JAGUAR, set in the Amazonian jungle and showing why Doc decided it was too dangerous for any women he might be close to. But that project will probably never come about because of Bantams's financial problems.

- Philip José Farmer

[Actually, Mr. Francka was referring to some errors in the book by Larry Widen & Chris Miracle, Doc Savage, Arch Enemy of Evil. (And I must confess, I cannot find the reference that Mr. Francka mentions). As for the "remembrance" thing, oops! That's pretty embarrassing. My new mantra shall be "use the spell checker, use the spell checker..."

I suppose that every Doc fan will have their own opinion about ESCAPE FROM LOKI. Here's my two cents worth. I believe that ESCAPE FROM LOKI was an accepted part of the Doc cannon or mythos long before it was written. Most Doc fans that I know of seemed to accept the idea that Doc met his men in a prison camp in WWI ever since it was first proposed in Apocalyptic Life. DC Comics certainly believed it, so much that they plageriazed Mr. Farmer's concept in their one and only Doc Savage annual. ESCAPE FROM LOKI is more a coming of age story than a classic Doc adventure and should be viewed as such.]

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

I've only sold a few copies of A FEAST UNKNOWN and see no chance of selling more individually. I wonder if you'd put a notice in the BB that I'll sell 50 signed copies at $10 per copy, plus mailing charges, to some book seller? If this offer isn't taken, I'm dumping the whole lot into the trash can. I don't want to do this, but am forced to take drastic measures in cutting down on my library. I've also got a case of galloping glaucoma, which doesn't help matters. Happy Holidays!

Philip José Farmer

6700 N. Mt. Hawley Road

Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

Joe Lansdale is a hell of a nice guy and a hell of a good writer, but if DARK HORSE knew anything at all, it would have asked me to write (complete) the Tarzan novel. Somehow, DARK HORSE overlooked my Tarzan biography and numerous Tarzan pastiches. In fact, I doubt if those nonliterates have even heard of me! Will Murray would have been a good candidate too.

Philip José Farmer

Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

Regarding Elaine Casella's excellent article on Roddenbenry's Tarzan script. Roddenberry gave me a copy of the script just after he'd written it. He asked me to look it over. I did, but I didn't think much of it, although some parts did have merit. My judgment may have been influenced by some inexcusable errors re. names and events in the Tarzan canon. Later, I found out that Roddenberry really didn't know the books. He'd sent out a man named Hank Stein to research Tarzan for him. Stein spent an afternoon in the library and handed in his notes to Roddenberry. Thus, the errors and mistaken references. That's how I remember the manuscript I never reread it, and I sold it long ago. It's only fair to tell you, however, that a movie director I knew thought that Roddenberry's portrait of Tarzan as a man whose great ape upbringing overrode the "human" part of him was superb. De gustibus non disputandam.

It's possible, no sure thing, that I might be writing an original Tarzan book for DARK HORSE. If I do, it will be based on the incident in TARZAN THE UNTAMED where the apeman finds the skeleton of a Spanish soldier in 15th or 16th century armor. Tarzan also found a map in the cylinder the soldier had been carrying. Tarzan took this with him, then there was no more of it. My plan is to have Tarzan return to the desert where he almost lost his life, and to follow the map. Ever since I first read UNTAMED in 1925, I've wondered why Tarzan didn't do that. So, now, maybe I'll have a chance to write my own version. But I'll be doing it in Burroughs spirit and as near his style as I can manage.

Philip José Farmer

Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

My hopes for writing an original Tarzan novel based on the skeleton in armor incident in TARZAN THE UNTAMED have been blown away. It's evident that the Ballantine editors are looking for stories to tie in with the TV Tarzan series, which will be science-fictional and futuristic. My novel would take place in 1918, would be traditional, and would, I had hoped, sum up the Tarzan mythos and the Tarzan character. Also, since I've been reading the Tarzan books since 1928 and believe, in a sense, that Tarzan really exists, I'd hoped to add some insight into the persona of the Lord of the Jungle. But it's not to be.

Attached is a horoscope of Tarzan's birth chart, sent in by Francois Christophe who came over from Paris to interview me for a documentary on Burroughs and Tarzan. I guess I'll have to write and ask him for an explanation of the chart, though. He claims that Tarzan is under the influence of Leo.

