Zola’s effect on American and Japanese literatureIf you read this blog religiously (which I’m sure no one does), you’ll know that one brand of fiction that Old Books by Dead Guys really likes is Naturalism. I started this blog by reviewing the complete works of Emile Zola, Frank Norris, and Jack London, all of them naturalist writers. The naturalist movement, spearheaded by Zola, was an offshoot of realism. It’s known for hyper-detailed and brutally objective descriptions of settings and social milieus. Naturalist authors often have an atheistic bent; they emphasize how human lives are influenced and governed by scientific laws of evolution and heredity, physiology, sociology, and psychology. I’m a well-read fan of French and American literary naturalism and have started to branch out into the naturalist literature of other nations. Wanting to learn more about naturalist authors in other parts of the world led me to Christopher Laing Hill’s 2020 book Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form. This book, published by Northwestern University Press, is available as an open access publication, meaning you can download a pdf ebook for free (or you can purchase a print copy).
What I was hoping to get out of Hill’s book was an international list of authors and books for further reading, and I certainly got that. Some of those books may have never been translated into English, but if even a quarter of them are, they ought to keep me busy reading for years. Hill focuses primarily on French, American, and Japanese literature because he reads in those languages. The bulk of the book is comparing novels from those nations to show how Zola’s ideas spread from country to country. His detailed examination of works by Zola, London, Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Kosugi Tengai, and Tayama Katai brings up many interesting and thought-provoking points. Like most literary critics, Hill gives away the endings of all the novels he discusses, but I’ve already read all the French and American books, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever read the Japanese. In addition, Hill does mention and briefly discuss many other works from other countries. He gives particularly good overviews of Spanish and Latin American naturalism and East Asian naturalism. Hill says almost nothing about British and German literature, but he does reference plenty of naturalist authors from other European nations such as Denmark, Greece, and Slovenia.
Having an avid interest in this subject, I naturally liked much of what Hill had to say. As a nonacademic, however, I can’t say I like the way he says it. Hill is a PhD writing for other PhDs, and the text is the jargon-heavy academic prose you’d expect for an audience of specialized professors. It drives me nuts how many words are used to make a point, how many times the points are made over and over again, and the pretentious, obscure vocabulary (ugh, the title). The word “figure” is used over 400 times to mean just about anything and everything. There are chapters on “the body figure” (anatomical imagery), “the Nana figure” (sexually liberated and/or independent women), and “the social figure” (just about any time and place, as far as I can tell). When Hill comments on the work of other Zola scholars, he points out exceptions to any proffered thesis as if to nullify its value. He then seems hesitant to say anything concrete himself for fear that his arguments will be likewise picked apart. Every statement has to be made with heterogenous multiplicity, so that nothing can ever be nailed down as fact, theory, or even an explicit opinion.
Naturalist literature can be enjoyed and appreciated by nonacademic readers, not just the intelligentsia within academia. As intended by the author, this scholarly monograph only addresses the latter category. For the nonacademic audience, if nothing else, the bibliography and the index suggest myriad opportunities for further reading. With this blog I try to turn a few readers on to some readworthy naturalist literature, and hopefully the knowledge I’ve gleaned from Figures of the World will help me do that.
Kansas couple explores the worldMartin Johnson was a young man from Independence, Kansas, when Jack London hired him as a crew member on his yacht, the Snark, as detailed in Martin’s book Through the South Seas with Jack London (1913). London became ill and had to return to the U.S., but Johnson continued his journey and actually made it all the way around the world. After returning to Kansas, he married Osa Leighty from the equally small town of Chanute. Rather than settle down with his new bride, Martin was determined to continue his life of adventure. He invited Osa to share in his exotic exploits, and she was game for the challenge. The couple traveled the world and achieved fame for their wildlife photography, documentary filmmaking, and travel books. After Martin’s death, Osa published her autobiography I Married Adventure. It was the bestselling nonfiction book of 1940.
I Married Adventure recounts the couple’s youth and courtship in Kansas and details their subsequent adventures in the Solomon Islands, Borneo, and four trips to Africa, where they lived for a few years. Martin, the photography expert, bought the camera equipment and developed all the film. Osa was not just a passive passenger, however. She served as Martin’s right-hand woman. In addition to appearing on camera, Osa shot photos and film, shot dinner when necessary, drove a truck, managed staff, and entertained visiting dignitaries to camp like George Eastman of the Kodak company and the Duke and Duchess of York.
