Egomania

EGOMANIA

  Essays & Other Writings

  by

  CHARLES NUETZEL

  Copyright 2013 by Charles Nuetzel

  Discover other titles by Charles Nuetzel at

  INTRODUCTION

  What is this book all about? Well, I could say it is about promotion of my books, which wouldn’t be totally false. On the other hand, it is about writing, as a profession, and reveals what goes into putting together books for publication. More than that, it offers some prime examples, of ques-tionable literary value of my own writing in essays, stories and articles. To top all that off – or bottom line it, I suppose – there’s the “Introductions” written for a number of my books, now published in print and ebook form.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SOME WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR

  The following is a collection of writings which have appeared else-where, and were freely offered up, easily accessed by going to Haldolen.com. So they are being offered here “free” of restrictions, other than the ability to read them without going elsewhere. They all have their own messages. The first being about Narrative Hooks and the way writers go about grabbing the reader with the first words of their story. And this is followed by the story behind the writing of “A Queen of Blood” which was created from a script for the film of that name. Then comes an article telling how Philip Jose Farmer’s “Love Song” came into existence as a pocket book. These are bits that offer a “behind the scenes” gander at how stories and books get written and published. I end this section with a trib-ute to my father, who was a commercial artist and did a number of magazine and pocket book covers in his retiring years, followed by “Dad and I” – excerpts from “Pocketbook Writer” which was edited and presented by Earl Kemp for his emag at: https://efanzines.com.

  EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS: A REAL HOOKER

  or,

  “The Mystery of Missing Foreword”

  by

 

  Charles Nuetzel

  “I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.”—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes

  This article exists because the Foreword to The Princess of Mars is missing! Well, that hopefully did the trick! Before I explain, let me offer the following: It all started, for me, back in the “Stone Age,” sometime in the late 1940s.

  What was it like, back then when Edgar Rice Burroughs was still alive—barely? The Second World War was still newly finished and the young people were beginning to rebuild their lives at the opening of the Atomic Age.

  Well, there was Glenn Miller music. Even though he had died some-where over the English Channel during the war, his music had become the signature “tune” of the war years, and continued being popular even after the end of the Big Band Era. This was shortly before the Elvis rock ’n’ roll years. This was the romantic period of Sinatra. And Tarzan still swung through the movies in black and white.

  And it was a time when the Burroughs books were hard to get in any form. Just the last ten or so Tarzan novels and the Mars and Venus books were in print, via Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. A few more Tarzans existed, thanks to Grosset & Dunlap. But that was it. It was only a hint of what had once been and what was yet to come.

  I was an innocent, and the Burroughs universe was going to be an ideal place into which to escape. His fantastic lands of Barsoom, Pellucidar, Amtor, were all in the near future. And the real Tarzan, English Lord, cul-tured jungle man, was yet to come. But only after I had discovered and ex-hausted John Carter’s beloved Barsoom. It was A Princess of Mars that would thrust me right into the worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Fore-word to the book was designed to quickly suck the reader in. Burroughs used the “promise of a story” to catch use like a fish on a string. He baited the opening lines with a narrative hook. Once properly hooked the “fish” is helpless. W. Somerset Maugham offered the classic illustration of the prob-lem all authors face when he started one of his short stories with: “I wonder if I can do it.”

  The opening line of Tarzan of the Apes is an excellent example of this: “I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other.”

  In both cases it actually takes only two words to hook the reader into continuing. The promise of those first words is enough to catch any reader’s attention long enough to finish the statement, whatever it might be. Without the ability to grab the reader long enough to hook him, the author will never get the “message” across—whatever that might be.

  Burroughs, more importantly, was able to convince the reader that the people he wrote about actually existed. This had nothing to do with any ability to create deeply textured people, but rather the ability to make the reader want to believe. How could one doubt that John Carter actually ex-isted? Burroughs kept us hooked no matter how impossible the plot or the details of the adventure. In fact, the events that he related were, well, stranger than fiction. Even then you always wanted to believe that John Carter lived and that Tarzan was really an English Lord. The earth was hol-low and Pellucidar existed. What Burroughs told you about his own in-volvement with John Carter, David Innis, Tarzan, Carson Napier and all the other wonderful people of his personal universe (those wonderful Introduc-tions!) simply had to be true. They were all alive and well, and somehow surviving in their strange and frightening lands.

  In A Princess of Mars, Burroughs took only the first pages to really slip the hook deep into the reader’s craw.

  The Foreword begins with:

  “To the Reader of this Work: In submitting Captain Carter’s strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.”

  Well, that teased me into continuing a little further. We are offered quick, direct “introduction” to John Carter and his relationship to ERB. And we are told that Carter had died and left a manuscript with special in-structions to not have it publish until twelve years after his death. Every-thing, until now, was straightforward. Obviously interesting enough to keep reader going. But the real hook came in the closing lines of the Foreword:

  “A strange feature about the tomb, where his body still lies, is that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge, gold-plated spring lock which can be opened only from the inside.”

