At 12:19 PM 12/1/00, you wrote:
>Burroughs takes a piece of the story, whacks it over the net, dashes to
>another
>table, fields a plot point there, runs back to the first or a third table,
>whacks again, and generally keeps everything in the whole story in the air at
>one time, if not one location. Later he has three or four balls aloft at each
>table and bats balls from one table to another, like the maniac juggler. Then
>suddenly he's ripping off the table legs to juggle them overhead while he's
>hitting balls, table lamps and pet cats holding cigar boxes across the white
>line and roaring around like the Flash on amphetamines to knock 'em back. He's
>everywhere. Then comes the finale, where everything crashes, the tables
>themselves ignite from friction, and a jetliner and a military balloon with
>dwarf dancing girls on board crash through the ceiling and justice is served -
>yes, a pun . After this ERB writes a few pithy things about nature and and its
>inexorable law, and leaves for the next book, carrying the girl. I loved it.
>Never seen anything like it before or since, and it was a shame to grow up and
>make it all invisible. I saw those books just in time.
Quite true, but a lot of Burroughs' books (at least the early ones) were
written as multipart or serial stories for the pulps. Each one had to be
mostly a self-contained story, so he pretty much HAD to flop you all over
the place to build up reader tension again.
It's a beautiful style, as you're getting several adventures wrapped up in
one longer story. And all the detail you really need is in your
imagination. He gives you a few seeds of description and lets them flower
in your mind.
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