I admire Martin and Osa for their adventurous spirits, and I envy their travels. As a Kansan for most of my life, I also enjoyed the small-town-couple-make-it-big aspect of the story. The era in which the Johnsons traveled, however, wasn’t known for its ecological or ethnographical consciousness. The Johnsons hire 250 native porters to carry their supplies through hundreds of miles of wilderness, knowing full well that some of those porters are probably going to die along the way. If the porters aren’t moving fast enough, Martin whips them. When they reach their destination, they level swaths of forest to build a small, semi-permanent town, complete with decorative curtains and other frivolous amenities that some poor laborer had to schlep to the site. Osa brags about scattering invasive American flower seeds all over Africa. The couple have no qualms about shooting with guns the animals that they are shooting with cameras. Many anecdotes explain how the Johnsons would get as close as they could to the animals they were filming—lions, rhinos, water buffalo—until the animal would charge one spouse, and then the other would shoot the animal dead. Although the Johnsons occasionally traveled with zoologists from the American Museum of Natural History, Martin and Osa were photographers not scientists, not even amateur scientists. As a result, from this account by Osa you don’t really learn a whole lot about the animals or indigenous people that they encountered.
Although Osa clearly loved Martin, you don’t get much of a sense of his personality from this book, in which he comes across as something of a cipher. You almost get the impression that Osa really didn’t know him very well. That’s not a comment on their marriage, but rather a comment on her writing. This, however, was my grandparents’ generation, when people were more private and dignified when discussing their relationships. If spouses ever disagreed on anything, you wouldn’t hear it from Osa or my grandmother.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but the Johnsons are still fondly remembered in their home state of Kansas. The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute is devoted to their lives, travels, and works. Reading this entertaining biography definitely makes we want to check it out.
I sailed with AdventureWhen word got out that Jack London was building a yacht with the intention of sailing around the world, hundreds of fans and would-be adventurers wrote to the famous writer to apply for a spot on his crew. As the 45-foot boat finally set sail on April 23, 1907, one of the chosen applicants on board was 22-year-old Martin Johnson of Independence, Kansas. Johnson was signed on as ship’s cook, despite having no culinary experience. Later Johnson would assume the role of engineer, and he also served as London’s photographic assistant, developing all of the author’s photos as well as many of his own. In its two years at sea, the Snark underwent many crew changes, but Johnson was the one sailor who stuck it out with London from start to finish. After sailing to Hawaii, the Marquesas, Tahiti, the Solomons, and many more islands in the South Pacific, the voyage came to an end in Australia due to London’s medical problems. Johnson writes about his experience of the trip in his 1913 book Through the South Seas with Jack London.
London published his own account of the journey, The Cruise of the Snark, in 1911. While London’s book is written as a series of magazine articles, Johnson’s book is more of a straight-up memoir. I didn’t care so much for London’s account of the expedition. His ego often gets in the way, resulting in self-praise and pretentious prose that only make the travelogue duller. Johnson relates many of the same events that one finds in The Cruise of the Snark, but his writing is clear, engaging, and free of ostentation. He comes across as a very likable guy, one the reader would gladly accept as a traveling companion, and he conveys the average Joe’s wonder at exotic locations and peoples in a way that the larger-than-life London could not. While London and his wife are off having dinner with the king or governor of whatever island the Snark is visiting, Johnson is frequently living the life of a common sailor, hanging out with the locals, or merely exploring the sites—activities which make for a far more interesting travel memoir. Though Johnson’s account is not free of romanticization, and one can infer that he withheld some racy details from the prudish American reading public, his telling of the tale feels more honest and authentic than London’s.
One caveat is that on a few occasions Johnson uses racial labels for Blacks and Asians that are no longer acceptable (not the n-word, but in the same ballpark). Given the time period, one could safely say he just didn’t know any better. For the most part, he speaks favorably of other races and demonstrates an openness towards diverse cultures and perspectives. Johnson actually comes across as less of a racist than London, probably because Martin doesn’t share Jack’s superiority complex. Johnson only uses the term “savages” when he is speaking about actual cannibals, which is an improvement over most white writers of his day.
