TARZAN OF THE APES <i> by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Signet: $2.95) </i>

Since it first appeared in 1914, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic adventure-fantasy and its 22 sequels have sold more than 30 million copies in 58 languages. It’s interesting to compare the original to the countless films, rip-offs and spoofs it’s inspired.

“Tarzan of the Apes” was Burroughs’ first novel: The dialogue is often hokey and the story line more than a little improbable. Tarzan teaches himself to read by studying a primer in his parents’ abandoned hut, and modestly decides to begin wearing a loincloth just a few pages before Jane arrives on the scene. There’s also the nagging question of just what the “great apes” who rear Tarzan are: They’re not gorillas or chimpanzees or baboons . . .

But the action sequences are so compelling that the reader becomes aware of these flaws only after putting the book down. Seventy-five years after its publication, Burroughs’ tale of the Noble Savage remains the stuff of daydreams.