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Going Ape for an Icon: Why Tarzan has reigned for almost a century.(POP CULTURE)(Arts and Entertainment)(Brief Article)

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From: Newsweek
Date: 19990621
Author:Jones, Malcolm

I read "Tarzan of the Apes" for the first time a couple of years ago, and I couldn't get over how good it was. OK, it's not perfect. Cliches abound. Author Edgar Rice Burroughs's racism, appalling precisely because it is so casual, stains an otherwise noble story. And the writing itself often wobbles into orotundities worthy of W. C. Fields. Despite all that, Burroughs's first "Tarzan" is a spellbinding work. Early in the first book--there would be 23 more--the orphaned Tarzan, now a teenager with no memory of his true parents, enters the house his father erected in the jungle. ...

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