The Snark may not have made it all the way around the world, but Johnson did, and then some. Johnson’s voyage with London was but the first step in a life filled with adventure. Martin and his future wife Osa would become celebrities through a series of wildlife documentaries and travel films shot in Africa and the South Seas. After Martin’s death, Osa’s autobiography I Married Adventure was a bestseller in 1940. The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum in Chanute, Kansas, is devoted to artifacts from the couple’s adventures.
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A great time capsule of this important period in sci-fi history
Though examples of science fiction can be found as far back as ancient times, it was during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when this genre became popular and plentiful. Before the term “science fiction” gained widespread use in the 1920s, literary critics commonly referred to speculative fiction based on scientific concepts as “scientific romance.” In the book Scientific Romance: An International Anthology of Pioneering Science Fiction, published in 2017, editor Brian Stableford presents 27 short stories that exemplify the era of scientific romance. For the most part, the quality of the volume’s selections is very good. Reading this book is like opening an entertaining and educational time capsule of this pioneering period in science fiction.
In his introduction to the book, Stableford gives an overview of the origins of the scientific romance genre and its heyday from the 1830s up until World War I. It must be noted that in this case “International” only includes writings from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. Stableford obviously reads French and is quite knowledgeable in the history of French literature. I don’t think he translated the French works for this volume, but he does supply helpful footnotes that provide historical context and explain difficulties of translation.
Due to their influential talents and prolific output, the undisputed giants of this era were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. This volume does not contain an entry by Verne, likely because he didn’t write any stories short enough to fit. Wells is represented by his excellent apocalyptic vision “The Star” from 1897. Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were also prominent authors in this genre, and Stableford includes their stories “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion” and “The Horror of the Heights,” respectively. Readers of classic literature will also recognize familiar names such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (“The Artist of the Beautiful”), Ambrose Bierce (“For the Akhoond”), and Jack London (“The Shadow and the Flash”), as well as several regular contributors to the American and British pulp magazines. One of the best things about this volume, however, is that it draws attention to French writers with whom English-language readers are likely to be unfamiliar, such as S. Henry Berthoud, Charles Epheyre, Émile Goudeau, and Camille Debans. Stableford provides brief but valuable biographical introductions to each story, often referencing a few other works by each author for further reading.
The diverse range of topics these authors cover represents the scientific concerns of their times. The ideas around which these stories revolve include future utopias, the end of the world, artificial intelligence, automatons, alien life forms, evolution, eugenics, microbial disease, climate change, and human immortality. The protagonists of these tales invent flying machines, weather control devices, invisibility potions, and a method for creating artificial memories. Many of the authors take a humorous or satirical approach to their sci-fi visions, with some hilarious results.
This collection is published by Dover Books, a company known for its inexpensive, no-frills volumes of public domain material. It is therefore a pleasant surprise that Scientific Romance is such a well-edited collection. Stableford has done a great job of not only selecting the stories but also of educating the reader on the history of this literature. One could find these stories online for free, but Stableford’s knowledge adds value to the reading experience. Not every story in this collection is a masterpiece, but overall the outstanding entries far outweigh the mediocre.
Stories in this collection
The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion by Edgar Allan Poe
A Heavenward Voyage by S. Henry Berthoud
The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne
What Was It? by Fitz-James O’Brien
The End of the World by Eugène Mouton
A Paradoxical Ode (After Shelley) by James Clerk Maxwell
The Ablest Man in the World by Edward Page Mitchell
Josuah Electricmann by Ernest d’Hervilly
The Child of the Phalanstery by Grant Allen
The Salvation of Nature by John Davidson
Tornadres by J.-H. Rosny
Professor Bakermann’s Microbe by Charles Epheyre
In the Year Ten Thousand by Edgar Fawcett
The Revolt of the Machines by Émile Goudeau
For the Akhoond by Ambrose Bierce
The Philosophy of Relative Existences by Frank R. Stockton
June 1993 by Julian Hawthorne
The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome
The Conqueror of Death by Camille Debans
The Star by H. G. Wells
A Corner in Lighting by Gorge Griffith
The Memory Cell by Walter Besant
The Shadow and the Flash by Jack London
The Gorilloid by Edmond Haraucourt
The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson
The Singular Fate of Bouvancourt by Maurice Renard
The Horror of the Heights by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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A mind map of London’s marginalia
Jack London was not only a prolific author but also a voracious reader. As indicated by the title of David Mike Hamilton’s 1986 book “The Tools of My Trade,” London saw books as the raw materials and instruments by which he plied his literary craft. In this in-depth study of London’s personal library, Hamilton charts the lengths to which other writers’ books influenced London’s intellectual development and served as source material for his own writings.
