#579： Jack London's Literary Code
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 6 minutes
Words per Minute
133.15434
Summary
The literature of Jack London has long been given the short shrift by scholars. They say he wrote some good dog stories for boys, but beyond that didn t showcase any literary genius or high-level craftsmanship. Well, my guest today begs to differ with this assessment. His name is Earl Labor, and he's the Pre-Minute Jack London Scholar, and 91 years young. For this episode, I drove down to Earl's home in Shreveport, Louisiana, to talk to him about the overlooked literary genius of and the big themes that he wrote about in his novels and short stories.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the literature
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of jack london has long been given the short shrift by scholars they say he wrote some good
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dog stories for boys but beyond that didn't showcase any literary genius or high-level
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craftsmanship well my guest today begs to differ with this assessment his name is earl labor he's
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the pre-minute jack london scholar and 91 years young i've had earl on the podcast two previous
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times the first to discuss his landmark jack london biography it's episode number 67 and the
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second to discuss his own memoir the far music and that's episode number 370 for this episode i drove
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down to earl's home in shreveport louisiana to talk to earl about the overlooked literary genius of jack
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london and the big themes that london wrote about in his novels and short stories we begin our
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discussion with earl's story of how he became a jack london scholar and why london's work was
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historically neglected by academics we then dig into london's literary themes by first discussing
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how he used the klondike as a symbolic proving ground for men and how success in this wilderness
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depended on one's ability to mold oneself to jack's northland code earl uses excerpts from my favorite
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london story in a far country as well as to build a fire in the call of the wild to showcase the
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tenets of this code as well as london's literary artistry earl then explains how london shifted his
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themes later in his career with his agrarian writing how his wife charmian changed his perception
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of real women and his female characters and the influence psychologist carl jung had on london's last
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works consider this episode a master class on the literature of jack london after it's over
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check out our show notes at awim.is slash london all right earl labor welcome back to the show
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thanks brett great to be here again so we had you on i'm gonna say five years ago six years ago to talk
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about your jack london biography then we had you on again to talk about your memoir the far music
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which i know a lot of our listeners enjoyed this time i've made a trip down to shreveport louisiana
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come shake your hand because i wanted to meet you after all these years and then to talk more about
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jack london uh particularly about the literary themes of jack london because that's what you spent
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in your career writing about researching about lecturing about was jack london and his literature
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so i think the first question i'd like to start off with is how did you get started or how did you
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become a jack london scholar i'm going back to 1948 brett a professor at smu named george bond
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taught a course in the american novel and among the novels he chose not only hemingway and faulkner and
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fish gerald he chose an obscure novel by jack london titled martin eden my best friend p.b lindsey a
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combat veteran from the second world war a couple of years older but much older in many ways
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took that course and told me earl martin eden is very powerful novel you need to read it at that
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time i had some other interests mostly extra literary but four years later i'm on a weekend
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pass to new york city from the recruit training center in bainbridge maryland downtown manhattan just
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strolling around looking at the sites walked into this newsstand and saw a 25 cent penguin paperback
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of martin eden well my friend had recommended it i thought i'd look at it i took it down and bought it
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put it in my hip pocket to take back to the bus i started reading it on the bus back to the base
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could not put it down brett i stayed up all night i didn't wasn't up exactly i stayed in my bunk with
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my flashlight on i was so fascinated with that novel and i said when i go back to get a phd
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jack london is going to be my subject and that was the beginning of my serious study
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and that was a while before i got to that because i had some other obligations at the time
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uh to uncle sam in the military uh training recruits that uh that base in maryland
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also uh spent some time on a uss hail destroyer but when i got out of the navy i had a family a wife
