A look at a non-science fiction romance by Edgar Rice Burroughs
by Thomas Krabacher
Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Girl From Farris’s (Rialto, California: Pulpville Press, 2004).
I first heard of this story as a high school freshman in the mid-sixties when I read Dick Lupoff’s Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. Lupoff described the story as a minor work, of interest only to die-hard fans. For that reason alone, I’ve wanted to read the thing ever since. Copies were impossible to find for a teenager at the time, however, (if I recall correctly it was reprinted only once in a limited edition chapbook format back in the early sixties) so I never got the chance. That’s now changed, thanks to Pulpville Press, which has recently reprinted the story as an attractive trade paperback.
Burroughs began writing The Girl From Farris’s in the summer of 1913. He originally intended to enter it in a best novel contest sponsored at the time by the publishing house of Reilly & Britton in hopes of winning the $10,000 first prize. He didn’t complete it, however, until sometime in the spring of 1914 well after the contest ended; eventually it saw publication as a four-part serial in All-Story Weekly in the fall of 1916. It’s billed as a novel, but that’s a generous claim at best, since by my count it clocks in at only about 42,000 words.
The story is a significant departure for Burroughs since there’s no sweeping adventure here, no Barsoom or Pellucidar. He’s clearly aiming for something both mainstream and a bit more serious than his usual fare. It’s also something he attempted at greater length in The Girl From Hollywood in 1922. However, while the focus of TGFH was drugs among the Hollywood set, in this case the subject is vice in the city of Chicago -- "Farris's" of the title being the most notorious house of ill-repute in the city.
The result is mixed. It’s an attempt by Burroughs at something like social realism, and it has its moments in this regard. Ultimately, however, his typical sentimentality and over-reliance on coincidence keep getting in the way with the result thaty the end product is something more akin to the shop girl romances that regularly appeared in general fiction magazines such as All-Story Weekly at the time.
The plot basically follows the intertwined storylines of its two main characters, Maggie Smith, a young prostitute (although that term, or anything remotely like it, is never used; ERB’s treatment of the subject is very discreet) and Ogden Seccor, a young Chicago businessman. As is usual with Burroughs, coincidence and melodrama abound. To bullet-list the plot:
* a casual encounter between Maggie (whose real name is June Lathrop) and Ogden at a grand jury hearing inspires Maggie/June to turn over a new life;
* she trains herself to become a stenographer/typist and, by chance, ends up working for Ogden, although he now no longer remembers her;
* theft and assault at Odgen’s company cause Maggie/June to flee under a cloud of suspicion while, at the same time, the crime leaves Odgen a broken man: bankrupt, mentally enfeebled, and drunk.
* eventually they meet again in Idaho’s ranching and mining country where Maggie’s unflinching devotion spurs Odgen on to physical, mental, and moral recovery;
* Odgen realizes he loves Maggie (now June), but June (formerly Maggie) also realizes that because of her shameful past she can never return Ogden’s love…etc., etc.
Needless to say, thanks to still even more coincidences (some incredibly over-convenient!), everything comes to a happy conclusion at a dramatic murder trial back in Chicago.
So, is the book worth reading? The answer is yes. While it’s minor work, it nonetheless has momentum and reads quickly. And, for anyone interested in Burroughs, it sports a number of points of interest:
For one thing, in this story, more than any other of his I’ve read, we see ERB make use as story elements events from his own life, such as his brief attempts at a career in business (especially book-keeping) and his family’s unproductive ventures at mining in Idaho. For another, we also see Burroughs trying out some of the themes and devices -- the Chicago setting, the morally degenerate protagonist from the slums, the reforming influence exerted by a virtuous person of the opposite sex, a climax in which the protagonist returns to Chicago to stand trial for murder -- that he would use to much greater effect in The Mucker, a book Burroughs was working on at the same time.
Burroughs also makes very effective use of the Chicago setting. He has a strong sense of place: streets, avenues, neighborhoods, buildings, and street car lines are clearly identified and integrated into the plot, giving the story a down-to-earth solidity one usually doesn’t associate with ERB.
Also, by this point ERB is a more confident writer, having shaken off some of the clunkiness that characterized his earlier work, and the reader gets numerous examples of the Burroughs wit. Throughout the book he pokes fun at Chicago crime and law enforcement, political corruption, stenography, and the self-importance and hypocrisy of would-be social reformers. The story’s one big failing is a rushed ending that seems almost perfunctory.
And finally: Where else are you going to see Edgar Rice Burroughs devote half a chapter to explaining how a Chicago grand jury works?
(c) Thomas Krabacher
LINKS:
There's a paperback edition of The Girl From Farris's available at Amazon.com. Click here to find out more.
Richard Lupoff's Master Of Adventure: The Worlds Of Edgar Rice Burroughs is newly available in an edition from Bison Books. Click here to learn more at Amazon.com.
Learn more about The Girl From Farris's at Bill Hillman's great ERBzine web site, including the Frazetta illustration that graced the cover of the 1976 House of Greystoke reprint! Click here.
Posted by ds at July 18, 2006 08:09 PM
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