Jack London’s One Short Life

By Amy Fernandez

Jack London long ago faded off the charts as a popular author- except for dog people. Most of us avidly read his works as children, and more than a few of us continue to re-read his classics like Call of the Wild and White Fang.

Recently, one of his letters was discovered tucked into a copy of White Fang at the Pequot Library in Southport, Connecticut. Dated 1906, it was written to George Brett, his publisher at Macmillan. Its ostensible purpose was a progress report on his White Fang manuscript and a notification that it would likely exceed their predetermined word count.

Then 28, London achieved instant fame after the publication of Call of the Wild three years earlier. This semi-autobiographical account was based on his experiences prospecting in Alaska, a topic that was virtually impossible to cover without focusing on the pervasive canine presence that affected every aspect of gold rush life.

In 1898, the region was flooded with thousands of would-be prospectors almost overnight. They arrived with high hopes, but virtually no mining experience or arctic survival skills. Early on, they discovered the limitations of traditional pack animals to haul freight through ice, snow, and mud.

The resident population of trappers, explorers, Indians, traders, Mounties, lumberjacks, and anyone else requiring transportation kept a dogsled. As a result, the gold rush triggered an unprecedented demand hallmarked by skyrocketing prices, rampant dog theft, and a thriving black market – all of which intensified the existing mayhem caused by thousands of inexperienced mushers trying to manage poorly trained packs. Dog fights and dog attacks were ubiquitous, along with brutal mistreatment and neglect.

London’s 1903 bestseller graphically portrayed this frenzied era from the viewpoint of his protagonist, Buck, a St. Bernard/Scotch Shepherd mix. Buck typified the Klondike’s eclectic dog population that combined every variation of Husky, wolf, and assorted purebred gundogs, hounds, bulldogs, and terriers that arrived during these years. “Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles.”

During his two years in the Yukon, London witnessed the full spectrum of human/canine relationships. Senseless brutality was balanced with selfless devotion.  He recounted all of it with a degree of empathy and accuracy that won the hearts of millions. He loved dogs, but didn’t permit sentiment to cloud his portrayals. In a Harper’s Weekly essay from 1900, he described the Husky’s unparalleled toughness, versatility, and street smarts,  “As a type of endurance, no better evolved product of natural selection need be sought. If ever a species has been born and bred of hard times, it has. Only the fittest, in a struggle for existence extending thousands of generations, have survived.” He went on to elaborate on the breed’s multifaceted talents, which often translated into escaping from any manmade restraint and routinely pilfering carefully guarded food supplies from prospectors.  “No white man ever successfully devised a way of tying up a Husky. Rope or thong can resist their sharp teeth, at best, for a few minutes.” Quite a few Jack London  fans subsequently made serious commitments to careers as Husky breeders and mushers thanks to his work. However, his revelations about the canine mind had a far more pervasive influence and generations of readers came away with a genuine respect for the human/canine bond.

Like every good writer, he focused on what he knew and loved. His writing drew on his varied experiences as a sailor, longshoreman, war correspondent, and inveterate traveler, and London was undeniably a free spirit. More than a century later, this letter reaffirms it. Although Brett was his publisher, it wasn’t strictly business. The main purpose of his letter was to make a last-ditch attempt to persuade Brett to join his upcoming sailing adventure.

Brett didn’t take the bait, but London’s descriptive chronicles of risky exploits and global treks inspired an entire counterculture genre.  Hemingway, Kerouac, and Steinbeck are just a few authors who later achieved prominence with this formula of personal experience, social commentary, and gritty depictions of life on the road.

London may not rank among the world’s greatest authors. His dog stories are classics because of their authenticity. They endure because they unfailingly strike a chord with anyone who has experienced the human/canine bond.  Ironically, his critics regularly took him to task for depicting his canine characters as perceptive, sensitive, brave, and often far more intelligent than the humans who populated his fiction. They saw these portrayals as a jarring departure from the typical descriptive realism of his prose.

In reality, London’s true gift was his amazing ability to think outside the box.

He understood dogs from a perspective that was both unconventional and unaccepted at that time. For instance, his descriptions of pack behavior and neonatal socialization in White Fang predated Scott and Fuller’s groundbreaking work by decades. Nonetheless, they were spot-on.  Moreover, his character portrayals astutely presented the contrasting behaviors of a domestic dog in The Call of the Wild, and a dog/wolf hybrid in White Fang. A century later, behavioral science finally validated London’s contentions about canine intelligence and emotion.

In this unearthed letter, London reminded Brett that, “we’ve only got this one short life.” He would soon become America’s highest paid, most popular novelist, publishing over 50 books and hundreds of essays, short stories, and articles before his untimely death  exactly a decade later.

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Posted by chesliepickett on Sep 15 2014. Filed under Current Articles, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.