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and a child and i had to have a job so i went to work for hager uh company in dallas men's slacks
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was really lucky in terms of that was an up and growing company but um i found that the intellectual
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challenge of men's pants were a bit thin after about six weeks i was doing okay from their point
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of view but i wanted to get back into teaching so the same professor george bond called me one saturday
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morning in early 1955 and said earl there's a little college liberal arts college over in shreveport
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looking for an instructor if you're interested in getting back into teaching i'll recommend you
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three weeks later i was teaching at centenary college and i've been teaching on and off at
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centenary ever since then until my retirement a few years ago took off a few years for various things i
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may have mentioned in some of my early works such as a fulbright lectureship in denmark for a year
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etc etc etc but mainly i've been teaching and working on jack london ever since so for your phd you did
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the first major study on jack london as a true literary artist and you were really breaking new
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ground because for a long time the literary establishment didn't take london's work seriously
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and very few scholars had studied his craftsmanship why was that and what's the status of london today in
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literature particularly in terms of scholarship well it's it's on the rise for sure has been for the
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past generation or so it's amazing to see what's happened in the last couple of decades but for a
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long time he was dismissed as little more as i say than a hack writer for adventure stories and what
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have you fortunately there have been a number of breakthroughs just in the last two or three
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decades actually to be honest brett i think over the past half century or so i have a lecture that
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i give sometimes on the politics of literary reputation and i explained to my students i said
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look the books you read the ones you read in high school and many that you read in college
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were not handed down to moses on that tablet that they're selected by a certain group and those are
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the the so-called elite they decide what you're going to read they decide for example you're going to
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read shakespeare and maybe author and scarlet letter which is fine but they should be also assigning
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jack london's the seawolf or something in addition to call the wild anyhow london was not a part of the
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the group that makes those decisions now you ask for one thing london was a western writer and they were
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not part of the eastern establishment that pretty well dictated the the literary uh selections or
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whatever at the time in the 19th even 20th century eric miles williamson uses the term
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the ivy mafia that may not be quite fair but i think it's kind of kind of fun anyhow the idea that
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it's those easterners back in the 19th century even early 20th century centered around boston new york
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william dean howells was the leader of that group for a generation interesting that he encouraged
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writers like amelyn garland and stephen grain even emily dickinson and here is london at the time
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the most popular of all of them and virtually ignored by william dean howells now that's got to have been
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deliberate i think so all of that ties into what i call the politics of literary reputation which has
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impeded the recognition of jack for a number of years but finally we're getting that recognition
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as a result of what's been done over the past 50 years and certainly the last generation my own
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student genie campbell has become genie campbell reisman started the jack london society in about
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1990 or so and ken brant is currently the executive director of that and and just in the last few years
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the modern language association has published a collection of essays on london called teaching
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jack london that's been edited by ken brant and genie reisman has over 20 essays by different scholars
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even more recently the oxford university press has published a handbook of jack london edited by
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jay williams that has more than 30 essays by different scholars in there which says something
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about what's happening jack london and his status during the last decade or two so yeah he's on the
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rise let's talk about some of the themes that jack london wrote about during his career and we'll get
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into detail about some of these things but before we do that could you give us just a big picture
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overview of sort of an outline of the themes that he wrote about both in his fiction and in and in
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his non-fiction i'm looking here and i'll simplify this to me i was just looking at my introduction
