{"id":61585,"date":"2026-01-12T09:00:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=61585"},"modified":"2026-01-11T18:25:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T23:25:43","slug":"happy-birthday-jack-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=61585","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI look back on my life and draw one great generalization: IT WAS MY REFUSAL TO TAKE CAUTIOUS ADVICE THAT MADE ME.” — Jack London"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n\u201cI would rather be ashes than dust!
\nI would rather that my spark should burn out
\nin a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
\nI would rather be a superb meteor, every atom
\nof me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
\nThe function of man is to live, not to exist.
\nI shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
\nI shall use my time.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Jack London\u2019s Credo, The Bulletin<\/em>, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916<\/big><\/p>\n

Jack London was born on this day, January 12, 1876. <\/p>\n

London was a magazine writer who achieved world-wide fame during his lifetime. Best-known for The Call of the Wild<\/i>, White Fang<\/i>, and To Build a Fire<\/i>, he had a robust and busy career as a reporter and activist. Some of the more pointed activist stuff does not time-travel as well as his most famous works, but it all provides a great portrait of the fights of the Left – with others and with each other – during that era. He was a unionizer. He wrote a lot about class war. He spent his years as a teenager bumming around, pan-handling, working on ships (he traveled as far away as Japan), working in canneries. He did attend high school but he was essentially self-educated, and a voracious reader. He wrote for the high school newspaper about living through typhoons off the coast of Japan (not the usual school paper essay topic). He was determined to attend Berkeley and after busting his ass on the entrance exams, he got in.<\/p>\n

But London always kept a foot in the wild side. While attending Berkeley, he hung out in saloons frequented by sailors and pirates and rough trade. These were his people. He would end up writing about all of them. <\/p>\n

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\nHe grew up not knowing who his father was. His mother had been living with a man prior to his birth, but all records (of any kind) were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, so whether or not the two made it legal is still not known. London, while at Berkeley, wrote to this dude who had been living with his mother – the man was an astrologer, then living in Chicago), and inquired if he might be his father. The man replied bluntly that it was impossible since 1. he was impotent, and 2. Your mama “got around,” son. The trauma of this event can be felt in what followed: London quit school and headed to the Klondike, following the gold rush of the 1890s.<\/p>\n

“Like Peter Pan, he never grew up, and he lived his own stories with such intensity that he ended by believing them himself.” \u2014 Ford Madox Ford on Jack London, 1916<\/big><\/p>\n

Although his time in the Klondike was extremely important, in terms of the books that would make him famous, the books we still read today, it also destroyed his health. He developed scurvy (a condition causing long-lasting effects on him). His career as a magazine writer started for real after he left the Klondike. He became involved in politics and activism. Like many people who grew up poor, he did not have grandiose ideas about his writing. His writing was his work, it was a way to make money, an escape from the drudgery of office work or the brutality of manual labor. London “came up” during the Golden Age of Magazines, and he benefited from the better\/faster printing technologies, wider circulation, clear mailing routes, all of the developments exploding in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Because of all of these factors, London’s work reached a mass audience in a way it might not have even 20 years earlier. He made a great living. <\/p>\n

He died at home. Some think his death was a suicide. He had been suffering with unbearable pain from kidney stones. <\/p>\n

The epitaph he chose for his gravestone is the first part of Psalm 118:22:<\/p>\n

The Stone the Builders Rejected<\/i><\/h1>\n

(The second part of the Psalm, not on the tombstone, is “has become the capstone”. Much food for thought here in the choice of epitaph, and the choice of omission. I also love that London, a writer til the end, EDITED the quote he wanted to use.) <\/p>\n

