Edgar Rice Burroughs (Edgar Rice Burroughs)

(September 1, 1875 - March 19, 1950)
. His novel, rejected by all publishers, but the situation changed once and forever after as "Tarzan" from room to room began publishing the New York newspaper "Evening World".
. Something mystical was in this man
. This was a magician who always found himself under the power of its own charms: it cost him to start writing the text of a long page, as what he gets is an adventure novel.
Once he decided to write autobiography. He sat at the typewriter, tucked in her clean sheet and typed:
Edgar Rice Burroughs. Writer
I was always upset that my life is not so hot events, which could give a fascination biographical narrative. Alas - I was among the losers, who are not lucky with the adventures, they always arrive at the fire when the fire is extinguished.
I was born in Beijing, where my father was a military advisor to the Empress of China, before the age of ten, I lived with my family in the Forbidden City. Thorough knowledge of Chinese language, I have acquired over the years, not just served me a good service - especially in the research, which I had, and my interest was addressed mainly to the Chinese philosophy and Chinese porcelain ... "
. Intonation was good, the problem lies elsewhere: Edgar Rice Burroughs was not born in Beijing and in Chicago, and his father was a brewer, not a military
. And with the knowledge of Chinese language in the author of "Tarzan" was not as well, as it is written ...

And this amazing creativity manifested itself in his only 36 years.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on Sept. 1, 1875 in the family of the Civil War veteran (army officer of the Northern Alliance), which after the war became a prosperous businessman. Edgar was the fourth child in the family. His two older brothers graduated from Yale University, and he was sent to school Brown. When the school closed for quarantine during an epidemic of diphtheria, he was transferred to Maplherstovskuyu school for girls (something like that), then - in Endoverskuyu Harvard School after which Edgar enrolled at Michigan Military Academy. Later Burroughs recalled that all schools teach it hard to Greek and Latin, but in none of them in the program was not an English course.

But in the military academy, he learned to perfect ride.

After graduating from the academy in 1895, he enlisted (with his father, of course) the support of Congressman Edgar Wilson of Chicago and received a recommendation to West Point, but overestimated the weight of the recommendations and shamefully failed the entrance exams.

Then he rushed out in pursuit of adventure and in May 1896 was determined in the cavalry. However, instead of rough camp life and clashes with the Apaches, he found only the classic charm of a military vegetating in the provinces - at Fort Grant, Ariz., the site of the 7 th Cavalry Regiment U.S. Army. Therefore, the shape of Edgar chose to get rid of as quickly as possible - within three months after the beginning of the service, he wrote my father a letter in which he asked to talk with friends from Washington. Dad went to his bidding, but bureaucratic procedures are stretched for seven months, so that with his cavalry Edgar parted only in March 1897.

After demobilization Burroughs long cows in Idaho. In 1941, he recalled:

"Life is a cowboy had to my liking, although in those days in Idaho was not a single shower. I used three weeks did not take off his boots and stetson ". I had Mexican spurs, decorated with silver, with huge stars and prizvonom. When I stamped on the street, spurs tinkled loudly, and I could hear the quarter. Oh, how I was proud! "

. He then worked as a salesman in Pocatello, . Idaho, . gold mines in Oregon, . Police in Salt Lake City, . clerk in the Chicago offices, . Accountant, . traveling salesman, . unsuccessfully attempted to go to China as an instructor in horsemanship and even thought again enlist in the army,
.

A letter from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, in those years - the commander of the First Volunteer Cavalry Battalion, in which Edgar was trying to enroll

. Dear Sir, . - Burroughs wrote a future U.S. president, . - I would be glad to take you to the service, . but the danger of exceeding the strength of the battalion did not give me the opportunity to meet the acceptance of the proposal Volunteers, . lives so far away from my deployment. ",

. Burrows regularly undertook to create his own company, but his life's ideas were ground rapidly in the dust
. But he was already married, had to feed two children ...
And - imagine now.
1911. Thirty-five-businessman, a loser who can not make ends meet and just for good-bye to another client, sitting in the evening in the empty office, and in pencil on the back of the form book wrote ... fiction novel. A novel about a man who was known as abandoned on Mars, the world of endless adventure in a world completely unlike anything on the "potato" Idaho, nor the business of Chicago.

In the world, like a magic dream.