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the portable thematically london london's works move from the foolishness of pride ruthlessness of greed
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blindness of racial prejudice and the senselessness of war to the indomitability of the human spirit
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the unfailing salvation of true comradeship and the ageless wisdom of the great mother and the water
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baby i could talk later about the great mother and the archetype and the water baby which is london's
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last story which is very revealing but in more general terms i like to say that one of the overriding
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themes is love love of adventure love of life love of humanity love of nature love of man for woman
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comradership comradership comradery love of seeking and what have you it's it's it's a kind of passion
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that he has and my biography of talk about the seeking drive for example that london had in extreme
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measure that the neuroscientists have discovered generation ago is that basic drive along with fear
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and hunger and hunger sex and the rest of it that leads mammals to seek new adventures even at the
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expense of food and and ferret sometimes anyhow it's fascinating to see this at work trying to think
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of other things of course the hatred of anything that was restricting that deprived human beings of
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of their essential humanity and liberty or what have you those seem to be themes that run throughout
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his work one thing that he i think was a common theme throughout all of his work is this idea of man
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versus nature and nature being sort of a proving ground for men and i think you've written about this
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as nature there's like four types of environments that london wrote about where you see this motif of
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man versus nature can you talk a bit about that i'm talking about symbolic wilderness symbolic wilderness
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yeah i'm going back now about what 50 more years and um texas scholar university of texas scholar named
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gordon mills published a very fine article in 19th century fiction on the symbolic wilderness contrasting james
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fenimore cooper's version of that wilderness with jack london's saying that fenimore cooper's wilderness was
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pretty consistent uh what have you but jack london's version of the symbolic wilderness was uh confusing
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and didn't seem to have any uh sense of uh organization or what have you so i thought about it i said well
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i don't think gordon mills has read jack london's work carefully enough there are four different
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versions the northland then there's the polynesia which i call london's paradise lost and there's
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melanesia which i call the inferno and then there's the valley of the moon which is jack london's pastoral
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wilderness or what have you and each has its own distinctive characteristics
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the uh qualities that a man needs to survive in the northland are totally different from what he
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needs to survive in melanesia and the northland i think these are spelled out pretty clearly in the
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opening of in a far country i think one of your own favorite stories my favorite story give me a
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minute i'd like to read that let's do it because it's my favorite it's the favorite thing that jack
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london never wrote brett this spells it out i'm reading the beginning of in a far country
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which i call an exemplum in other words if a preacher's delivering a sermon he wants to tell
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a story a pretty in what dramatic story to illustrate his sermon and that's sometimes called an exemplum and
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that's what that's what we got in a far country and here's the sermon when a man journeys into a far
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country he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned and to acquire such customs as
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are inherent with the existence of the new land he must abandon the old ideals the old gods and
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often times he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped to those who
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have the protein faculty of adaptability the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure but to
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those who happen to be hardened in the ruts in which they were created the pressure of the altered
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environment is unbearable they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions which they do not
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understand this chafing is bound to act and react and producing diverse evils leading to various
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misfortunes it were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the new groove to return to his own
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country if he delayed too long he will surely die the man who turns his back upon the comforts of an
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elder civilization to face the savage youth the primordial simplicity of the north may estimate success at an
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inverse ratio to the quantity and quality of his hopelessly fixed habits he will soon discover if he be a
