I Read Books: The Son of Tarzan
Jack Clayton, the son of Tarzan, is uncontrollable by his tutor, and gets over excited when he meets an ape, Akut, who previously knew Tarzan. John Clayton (Tarzan, Lord Greystoke) admits to him his previous life as an ape man. Due to a complex series of events including a plot by an old enemy of Tarzan, Jack, named Korak, “Killer” in ape language, and the ape go on the run in Africa.
They meet Meriem, a French girl kidnapped by an Arab Sheik, and wanted by everyone, and together they happily stalk the African wilderness for a long though unspecified time. Then Meriem gets captured and rescued again, this time by the mysterious white couple “Bwana” and “My Dear”, who live on an estate in Africa.
This novel messes up the Tarzan timeline if you assume, as Burroughs claims in the original Tarzan of the Apes, that it is based on a real story with the names changed. Tarzan is born (I’m not doing a lot of research here) in 1888, and is 20 or 21 when the first novel ends (published 1912). In The Return of Tarzan another 2 years go by, there’s a year’s gap for Jack to be born before The Beasts of Tarzan. Jack’s maybe 12 when this novel starts, 18 at the end, so we are in the future from the 1916 when it was published.
This isn’t important; if I get anything from this it’s that Burroughs was interested in the timing when he wrote the first novel and by the time he wrote this one didn’t really care about the chronology.
Anyway, this retreads and remixes the ideas of Tarzan of the Apes, possibly getting closer to the actually core interesting idea of a man who acts as an animal, without introspection, just reacting. But mostly it’s about kidnapping, and fighting and killing and a bit of casual racism, though often immediately undercut; Burroughs repeating the received wisdom of the day on national characteristics, then playing with them.
Read This: Because you fancy something Tarzan related and this threatens to have something new to say after the novels Return and Beasts... didn’t
Don’t Read This: If old fashioned adventure fiction does not do it for you
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