  That nailed me.

  And this book cliff-hung all the way through The Gods of Mars and in-to The Warrior of Mars, which finished the opening trio of the Barsoom Saga.

  Chapter One of A Princess of Mars opens with a full dose of narrative tricks that reel us into the book like a helpless fish tossed into a bucket of water:

  I am a very old man; how old I do not know. Possibly I am a hundred, possibly more; but I cannot tell because I have never aged as other men, nor do I remember any childhood. So far as I can recollect I have always been a man, a man of about thirty. I appear today as I did forty years and more ago, and yet I feel that I cannot go on living forever; that some day I shall die the real death from which there is

  no resurrection. I do not know why I should fear death, I who have died twice and am still alive; but yet I have the same horror of it as you who have never died, and it is because of this terror of death, I believe, that I am so convinced of my mortality.

  The author not only captures the reader with the content of his words, but also by the rhythmic way he “speaks” to us. This is not only inviting—it is hypnotic. While there might be some question as to ERB’s “literary” style [as many a “registered” critic or college professor might suggest] there is no doubt about the power of his verbal impact. Here he quickly grabs the reader and keeps ’em hooked all the way to the last page—and beyond.

  Burroughs was masterful at holding the reader by hook or crook from Chapter to Chapter, from book to book. In his
very first, A Princess of Mars, readers were given a sampling of what would soon become an ERB trademark. He ends the first John Carter adventure in the following man-ner:

  Did the Martian reach the pump room? Did the vitalizing air reach the people of that distant planet in time to save them? Was my Dejah Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death beside the tiny golden in-cubator in the sunken garden of the inner courtyard of the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium? For ten years I have waited and prayed to be taken back to the world of my lost love. I would rather lie dead beside her there than live on Earth all those millions of terrible miles from her.

  The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me

  fabulously wealthy; but what care I for wealth!

  As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the

  Hudson, just twenty years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes upon Mars. I can see her shining in the sky through the little window by my desk, and tonight she seems calling to me again as she has not called before since that long dead night, and I

  think I can see, across that awful abyss of space, a beautiful black-haired woman standing in the garden of a palace, and at her side is a little boy who puts his arm around her as she points into the sky toward the planet Earth, while at their feet is a huge and hideous creature with a heart of gold. I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something tells me that I shall soon know.

  When those words were first published, the public had to wait several years for the next book in the series: The Gods of Mars. The author imme-diately uses the same hook in the Foreword’s opening lines:

  Twelve years had passed since I had laid the body of my great-uncle, Captain John Carter, of Virginia, away from the sight of men in that strange mausoleum in the old cemetery at Richmond. Often had I pondered on the odd instructions he had left me governing the construction of his mighty tomb, and especially those parts which directed that he be laid in an OPEN casket and that the ponderous mechanism which controlled the bolts of the vault’s huge door be accessible ONLY FROM THE INSIDE.

  From Chapter to Chapter we are strung from cliff-hanger to cliff-hanger until the very end of the book. [Burroughs used the cliff-hanger at the ends of his Chapters, much like a movie serials would do for years, leaving someone in a terrible life-threatening situation. ERB would many times open the next Chapter with a totally different set of characters, until he had cliff-hung them in a frighteningly dangerous situation. Then he jumps back to the first group. This is a delightfully cheery way to keep the reader going madly through a book. But Burroughs took this a giant step further with the opening and closings of his books.] Here is a classic Burroughs trick. He has placed John Carter’s woman in a cell with two other females. The door is closing [and will remain closed a full Martian year—about two of ours]. The last thing John Carter sees is revealed in the final paragraphs of the book:

  And as she finished speaking I saw her raise a dagger on high, and then I saw another figure. It was Thuvia’s. As the dagger fell toward the unpro-tected breast of my love, Thuvia was almost between them. A blinding gust of smoke blotted out the tragedy within that fearsome cell—a shriek rang out, a single shriek, as the dagger fell. The smoke cleared away, but we stood gazing upon a blank wall. The last crevice had closed, and for a long year that hideous chamber would retain its secret from the eyes of men. [And a few paragraphs later he ends the book.]

  Ah! If I could but know one thing, what a burden of suspense would be lifted from my shoulders! But whether the assassin’s dagger reached one fair bosom or another, only time will divulge.

  These words thrust the reader at the speed of light into the next book: The Warlord of Mars.

  This ability to tease, please and tease the reader on and on from book to book was a skillful trick that Burroughs used again and again. The unsus-pecting public had been seduced even before Tarzan of the Apes was pub-lished in All-Story Magazine. The literary world, though, was little affected until 1914, when A.C. McClurg & Co. offered up this third Burroughs nov-el in a hard cover edition. [The Outlaw of Torn having been his second, though at that point, unpublished manuscript.]