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fifth candidate that the material habits are the less important the exchange of such things as a
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dainty menu for rough fare of the stiff leather shoe for the soft shapeless moccasin of the feather bed for a
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couch in the snow is after all a very easy matter but his pinch will come in learning properly to shape his
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mind's attitude toward all things and especially toward his fellow man for the courtesies for the
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courtesies of ordinary life he must substitute unselfishness forbearance and tolerance thus and thus
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only can he gain the that pearl of great price true comradeship and that's the key i think to the northern code
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and the two incapables in the far country as it spells out cannot do that they're they totally
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unfitted to come up there in the first place and they pay the price well yeah i think what i love about
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the the intro to in a far country is that it perfectly encapsulates and summarizes jack london's what you call
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the northland code so you know from what that we just read there what you just read there part of the
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northland code is adaptability exactly it's also true comradeship exactly those seem to be the two
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important things for london when it came to the northland code both are important there's another factor
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he doesn't mention here he mentions later in addition to adaptability camaraderie and what have you all
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that there's another factor that comes up very clearly in that great classic to build a fire and
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we're talking about the man who does not have a name in this version incidentally i've seen the
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original manuscript and at first when he started this story jack london gave the man a name
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i think as i recollect something like john collins but after about a thousand words meaning after i
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think the first day he comes back and says this story would be more effective if i made this every
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man instead of a specific man now by the way you know there's an early version of the story that
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we found king henriks and i found the summer i was working with him out at utah state that was
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published what say six years earlier and youth companion totally different from this by the same
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title but the young man in there is given a name and he survives but this guy is not going to make it
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and here's why by the way london opens this story talking about how weird the situation is up there
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very very cold 70 something degrees below zero no sun in the sky but all this the mysterious
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far-reaching airline trail the absence of sun from the sky the tremendous coal the strangeness and
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weirdness of it all made no impression on the man it was not because he was long used to it
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he was newcomer in the land at chichai quo and this was his first winter the trouble with him was that he was
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without imagination he was quick and alert in the things of life but only in the things and not in the
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the circumstances 50 degrees below zero meant 80 odd degrees of frost such fact impressed him as being
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cold and uncomfortable and that was all it did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature
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of temperature and upon man's frailty in general able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and
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cold and from there on did not lead him to conject to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place
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in the universe now this is a master stroke of the artist in other words here's a story that is so
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definitely and beautifully woven together the reader doesn't realize that suddenly there's a profound
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philosophical message in this story it's more than about just a man's getting cold and dying from
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freezing to death but there's another message underlying this which he's just slipped in there
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but he's done it so so definitely so artistically you read right on through and don't don't stumble
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over it it's a wonderful uh example of what london was gonna was doing later on i'll talk about how he
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does that in the call of the wild but anyhow i wanted to bring in as a factor and he mentions that other
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places too the importance of imagination if you're going to make it up there and later on when he's
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talking about survival in the uh in the in melanesia he said one of the things there to survive whoever
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going to make it doesn't need any imagination he's just got to be as mean as the savages around there
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and resort to stuff that as as bad as they do it's totally different from the northland we're
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going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show well so back
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this idea of imagination and going back to in a far country i think it's related to one of the the