Two decades of struggle for existence have taught Burroughs did not neglect any earnings. Of course, he did not believe that his writings someone will print, but still sent the manuscript to the Editor of "All Story", by signing the novel, saying, "the pseudonym Normal Bean -" normal guy ". He hoped thereby to make it clear and editor, and a hypothetical readers: the author, in general, is aware of all the madness of his act, but, in fact, quite sane.

Burroughs and many eagerly read the terms of his reading probably came and popular magazines, so it is quite imagine what level of work can be accepted for publication. Like most of the more or less educated people, he certainly often thought, closing and forgetting the next "masterpiece" magazine prose: "I would write much better than this if I wanted". Now he has a chance to check how his ambitions match the views of the editors.

According to another version, one of his responsibilities at work was to see advertising in the pulp-magazines, so that the stories were in sight as if by themselves. Maybe that was it, the more that the manuscript he offered it to publication, and to whom it should offer in the first place - that is, Burroughs outlines represented the then-magazine "pecking"

. "All Story" was considered in those days one of the most popular monthly magazines, . owned publishing empire of Frank Mansi and, . among other, . highest paid authors royalties, . so break on its pages was considered a big success for any writer,
. It was logical to start with him - any product should first offer the most expensive on the market ...

Editor Samoteka in "All Story"
Editor Samoteka in "All Story" at that time was Thomas Newell Metcalfe, and that he had the honor of opening the world named after perhaps the most popular writer of XX century. He immediately took the manuscript, made out to Burroughs check for $ 400 (fantastic money for a fantastic product! ") And put the novel, entitled" Under the moons of Mars "(" Under the Moons of Mars "), the plan. The novel was published in six rooms - from February until July issue 1912. However, Burroughs conceived game with a pseudonym was apparently too complex for the magazine: whether Metcalfe himself, or someone from the proofreaders corrected "Normal" to normal "Norman" and wiped out the entire escapade.

But to prevent the triumph of such a trifle could not. From the first fragment of the reader was enthralled by way of John Carter, and although the text of the novel bore all the hallmarks of a literary apprenticeship was this hero and his adventures is something fascinating and new.

First of all, was itself a new hero - John Carter. Externally, the ordinary man, a former Confederate cavalry officer, he is casually mentions at the beginning of his notes (the novel is built exactly like his memories) about some of its own unusual qualities. For example, he did not remember his youth, he looks thirty, though he knows that he lived on earth for much longer, he even mentions that died twice - and twice came back to life. Notes he had instructed his post after his death the next, and be buried themselves in an open coffin in a cave, a door which can be opened only from within ...

The mystery of life and death of John Carter and remains a mystery - more than any of Burroughs is not a hint gives the reader a clue to. Just do not give any explanation, and how John Carter was on another planet: judging from the description of 'transfer' to Mars, Carter was there in the form of the astral body after one of their deaths. However, this explanation is defective: on Mars, the hero acts as a very corporeal substance.

Rather, Burroughs did not intend to give any explanation. All his inventions are subject only to one goal: it had to draw the reader into the game on its own terms, the reader was supposed to take this game, no matter how incredible these conditions may be.

And, I must say, this move Burroughs brilliantly succeeded. When the entourage of Midwest suddenly replaced Martian deserts, . and the Indians - many-armed green barbarians, . reader is already "caught", , . to pass for a good adventure novel, traced the background,
.

But the center of attention of the reader and the author, of course, is not Barsum, and the John Carter. Naked man in a strange world, man, devoid of the usual and customary protection of weapons, a man who can count only on their physical and moral strength. The man who overcame all the difficulties, as is able to adapt to the alien world to him ...

Notice how beautifully the history of John Carter illustrates the idea of adaptability. Burroughs novels very materialistic - he really was a consistent materialist, and since bought in the 1890 book Darwin's "Origin of Species, never parted, they say, until his death. Fritz Leiber once tried in the earlier article "John Carter: Sword of Theosophy" Burroughs associate creativity with the theory of Helena Blavatsky, . but Burroughs himself so often demonstrated in his books neglect of all kinds of speculative theories, . that building Leiber nobody has seen fit to refute - they simply have not received any further,
.
But the idea of the infinite adaptability of human development and has a finality in the second novel Burroughs. "Tarzan" became the most famous piece E.R.B., to surpass the success of which the writer was unable.
Yet at first - a few words about the adventures of John Carter.
On the first novel "Mars Trilogy" (in 1917 the novel appeared in book form titled "A Princess of Mars" - "Princess of Mars") is often repeated at least two very common stupidity. The first - a novel "about the flight to Mars". Second - this is one of the first "space operas". Neither one nor the other, in principle, is not true

. The concept of "space opera" is undergoing a fairly significant changes over the decades, . but it appeared only in the early 30-ies and in connection with an entirely different type of science fiction works - the space version of "horse operas", . ie Westerns,
. As for the theme of "flight to Mars, no flight, strictly speaking, the hero Burroughs did not commit ..