  The very opening line to Tarzan of the Apes is quotable as a hook in it-self. The first two words force you to read on to the first period. And who can refuse to discover what follows? Who can escape the implications of the opening statement?

  I had this story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narra-tor for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the strange tale.

  Right to the very ending of the book:

 

  Tarzan took the envelope and tore it open. The message was from D’Arnot. It read:

  Fingerprints prove you Greystoke. Congratulations. D’ARNOT. As Tarzan finished reading, Clayton entered and came toward him with ex-tended hand. Here was the man who had Tarzan’s title, and Tarzan’s es-tates, and was going to marry the woman whom Tarzan loved—the woman who loved Tarzan. A single word from Tarzan would make a great differ-ence in this man’s life.

  And, of course, Tarzan, a true gentleman, says nothing. Instead he re-turns to Africa and his beloved jungle, alone, without the woman he loves. It will, naturally, take another book to unite them. Thus The Return of Tar-zan become, in reality, the second part of what could have been published as a one volume saga, “The Romance of Tarzan.” Instead, these books were followed by scores of others.

  Many of them give an illusion of reality, a sense that these events, though quite impossible, must have happened. Burroughs made us want to believe.

  This habit of designing his books in such a way as to cause the reader to believe in the reality of his people and worlds, is a vital element of his style and charm. And to miss the Forewords and Introductions was much the same as missing the openings or closings of the books themselves. They were, in the case of Burroughs, a necessary element of the magic; without these touches his characters missed out on the vital connection of being in some way a part of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ real existence. He knew John Carter; he knew Carson Napier; he knew Davis Innis. If Burroughs existed, so did they. Thus, we come to the centering point of this article, the begin-ning gambit, the reason for its existence.

  I began in the following manner:

  This article exists because the Foreword to The Princess of Mars is missing!

  I suggested that the mystery would be resolved as a result of reading the article. Well, Resolution Time has arrived!

  On the Internet it is possible to download quite a few of the public do-main ERB books. One of these is, of course, The Princess of Mars. And much to my horror, I learned that the vital Foreword was missing.

  How could they have done such a stupid thing? Didn’t they know these were the very first words ERB ever wrote? (Well, at least the opening lines to his first novel.)

  As a result of trying to discover the reasons for this terrible crime, I contacted several Burroughs experts, via the TARZAN, Edgar Rice Bur-roughs Website.

  It was some time before I discovered at least enough of the truth to sat-isfy me. By then George McWhorter had suggested that I write an article dealing with this matter and ERB Hookers and Cliffhangers.

  Steve Armstrong came up with what is the real reason. He did a bit of investigating on his own and wrote the following to me: “I would say on the Princess of Mars, they were lazy. The Ballantine edition has it in there, and that is what they used.”

  So the mystery of the missing Foreword is, sad to say, a matter of very little importance; though the trip I took to discover this truth has turned into a kind of interesting adventure which has lead all of us to this final point.

  SOME SIDEBARS

  CONCERNING THE ABOVE ARTICLE:

  EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS’

  INFLUENCE ON MY WRITING

  Charles Nuetzel is the author of nearly 100 b
ooks, most of which, he writes, “are probably better forgotten.” Some others, it turns out, were Ed-gar Rice Burroughs type novels [Warriors of Noomas, Raiders of Noomas, Swordmen of Vistar, The Slaves of Lomooro, published by Powell Sci-Fi. He has offered the following as examples of how he used the ERB touch.

  The following examples illustrate how I used some of Burroughs’ tricks in my own writing. [Not until now did I realize how closely I had done so. It is embarrassingly obvious when one compares the following examples with those of ERB’s first two Mars books quoted in this article.]

  I began the Introduction to Warriors of Noomas with: “As a writer I come across many people with stories to tell, most of which are useless. In the case of two men I shall call Dr. Spencer and Dr. Donaldson, quite the opposite was true.”

  Then I opened Chapter One with: “I, Torlo Hannis, was born at the age of twenty-eight, without memory of my past life, without knowledge of the world in which I found myself.”

  Apparently I liked that line so much I used it again in the opening para-graph to the book’s sequel: Raiders of Noomas: “For me the story began some eight months ago with the words: ‘I, Torlo Hannis, was born...”

  In the Swordmen of Vistar’s Introduction, I opened with:

  “I would like to warn the reader that there are very few of you who will believe the following story of Thoris of Haldolen and his encounter with the Wizard of Zorkada.”

  In each case, hopefully, I had used the conversational style coupled with the “immediate” hooking opening words. I always felt that the first words were very important, because without that being effective, then there was no used bothering with the rest. You have to grab the reader and not let go until the final page. Otherwise you never get a chance to make your point.

  THE TRUTH CONCERNING THE

  PEOPLE BURROUGHS WROTE ABOUT