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things that seem to be wrong or something that that london talks about not only in a far country but you
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see it in the call of the wild white fang london went up to the klondike when people were going up
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there for the gold rush but in his stories he talks about one of the problems with the incapables and
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some of the other characters who don't fare well in the klondike is that they went up there with
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impure intentions almost they didn't have the right intention it's like with the incapables they went
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they didn't london said they they had sentimentality about the klondike but they didn't have the spirit
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of true romance and adventure what was the difference in london's mind well in london's mind i mean
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sentimentality is this illusion that you're going up having a beautiful what a lovely time out with
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nature or whatever going to have uh uh going to have a pretty easy time just enjoying the beauties of
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of nature without really understanding the reality of the situation and that's uh i think percy
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cufford is the dilettante who thinks that he's just uh he's read a lot of romantic stuff about the
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animals etc it's going to be some kind of wonderland up there winter wonderland which of course it's
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not and the other with uh weatherby car carter weatherby i think it's going just for strictly
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materialistic gain or whatever thinks he's gonna become a millionaire without it having to do too much
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to achieve that but the idea of true adventure but i'm going back to seeking again you you want to go
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regardless of the danger and you want to find out what the new frontiers are like you're willing to go
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ahead and even risk your life to uh to grow to find uh find out what your limits might be and test them
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find out what nature is really like speaking realistically and speaking about in the far
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country you've written about this you make the case that the incapables as you call them london use
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that use those characters as a way to explore the seven deadly sins what was going on there so is this
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actually a sermon i got something i had fun with that but uh i would if you give me a minute i'll check
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it out here after an overeager show of industrious cooperation they abandoned the austere discipline
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of the code discipline is a key their spiritual degeneration as they succumb to each of the seven
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deadly sins is initially dramatized in their social relationship first pride is manifest in a foolish
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arrogance that precludes the mutual trust requisite to survival in the wilderness mutual trust also a key
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there the i'm quoting here the one was a lower class man who considered himself a gentleman and the other
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was a gentleman who knew himself to be such from this it may be remarked that a man can be a gentleman
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without possessing the first instinct of true comradeship next appears lust as they consume with sensual
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promiscuity their supply of sugar mixing it with hot water and then dissipating quote the rich white syrup
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over their flapjacks and bread crust this is followed by sloth as they sink into a lethargy that makes them
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rebel at the performance of the smallest chore including washing and personal cleanliness and for that
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matter common decency accelerated by gluttony their moral deterioration now begins to externalize itself in
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their physical appearance i'm afraid they were not getting their proper shares and in order that they may not be
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robbed they fell to gorging themselves in the absence of fresh vegetables and exercise the blood became
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impoverished and a loathsome purplish rash crept over their bodies next their muscles and joints began to swell
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the flesh turning black while their mouths gums and lips took on the color of rich cream instead of being drawn
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together by their misery each gloated over the other's symptoms as the scurvy took its course covetous and
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envy appear when they divide their sugar supply and hide their shares from each other obsessed with the fear
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of losing the precious stuff the last of the cardinal sins anger is delayed a while by another trouble
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the fear of the north and then finally at the very end they that's when they kill each other at the very
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end of the thing that's the anger so anyhow there's a lot in between there but that gives you at least
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rough idea as say i was having some fun just playing with that it's so much that story i think is one of
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his underrated stories it's really worth a great it says so much about the code and also about london's
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literary artistry yeah i think i agree you mentioned the call of the wild and so that's that's in the news