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\nI read The Iron Heel<\/i> last year, part of my deep dive into tyrannical dystopias in literature. It’s a chilling portrayal of how a multi-tentacled gigantic political system called The Oligarchy (i.e. “The Iron Heel”) took over the world for centuries, through a combination of politics, violence, and rapacious capitalism. London was more prophetic than could be understood at its time of publication in 1908. In reading it, I realized that The Iron Heel<\/i> is the real inspiration for Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale<\/i>, although her book is most often compared to Orwell’s 1984<\/i>. But in Handmaid’s Tale<\/i>, she uses the exact same “device” London usees in his book: a manuscript is found centuries after The Iron Heel has fallen, and it is an eyewitness first-person account of the events and how the Oligarchy affected the people. The Iron Heel<\/i> is a bit of a slog at points, but it is an incredibly detailed portrait of Leftist thinking at that time. It’s real agitprop. The book is eerily prescient in so many ways. One example is he has the Germans pulling off a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.) <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sometimes a dreary thing to sit and watch the game played in the small and petty way. One who not only takes a hand in the game, but calmly sits outside as well and watches, usually sees the small and petty way, and is content to face immediate losses, knowing that the ultimate gain is his. It is so small, so pitifully small, that at worst it can produce only a passing glow of anger, and after that, pity only remains, and remains, and tolerance without confidence. \u2014 Oh, why can\u2019t the men and women of this world learn that playing the game in the small way is the losing way? They are always doomed to failure when they play against the one who plays in the large way.\u201d <\/p>\n

— Jack London, letter to Charmian Kittredge, 1904<\/big><\/p>\n

Truer words … <\/p>\n

He knew what we were up against. <\/p>\n

The Call of the Wild<\/i> was one of those books I was forced to read in 8th grade, and – unlike some of the other books on the syllabus – I fell in love with it instantly. Call of the Wild<\/i> captured my imagination. I remember the reading experience vividly. I remember being afraid of the wildness of the wolves and wanting Buck to go back home where he could be safe and warm. But then I also remember thinking: Running free through the snow and howling at the moon sounds amazing, and he is doing what he knows best. But still: the transformation Buck has to go through, from a domestic pet to a wild pack-dog (and not just the wild pack-dog, but the leader of the pack) was fascinating to me. I was 12 years old, and I clicked with it. (Kudos, London.) I kept thinking, as I read it, as each chapter went on, “It’s not too late for someone to save him … someone needs to swoop down and save Buck … he can still go back!” But eventually there comes a point of no return. <\/p>\n

It’s a brilliant book. <\/p>\n

You begin to realize that the journey of the book is not how Buck is removed from his comfortable life and transformed. The journey of the book is that Buck becomes himself<\/i>, his true<\/i> self. The tame Buck in the beginning was the lie. His domestic days were an unnatural respite: being wild is who he really<\/i> is. And it’s not just about who he really is: it’s a cellular memory of his own species, the deep course of understanding within him that “This is the way we wolves are.” By the end of the book it is impossible to imagine Buck lying curled up in front of a fire. Buck has not “reverted”. He has inhabited his true destiny. He is not conscious, at least not in the way human beings are conscious. He does not reflect. But he knows that the sound of the pack calls something up in him, something older than anything he has ever known. <\/p>\n

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\nIn the late 70s, there was a Charlie Brown TV special called What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!<\/i> This was a different sort of Charlie Brown than the other seasonal specials, and it didn’t get much play. Snoopy is the sole star. Charlie Brown appears only briefly. In What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown<\/i>, Snoopy is, like Buck, taken from his cozy dog house and thrust into the wild life of a Klondike sled dog. Snoopy, like Buck, must learn to fight for his food (or he won’t eat), he must learn to dominate the other dogs, because “playing well with others” means you starve or die. Reminder: this was a special for CHILDREN. The whole thing is deeply disturbing to our ideas of Snoopy. (There’s a clip below. Watch how he transforms in it. Look how big his teeth get, how huge his mouth gets when he roars). It’s disturbing on every possible level. It is a nightmare. God, I love the 70s. I am proud my earliest memories come from that decade. It was an era that was not afraid to freak out the children.<\/p>\n

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