. Strictly, . much more apt to be "Martian pioneers" heroes novels Percy Greg through the Zodiac "(Percy Greg, . "Across the Zodiac", . 1880), . Robert Cromie "Leap into space" (Robert Cromie, . "A Plunge into Space", . 1891) and Ellsworth Douglass "Broker of Pharaoh" (Ellsworth Douglass, . "Pharaoh's Broker", . 1899) - characters of these books have reached Mars on spacecraft, which earlier, . than there came a hero Burroughs,
.

Among the "Martian" forerunners of John Carter there is another, the most mysterious. In 1905 a book was published by Edwin Lester Arnold, Lieutenant Gullivar Jones: His Vacation "(Edwin Lester Arnold," Lieut. Gullivar Johnes: His Vacations "), which was released only in Britain and had no success. It would seem that the book Arnold could hardly get into the hands of Burroughs, but the coincidence of the plot "Vacation Gullivara Jones" with "Martian trilogy" about the John Carter was simply an amazing. Gullivar Jones, Lieutenant U.S. Army, falls on Mars without a space ship - it delivers there accidentally found on the street magic carpet. Lieutenant inadvertently wished to be "well, at least on Mars" - and the carpet immediately fulfilled his wish, after hermetically packed hero. Mars Jones finds the once mighty, now a crumbling ancient civilization, tormented by the raids of the barbarians. Jones falls in love with a local princess, is sent to a campaign on "River of the Dead" to the pole of Mars, and in return learns that his beloved is in the hands of the barbarians. Of course, the lieutenant frees her and sent along with her in New York on the same carpet-ships ...

In another book by Edwin Arnold - "Fra-Phoenician" ( "Phra the Phoenician", 1890) - described by the immortal hero who for millennia and over again brought back to life in the form of thirty soldiers and the master sword

. "There is no evidence - writes Richard Lupoff - that Burroughs read books, and Arnold was an admirer of his work, but the date of publication of books contained in the books of the coincidence certainly give cause for reflection."

. The similarities make a second novel by Burroughs from Rudyard Kipling's "Jungle Book" could cause similar complaints, but Tarzan is so not like Mowgli, that even the most ardent nelyubiteley creativity E.R.B
. not bring myself to blame him in any whatsoever borrowing. And then, time has judged and heroes, and their authors - Kipling died Nobel laureate for literature, but books published Burroughs unthinkable editions. Mowgli stayed hero of the tale, and Burroughs Tarzan - and then his imitators - has sent in an endless search for adventure.

The popularity of Tarzan did not need even a finding. If you have not read the novels of Tarzan, you've seen movies about it, if you do not accidentally see the movie - you probably caught on television teen TV series or Disney ... Americans, of course, add to this list endless series of comic.


Anyhow, Tarzan was one of the most popular images of mass culture of XX century.

It all began this madness in the same 1912. In the October issue of "All Story" this novel was published entirely entitled "Tarzan of the Apes".

"I wrote it by hand at the speed used on letterheads and other random sheets of paper that came across to me by the arm, - recalled Burrows. - I did not think the novel is particularly good, and doubted that it would be possible to attach. But Bob Davis [Robert Hobart Davis (Robert Hobarth Davis) - one of the most prominent editors group Frank A. Munsey, who in many ways defined the policies and image of pulp-magazine 10-ies - P. B.] evaluated the commercial potential of its relatively high and sent me a check, it seems, at $ 700 ... "

