Something for Summer Reading: ‘Tarzan of the Apes’ by Edgar Rice Burroughs

The wonderful summer book has been made into movies many times. Maureen O’Sullivan and Johnny Weissmüller starred in the 1932 film “Tarzan the Ape Man.” MoveStillDB

The distinction between what is “great” and what is “good” is significant when it comes to literature. “Tarzan of the Apes,” written by American author Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, is not a great book by any means—but it’s a thumping good read.

Even if “Tarzan of the Apes” is just a pulp page-turner, as the first of 25 increasingly outlandish sequels, it possesses every feature that a reader could hope for in a novel. There is nothing in the surprisingly rich and graceful prose of Burroughs that fails to satisfy, making “Tarzan of the Apes” a perfect book for summer.

Tarzan: Stereotype for a Reason

Tarzan has suffered from stereotyping over the years, but there is good reason he became a stereotype to begin with. There is appeal in the story of the English lord of Greystoke orphaned in Africa as a baby, and whose parents’ deaths caused him to be raised by apes. There is triumph in his mastering the shrewdness of apes. There is humor in his haunting a tribe of natives.