The book opens with an excellent 47 page essay in which Hamilton traces London’s life as a reader. Based on books that London discussed in his letters, mentioned in his published writings, or noted in unpublished manuscripts, Hamilton is able to piece together in great detail which books London read at various points in his career and how those books influenced his thought and writings. Other London studies often touch upon major names like Darwin, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Jung, but Hamilton delves far deeper into London’s pool of influences.
At the time of London’s death, his library consisted of about 15,000 volumes. Of that impressive total, Hamilton has compiled a bibliography of almost 600 books, pamphlets, and periodicals that contain handwritten notes by London, inscriptions from authors and friends, and/or enclosures such as letters, articles, or news clippings. Depending on the degree to which London marked up his copy, Hamilton either summarizes London’s notations or quotes them verbatim. Because London died in 1916, all the books mentioned are in the public domain, and one can find digitzed editions of over 90 percent of these works at the HathiTrust website.
As one might expect, frequent topics in London’s library include socialism, Hawaii, sailing and navigation, Alaska and the Yukon, poetry, and evolution. The high quantity of titles in psychoanalysis and sexuality is more surprising. The contents of London’s library do not entirely reflect well on him, since the list does include books on white supremacy. Beyond his pet interests, browsing London’s shelves allows the reader to experience the breadth and depth of knowledge enjoyed by an early-twentieth-century American intellectual. It is always fascinating to browse through the legacy libraries of historic personages. Rarely, however, does a bibliographer make the kind of concrete connections that Hamilton establishes between the books an author has read and those he has written. Through exhaustive research of London’s library, correspondence, and literary oeuvre, Hamilton is able to draw these linkages, providing London aficionados with an exceptionally clear vision of the author’s intellectual development and working methods.
The only problem with “The Tools of My Trade” is that it contains an inordinate number of typographical errors—an unforgiveable fault in the detail-oriented discipline of bibliography. While the author is very good about noting London’s spelling errors with [sic], the proofreading of Hamilton’s own text was not very thorough. What’s worse is that many of the errors occur in the titles of books and the names of authors. When compared to the actual title pages of the volumes he’s citing, Hamilton has authors listed as Grieg instead of Greig, Kish instead of Kisch, Mathe instead of Mather, Nedig instead of Neidig, Pennoll instead of Pennell, and those are just the few that I bothered to jot down. Errors occasionally occur in titles as well, such as “Human” instead of “Humane,” and also in Hamilton’s descriptive copy. One work described as a “small pamphlet” is listed as having 614 pages. Such inaccuracies make it difficult for researchers to track down and utilize the works that Hamilton has so thoroughly researched and compiled.
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A well-edited sampler of natural science, travel, literature, and lore
I have traveled to Alaska and the Yukon once, just on a brief vacation, but it was enough to make me fantasize about a longer stay and deeper exploration of the region. Though I may make it back someday, for now I’ll have to admit I am an armchair adventurer who primarily enjoys the idea of the North vicariously through the accounts of others. Whether you’re a long-term resident of the region or just a dabbler like myself, chances are you will find much to appreciate in A Republic of Rivers, an anthology of 48 writings on Alaska and the Yukon. Edited by John A. Murray, a nature writer himself, the book was published by Oxford University Press in 1990.
