By Bryan A. Hollerbach
Photograph by David Torrence
Heroes fans who miss the superpowered clan because of the Hollywood writers’ strike should follow the lead of Dr. Peter M. Coogan, who has an interest that rivals the NBC hit: exploring the lineage of classic adventure heroes.
Coogan’s odd hobby originated with a faux bio of Tarzan written by fantasist Philip José Farmer in 1972. “I discovered Tarzan Alive when I was about 12, and my response was ‘Huh! It’s real! Tarzan is real!’” the Fontbonne University writing specialist recalls. “That meant that the world was a much more romantic and interesting place than I had previously imagined.”
Farmer’s bio posits that a meteorite irradiated 11 Brits in 1795 near the hamlet of Wold Newton and, through mutation, created a community of superhumans, including Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. That fictional clan has since become the focus of parascholarship—highbrow high jinks—to which Coogan has contributed in various ways.
Perhaps most significantly, his “Wold-Newtonry: Theory and Methodology for the Literary Archaeology of the Wold Newton Universe” opens the recent symposium Myths for the Modern Age and details ways of tracing the genealogy inspired by
Farmer’s writings.
Despite his Wold Newton work, amusingly, Coogan confesses, “I don’t have a larger interest in genealogy.” Still, Myths mentions that his own great-grandfather served the Shadow, a top pulp-magazine crime fighter of the 1930s and ’40s. The reason: credentialing. “I inserted my family into the whole Wold Newton universe, and this is my explanation for where my sources are.
“The idea behind a Wold-Newtonry article is that someone comes away wondering if it’s true,” Coogan adds with a grin. Sometimes, of course, that idea reaches extremes: “Farmer told me that he got a call from an Olympic javelin thrower who wanted to be introduced to Tarzan so he could get tips—throwing tips.”
Talk Mangani to Me
Also from Coogan: an embryonic dictionary of Mangani, the dialect of the apes in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original Tarzan novels. “I started to notice that the language was a little bit more complex than it seemed,” Coogan says of the dictionary’s inspiration. “It wasn’t just these random syllables that he threw in.” For a Mangani take on Valentine’s Day, for example, practice these phrases:
“flower” ro | “heart” thub | “love” gree-ah
So, ud, rota, meanwhile, more or less means “eat, drink and be merry”—sage counsel, whether in Mangani or English.
