My recent e-mail to the editors of the National Post, Canada's
national newspaper, has dragged my observations on the influence of Edgar
Rice Burroughs into a dispute that has been making international headlines.
Numerous follow-up phone calls from Toronto with requests for book
cover illustrations and for more info on ERB's stories resulted in a front
page story in the Saturday, November 9th edition of the Post: The
headline:
"Boy and beast on a boat? Oldest idea in the world"
is accompanied by a colour reproduction of John Coleman Burroughs'
dust jacket painting for THE LAD AND THE LION lifted from our ERB C.H.A.S.E.R.
Online Encyclopedia.
The story also went on to quote George McWhorter of the University
of Louisville and authorities on literature and copyright.
Unfortunately they didn't get the name of our university quite right
: -)
Boy and beast on a boat?
Oldest idea in the world
Sarah Schmidt ~ National
Post
Saturday, November 09, 2002
http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={3A7EE136-A2F5-4457-A00C-AAB6A90F67FB}
"It appears the plot of a boy on a boat
with a beast is nearly a century old."
Fans of Edgar Rice Burroughs are shaking their heads at Brazilian author
Moacyr Scliar's accusation this week that Montreal's Yann Martel stole
the premise from him.
Burroughs, the famed creator of Tarzan, told a similar story in his
The Lad and the Lion in 1914.
Inspired by archetypal religious imagery of people cast adrift with
animals, most notably in the tale of Noah's Ark, and the literary tradition
of the special bond between child and beast, as in Rudyard Kipling's The
Jungle Book, Burroughs devoted a long chapter of his book to the boy and
the lion drifting for years aboard a derelict boat.
Mr. Scliar's novel Max and the Cats, the story of a Jewish boy and
a panther on a lifeboat, was published in 1981.
Mr. Martel's Life of Pi, the story of an Indian boy and a tiger on
a lifeboat, has won this year's Booker Prize.
Mr. Scliar this week accused Mr. Martel of abusing his "intellectual
property." He mused about taking legal action but then decided against
it.
Besides The Lad and the Lion, Burroughs also wrote of a man-animal
maritime adventure in his 1914 novel The Beasts of Tarzan. In this story,
Tarzan, stranded on an island, survives with the help of a panther and
an ape before the group escapes on a boat.
"It's ridiculous to say you can copyright ideas in literature. What
hasn't been said? What hasn't been recycled?" said Bill Hillman, a professor
of education at the University of Brandon and a Burroughs expert."Certainly
Burroughs came up with just about any combination you could think of with
man and beast."
Burroughs, author of more than 20 Tarzan novels, always maintained
that the concept of an original literary idea defied logic.
"Burroughs himself said that there's nothing new under the sun and
the best we can to is put new clothes on old ideas," said George McWhorter,
curator of the Burroughs Memorial Collection at the University of Louisville.
His own blunt admission did not stop the accusations of plagiarism
levelled against Burroughs, whose Tarzan books have been translated into
more than 50 languages, have sold more than 20 million copies and
have served as the basis for many movies.
Some of his contemporaries accused him of "stealing from Romulus
and Kipling,'' Dr. McWhorter said.
"I guess we should also accuse Kipling of copying Romulus,"
Dr. McWhorter added mockingly.
Mowgli, Kipling's central character in The Jungle Book, written
in 1894, was raised in the wild by wolves, just like the legendary founders
of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who myth says were abandoned as infants and
saved by a female wolf.
Marcus Boon, a professor of contemporary literature at York
University in Toronto, said the spiral of accusations illustrates the absurdity
of laying claim to an original idea in literature.
"These are sort of fundamental images and narratives within
human culture," Dr. Boon said of the image of a person cast adrift with
animals.
Dr. Boon said examples of the "ubiquity of the man-animals-raft image"
in literature and film include French author Alfred Jarry's Exploits and
Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician (1898). The story ends with
the main character sailing away in a boat with a chattering ape.
Werner Herzog's 1972 classic movie Aguirre: Wrath of God, which
tells the story of a 16th-century expedition in Latin America, ends with
the main character on a boat with monkeys.
As is common in the literary world, Mr. Martel disclosed long ago
that he was inspired by Mr. Scliar's plot in Max and the Cats, translated
into English in 1990. "Books are constantly referencing other books,"
Dr. Boon said. "I'm sure Scliar's book has resonance with other books."
Carys Craig, a copyright specialist at Osgoode Hall Law School in
Toronto, said the law accepts this long-standing practice.
"It's essential that people be free to develop upon and free
to share ideas -- and that's a goal of copyright law....
* * *
For the rest of the story see: http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id={3A7EE136-A2F5-4457-A00C-AAB6A90F67FB}
THE FRONTPAGE STORY GENERATED BY OUR ERB PROMOTION
PROMPTED THIS FOLLOW-UP STORY IN THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
AND NATIONAL POST
Catch a tiger by the tale
Boys and beasts were storied long before the latest
literary dust-up
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/story.asp?id={FBA658CF-888D-4406-B654-3244DB9A1E65}
Paul Gessell
The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, November 12, 2002