Murray has done an admirable job of selecting from a wide variety of sources and organizing and presenting them in a manner that truly gives the reader an educational crash course in the literary history of Alaska and the Yukon. The selections are divided into three sections. The Age of Exploration covers the era of Russia’s dominion over Alaska, and contains excerpts from explorer narratives including those of James Cook, George Vancouver, and Alexander Mackenzie. The Age of Exploitation covers Alaska’s period as a U.S. territory and features a wide variety of writers including John Muir, John Burroughs, and Jack London. The Age of Environmentalism covers the time from Alaska’s statehood to the present (1990) and includes many contemporary writers and environmentalists such as Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, and Barry Lopez. These categories are more chronological than thematic, as you will find explorers, exploiters, and environmentalists mixed into all three. The myriad writing styles include exploration diaries, empirical scientific observations, adventure travelogs, personal memoirs, literary nature writing, studies of animal species, poetry, myths and folklore, and more. Murray wisely includes at least a half dozen selections from Native American, First Nations, and Inuit writers, including Koyukon riddles, Eskimo poetry, Haida myths, and a first-person narrative from a Tlingit trapper.
Although this book is 325 pages in length, each selection gets its own title page and author bio page, and it has many intentionally blank pages. As far as the excerpts themselves are concerned, you’re getting at most maybe about 190 pages of text divided among 48 entries. Each selection gets anywhere from one to eight pages. The Age of Exploration excerpts are all very short, which is unfortunate since those are the ones I found the most fascinating. Murray is clearly more interested in the more literary nature writing of the later twentieth century, so he grants those selections a higher page count. At times there’s enough text to leave you feeling content at having read a satisfyingly eloquent piece of natural observation, but often it feels like you’re only getting the barest general idea of what the works from which these excerpts were drawn are actually about. If anything, this collection succeeds as an appetizing variety platter that allows the reader to choose which writers are worthy of further follow-up. To aid the reader in that quest, Murray includes complete citations for each passage and a sizable bibliography in the back matter.
Though the book is attractively designed, a more judicious use of page space would have allowed for the inclusion of more content. The brevity of the selections is really my only major criticism, however. Murray has done a very fine job assembling this collection, and he is both knowledgeable and thoughtful in his selections. Any state or region would be happy to have an anthology of this quality to represent its natural environment and Indigenous culture.
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A superb telling of an amazing life
Jack London: Sailor on Horseback, a biography by Irving Stone, was originally published in 1938. It began as an authorized biography when Stone was invited by London’s widow, Charmian Kittredge London, to the London family ranch in California to utilize the family’s personal archives. Later Charmian withdrew her blessing and disowned the biography, however, when Stone dug a little too deep. I have read several biographies of London, as well as his own autobiographical writings like John Barleycorn, The Road, and The Cruise of the Snark. I had previously avoided Stone’s book because I thought it was a biographical novel, and I had read some disparaging comments about its level of fictionalization. After reading it, however, I discovered it to be a work of nonfiction, and it turned out to be a truly enjoyable and riveting read.
Despite accusations against Stone by Charmian and others, I didn’t find anything particularly sensationalized about Stone’s account. London’s life was so sensational in the first place, it would be difficult to write about it without making it sound sensationalized. For the most part the portrayal of London is a positive one, though ultimately tragic. Stone clearly admires his subject, but this account is not merely an adulatory tribute. Stone draws attention to London’s faults, but does not delve too deeply into them. London’s white supremacist views on race, for example, are mentioned but not examined in great depth. Perhaps that just wasn’t a hot-button issue in 1938, and London’s opinions on race were certainly not uncommon for Americans of his era. As far as London’s dark side goes, Stone mainly emphasizes his childlike handling of financial matters, his naive trust in friends and family, his marital infidelities, and his tendency toward bouts of crippling depression. London’s alcoholism is also dealt with frankly, but not to the extent of its coverage in John Barleycorn.
It is no wonder that Charmian hated this book, because it really portrays her in a negative light. In this account she comes across as conniving, smothering, unattractive, and infantile. Stone not only holds her responsible for breaking up London’s first marriage but also for negatively altering London’s literary style in the latter half of his career. This book provides a clearer, more thorough insight into London’s two marriages than any other biography that I’ve encountered, including Charmian’s own The Book of Jack London, which is biased, disingenuous, and worst of all, dull. Whereas Charmian tried to hide Jack’s illegitimate birth in her book, Stone brings the facts out into the open. She was also outraged that Stone made London’s death seem like a suicide, but a century later scholars are still debating the exact cause of death.
