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The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs 9781293528136 Books

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The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs 9781293528136 Books

Everyone knows that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan.
But, here is a hero that climbs from the cess pool of the lowest strata of human existence, to the pinnacle of human social behaviour. Billy Byrne is spawned in the inner city slums of Chicago. He survives his childhood by becoming a "Mucker." A person with very few qualities that would pass in "Normal" or polite society.
It is interesting to note that Burroughs writings of inner city Chicago dovetail right into Sinclair Lewis's writings in "THE JUNGLE ". Both were written looking at inner city Chicago at about the same time.
And yet, Billy lifts himself from the slime to become a shining example of what a MAN should be.
An excellent read, filled with action, adventure, cliff hanging moments, and it leaves you wanting to be a better person! I highly recommend this book.

Product details Paperback 78 pages Publisher Nabu Press (January 14, 2014) Language English ISBN-10 1293528137

Tags : The Mucker [Edgar Rice Burroughs] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages,Edgar Rice Burroughs,The Mucker,Nabu Press,1293528137,Fiction - General,Fiction General,General,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
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The Mucker Edgar Rice Burroughs 9781293528136 Books Reviews

The first two the mucker (hood) goes straight under the influence of a good woman. In the third, the mucker's pal--a decent, poetic hobo--earns his own reward.
The first two are poured in E.R.B.'s heroic Tarzan mold, tales of iron men meeting life and winning against their environment for the best of ideals. The last (Oakdale) continues, but it's a combination of pithy, evocative, wonderfully descriptive prose often hilariously applied. Both are embellished with witty poetry by "Knibbs"--I suspect His Nibs'-- E.R.B.'s--own. It reads like Mark Twain, and is my favorite Burroughs tale.
"Birds sang or twittered about them, the mat of dead leaves oozed spongily beneath their feet,
giving forth no sound as they passed, save a faint sucking noise as a foot was lifted
from each watery seat."
All in all, these three books are a great read.
Enjoy!
Inspired by the relatively new anthology of short stories, The Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs (in turn, inspired by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs), I found an Ebook copy of The Mucker by the aforesaid ERB. The Mucker does not age well. Like some of the classic Robert E. Howard works, it is full of racial epithets (some of which, placed in the slang of the eponymous “Mucker,” were new to me) that often served to jar me out of my suspended disbelief. I think I was truly blind to just how racist mainstream society was in the earliest part of the 19th century. The protagonist in The Mucker even deliberately uses an anti-Italian epithet as an anti-Hispanic and anti-Native Mexican slur “It ain’t never a mistake to shoot a Dago, … (Location 4603).

Perhaps, outside the plot in general, the most useful lesson in The Mucker is about the premature judgments we make on the basis of appearance and language. To be sure, this is a volume about personal transformation by an extreme effort of will (else there wouldn’t have been two additional books with the main characters), but it underscores the class consciousness of its generation in a very vivid way.

In the midst of the crudeness depicted within the dialogue and class prejudice, I truly enjoyed the use of unusual words and phrases within the volume. Devotees of Strunk & White would be horrified at the use of vocabulary such as “contumely” (Location 1294) and “avoirdupois” (Location 176, a term for weights and measures in English-speaking countries with which I was unfamiliar). Indeed, who could resist a line referring to the “supposititious purpose of the cruise” (Location 571). I enjoyed the biblical reference to the “evening and the morning were the third day” (Location 1545), quotations from cowboy poet Henry Herbert Knibbs (“’It’s overland and overland and overseas to—where?’ ‘Most anywhere that isn’t here,’ I says. His face went kind of queer. ‘The place we’re in is always here. The other place is there.’” –Location 3656)
My favorite line is the book is “…the eye-light of love and lust are twin lights between which it takes much worldly wisdom to differentiate.” (Location 846) This is an ideal phrase to use in discussing the main conflict in the book (indeed, judging from the Max Collins story in the anthology, it is the main conflict in all three books—though I’ve only read this one). The male protagonist is a tough from Chicago’s Grand Avenue gang culture of the early 20th century. His hostile, pugnacious nature gets him in trouble and he ends up aboard a ship of toughs in the midst of a piratical kidnapping scheme. The subject of the scheme is a New York City socialite named Barbara. Although street tough, mucker, “coward” as Barbara calls him, Billy Byrne initially despises Barbara and all her family and social class represents, it isn’t a spoiler to suggest that, in the course of the narrative, Billy will fall in love with her and save her life on many occasions.

The kidnapping leads to a shipwreck which allows for a mix of ERB’s jungle survival prose combined with an unexpected “lost oriental” theme. The latter was a surprise to me and I hope I haven’t spoiled it for potential readers.
Well, since the book is only halfway complete when the principals are rescued from the island (and this doesn’t quite work out the way one would expect), it is clear that this isn’t the end of the saga. Billy tries to make a life without Barbara, but even though he rejects her because it is the right thing to do (two different worlds, ya’ know, and also, apparently, a recurring theme), their paths cross again in a foreign country. Once again, Billy is thrust into the position of rescuer and would-be suitor, but he must intern for a time with a Pancho Villa rival in order to do so.

