The Mucker

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Summary: ERB does an urban version of the Tarzan story
Review: Okay, first, to set you mind at ease, a "mucker" is slang for "a coarse vulgar person, esp. one capable of offense against courtesy of honor." I believe it is originally British slang which made its way across the pond in the early 20th century in time for Edgar Rice Burroughs to feel comfortable using it for the title of a pair of pulp fiction yarns collected in this volume. As you would expect from the title, this is the story of a low borne brute, Billy Byrne, who wins the hand of an upper class lady, Barbara Harding . "The Mucker" ran in "All-Story Cavalier" in 1914 with "The Return of the Mucker" being published two years later in "All-Story Weekly." Now both stories are published in a single volume.

Billy Byrne is basically a street thug whose notion of honor is based more on a sense of territoriality rather than anything else. Just when things are starting to become too hot in Chicago he gets shanghaied and ends up on the brigantine "Halfmoon," a 20th century pirate vessel. Surviving and rising in the ranks because of his ability to beat any other man to a bloody pulp, Billy participates in the taking of the yacht "Lotus," where one of the captives is Barbara Harding, the millionaire's daughter. Of course he insults her, as is the way of the mucker, but when she calmly calls him a coward and a beast he finds himself thinking about how he much look to others, thus beginning his quest for moral regeneration. When she gets captured by headhunters, take a wild guess as to who is going to rescue her. Of course, at the end of the first part Billy takes the high road, knowing he is not good enough for Barbara and leaving her to return to the world to which she belongs, and then we repeat all the action in the second part and change the ending.

You will find a little bit from several different early works by Edgar Rice Burroughs in "The Mucker." The story starts in Chicago, a city that ERB knew well, and then turns into a sea yarn with a mutiny, which is how "Tarzan of the Apes" began, except that this time the "hero" is one of the pirates. You will also find one of ERB's lost races, which would become a staple in the last half of the Tarzan series. The second half, which takes place after the Mucker does the noble thing at the end of part one, goes off into the Mexican desert and turns into a western. So there is certainly a little bit of everything here, although the strongest comparison is to the first two Tarzan novels, not only because the romantic plot follows essentially the same pattern, but because it also provides the brute becoming civilized. In that regard it is one of ERB's more interesting pulp yarns, totally devoid of the science fiction elements found in most of his better stories, but retaining his strong sense of human nature.