In my opinion, from a scholarly standpoint, the best biography of London, in terms of comprehensiveness, depth of research, and just good writing, is Earle Labor’s 2013 book Jack London: An American Life. However, for the average reader who just wants to learn about London’s fascinating life, doesn’t care about literary criticism or Jack London Studies, and doesn’t need footnotes or a bibliography, Sailor on Horseback is really the best way to go. It is an excellent read for novices or diehard fans alike. If all you know about London is The Call of the Wild and White Fang, you will be amazed at the breadth, depth, and variety of his adventures and achievements. I have been an avid fan of London’s writing for over 30 years and have read everything he ever published, but Stone’s account of his life has really renewed my interest in this important author and remarkable man. Reading Sailor on Horseback makes me want to go back and reread some of my favorite London novels and stories and do further research into his amazing life.
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At home and abroad with Mr. and Mrs. London
The Book of Jack London is a biography of the great American author of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, The Iron Heel, “To Build a Fire,” and other literary classics. Written by his widow Charmian Kittredge London shortly after his death, The Book of Jack London was published in 1921 in two volumes. Volume 1 consisted mostly of secondhand anecdotes of Jack’s life before he met Charmian. In the second volume, which is superior to its predecessor, Charmian writes firsthand about her life, love, and marriage with Jack.
The book is invaluable for the copious level of detail it provides on the author’s life, such as the places to which he traveled, the people he met, the venues where he lectured, his dealings with publishers, his agricultural operations, and the leisure time Mr. and Mrs. London spent with their friends. I’ve read everything Jack London ever wrote and much of what has been written about him, but this is the first book I can recall that even mentions his trips to Cuba and Jamaica, which is just one example of this volume’s thoroughness. On the other hand, Charmian is probably best known for accompanying Jack on an aborted around-the-world yachting voyage, but she all but skips over that trip here because she’s already covered it in another book, The Log of the Snark. The same is true of much of their Hawaiian travels, which she recounted in her book Our Hawaii.
The biggest problem with The Book of Jack London is Charmian’s writing. Her pretentious prose stands as a glaring exemplar of thesaurus abuse, and her convoluted syntax hinders understanding. In constructing the narrative of her husband’s life, Charmian jumps all over chronologically and thematically while haphazardly reproducing quotations, letters, and poetry, whether relevant or not. The fact that this account of Jack London’s life is quite biased should not be surprising, given it was written by his spouse, but the extent to which Charmian sugarcoats and sanitizes every aspect of Jack’s life really tests the reader’s patience. She speaks about her husband as if he were a cross between Hercules and Romeo. When describing his final days, she paints him as a Christ figure who died for humanity’s sins. Charmian goes to great pains to show that she and Jack shared a superhuman love, not only relentlessly praising the man but reproducing every utterance of praise he ever had for her as well. Nevertheless, one can read between the lines and see that all was not paradise in their relationship, and Jack could be a difficult man to live with. One wishes Charmian had been a little more forthright about Jack’s problems instead of constantly making excuses for him.
Mr. and Mrs. London, who constantly referred to each other as “Mate-Man” and Mate-Woman” and spoke about their love in near-mythic terms, would surely have been an annoying couple to hang out with. Despite Charmian’s best efforts to portray Jack as the perfect man, he often comes across as rather childish and petty in this memoir. Charmian’s account actually lessened my admiration for the man, but not my love for his writing. Though I am fascinated by Jack’s amazing life, Charmian managed to turn it into a book that I just wanted to be over and done with. There’s no denying this book’s value as a source for subsequent biographers, however. If you’re unfamiliar with Jack London’s life story, I would recommend Earle Labor’s 2013 biography Jack London: An American Life. Only the great writer’s most diehard fans will appreciate The Book of Jack London, and even they, like myself, might find themselves annoyed and disappointed by it.
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Tedious rehash of stories better told elsewhere
The Book of Jack London is a biography of the great American author and adventurer. Published in 1921, five years after his death, it was written by London’s widow Charmian Kittredge London. Not surprisingly, the book is a rather biased account of Jack’s life, prone to hero worship and often sugar-coating any unseemly details. To cite one example, Charmian passes Jack’s stepfather off as his biological father, thus concealing the sketchy details of his birth, which may or may not have been out of wedlock. Despite such inaccuracies, the book is packed with a sufficient amount of detail that just about every subsequent London biographer has used it as a primary source.
