Nigel Cox is finally getting the attention he deserves: Tarzan Presley, his fourth novel, has shot into the NZ Fiction bestseller charts at #2. And Cox is not even a full-time writer: he works at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, and there was a gap of 13 years between his second and third novels.

Tarzan Presley is gloriously unconventional. It’s riding high thanks to word of mouth, a brace of glowing reviews, and a marvellously trashy Rodney Smith cover. And how’s this for a plotline:

Tarzan Presley grows up in the Wairarapa jungle, fostered by gorillas and dodging cave-dwelling giant wetas. As a teenager, he stumbles across an abandoned shed, possibly built by his deceased parents. The shed has electrical power, courtesy of a windmill, and contains a radio. Tarzan is spellbound by the music coming from the radio, and this becomes the focus of his teenage years.

Just as the book starts to slow down and feel more like an anthropological study than a novel, the pace picks up. Tarzan is discovered by a roving entomologist called Jane Porter, who first takes his virginity, and then takes him back to California.

You can imagine the rest. Tarzan gradually makes the transition to American life in the 50s, gets a job as a singer, and meets Sam Phillips in Memphis. Soon he’s recording and performing live, then he’s starring in movies, and then it’s cheeseburger time. Less predictable is the way Cox weaves Gladys Presley into the story: the real Elvis has been killed in a car crash, and Tarzan becomes her surrogate son.

It’s an intriguing concept, and a helluva trick to pull off. For me, the opening third was slightly hard work, but the denouement more than compensates. You get used to the slightly matter-of-fact writing style and, indeed, it’s the quality of the wordsmithing that stops Tarzan Presley from being an intellectual exercise: every few pages, you will find a glowing sentence that stops you dead in your tracks.

If you’re going play around with novelistic conventions, as Cox does, readers will inevitably get the occasional flash of your undergarments. But Cox remarkably manages to sustain a skewed verisimilitude over virtually the whole novel.

The only real negative is that until the final third of the book, there is a notable lack of foreshadowing. It’s a very linear story. For example, the dichotomy between Presley’s physical decline and his sex god status is a key component of the myth. But the first we hear of it in the book is a simple statement that Presley is fat and unfit when called upon to wrestle a crocodile on a film set.

With a suitable build-up, this could have been a climactic moment: the point when Tarzan realises that he is falling from grace. Instead, it becomes a straightforward incident, given no more or less prominence than many others. It’s something that could have been improved by a little judicious editing.

But that’s a small quibble. It’s easy to criticise, and this must have been a difficult book to write. It makes you think about the process of writing a novel, and the myths and structures and tricks that you subconsciously become used to as a reader.

Tarzan Presley should lift Nigel Cox well and truly into the mainstream. His previous novels, Waiting For Einstein, Dirty Work and Skylark Lounge, have already revealed a writer of exceptional imagination. If you can suspend your own disbelief a little, you’ll find Tarzan Presley a rewarding read.

NB Victoria University Press has a limited edition Tarzan Presley
T-shirt to give away. To win this piece of wearable art, send an email to
victoria-press@vuw.ac.nz with “Tarzan Presley competition” in the subject line. Include your postal address and the answer to this question: “What’s the name of the first single that Elvis Presley recorded?” Entries close 15 July 2004 and all correct entries will go in the draw.