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there they've got a new movie coming out based off the call of the wild disney does starring harrison ford
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what themes does london talk about in the call of the wild that you think hit on the idea of the northland
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code well we're back again to adaptability in the call of the wild i mean that's that's certainly one
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reason that buck is able to survive because he adapts even though it requires him to become something
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very different from what he was as the sort of pet ranch dog back on back on the ranch down in
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california etc the kind of the code that i think animals live by
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is different from the northland code that men live by in some ways for example with the animals and with
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buck sometimes he has to kill to survive and that's not generally the case with the men in the northland
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code but let's go back after he managed he has the will to take over to take control of the the team and
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what have you he's tough he's strong but he's got spirit and finally though it's love that prevails
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it's his love for john thornton that really saves him at the end of course to become the the the what the
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supernatural ghost dog of the north he has to even leave john thornton and i i want to talk at some
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point about the call of the wild and the fact there's so much more there than just a dog story
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whenever you're ready to do that let's let's do let's move right into that let's talk about that go
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ahead let me talk a little bit about the universal appeal of this novel it's been translated into nearly
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100 different languages i think and it's obviously more than a good dog story it's that but much more
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more and i want to talk about the call of the wild as such a rich uh work in terms of thematic
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richness and also literary artistry the first six chapters are pretty matter of fact i think it starts
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the book starts with something buck did not read the newspapers that's pretty matter of fact
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interesting he didn't say that buck can't read he just said buck did not read the newspapers but that's
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pretty that's a state and matter of fact and the first six chapters are quite realistic and what have
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you but there's one section that is outstanding and i want to read that
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yet there's an ecstasy that marks the summit of life beyond which life cannot rise such as the paradox of
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living this ecstasy comes when one is most alive and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive
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this ecstasy this forgetfulness of living comes to the artist caught up and out of himself
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and in a sheet of flame it comes to the soldier war mad on a stricken failed and refusing quarter
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it came to buck leading the pack sounding the old wolf cry straining after the food that was alive
00:34:23.880
alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight he was sounding the deeps of his nature
00:34:32.680
and the parts of his nature that were deeper than he going back into the womb of time he was mastered by
00:34:43.080
the sheer surging of life the tidal wave of being the perfect joy of each separate muscle joint and sinew
00:34:53.880
and it was everything that was not death it was a glowing rampant expressing itself in movement
00:35:01.560
flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move
00:35:10.040
i think then that's poetry there and it's interesting that he talks about that
00:35:16.680
i think i am i quote it in my biography in terms of jack's own ecstasy in in writing you know i mean he had
00:35:31.000
passion that i think uh enabled him to write some of his best work there i think more than one
00:35:39.640
one writer has talked about being a kind of zone when you're writing we had a visitor on campus a few
00:35:48.520
years ago said that the scientists actually measured there's an increased slight increase in brain
00:35:57.080
temperature when we get into that creative zone anyhow let me move quickly as possible
00:36:04.680
to the seventh chapter the sounding of the call by the way seven is the most significant of numbers
00:36:15.320
archetypally speaking signifying the completion of a cycle and some other things and what has begun
00:36:24.120
up to this point very matter-of-factly note how the language changes at the very beginning of this seventh chapter
00:36:35.800
when book earned sixteen hundred dollars in five minutes for john thornton he made it possible for
00:36:43.720
his master to pay off certain debts and the journey with his partners that's pretty matter of fact but
00:36:52.280
note what happens here journey into the east that's capitalized after a fabled lost mind the history of which
00:37:03.000
was as old as the history of the country many men had sought it few had founded and even more than a few
00:37:12.120
there were who had never returned from the quest this lost mind was steeped in tragedy
00:37:21.880
and shrouded in mystery no one knew of the first man and the oldest tradition before he got
00:37:32.440
anyhow i'm going to stop and move down a ways look at those key words like
00:37:37.880
fabled and tragedy mystery that indicate we're in a different world now we're moving into a kind of
00:37:46.280
supernatural world and note at the bottom of that page the months came and went back and forth they twisted
00:37:57.480
through the uncharted vastness where no men were and yet where men had been if the lost cabin were true
00:38:05.560
they went across divides in summer blizzards shivered under the midnight sun on naked mountains
00:38:15.160
between the timberline and eternal snows dropped into