. If during the work on the "Princess of Mars Burroughs has only acquired the skills of the literary trade, in" Tarzan "his talent for the Lord of Adventure opened in full force
. The novel then read and read now with a nondecreasing interest - read not only as a cascade of exciting adventures, but also as a hymn to the human mind, the strength of human spirit. Of course, this fairy tale - but sometimes it amazes unexpected turns entirely of contemporary thought, ideas that are applicable in the real ironic circumstances. Example, . all, . with regard to gaining Tarzan ability to communicate with other people - first he learned to express in writing (fiction, . pure fantasy, . not even scientific), . then by force of circumstances learned to read English text in French, . and then moved into English ..,
. All of these tricks paradoxically reflect real complexities involved in developing communicative children in today's multilingual society of. Now, children often learn to recognize the first English signboards of shops and only then relate this knowledge with the Russian alphabet, and they exist in multiple language streams, . and with the growth of information connectedness of the world we are increasingly going to watch "Tarzan-effects" - the result of the impact on the child's complex linguistic environment,
.

Burrows, consciously or not, spent over Tarzan sociocultural mental experiment - certainly at the level of knowledge of his time. He postulated, . the nobility inherent in person (usually a sad delusion born romantic nineteenth-century, . misleading, . mercilessly trampled the twentieth century), and that people can adapt to the circumstances of almost any complexity,
. It can hardly be regarded as proof of his innocence, say, the existing methods of teaching deaf and mute since birth of people sounds of speech - but denied that it is a miracle in something akin to "educate themselves" man-ape, too, should not be. Likely, . creator of Tarzan is not even remotely meant nothing of the sort, . but does not serve the very principle of such techniques to confirm the main ideas, . which simply oozes romance, . - Reverence for the infinite flexibility of the human mind, . its unlimited vozmozhnostyamiN,

. However, despite the fact that in this novel if you want to be found, and other reasonably interesting concept, "Tarzan" was and remains primarily the product of entertainment
. If Jules Verne used the form Fantastico-adventure novel for the establishment of the cognitive Text, . If HG Wells used a fantastic premise for artistic exploration of new social and philosophical concepts, . Burrows is the main aim to consider the reader's entertainment,
. In his books were edification - but was not a petty desires and attuned to the tastes of the public. He successfully "hit" in that same manner, which waited on the journals of their audience.
The reader was ready for the appearance of Burroughs.
The reader was willing to pay money for it.
But this ought to convince more and Publishers.
Although Bob Davis bought for publication in "All Story" the second novel about John Carter, "The Gods of Mars" ( "The Gods of Mars"), he refused to buy "The Return of Tarzan" ( "The Return of the Tarzan"). However, the novel immediately able to attach to the journal "New Story", unreleased competing journal concerns "Street & Smith".
Then Burroughs decided to offer his novels publisher. If publication in the journal brings only a one-time fee, contracts for the publication of books can provide income all the time - in the form of royalties to overprint and reissue. The success of his works at the magazine allowed the audience to hope that the book will diverge considerable circulation.
Publishers have a different point of view. "Tarzan," Burroughs systematically sent to the addresses of all anything like respectable American publishing companies, was rejected by all without exception. None of the professionals did not believe that this magazine-reading matter may be at least some future.

But the situation changed once and forever after as "Tarzan" from room to room began publishing the New York newspaper "Evening World". The idea of this publication belong to the chief editor Dzh.H.Tennantu (JH. Tennant), and that he is obliged to Burroughs that his novels have broken into the desired world of book publications. Publication in a popular newspaper has made a novel widely known among readers who do not belong to a constant audience pulp-magazines. Burroughs novels began to ask the booksellers. Booksellers referred an inquiry to the publishers ...
The upshot was that Burroughs turned to the company "ACMcClurg", which for several months before sent him a flat refusal. Now the tone of the conversation was quite different: the publishing house has requested permission to contract for book publication of the novel.
It was a victory. Big, real, strategic success.
Of course, he agreed.
In June 1914 "Tarzan of the tribe of monkeys" was released as a separate volume, and began a long-term publishing triumph Burroughs. "McClurg" throughout the decade and a half year to spread on the market for at least one first book publication of a Burroughs novel, published in the journal before that - and often two or three novels a year. These were the Tarzan novels, novels of the "Mars" series of John Carter, novels about the world Pellyusidara, located inside the earth's crust, other historical and adventure novels ... Burroughs was the perfect author in terms of commercial publishing. He wrote quickly, he continued his popular series and began a new series (which could eventually become popular, and might not be), but still sold well.
It works Burroughs finally took shape a whole line of fantasy fiction - adventure. And Burroughs himself ever since as one of the founding fathers of fantasy XX century ...