Philip José Farmer

Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

I'd talked myself into thinking that it didn't matter if I never got the "Tarzan and the Golden Lion" award from the Burroughs bibliophiles, but when it came two days ago, I wept when i saw it. So much for fooling yourself. You don't know how happy this has made me. I got to thinking about those golden days when I was reading ERB's books for the first time, borrowed from the local library (I started when I was 8 or 9, about 1926 or 1927) or when my parents gave me one for Christmas. Anyhow, I was overwhelmed. The pastiche on the incident from "Tarzan the Untamed" will go ahead at Ballantine books. Kaor!

Philip José Farmer
Peoria, Illinois

A Letter from Philip José Farmer

Dear Mr. Atamain:

The Origin of Tarzan is a splendid work, thoroughly and ingeniously researched, and I, for one, believe that it solves many problems of origin that have been puzzling ERB scholars for years. Congratulations! I cherish the book and will reconsult it many times in the years (few as they are) to come.

Now, for the particulars. There are some things you guessed at and so went astray. For instance, my first acquaintance with Du Chaillu was not when I was researching Tarzan Alive in 1971. It was in 1928, when I was ten years old, that I came across my first Du Chaillu book. This was in the local branch library in Peoria, which also had all of ERB's works published at that time and continued to stock them as they came out. Peoria, though its population was only 50,000 at that time, had a library sytem that would have done many a much larger city proud.

There were, as I remember it, about four or five Du Chaillu books at the local branch and about ten or more downtown at the main library. (It was here, ten years later, that I discovered that the main library had most of Sir Richard Francis Burton's books.) However, when I wrote Tarzan Alive, the libraries here had no Du Chaillu books. I had one copy, which I'd gotten in a second-hand bookstore here. It was falling apart, and I eventually had to toss it-regretfully. But that one had the index you refer to-I think.

I discovered ERB's books in the local branch library when I was nine or ten, and, though the Great Depression came along in 1929, my parents purchased new Tarzan and John Carter books for my birthdays and Christmas. Of course, in those days, I read purely for adventure and exciting concepts, the more imaginative the better, etc. and had no idea that someday the ERb books would be subjected to literary criticism and analysis or that the Du Chaillu books or Haggard, whom I also read devoutly, had provided inspiration to ERB.

As for Buell, I never heard of him until your book. Many thanks.

You end the book with a fine flourish and passion and love for and empathy with Tarzan and what he stands for. I agree whole-heartedly, though I am, not above parodying or pastiching Tarzan. But I wouldn't do that if he meant nothing to me.

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

I have a Finnish novel (I can't read Finnish but hope to some day): HUOVINEN VAPAITA SUHTEITA by Veikko Huovinen, Werner Soderstrom Oasakeyhito Porvoo, Helsinki, 1974. This has references to Tarzan on pages 115-123. Perhaps one of our Finnish members could get a copy and translate the text? Or, if need be, I'll copy the pages and send them to the interested Finnish member. By the way, has anyone published an article on the anatomical effects of egg-laying on the Martian human female? Dejah Thoris, I'm afraid, would have been as slim-hipped as John Carter. Strange that John didn't mention the lack of female broad hips on Barsoom. Also, if the eggs grew in size after being laid, they must have put out roots to provide nutrition for the growing egg. Would a short article on this from me be welcome? Kaor

Philip José Farmer
Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

In Tarzan the Untamed and Tarzan the Terrible, Burroughs refers to the Congo Free State as existing then (1908). Actually, since 1908, the Congo Free State was replaced by the Belgian Congo. Also, throughout the Tarzan novels, we see references to Bara, the deer, and the ape-man often wears a deerskin loincloth. But the zoologists say that deer actually exist only in north Africa. The tiny chevrotain, or "mouse deer"of West Africa (Tarzan's native domain), is not a true deer.

Regarding Mr. Atamian's admirable and deeply scholarly The Origin of Tarzan, I have only a few differences. Page 88: "Du Chaillu believes there are no gorillas south of Sette Cama ... not south of the Congo River which is too far south by nearly 300 miles from Sette Cama, let alone 300 miles south of the farther Congo River." But, as the enclosed copy of the map from The Apes by Vernon Reynolds, 1967, shows, gorrilas in Tarzan's early life did live south of the Sette Coma. I maintain that my location of Tarzan's birth site is correct. Besides, Lord Greystoke told me where he was born and raised.

