|
|
While still a teen-ager, London was forced to earn money to help
support the household. He worked at a series of unskilled jobs but
constantly sought a way out of the dead-end life of a "work beast." He
sailed the waters of San Francisco Bay, first as an oyster pirate, then
as a member of the Fish Patrol, apprehending his former comrades in
larceny. In 1893, at the age of 17, he signed on as a seaman with the
seal-hunting vessel Sophie Sutherland. The experiences of his
seven months at sea not only taught him much about life, but also
provided him with raw material for some of his early writings.
In the summer of 1897, still seeking to escape the common laboring
life, London sailed for Juneau, determined to strike it rich in the
Alaskan gold rush. A year later, broke and ill, perhaps with scurvy,
London abandoned his Klondike adventure. He had found no gold dust, but
he came away with rich nuggets of experience that inspired some of his
best tales. London later wrote of his year in Alaska: "It was in the
Klondike that I found myself. There, nobody talks. Everybody thinks.
You get your perspective. I got mine." In novels like The Call of
the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), and in short story
collections like The Son of the Wolf (his first published book,
in 1900), London explored the struggle against nature's indifference
and cruel power.
Throughout his life, Jack London held an unshakable faith in mankind.
He lived according to this faith, and his writing reflected it. His
months as a hobo, tramping across the United States, provided him with
the philosophical base for his compassionate socialism and the story is
recounted in his book The Road (1907). London's compassion for
humanity led him to live for a period among the poor in the East End of
London, England, an experience that produced his sociological study,
The People of the Abyss (1903). He later wrote that "Of all my
books, I love most The People of the Abyss. No other book of
mine took so much of my young heart and tears as that study of the
economic degradation of the poor." London's faith in humankind and his
abhorrence of individualism are themes that recur in many of his novels
and tales.
As both adventurer and author, London himself often made headlines.
But, he also had a journalist's nose for a good story, and he managed to
be at the center of some of the world's major events. In 1904, he
covered the Russo-Japanese War as a war correspondent for the Hearst
newspapers. Despite being arrested and having his camera confiscated,
London captured extraordinary views of the war. Two years later, back
home in Sonoma, California, Jack London and his wife Charmian woke to
the rumbling and rolling of the ground on April 18, 1906. The Londons
walked the quake-ravaged city of San Francisco for hours, absorbing and
photographing the devastation wrought by the temblors, explosions and
fires. The report that London wrote for Collier's is one of the
first eyewitness accounts and a simple but eloquent masterpiece of
journalism.
In 1906, London began to build a 45-foot yacht for a projected
seven-year, round-the-world cruise. On April 23, 1907, Jack and
Charmian London and a small crew set sail from San Francisco, bound for
the South Pacific. For the next year and a half, the Snark miraculously
prevailed despite her design flaws and the inexperience of the crew.
After adventures such as savoring the Hawaiian paradise, visiting the
leper colony on Molokai, fending off marauding villagers in the Solomon
Islands, and nearly perishing from thirst at sea, the ill and weary
Londons reluctantly abandoned the voyage in Australia and returned home
to California. The story of the voyage, with all its rigors and rewards,
is told in London's The Cruise of the Snark (1911).
As he did with his stories of the cold, cruel Klondike, London used
the vastly different tropical settings of the South Pacific to explore
some of the same themes concerning human conflict and the most
fundamental forces of nature. In his story "Koolau the Leper," for
example, London tells of the plight of a man who goes into hiding,
rather than submit to deportation to Molokai. In the last story London
wrote, "The Water Baby," he explores the fundamental conflict between
internal, spiritual affirmation and rational skepticism, reflecting
London's own inner struggle with these opposing beliefs.
In June, 1905, London wrote to his editor and publisher George Brett
about land he had just found in the Sonoma hills: "There are . . . 130
acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found anywhere in
California. . . . I have been riding all over these hills, looking for
just such a place, and I must say that I have never seen anything like
it." London eventually owned about 1,400 acres of land, on which he
operated an ambitious ranch with his step-sister Eliza London Shepard
as superintendent, applying scientific principles to growing record
crops and raising champion livestock.
London's ranching venture awakened in him a belief in the redemptive
qualities of the land, as well as a commitment to the wise renewal of
its natural resources. In this vision of mutual benefits and obligations,
humankind can find salvation by returning to nature and her bounty but
must also be committed, in London's words, to "making the land better
for my having been." London explored this vision in his writings,
producing a series of pastoral tales, such as the novels The Valley
of the Moon (1913) and Burning Daylight (1910) and short
stories like "All Gold Canyon." In contrast to the Klondike stories,
in which people are pitted against nature's cruel power, these tales
feature a beneficent nature sometimes threatened by human insensitivity.
Throughout his career, Jack London explored ideas, both in his
reading and in his own writings, seeking to find the answers to life's
great questions. In this quest, he frequently affirmed his own belief
in the superiority of humanity over the destructive power of
individualism, as in his novels Martin Eden (1909) and The Sea
Wolf (1904). He also cast his socialist beliefs toward the future
in The Iron Heel (1908), imagining a world in which a ruling
party rises to complete domination of the proletariat.
Increasingly, in the last several years of his life, he saw the
importance of the inner or spiritual side of life to humankind's
self-understanding. His remarkable novel, The Star Rover (1915),
is the story of a prisoner whose spirit roams through time and space as
an escape from his body's brutal torture. In addition, London's reading
of Carl Jung introduced him to concepts of psychology and collective,
inner human experience that he described as a "world so new, so terrible,
so wonderful, that I am almost afraid to look over into it." London
began to incorporate Jung's theories into short stories like "The Water
Baby."
Sara S. Hodson
Curator of Literary Manuscripts
shodson@huntington.org
Return to top
|