00:38:22.440
summer valleys amid swarming gnats and flies and in the shadows of glaciers picked strawberries and
00:38:31.480
flowers as ripe as and fair as any of the southland could boast in the fall of the year they penetrated a
00:38:39.560
weird lake country sad and silent where wild fowl wild fowl had been but where then there were there was no
00:38:51.000
life and my sign of life only the blowing of chill winds the forming of ice and sheltered places
00:39:00.680
and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches that's poetry again but here's the point that i i
00:39:11.480
wanted to make stop and think what these guys have been through and what they must look like be interested
00:39:20.440
in seeing what harrison ford and his partners look like in them in the movie there they got to be pretty
00:39:28.840
tough hombres to survive what they do up there you can imagine they would if they see some wild
00:39:37.320
strawberries out there they haven't eaten anything except probably pemmican or dried beef or something
00:39:43.640
for a good while jerky or whatever they eat some strawberry but they're picking flowers it just doesn't fit
00:39:52.040
does it but you don't notice because he's woven this thing so well in terms of describing you don't stumble
00:40:00.680
over that at all and i'm talking this a an instance of london's literary artistry and the way he weaves
00:40:08.200
these moods for you so i just want to point that out in terms of the call of the wild so the relationship
00:40:15.080
between man and nature that jack experienced in the klondike was more adversarial but he also
00:40:21.080
experienced a different relationship between man and nature through his work on his beauty ranch in
00:40:26.440
glen ellen california where he was a pioneer in organic farming and he tried to make what was worn
00:40:32.600
out land fruitful again what books did jack write about his ranching and farming experience three novels
00:40:40.120
particularly the first was burning daylight and the second was valley of the moon that's his longest
00:40:47.960
novel and the third was little lady of the big house burning daylight i think is the most neglected
00:40:55.720
novel i like it as far as i know bread it's the only novel in which the major character
00:41:04.520
epitomizes all three american archetypal heroes the hero is frontiersman the hero is a businessman the
00:41:14.760
hero is yeoman farmer all in one character and it's it's it's uh i think it's amusing i'm not saying it's one
00:41:23.160
one of his great novels but it's fun to read see what he does so in these agrarian stories
00:41:31.240
was there did jack london develop a code similar to the northland code that someone had to live by
00:41:37.000
in order to thrive as a farmer i think so in other words in terms of camaraderie decency honesty but
00:41:46.200
love of land here is an interesting story his first story that he wrote after moving into the valley of
00:41:54.040
the moon 1905 or so all gold canyon and you've got this character bill who is a prospector on some place like
00:42:08.280
the ranch down there prospecting for gold and he finds this big uh gold pocket and desecrates the hillside
00:42:19.080
to get the gold and the process almost gets killed by a stranger that's been watched him and until he
00:42:27.720
he uncovers the gold and comes up and shoots him fortunately he manages to survive but you've got
00:42:37.720
something of the northland type coming down there not loving the land just say but desecrating that
00:42:46.360
beautiful place so there's a message there that jack is trying to convey that he's getting the same
00:42:53.480
attitude in terms of treatment of nature doesn't work in the pastoral garden or wilderness the way it did
00:43:04.840
up in the frozen northland but in terms of the spirit camaraderie decency honesty love of man and what have
00:43:15.240
you uh it's it's essentially the same incidentally we might mention that london's attitude toward
00:43:23.320
women changed significantly after meeting charming from what it was in the early stuff if you want
00:43:32.200
to talk about that let's talk about that right now so yeah his he was married twice his first wife
00:43:39.400
they separated right and then he met charming like tell us about their relationship and how it influenced
00:43:45.320
his writing he he married bessie matter and for the wrong reasons and has a terrible mistake for everybody
00:43:53.400
and i mean we're still paying the price in terms of the damage to the folks to the offspring or
00:44:00.920
all that it's so sad at first neither of them really loved each other it was a marriage of convenience
00:44:06.840
she just lost her fiancee fred jacobs uh to uh i think some kind of ailment when he was on a troop ship going
00:44:16.520
to the philippines i've forgotten now what what he was suffering from but uh uh they'd been friends for
00:44:24.680
years and he felt well i need to get married to settle down and have uh a good mother for seven anglo-saxon
00:44:34.840
sons or whatever turned out that bessie uh did love him but uh he never really loved her they had two
00:44:46.040
daughters meanwhile he is having a kind of affair uh with anna strunsky i mean never consummated but
00:44:55.800
in terms of uh uh somebody he could relate to intellectually and personally more closely than
00:45:03.800
he could with bessie you see he was a party guy he loved fun and loved crowds and what have you
00:45:11.400
and loved to entertain people and bessie didn't like that at all so they were just not compatible
00:45:19.560
and finally i guess it was summer of 1903 or so he fell in love with charmian and madly literally
00:45:29.560
madly in love if you read my biography you'll see some of those early love letters just uh absolutely
00:45:37.000
beside himself he never met a woman quite like that i wish i had it handy i could describe her she was the
00:45:44.520
new woman in many ways and she was very feminine but the same same time she was tough she was at a will of
00:45:53.560
her own but she was smart enough to know how to get along with them and she was very attractive which
00:46:01.960
doesn't come out in her pictures milo shepherd jack london was a great nephew knew her very well for many
00:46:09.640
years and and had tremendous admiration for her he said even when she was in her 60s she could turn men's
00:46:18.680
head when she walked into her room so charming was something special and that as from her that he
00:46:26.760
evolved the idea of the mate woman not just uh in any kind of animalistic sense or whatever but a true
00:46:35.720
mate in terms of an equal and on many risk in many respects and loved her until the day he died
00:46:44.040
and and she loved him of course and to tell you speak of being attractive houdini had an affair with
00:46:53.000
