Polar Treasure Reread and thoughts

[l***@yahoo.com]

Probably like many on this list, I'm rereading the Dos from the
Nostalgia reprints. I'm trying to sort of read them as they were
written, so this one was early on...interesting to see his early
style, and can see real talent lurking just below the purple pulp
exclamation points (!)

The obvious connection: Dent was a huge fan of Tarzan, and it's REALLY
clear he's making the Tarzan-Doc connection when Doc kills the polar
bear with his bare hands, and then proceeds to use him for vittles.
The part that seals the deal is that after Doc kills the bear, he
makes his unusual trilling sound (to compare to Tarzan's alpha-male
yell of victory). Doc does everything but beat his chest after the
kill.

The memorable moments--The chapter where he explores the wreck of the
ship is terrific, and still holds up very well. In this early part of
his career, Dent was writing stories that 'called' to him, and it's
clear that the 'haunted ship' element was something he was really
excited about. And when Doc is trapped by the Eskimos and has to
brachiate away by using ceiling fixtures, well that makes the Tarzan
connection even more obvious.

The five aides do something other than get captured--When Renny and
Monk are washed overboard, in the Arctic, and manage to survive, that
stretches credulity, but having Monk able to come up with the chemical
warming substance almost makes up for it, and it's nice to see the
aides put in a position that they solve completely on their own.

Conclusion: I'd put this in one of the ten best Docs, and it marks a
clear transition from his early, cruder prose, to a more polished,
frankly better style that he was to hit so well in 1934.

[Dave]

Reading now -- this is classic.

I'd forgotten the beginning -- the blind violin virtuoso in concert
playng one of DOC's compositions

At Polar Treaure we are still on the cusp of the legend. DOC has the
superfirer, but no mercy bullets yet. He hasn't developed the neck
pinch yet, but the "sock in the jaw" is being replaced with the small
hypodermics on the fingernails. ham has the sword cane, but no
sleepytime syrup on it. No Habeus corpus yet. DOC is still talking a
lot and chatty with slang.

TOP 10 easy, though.

dave

[TBerk]

Post by Dave
Reading now -- this is classic.
I'd forgotten the beginning -- the blind violin virtuoso in concert
playng one of DOC's compositions
At Polar Treaure we are still on the cusp of the legend.  DOC has the
superfirer, but no mercy bullets yet.  He hasn't developed the neck
pinch yet, but the "sock in the jaw" is being replaced with the small
hypodermics on the fingernails.  ham has the sword cane, but no
sleepytime syrup on it.  No Habeus corpus yet.  DOC is still talking a
lot and chatty with slang.
TOP 10 easy, though.
dave

I'm going to have to go back to the actual text this week but what I
remember is 'Polar' seems like such a clean version of a Doc saga. (I
can't explain it better just yet...)

berk

[Dave]

The speed of the plot just keeps moving. Slambang action and tossed
off ideas and it whisks you past obvious problems, like why DOC never
investigates Cap'n MacLuskey before embarking on the Arctice voyage,
and why the bad guys wait 15 years to recover the loot.

But it works great. DOC does turn the polar bear into dinner --
infact this is a rare DOC where anyone eats. DOC needs raw bear for
energy -- no word on how the guys made out for chow.

DOC rarely ears. The SPIDER eats for energy, though often the food
tastes like ashes in his mouth -- he is just fueling up. G8 eats
constantly, and well, considering there's a war going on. The SHADOW
never eats, though Lamont Cranston dines.

Dave

[Lokke Heiss]

The speed of the plot just keeps moving.  Slambang action and tossed
off ideas and it whisks you past obvious problems, like whyDOCnever
investigates Cap'n MacLuskey before embarking on the Arctice voyage,
and why the bad guys wait 15 years to recover the loot.

Exactly. Dent's enthusiasm for the material clearly pushes the
shortcomings of the plot to the side -- for example, why a submarine,
where they could have flown a plane with special gear instead? -- the
'intermission' notes make clear what happened -- Dent had a submarine
story already written, so he rewrote the story and put Doc in.

And as much as Dent hated re-writing, I think often the stories were
usually better when he did. Tighter, or just a better, faster style.
And putting Doc in a story already written would give the story a more
interesting feel--Polar Treasure is not so cookie-cutter as some of
his other sagas.

Any genre writer, if they write enough stories, will have to, by
necessity, plow through the options of scary/suspense stories. What
makes the story more interesting is often how they combine the story
possibilities. The haunted/ghost ship genre has been used many times,
and the submarine story used many times (always seems like there is a
mutiny/hidden enemy agent involved), and Dent put them together in a
very inventive way. And to repeat, the scene of the haunted ship is
spooky and striking.

And another nice part of the story is how Dent combines the high-tech
gadgets with the primitive. I think Doc is at his most interesting
when he does some clever trick that doesn't work, then has to figure
out something else. In this case, it was hiding the valve.

Lots of great verbs--like "the bullets spanged off the rock.' He was
using them before in his books, but now he's using them in combination
with less purple paragraphs, so they have more effect.

So anyway, Polar Treasure is as good, or I would argue better, than
most of the Tarzan novels, and is certainly Dent fulfilling a dream of
getting out a great pulp story.