Charmian’s account of Jack’s life was lengthy enough to be published in two volumes, with Volume 1 ending around 1905. This results in much of the content of the first volume having taken place before Jack and Charmian met. Thus, much of what’s related in the first volume is second-hand information. In fact, those familiar with London’s work will recognize most of the anecdotes from his own published writings. Charmian lifts heavily from London’s autobiographical works, most notably from his memoir John Barleycorn, with bits and pieces of The Road, The People of the Abyss, and various nonfiction articles thrown in.
As one of the great practitioners of American literary naturalism, London often wrote his novels in a stark and almost brutal prose that evoked the harsh wilderness landscapes in which his stories took place. In some of his lesser known works, however, there were times when he felt the need to prove himself a poet and would indulge in overly romantic, flowery language. Unfortunately, Charmian’s writing falls squarely into the latter camp. Her pretentious, thesaurus-wringing prose is a constant annoyance throughout the book and renders previously exciting stories an ordeal to read. What you get for most of the book is a rehash of John Barleycorn, retold in this god-awfully verbose and convoluted syntax.
About two-thirds of the way through, even Charmian seems to realize that this has grown tiresome, so she starts to reprint Jack’s correspondence to two friends: Cloudesley Johns, a fellow struggling writer and lifelong penpal; and Anna Strunsky, a close friend and authoress with whom Jack collaborated upon the novel The Kempton-Wace Letters. Charmian reproduces these letters verbatim, with very little editing. While they shed a little light on Jack’s personality, most of their content deals with the submission of manuscripts and payments from publishers. This correspondence may provide some welcome detail for researchers, but feels out of place in a book devoted to London’s life story. If you wanted to read unedited letters, you could do so to your heart’s content in the three-volume The Letters of Jack London. Charmian also reproduces some of London’s personal notebooks of his tramping days, as well as some letters from his time covering the Russo-Japanese War. Though penned in choppy, abbreviated prose, they still yield some insight into his travels.
In the final few chapters of Volume 1, it begins to become clear that Jack and Charmian have become more than friends, though that’s not stated explicitly because he’s not yet divorced from his first wife. Hopefully Volume 2 will contain more first-hand information from Charmian’s perspective. As far as Volume 1 is concerned, diehard London fans will find little here that they weren’t already aware of. For those who just want a good biography of London, Earle Labor’s excellent 2013 book Jack London: An American Life is likely the best there is.
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The allure of wanderlust
Journalist and mountaineer John Krakauer’s book Into the Wild, published in 1996, is an expansion of an article he previously published in Outside magazine in 1993. The book is an investigative biography examining the life and death of Chris McCandless, who, immediately after graduating college, gave all his money to charity, broke all ties with his family, and embraced a life on the open road, sometimes living a primitive solitary lifestyle in remote natural areas. Krakauer tracks McCandless’s travels across North America from Atlanta to Alaska and engages in in-depth interviews with the people whom he met along the way. Unfortunately, this is a posthumous biography because McCandless died in Alaska, having chosen to venture alone into harsh conditions with minimal preparation. Krakauer pieces together the final days of McCandless’s life and conjectures as to the young man’s cause of death. The book is more than simply one man’s life story, however, as Krakauer uses McCandless as a case study to draw larger conclusions about our relationship with nature and the motives that drive some to take fatal risks.
Into the Wild is one of my all-time favorite nonfiction books, and I recently reread it for the second or third time. McCandless’s journey really speaks to me on a personal level. He and I are roughly the same age and both lovers of the literature of Jack London and classic literature in general. McCandless took the works of London, Tolstoy, and Thoreau to heart, adopting the ethical code of individualism and living in accordance with nature that they advocated and turning it into his own personal quest for spiritual enlightenment. In many ways I envy the freedom of McCandless’s deliberately nomadic existence. The conventions of society, the demands of work, the responsibilities of civilization, and the rules and regulations we are all constantly subject to leave little room for personal freedom or the nurturing of personal ethics. How many of us have occasionally thought life would be so much more meaningful if we could strip away all the bull and get back to the basic necessities of life? Well, McCandless pulled it off, for a while anyway. Sadly, it killed him in the process.
