Breaking Edgar Rice Burroughs News

A few days ago a member of the Facebook group For the Love of All Things EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS * informed me that there was a book of ERB's non-fiction works entitled Edgar Rice Burroughs Tells All. I've spent a fair amount of time over the past 13 years scouring the internet in an attempt to find all of ERB's books, and I hadn't even caught a whiff of this one. Needless to say I hopped on this tip right away, and lo and behold

I ordered a copy from Thrift Books (HERE) immediately, so now that my copy is heading my way I'm willing to give you the lowdown. According to the Thrift Books description, "This book contains the vast majority of his published, public domain non-fiction works." That's hard to believe, as it weighs in at a mere 396 pages, and I know that ERB wrote a lot of non-fiction, but I'll withhold judgement until I have it in my hot little hands.

I'd recommend ordering it from Thrift Books because they are super cool, but if they run out you can also find it at lulu (HERE) and The Usual Suspects as well.

More news as it happens.

* Shout out to Mr. Matthew Moran, who informed me of the existence of this book on April 27, 2022 at 5:37 PM. 

MORE 🗞:

6:45 pm, May 4, 2022:

So that was pretty quick.

EVEN MORE  🗞:

On the one hand, this is Edgar Rice Burroughs stuff that I didn't know existed in book form, and that I didn't have the time, patience, or resources to put together on my own, so for that I am most grateful to Jerry L. Schneider for putting all of this material together. I wish he had written an introduction that told how he went about doing this. I suspect that the internet didn't do him a hell of a lot of good, and that he actually had to find physical copies of the newspapers (etc.) that these pieces were printed in--but I'd like to hear about that from him. It'd be an interesting story. I also wouldn't mind it if he'd put some introductory comments before at least some of the pieces...and / or some reflective comments after at least some of the pieces. 

On another hand, 34 pages of the book are taken up by ERB's virulent comments about a murder trial. The murderer, one Hickman, was a truly depraved man and certainly deserving of scorn. But to hear ERB constantly (pretty much every page) say how William Edward Hickman wasn't a human being and should be killed just kind of turned my stomach. 

Just found out that the 13 columns that comprise the Hickman Story were printed on ERBzine.com (well..."printed"), so now I'm wondering if maybe Jerry L. Schneider actually didn't have to do a hell of a lot of work at all...if maybe he just copied the pieces for this book from ERBzine.com? I don't have it in me to go checking...and I'd still have bought the book even if that was the case, because (1) I like having the book and (2) it'd give me at least a small pain in the ass to try to read almost 400 pages' worth of material on a computer and / or Kindle. But if you want to save some bucks and still read the material, it's worth a shot. You might as well start at https://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1768.html and go from there.

AND FINALLY, THE LAST 🗞 ON THIS TOPIC:

I'm only about halfway through the book as of this writing (May 15, 2022), but I'm already feeling a goodreads review coming on. I've got a few readers over there, and that's gratifying enough to make me want to keep hitting it, at least for some of the books I read. So I'm going to get it started now and then finish it up when I finish the book. 

Ahem.

I spent $29.89 at Thrift Books for a copy of the Jerry L. Schneider edited Edgar Rice Burroughs Tells All...a collection of ERB's non-fiction work. If you're familiar with the ERB oeuvre, then I'd imagine that was a surprising sentence. I was pretty familiar with Burroughs works--having read all 84 of his fictional works--and I had no idea that this collection existed until a fellow Burroughs fan told me about it. It includes almost 400 pages of material, and I thought it was a great buy at $29.89...which is pretty much the going price online, though you can cadge a copy for $20 at Barnes & Noble (or for a mere $9.99 if you're one of the 73 people in the USA who owns a working Nook Reader). My love for Thrift Books (and my lack of a Nook Reader) makes the "extra" $9.89 immaterial to me, though.

A couple of warnings about this collection. First, there are several pieces that appear more than once. I haven't kept close track and have no desire to go back to tally things up, but I'd guess that at least four pieces have been repeated three or more times--because they were either printed with slight changes or just because they appeared in different publications. Even given that, though, there is quite a lot of material in these 400 pages, so I don't think that would be a deal-breaker for anybody...though it might indicate that Mr. Jerry L. Schneider could have put his hand on the tiller a bit more often. In fact, the lack of an introduction detailing how these pieces were collected, and the lack of pre- and / or post- article commentary for context also show me that Mr. Schneider could have made this into an even better collection with a little more effort.

Second on the warning list is more germane to the lover of Edgar Rice Burroughs himself, though. While there are plenty of times when his sense of humor (which is particularly given to self-abnegation, which I tend to like--give me a man who can laugh at himself and I'll give you ...well, hell, I don't know; what would you like?) is spot-on, there are also times when his extremely conservative socio-political perspective becomes irksome, or even off-putting. Such was the case for me in the 13 pieces on the William Edward Hickman murder trial. It was clear from the details that Burroughs gave that Hickman was a brutal, vicious murderer, and though as a rule I'm not in favor of the death penalty (for a number of reasons), I was not put off by Burroughs' insistence that Hickman should be put to death. I was put off, however, by the fact that Burroughs repeated this so many times, and by the fact that he justified this by insisting that Hickman was not a human being, and thus "Hickman's Kind" should be exterminated. It was way too close to Nazi propaganda for my comfort. It also is problematic philosophically, in that it denies that human beings are capable of committing atrocities. To me, the only hope that we will refrain from committing atrocities is the knowledge that we are--every one of us--capable of doing so. If you know there's a pothole on the highway, you have a fair chance of being wary enough to avoid it. If you don't know, you might have a wheel torn off. (I'm picturing a pretty big pothole for this one.)

Those warnings aside, however, I'd say that I enjoyed this book mightily, and would think that even non-Burroughs readers might enjoy this little slice of history. It's also kind of fun to see Burroughs shift into Real Estate Salesman mode as he tries to unload some pieces of property via newspaper advertisements disguised as articles. The guy was a huckster, and I say that with love in my heart and a smile on my face. He's like the grinning uncle who tries to sell you an insurance policy at the family reunion...but he's also honestly glad to see you. There's an almost dog-like winsomeness about it all. 

To be continued....