Roy Krenkel (1918 – 1983): Cover for the Ace edition of Pirates of Venus
Once upon a time – I believe it was twelve years ago – I published an article at the Brussels Journal, defunct since 2009 but still archived on the Internet, under the title Edgar Rice Burroughs and Masculine Narrative. The article mainly addressed the author’s quasi-science fiction novels, but it also contained criticism of the stilted, politically correct apologies for Burroughs in otherwise handsome editions of his work reissued beginning in 2000 by the University of Nebraska Press under the Bison imprint. The foreword writers ritually excoriated Burroughs for having exercised the usual list of phobic isms and inexcusable bigotries. The article pointed to numerous counterexamples that, in particular, exonerated the Tarzan-author of having populated his stories with unrealistically weak or grotesquely male-deferential female characters. The editorial matter accompanying the Burroughs sagas in the Bison editions anticipated today’s advancing disappearance of the Burroughs oeuvre from the marketplace, partly under influence of wokeness. The stock of Bison editions nears depletion at Amazon. Those that remain for sale are in short supply. Used paperbacks from the 1960s and 70s are still for sale, but due to scarcity the prices are rising, especially for the Ace editions with cover-art by Roy Krenkel. An Amazon customer may purchase publish-on-demand versions of some titles, but they make a poor comparison with the Dover, Ace, and Bison reprints of past decades. The publish-on-demand editions often lack cover-art, coming with only title and author; and the printed page looks awkwardly composed, with no typographic grace. The situation treats poorly a man who once enjoyed the status of the most-read popular author in the USA, if not also in the world at large. (Burroughs’ adventures saw translation in a dozen languages, at least.) It saddens me that a man of so great an imagination, and at his best, a master of sterling prose, should vanish from public knowledge.