Today, January 12, is Jack London’s birthday. London (1876-1916) was one of Robert E. Howard’s favorite authors.
I confess, I haven’t read much London. I’m slightly familiar with White Fang and The Call of the Wild because they are so well known.
Of course, decades years ago, I read “To Build a Fire” in one of my high school English classes. I don’t recall which one, nor do I remember much about the story. From what I’ve seen, it’s the obligatory Jack London story to include in high school literature books.
I have read a couple of other Londond stories.
“A Relic of the Pliocene” concerns an encounter with a mammoth. It’s a good adventure story. It’s been quite a while since I read it. I’ll have to give it a reread.
The other story, which I read as a kid and have reread at least once, is “Moon Face”. The details of this one have stuck with me better, maybe because I read it while I was young and the story imprinted itself on my memory.
One man hates another man. The hated man loves to fish using dynamite. So the man who hates him gets a dog, trains the dog to fetch sticks, then gives the dog to the man he hates. You can probably figure out the rest.
London isn’t a writer you hear a lot about these days. I think that’s a shame, but then I can say the same about a number of writers who have passed from the scene.
I can certainly see how Jack London’s works would have resonated with Robert E. Howard. London’s themes, as I understand them, deal with man’s survival in a wilderness environment. I have been wantiing to read London, more than the little I have.
So, those of you out there who have read London, what do you reccommend? Where should I start? I’m open to suggestions of short stories or novels.
My dad read me White Fang and Call of the Wild when I was kid. I had been reading books about dogs. Cutesy books. White Fang and Call of the Wild were pretty raw adventure stories.
I am pretty sure Howard lifted a scene of a dog fight in one of those two and put it in a Sailor Steve Costigan story. It was about a bull dog who in the fight would bite on bigger dogs and would not let go.
Those are definitely on the list.
You can’t go wrong with The Call of the Wild but I also highly recommend The Sea Wolf. So good. Wolf Larsen is one of literature’s most memorable antagonists, a terrible person whom you can’t help but admire.
Brian, thanks for the rec of The Sea Wolf. I’ve wondered about that one for a long time because its a different type of adventure than White Fang or The Call of the Wild.
My favorite JL story is The Scarlet Plague. Civilization is wiped out by a virulent disease. One survivor is telling the tale of old times to his post-apocalyptic descendants, who mostly don’t believe him.
That sounds interesting. I’ve always wanted to do an in-depth survey of science fiction that predates Gernsback and the start of the sf pulps. That era of fiction produced a lot of the tropes that became cliches in the pulps, but they often have an original feel to them because they weren’t constrained by genre conventions.
Kipling’s With the Night Mail should be early on that list. SF story, set after current governments were overthrown in revulsion against mob rule.
2 of particular genre interest are The Star Rover, about an imprisoned convict laced into a very tight jacket who resists the torture by going into trances and experiencing past lives. And Before Adam, in which a modern man remembers through his dreams his former life as a stone age ape like man. Interestingly, London’s English publisher was Mills and Boon; a group nowadays associated with bad romance fiction!
I can see the influence these had on Robert E. Howard.
I agree with Mr. Murphy. The Call of the Wild and The Sea Wolf are raw, electrifying tales that still have something to tell us about ourselves.
I’d also recommend The Sea Wolf.
There’s also “The Shadow and the Flash”, a somewhat disappointing invisibile man story from London that, even given the science of the day, has its problems.