The Call of the Wild and White Fang - Jack London [3]
1909 Charmian and Jack return to Oakland via Ecuador, Panama, and New Orleans. Martin Eden, a novel about a seaman who becomes a writer, is published.
1910 London begins plans for Wolf House, a mansion designed to last “a thousand years.” A child, Joy, dies two days after birth. Lost Face, a collection that includes the famous story “To Build a Fire”; Revolution and Other Essays, a collection of London’s thoughts on Socialism; Burning Daylight, a novel about the Klondike Gold Rush; and Theft, a play, are published.
1911 The Londons travel around California and Oregon. The Abysmal Brute, a novel about prizefighting and based on a plot purchased from Sinclair Lewis; When God Laughs and Other Stories; Adventure, a novel; and South Sea Tales are published.
1912 Jack and Charmian sail around Cape Horn aboard the Dirigio. Charmian miscarries again. The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii; A Son of the Sun, another collection of South Sea tales; and Smoke Bellew, stories illustrated by Frederick Remington, are published.
1913 The Prohibition Party and other groups praise “John Barleycorn,” London’s astonishingly honest autobiographical treatise on alcoholism; others see this work as lacking in sincerity. Upton Sinclair noted, “That the work of a drinker who had no intention of stopping drinking should become a major propaganda piece in the campaign for Prohibition is
surely one of the choice ironies in the history of alcohol.” Fire destroys Wolf House.
1914 London covers the Mexican Revolution for Collier’s, but returns home after a severe attack of dysentery.
1915 London spends time in Hawaii hoping to improve his health. The Star Rover, a novel about reincarnation, is published.
1916 London resigns from the Socialist party in March because of its “loss of emphasis on class struggle.” He suffers sever bouts of uremia and rheumatism, and dies on November 22 of stroke and heart failure, which his physicians attribute to gastrointestinal uremia and renal colic.
Introduction
On July 25, 1897, twenty-one-year-old Jack London lit out for the territories and followed a herd of prospectors to the “new” Northland frontier in search of gold. By the time he reached the land of hope and lore, much of the gold had already been panned out of the tributaries of the Yukon River. After a year of following the well-worn trails from San Francisco to Seattle to Alaska to the Klondike region and back, London had gained little in the way of material wealth. He returned home in the summer of 1898 poorer than he was when he left, but he carried with him a store of information about life and landscape that he would mine for years to come; his memories and experiences would guarantee both his fame and his future fortune. In the frozen Arctic, London found confirmation for his philosophical leanings, especially his penchant toward Socialism and biological and social determinism. But his experiences also taught him the value of community, of the intense bonds that a confrontation with the wild can foster in humans and in animals.
The power of the wild and the love shared by human and nonhuman are the subject of the texts brought together in this volume: The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906). The Call of the Wild garnered Jack London immediate fame; it brought him commercial and artistic success and assured him a place in the American literary canon. Mention London’s name in a casual conversation and the unmediated, enthusiastic response is almost invariably the same: “I love The Call of the Wild!” This book, it seems, has come to symbolize much for many; but when asked to articulate further what makes for the lasting appeal of the book, many, like Buck, the novel’s canine protagonist, are unable to express their feelings. What, then, makes London’s often violent yet always poignant book so enduring?
London and the Klondike
By the time London boarded a steamer for his trip from San Francisco to Alaska, he had already led a colorful and dramatic life. He was a sloop owner and oyster pirate on San