Philip José Farmer
Peoria, Illinois

KAOR

Thanks for the latest ERBANIA, as usual, an interesting issue, especially Bob Barrett’s absorbing and informative piece on various aspects of the Tarzan novels. I especially found rewarding those references to Tarzan “lost adventures” which ERB mentions but does not explain. I had forgotten, for instance, about the Jungle Lord’s dislike of horse meat, mentioned in Tarzan and the City of Gold.

I used this item in the ms. of the Tarzan novel I’m writing for Ballantine. In fact, the horse meat episode inspired me to connect Tarzan with a certain Hemingway story, The Snows of Kilimanjaro. This begins with the statement that there is a dried and frozen carcass of a leopard high on the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Hemingway says that nobody knew what the leopard was doing way up there.

I reveal that only Tarzan knew why it was on the summit, and I outline briefly the “lost adventure.” But there’s enough data in the outline for another writer to write another Tarzan novel. I don’t intend to write any more Tarzan novels. The one at hand fulfills an ambition of seventy years to write an original Tarzan work. For which permission and opportunity I thank Danton Burroughs. He’s made a ten-year-old boy in an eighty-year-old body very happy.

Bob Barrett also supplied me with another mangani word, Umpa the caterpillar. He discovered that in a script ERB wrote for an animated cartoon film.

P. H. Adkins’ The Dream Vaults of Opar was also informative and mentally stimulating.

Unk Vando,

Philip José Farmer

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

My Tarzan manuscript has been accepted and has been copy-edited (they gave me permission to proof a galley, a rare privilege these days), and it should be on the way to the printers. Seventy years I'd waited for permission to write an original Tarzan novel. The original plan by Ballantine was to publish the Tarzan book as a tradebook, a large softcover. It would have been impressive even if not a hardcover. The cover illustration, I thought was outstanding, full of menace and broodiness, sinister eyes peering from the dense jungle foliage. But the Ballantine bigwigs have now decided to put the book out as the normal small-sized mass paperback. Reduced, the cover illustration is much less striking. And the text print will probably be so small I won't be able to read it without difficulty. I need to correct an item the Ballantine publicity group released to the Burroughs Bulletin. My Tarzan novel The Dark Heart of Time was not rescheduled to come out in June, 1999 because it needed more editorializing. It was rescheduled because the new Tarzan movie bombed so badly. Ballantine didn't want the book to come out on the movie's heels. Bad association. So the novel was reset to appear with the new Disney Tarzan animated film and the flood of children's items, games, T-shirts, toys, etc. The reasoning was that the book would be the only Tarzan item for adults to turn to. Unk vando

Philip José Farmer
Peoria, Illinois

LETTERS to the BURROUGHS BULLETIN

When they filmed the old Tarzan movies back in the '30s, some of the monkeys escaped into the wilds of Florida. They formed a colony that's still swinging from the cypress sweetgum and water-oak trees along the Ocklawaha River bordering the Ocala National Forest northwest of Orlando. For just under $600 you can ex­plore the region for six days in a canoe and six nights in a tent, courtesy of Wilderness Inquiry who will pick you up at Moss Bluff (or from Orlando for an extra $30). They'll give you three squares a day and you'll paddle from Magnolia to Little Lake George to see shore birds, game fish, alligators, manatees, monkeys, but (alas) not Tarzan. All this was advertised in The Chicago Tribune last January, but I grow old...too old to go (I was 82 on Janu­ary 26). It's not a question of should I wear my trousers? It's where ARE my trousers? Unk vando and Kaor!

...Philip José Farmer
Peoria, Illinois

Dear Howard Wright,

Recently, while going through boxes of papers, records, books, etc. stored in my garage, I found a copy of this letter. I sent a copy to you to show how deep & detailed my research for my Doc Savage Biography was. (Actually, I prefer to think of the book as more of my Doctoral thesis than as a biography.)

Yours for the good old days, when men were men and some were supermen. Not that I ignore Pat Savage.

-- Philip José Farmer

KAOR

Robert Barrett’s article in ERBANIA about Tantor the elephant (or elephants) intrigued me. I just hadn’t thought about Tantor being one or several in the sagas. Bob made a good case for Tantor being, usually, the same “great gray dreadnaught of the jungle” as ERB so happily phrased it.

Philip José Farmer (Peoria, IL)