Moderator’s note with quiz answer: Tarzans of the Apes is the bowdlerized work spotted recently in the archives of the valuable Project Gutenberg. Congratulations to the quiz winner, the sharp-eyed Munango-Keewati—and also to Jon Noring for his never-ending efforts to encourage providers of public domain content to reveal the provenances of books. Below, our anonymous spotter offers further thoughts. – David Rothman.
In an earlier post I asked blog readers “What famous book has been bowdlerized and currently resides in the Project Gutenberg Archive?”
The answer is Tarzan of the Apes. I discovered this while listening to an audiobook version of the work and simultaneously glancing at the Gutenberg e-book. I was initially intrigued by the following sentence about Tarzan: “All else of the jungle were his enemies, except his own tribe, among whom he now had many friends.” This phrase was somewhat surprising to me because in the movies and other pop-culture representations of Tarzan he had plentiful animal friends in the jungle. But listening to the original made clear that the Tarzan depicted in most cultural artifacts is considerably sanitized. Mysteriously, when I consulted the Gutenberg text I found that the sentence above was completely omitted.
Shooting at the maid: Hidden in the cover-up
There were other differences between the audiobook I was listening to and the e-book I was reading. In one extraordinary scene in the audiobook based on the original text, Jane Porter, better known by the simple moniker Jane, believes that she and her maid are about to succumb to an attack by a lion. To avoid this grisly fate she shoots at her maid with a gun and then points the gun at her own temple. Luckily, she misses the maid and the lion attack is averted by Tarzan before she pulls the trigger again. What do modern editors think of these extreme actions? Perhaps this blog posting should also be labeled “The Forbidden Jane” because Jane’s actions are completely omitted from many modern editions including the Gutenberg e-book.
Not the first spotter of the bowdlerization
I was not the first to discover these alterations. The Qeb site “ERBmania” has a webpage by Kenneth Fuchs that carefully compares editions of Tarzan. Fuchs contends that “The Gutenberg etext version of TARZAN OF THE APES was prepared by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska, from the Ballantine paperback edition published circa 1984. The 1984 printing contains many omissions and changes from the 1914 McClurg text.” This post shows the McClurg cover as reproduced in Wikipedia.
Once again I do not wish to criticize Gutenberg volunteers such as Judith Boss. She deserves great thanks and praise for performing the arduous task of creating an e-book and sharing it.
About those hints
Lastly, some comments about the hints.
HINT 01 ANSWER: “Tarzan of the Apes” and its sequels did inspire many movies such as “Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)”and “Tarzan (1999)” from Disney. In addition, the Tarzan phenomenon included a comic strip, a television series and much more.
HINT 02 ANSWER: “Tarzan And His Mate” was considered a scandalous movie in the 1930s and was one of the first films that was censored under the Hollywood Production_Code.
HINT 03 ANSWER: Tarzana is the district in California whose name was selected “in honor of Burroughs and his famous literary character.”
Additional moderator’s note: Sorry, no prize for M-K. Wish we were budgeted for that stuff. I do congratulate M-K, though. Nice job!
Update, Feb. 13, 2007: Garson O’Toole (formerly known by a different pseudonym, Garson Poole—after a character in a Philip Dick story) okayed the use of his standard TeleName. Earlier the byline read simply, “A TeleRead reader.”
I’ve always believed that a lot of the Project Gutenburg e-texts were derived from modern printings. This is why Michael Hart was so fanatical to remove provenance information. He knew a lot of his e-texts came from modern printings and didn’t want to get into trouble. It looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost.
Thanks first for bringing this to our attention.
The real headline however is, “ERB classic text is bowdlerized in print editions.” I don’t know if this is the work of sensitive Ballantine editors fearful of what librarians might think, or if this is the work of ERB Inc., censoring the man who created the empire they are trying to “protect.”
This is good evidence supporting Jon Noring’s ideal of a “trusted e-edition” ebook.
I wonder about other potentially thorny “problems” with ERB’s works, to wit:
– racism in Tarzan (almost all the “natives” are cannibals, and Tarzan delights in baiting the them as superstitious fools)
– other instances of the “last bullet” saved for “girls” fearing rape if they fall into enemy hands
– ERB’s virulent anti-clericism (all religions are seen as frauds, with a typical comment running along the lines of “as high priest, he knew his cult the best, and therefore believed in it the least”)
[…] recent TeleBlog articles about the Project Gutenberg (PG) text Tarzan of the Apes (see 1, 2), suggest that not all is well in the existing corpus of public domain digital […]