It was this latter part of the novel that offered the most incredulity to me as a reader. At one point, the bandito chief is convinced that Billy isn’t a gringo because his Chicago argot is practically a foreign language. At another point, Billy who only speaks a modicum of Spanish is able to negotiate a fine deal with his new “El Jefe” (the latter not ERB’s word). Yet, the entire section was a lot of fun because Billy was parsing rather precisely between his good intentions of going straight and his service of Mexico under command of this “general.” It’s an intriguing inner dialogue and more credible than some of the action scenes. Nonetheless, the action scenes are strung together like beads and, even though one knows largely what will happen, it is still interesting to see the beads come full circle.

Eventually, I’ll read the other two novels about these characters. As of now, I don’t feel any real urgency. My ERB appetite has been (probably because of the racism and classism) temporarily quenched and I’ll wait till I’m in another pulp adventure mood to trace down the other stories.
My dad said his favorite book as a child was <cite>The Warlord of Mars</cite> by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs is most famous for his Tarzan books. I read the first two of those. The first one was quite good, the second got a bit silly. My son, Zach, read further into the series, and said the silliness got rather out of hand—"jumped the shark", he said. Whatever, <cite>The Mucker</cite> came out in 1914, and deals with a young hoodlum who came from the tough parts of Chicago. My dad was born in Chicago and was eight when the book came out. So I thought perhaps in reading it, I might learn something about the environment in which my dad spent his early years. At some point, his family moved to a small town in southwestern, Michigan, undoubtedly not much like Chicago at all. Still, the early years in Chicago likely had some effect on his personality. Fortunately, my dad didn't grow up to be a thug, he was rather more of an intellectual than Billy Byrne, the protagonist of <cite>The Mucker</cite>, and had a professional career, as is appropriate for a college graduate, a class of people despised by Billy Byrne, but not at all by yours truly.

Well, the above is all mostly irrelevant. While the protagonist was born and grew up in Chicago, most of the book takes place in other venues. This is an amazingly silly book, geared primarily toward 12-year old boys I would guess. It's full of thrilling, but completely implausible and off-the-wall action. It reminds me a bit of the Hardy Boys, lots of exciting action that wouldn't make sense to one who had a shred of grounding in the workings of the real world.

So, we begin with a kid who grows up a thug in Chicago. He is what's known as a mucker <blockquote>[Muckers] were pickpockets and second story men, made and in the making, ... ready to insult the first woman who passed or pick a quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night they plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the feed store and drank beer from a battered tin pail. </blockquote>
He skips town to avoid a trumped-up murder charge, hopping a train to San Francisco. There he is shanghaied by pirates. The pirates kidnap a beautiful heiress from her father's yacht and carry her off to the south Pacific where they are shipwrecked on an island inhabited by samurai headhunters. Yup, you read it right. Some 16th century samurai landed on this island and intermingled with headhunters, and nothing changed for 400 years except the blood lines. Eventually, Billy and the heiress get saved, but not until after she has taught him to be able to speak in an educated and refined manner.

Then, the mucker, finds himself on the lam once again, in company of a poetry-spouting hobo. Of particular note is the spouting of the poem, <a href="http//www.angelfire.com/az2/sirdanimal/OutThereSomewhere.html"><cite>Out There Somewhere</cite></a> by Henry Herbert Knibbs. Their ramblings and adventures closely mirror this poem. They end up in Mexico dodging bandinistas (revolutionarios?), sometimes collaborating with them. You guessed it, the beautiful heiress' father owns a ranch down Mexico way; she and her father decide to leave New York for a quick visit; they have problems with bandinistas; and Billy rides to the rescue, winning the heiress in the doing. Something like that.

So, if you like a dose of <i>bizarrité</i> with your adventure, and don't mind a lack of any semblance of realism, this is likely to book for you. If you're an adolescent male, or sometimes think like one, you're likely to find this book entertaining.
Everyone knows that Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote Tarzan.
But, here is a hero that climbs from the cess pool of the lowest strata of human existence, to the pinnacle of human social behaviour. Billy Byrne is spawned in the inner city slums of Chicago. He survives his childhood by becoming a "Mucker." A person with very few qualities that would pass in "Normal" or polite society.
It is interesting to note that Burroughs writings of inner city Chicago dovetail right into Sinclair Lewis's writings in "THE JUNGLE ". Both were written looking at inner city Chicago at about the same time.
And yet, Billy lifts himself from the slime to become a shining example of what a MAN should be.
An excellent read, filled with action, adventure, cliff hanging moments, and it leaves you wanting to be a better person! I highly recommend this book.