McCandless’s story combines romantic idealism with sometimes stupid mistakes and unforgivable hubris—wandering into the wilderness without a map and little food, for example. Krakauer does not let McCandless off the hook for his poor choices. McCandless’s wandering lifestyle is not portrayed as idyllic, but rather described with a balanced consideration of its rewards and faults. Thus, there’s something for everyone in this book, as one can make a case either to admire McCandless or to despise him.
In addition to his study of McCandless, Krakauer provides a fascinating overview of other idealists who chose to live “off the grid” under dangerous conditions. Most of these often foolhardy individuals ended up disappearing without a trace. One shocking example is Carl McCunn, who had himself flown into the remote Alaskan bush to live off the land for a few months but failed to arrange a pickup for a return trip. Krakauer adds a mountain climbing story of his own to the mix, which may or may not be relevant, but at least it’s well-told. All of these examples demonstrate a need for mankind to commune with the wild, partly to withdraw from society and partly to test one’s own mettle and fortitude. Though one may choose to write McCandless off as a crackpot hippie, one cannot deny that the call to go “into the wild” exists, and Krakauer gives it its proper due here by examining it in psychological and philosophical depth. Into the Wild is a thought-provoking, soul-stirring, and heart-wrenching book that I wholeheartedly recommend.
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Anatomy of a boomtown
In Gold Diggers, published in 2010, author Charlotte Gray crafts a fascinating history of the Klondike Gold Rush. Covering the period from June 1896 to the Summer of ‘99, Gray charts the trajectory of gold fever in the Yukon Territory from its boom to its bust. I first became aware of this book through the television miniseries Klondike, a highly fictionalized adaptation produced for the Discovery Channel (which is very good, by the way; rent it if you haven’t seen it). I’m a huge fan of the author Jack London and his stories and essays about the Klondike. I was eager to learn the truth behind the fiction, and Gray’s account does not disappoint. The real history that she presents in Gold Diggers is every bit as exciting, fascinating, and incredible as London’s wildest literary interpretations.
Gray approaches the subject as a group biography, intertwining the lives of six diverse Gold rush participants: prospector Bill Haskell, author Jack London, entrepreneur Belinda Mulrooney, Jesuit priest Father William Judge, British journalist Flora Shaw, and Officer Sam Steele of the North-West Mounted Police. Although these six larger-than-life personages get the most attention, there are plenty of supporting characters that stand out as well, from government bureaucrats to newspaper editors to dance hall girls to “Klondike Kings” who struck it rich. In fact, it’s often difficult to remember who Gray’s six primary subjects are, because what really comes through is the story of a community. Gold Diggers is first and foremost the biography of a town: Dawson City. Gray relates the life of this remote mining outpost from its origins as a mud flat at the confluence of two rivers to its dubious distinction as the “Paris of the North” to its eventual mass abandonment in favor of the next big score.
At first I wasn’t very impressed by Gray’s approach. The initial chapters concentrate solely on Bill Haskell’s journey to the Klondike. Having read everything that London ever wrote, Haskell’s adventures sounded rather familiar, and Gray relies so heavily on Haskell’s memoir that I wondered why I shouldn’t just read that instead. However, once Haskell arrives in the Yukon and Gray begins to broaden her scope, I was hooked. I’ve read several biographies of London, but Gray opened my eyes to specific details about his Klondike experience that often get left out of the more general cradle-to-the-grave accounts. At times Gray takes some artistic license with her material, describing the thoughts in her subject’s heads or minute details of their daily activities that wouldn’t normally make it into the history books. She has a knack for combining historical facts with descriptive passages of literary quality. Where the book really succeeds is in its establishment of atmosphere. You truly get a sense of what it felt like to walk the muddy streets of Dawson, dance in its smoky saloons, hike a frozen river at 50 below, or hunker down in a drafty cabin for a long, lonely winter. You become so involved with the lives of Dawson’s inhabitants that after a while you feel like a citizen yourself. Gray vividly recreates the Klondike in all of its beauty, adventure, and filth.
The book ends with a “whatever happened to . . .” essay on the six main characters and an extensive bibliography of Gray’s sources. As satisfying as this book is, she has inspired me to want to learn more. Anyone interested in the Klondike Gold Rush will love Gold Diggers. Even if you’re only slightly intrigued by this episode of history, give this book a try and you too may be stricken with gold fever.
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