Tarzan of the Apes: The First Three Novels, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Any character that remains popular for over a century has something unique to offer. Tarzan could easily be called the first superhero: he possesses extraordinary strength, stamina, speed, agility, healing, and intelligence—basically Captain America without needing the Super Soldier Serum. Tarzan can speak with apes, kill gorillas, lions, and crocodiles with his bare hands, and his senses of hearing and smell rival those of bats and bears. His skill handling animals is also remarkable; at one point Tarzan trains a group of apes to man oars and sail through the Atlantic Ocean. There isn't much depth to these books (the volume I read collects the first three of twenty-four) but they are thoroughly entertaining pulp novels.

Both set and written in the early twentieth century, the style of writing suffers from what we expect today. Plots are melodramatic and driven by coincidence after coincidence, the characters are thin and one-dimensional, and the rampant negative stereotyping exposes the widespread sexism and racism common in the period. Despite all this, there is an undeniable charm to these stories and it is easy to see why they remain in favor today. Escapist and fun, the Tarzan books are a wonderful set of adventures.

First Sentence from Tarzan of the Apes:

I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.

First Sentence from The Return of Tarzan:

"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath her breath.

First Sentence from The Beasts of Tarzan:

"The entire affair is shrouded in mystery," said D'Arnot.

Running With Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs

This is a troubling memoir of a twelve-year-old boy with mild OCD whose mother gave him away to her bizarre psychiatrist to be raised as a member of his own family. Unfortunately, this new family brings a new meaning to the term unorthodox, where children of all ages have no rules to follow, smoke cigarettes and pot, have sex, and live in a filthy and structurally unsound house. "The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do." Some of the doctors patients periodically move in for extended periods of time as well, including a pedophile. Burroughs begins an intense homosexual relationship with this pedophile that is nearly twenty years his senior, but neither his mother nor his adopted family seems to have any issues with it. The book ends with a now 17-year-old Burroughs headed to New York City without any real plan of where to stay or how to make a living, but generally unconcerned about the situation. "Of course I can make it in New York City. ... Unwittingly, I had earned a Ph.D. in survival."

I'm sure parts of this autobiography are sensationalized but enough of it is clearly true to show just how disturbed some people in this world are. In Golding's Lord of the Flies we see a group of children without supervision devolve into madness; what is more unsettling about Running With Scissors is that there are uncomfortable similarities at times but it isn't fiction. I find it shocking that the only lawsuit that resulted from this was against the author for libel and not against any of the supposed authority figures who let this all happen. It is amazing that Burroughs came out of this squalid home and irresponsible upbringing with enough wit and wisdom to write a searingly honest bestseller. This isn't the sort of book anyone truly enjoys, but it is certainly worth reading.

First Sentence:

My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick.

Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs

This was picked for our book club because of its common description as one of the most important classic novels of the twentieth century. After reading it, I can only assume the importance is due to the obscenity trials and censorship issues it spawned that forced a closer examination of our right to free speech rather than the novel itself. Naked Lunch is the delusional raving of a drug-fueled homosexual, with graphic descriptions of sadistic pedophilia and wild hallucinations. There isn’t much of a linear plot, as evidenced by Burroughs himself when he said that he intended for the chapters to be read in any order. It reads like the world’s worst Mad Lib which afterwards was randomly scrambled. “The nostalgia fit is on me boys and will out willy silly . . . boys walk down the carny midway eating pink spun sugar . . . goose each other at the peep show . . . jack off in the Ferris wheel . . . throw sperm at the moon rising red and smoky over the foundries across the river. A Nigra hangs from a cottonwood in front of The Old Court House . . . whimpering women catch his sperm in vaginal teeth . . .”

This book is a classic in the same way that Pollock’s paintings are: unique, random, and meaningless but holding great appeal for professors and critics. I know I sound like that old man at the end of the block shaking his fist at the world while yelling, “Get off my lawn!” but as far as I can tell Naked Lunch has no redeeming value whatsoever. Dull and non-nonsensical, this is a truly awful book.

First Sentence:

I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making their moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs, catch an uptown A train . . . Young, good looking, crew cut, Ivy League, advertising exec type fruit holds the door back for me.