Lord Tyger (2 page)

There is a risk this story may sound like a reworking of the Tarzan and Mowgli epics, but this book is far from that. Farmer has read and learned from true-life and fictional feral
child stories,
¹
and has applied a practicable element to his own version. In any case, some may regard this as not a true feral man story, seeing as Ras's development is being overseen to an extent, but this intervention is a nudge here and there rather than any overt involvement. It is also true that Ras has grown up among language users, thus differentiating him from any authentic cases of feral children. On that score, the best example I would offer of an authentic feral man (and how the development of language is dealt with) would be the story of "Victor," a child discovered living alone in the forests of Aveyron, France in 1798. Dr. Itard, a famous eye-ear-nose-and-throat specialist, took the feral child into his own home to study and develop the latent human characteristics of Victor. Itard had some success but Victor never learned more than a few words. The conclusion is that the child has to learn to speak at an early age and without society sinks into a beast-like state. This story was filmed as
L'Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child)
by French director Francois Truffaut in 1970 (coincidentally, the same year
Lord Tyger
was published).

Farmer's strength is in understanding that a character like Ras Tyger could exist but that his life would not take the path described in romantic fiction. Farmer's creation is rooted in the real world and he carefully explores the effect of growing up without many of the cultural and physical boundaries we take for granted. The realism is palpable. Farmer's description of the landscape is exquisite and he has constructed a pocket world of great beauty but with inherent dangers. Farmer always excels at making his heroes inhabitants of the real world even as we
marvel at their superhuman escapades.

At this point I'd like to consider how others received and perceived the book. Its graphic content was condemned by some whereas others praised Farmer's exploration and deconstruction of the Burroughs Tarzan mythos. Algis Budrys called it "an entertaining, rich, inventive adventure novel in the best sense..."
²

Piers Anthony picked up on the inherent nature of the maturing child when he said "Lord Tyger might be a Tarzan juvenile--except that children are never permitted to be portrayed as they are, in their natural insensitivity and sexuality, lest this corrupt adult notions."
³

Locus Magazine
wrote, "I think that even those who have no interest in Tarzan and who do not consider Burroughs' work to be worthwhile still have to admit that this novel transcends the mythos that inspired it."
⁴

And,
Locus
again, this time more recently: "To me, though, the most interesting [novel] is
Lord Tyger
(1970), which again sees Farmer playing reality-games. What looks like a mere retelling of the story, through the eyes of the preternaturally able (and highly sexual) jungle lord Ras Tyger, turns out to be more like a meta-fictional comment on what Tarzan means in our culture, and what people do with him as an icon. That makes it sound like a drab read, which it's not: it gives you both the primitive excitement of the source material and a far more sophisticated commentary on them."
⁵

But, for me, the most significant of them all is Paul Walker's
reassessment of his own earlier review. "Philip Jose Farmer is one of the most original and unpredictable of SF writers. His novels and stories are uniquely his, and
Lord Tyger
is no exception. It is not unforgettable, but it is more than 'entertaining.' It has a peculiar flavor, a caustic tone, a vividness that could come from no one else. Yes, it is a sort of 'Tarzan novel,' but unlike any Tarzan you've met before. The eroticism is wild. The danger smells of danger. The jungle itself is alive with a poetry, both beautiful and sinister. The suspense is suspenseful. The book is never dull. In short, it is a fine read. I have done it an injustice and I apologize."
⁶
We owe a great debt of thanks to Titan Books for giving us all the opportunity to reassess
Lord Tyger
for ourselves in this stunning new reprint.

As the book develops its plot, Ras embarks on a physical and spiritual journey, much like the heroes of old. To quote Farmer himself: "In order to understand the structure and everything that's really going on there, you've got to be familiar with Joseph Campbell's
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
. If you read that, then read
Lord Tyger
, you can follow Campbell's motif right on through the novel. No critic ever noticed that."
⁷
Campbell's book describes a number of steps in the classic journey, starting with the call to adventure, travelling the road of trials, attaining the ultimate goal, and returning as the hero to make use of what has been won. It is this aligning with the monomyth as described by Campbell that hooks Ras's story into our common consciousness and allows us to share in his experiences even as we know his exploits are far beyond anything we could hope to achieve.

Farmer scholars will know of his admiration for the works of William Blake and how he used Blake's mythology within the World of Tiers series. I can only speculate, of course, but I have little doubt that Farmer would have been reading 'The Tyger' by Blake when thinking of his protagonist's character and name (and how I wish I could pick up the phone and discuss this with him!). The poem talks of the striking beauty of the tiger but also of its horrific capacity for violence. It tells us of God and how He created the magnificent tiger and in its magnificence the tiger is neither good nor bad but rather something wonderful and frightening. He is a beast of instinct. The smithy in the poem represents a traditional image of artistic creation and the 'forging' of the tiger suggests a very physical and deliberate kind of making; it emphasizes the physical presence of the tiger and precludes the notion that such a creation could have been in any way accidental. These notions draw clear parallels with our own 'Tyger.'

