It's Andy Fish!

I loved Tarzan Novels when I was a teen, I’ve recently re-read all of the books on my Kindle and I’ve found they hold up– all 24,000 pages of them.

It was after reading them digitally that I decided to try and find nice condition vintage copies– and since I’m not a hoarder I don’t need to have all of the books in the series I just want the ones I really liked;

• TARZAN THE TERRIBLE

• TARZAN THE UNTAMED

• TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE

• TARZAN AND THE JEWELS OF OPAR

I ended up finding them all on eBay, but I tried buying local first– I headed out to the Quabog Book Shop, previously and forever known by me anyway as the Book Bear and I had an interesting conversation with the owner– it went like this;

“Hello, how are you? I was hoping you could point me to the section where you keep the Edgar Rice Burroughs TARZAN books, preferably hardcovers.”

“Oh, I don’t carry those.”

Looking around this massive book store filled floor to ceiling with books I was surprised. Books constantly come into his shop with people selling and trading, certainly a series of books that started in 1912 and has been virtually in print since must cross his threshold.

“You don’t carry….”

“I would never carry those.”

And that was the end of our conversation. I said thank you and began to wander away, I turned and asked “Can you point me to the Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler section?”

“Mystery section, back corner. I’ve also got some of the collectors bound editions in the collector section, and some in the vintage section.”

“How about Ian Fleming’s Bond Series?”

“You’ll find some in Mystery, some in Adventure, same corner.” He said cheerfully.

Veronica was engrossed in the language section, picking up a Japanese book– she looked up and gave me that Mary Tyler Moore (Dick Van Dyke Show Era) smile; “Did you find your TARZAN’s?”

“No.” I said still trying to understand. “He doesn’t carry them.”

“He doesn’t carry Tarzan?”

I spent weeks trying to solve this mystery, I even had friends call the store to ask for them to see if he’d give any more details– and each one got the same curt response. I asked friends who are infinitely smarter than me– they were perplexed. I asked a friend who is the head of the English Department at a Major University– he was perplexed.

It turns out that there is an angry group of anti-Tarzan people out there because somehow he’s a white conqueror of an African nation…?

I’d be willing to bet these same folks never read one of the books.

As someone who doesn’t believe in book censorship but is A-OK with book ratings so parents can know what their kids are reading this kind of thinking doesn’t make any sense.

But it’s his store, and if he doesn’t want to carry something, I support his choice, even if I disagree with it. So I spent the money on eBay– where people apparently still collect Tarzan.