In an interview with Paul Walker,
⁸
Farmer acknowledges that the character of Boygur, the megalomaniac millionaire who plays such a key part in the novel, is a caricature of Farmer himself as the mad scientist who tries to raise his own Tarzan and continually has to compromise. Farmer also reveals where the inspiration for the name Boygur came from. The Boyg is a troll in Scandinavian folklore, historically characterized as a giant, slimy serpent that stands as a hindrance to travellers. In Henrik Ibsen's
Peer Gynt
the BOyg takes the form of a mysterious voice in the darkness that tells Peer what to do. Boygur is shocked and appalled when the jungle superman he has raised is far from innocent. Boygur sadly notes that for all his intended
interventions "things went their own way." Ultimately no man can mould another into his own, or any other, image. To try and do so is to fail.

It's certainly true, to a great extent, that the novel was inspired by the Tarzan stories but perhaps it's less about Tarzan per se and more about Farmer's lifelong love of his boyhood idol. Farmer may not have been in a position to truly recreate his own feral man but by casting himself as Boygur he achieves the next best thing. The historical and fictional stories of men raised in the wild have intertwined for many centuries, from Romulus and Remus--the preeminent feral children of ancient mythography--to documented true-life versions and the literary interpretations of Burroughs and Farmer.

This book is dedicated to Edgar Rice Burroughs and it really is a tribute to him despite what some may see as parody.
Lord Tyger
pays homage to Farmer's favourite hero and whereas it demonstrates the fundamental impossibility of that character as conceived by Burroughs, it shows how literary ingenuity could lead to physical possibility. Farmer's genius is in devising a believable way in which a feral man could truly come to exist. In the real world, one of unpredictability, Boygur's experiment was always doomed to fail.

But what a failure!

Paul Spiteri lives near London, England and has been reading, rereading, and writing about Farmer books since early adolescence. Although they had previously corresponded, he first met Phil Farmer in 2001 when asked along to Phil and Bette's 60th wedding anniversary. Out of that meeting a personal and professional relationship grew, with Spiteri taking on the editor role for
Pearls from Peoria
(Subterranean Press, 2006), a book that assembles over sixty hitherto uncollected pieces of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and autobiography - some previously unpublished. He was also a co-editor of
Farmerphile: The Magazine of Philip Jose Farmer
(2005--2009) and is a supporting editor on
The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer
series (Meteor House, 2010--present).

Spiteri has published three short stories. The first,
"Getting Ready to Write"
was in collaboration with Farmer and was printed in
Farmerphile #13
(July 2008). The next two stories appeared in
Farmerphile #15
(January 2009) and
The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer 1: Protean Dimensions
(Meteor House, 2010) respectively.

__________________

¹
See
Mother Was a Lovely Beast, A Feral Man Anthology
, edited by Philip Jose Farmer, Chilton, 1974.

²
Galaxy
, June 1970.

³
Science Fiction Review
#37, April 1970.

⁴
Tony Lewis writing in
Locus Magazine
, Issue 125, October 27, 1972.

⁵
Graham Sleight writing in
Locus Magazine
, Issue 565, February 2008.

⁶
Letter from Paul Walker printed in
Science Fiction Review
40, 1970.

⁷
Interview appeared in
Tangent
#2, May, 1975.

⁸
Luna Monthly
, September 1974.

1

THE PYTHON THAT RAPED A VILLAGE

"My mother is an ape. My father is God."

Ras Tyger sat on a branch, his shoulder against the trunk. He wore only a leopardskin belt that held a crocodile-leather sheath from which stuck the ivory handle of a big knife. A wooden flute was in his left hand.

"I am the only white man in the world.

"I come from the Land of the Ghosts."

He sang in the language of the Wantso. Throughout his singing, he kept turning his head to watch for anybody who might be sneaking up on him. The tree was twenty-five feet from the bank of the river and only two trees away from the village. He could see everything; the village, the fields to the east of the village, and the islet, separated from the peninsula by a narrow channel.

As he sang, he grinned. The panic racing through the Wantso was his own music fluted back to him.

"O brown-skinned beauties, I love you. I love you as the
lightning its tall tree, the fish its water, the snake its hole in the ground.

"Most of all, I love you, Wilida, because you are the most beautiful and because you are guarded from me.

"I, Lord Tyger, beautiful and fierce, leopard-beautiful, leopard-angry, Tyger, Tyger, from the Land of the Ghosts, ghost with the long, long python between the thighs and the great beehives that fountain forth honey on honey.

"O brown-skinned beauties, I love you, I love you as the stone its fall, the eagle its wind, the civet its egg.