her after his death wanted to marry her but she didn't want to marry houdini in fact she didn't
00:46:59.800
she didn't want to marry anybody after jack i guess yeah this idea of mate woman like they called each other
00:47:05.960
mate and how do you see this idea of the mate woman does it come up in london's literature in
00:47:13.640
the stories yeah it comes up let's say i think in burning daylight certainly in one sense it comes up in
00:47:25.560
the sea wolf with maude brewster as his mate so maude i think may be the first character in his novels
00:47:37.080
based on charmian so it's certainly there and at some point by the way you mentioned london's
00:47:45.480
concept of masculinity yeah and i i think that's very important there's there's a section i'd like
00:47:52.040
to read about that pretty soon but let me mention characters that exemplify masculinity john thornton of
00:48:02.200
course in the call of the wild weeden scott and white fang and i think even humphrey van waden
00:48:12.280
in the sea wolf it's fascinating particularly in the sea wolf because humphrey is a work in progress
00:48:19.960
he comes on board the wolf excuse me wolf larson ship the ghost as a kind of neuter a sissy and
00:48:29.000
larson makes a man out of him larson's too much of a man he's a there's a section in the sea wolf where
00:48:37.560
humphrey is talking about these guys they need a little influence women there it's their world is is
00:48:45.640
warped in a sense so here is wolf larson making a man in a sense given humphrey that masculinity but
00:48:56.520
he needs something else he needs that feminine touch and that's where maude brewster comes in to make him
00:49:05.400
the complete man and there's a section even in to the man on trail i want to read to you when we get a
00:49:13.080
chance shall i do that now let's do that let's talk about that let's do that all right i'm back to a
00:49:18.600
very early story the first story you published in the overland monthly to the man on trail by the way
00:49:27.240
malamute kid who's the kind of high priest of the northland code is another example of the true man or
00:49:35.640
whatever and in this story he's sort of our he's a character we see the events on through whose eyes
00:49:43.960
we see the events unfold here he is the talk soon became impersonal harking back to the trails of
00:49:53.800
childhood as the younger a young stranger ate of the rude fair by the way this is a man named jack
00:50:03.400
westendale who's just come in as a man on trail to join the group incidentally this is a christmas party
00:50:11.000
that's going on in this story interesting christmas party all right malibu kid attentively attentively
00:50:19.720
studied his face nor was he long in deciding that it was fair honest and open that he liked it
00:50:30.440
it still youthful the lines had been firmly traced by toil and hardship though genial in conversation
00:50:41.960
and mild when it rest the blue eyes gave promise the hard steel glitter that comes
00:50:53.400
when called into action especially against odds the heavy jaw and square cut chin demonstrated
00:51:06.040
rugged pertinacity and indominability nor though the attributes of the lion were there was there wanting
00:51:15.480
a certain softness the hint of womanliness womanliness which bespoke the emotional nature so there you've got the
00:51:27.800
qualities of both sexes in a sense both accepted qualities of masculinity and femininity
00:51:36.840
in one character without having the kind of problem that you've got with wolf larsen who dies
00:51:45.160
i think symbolically as well as literally in the sea wall also there's a section that arnold
00:51:53.880
genthe talks about this is a comment by famous poetry artist arnold genthe described london as i say most
00:52:03.960
accurately quote jack london had a poignantly sensitive face his were the eyes of a dreamer and there was an
00:52:15.400
almost feminine wistfulness about him and yet at the same time he gave the feeling of a terrible and
00:52:27.480
uncomfortable physical force so i think that pretty well describes london and his idea of the
00:52:37.320
masculinity as well well this idea of needing masculine and feminine energies combined it sounds
00:52:43.960
like jung the psychologist carl jung and you talk about this in your biography that at the end of his
00:52:49.640
career at the end of his life that's when london discovered jung in his writings and it started to
00:52:55.560
give more of an esoteric bent to jack's thinking whereas formerly he was he was a romantic but
00:53:00.600
he's also a materialist and you make the case that we were on the cusp of some of london's greatest
00:53:06.520
work with this discovery of jung but you also make the case that even before even in the klondike
00:53:12.760
stories you see union ideas pop up can you talk a little bit about jung's influence on london's work
00:53:19.160
and thought it's fascinating to me brett because he's got what jung calls the primordial vision and the
00:53:28.520
stuff i just read for example from the call of the wild indicates his sense of being tuned into
00:53:38.040
myth and what have you myth and archetypes without being conscious of it in fact early reviewers saw some
00:53:46.120
stuff in the call of the wild that was more than just a dog story and he said well i wasn't aware of
00:53:55.000
it i didn't intend it but obviously it was there and that's the nature of the primordial vision
00:54:02.920
when when it's at work the writer feels it and writes it creates it without being fully aware much of
00:54:11.480
his richest work uh is informed by what jung would call archetypes and myth and what have you but what
00:54:21.400
happened just a few months before he died he got a copy of beatrice hingle's brand new revision
00:54:30.840
excuse me not revision translation of jung's theories and he started reading that and came to his
00:54:39.880
wife charm says i'm standing on the edge of the world so new and wonderful and terrible i'm almost
00:54:45.800
afraid look over into it but that's what he'd been doing all those years and of course he did look over
00:54:51.880
into it and the last few stories he wrote he was deliberately employing union theory and of course the
00:54:59.640
final story the water baby which i could quote from in a moment here is obviously union but one of his
00:55:08.120
richest stories the richest stories the red one and i thought originally since he had written that in
00:55:16.680
uh i think may 1916 that was the first story he wrote after discovering young because there's so much there
00:55:28.120
that is archetypal and mythical and is a story i recommend to everybody it's the same motif that
00:55:35.880
kubrick used in 2001 based on r c clark's story the sentinel of course of course clark co-wrote 2001 i
00:55:47.560
think with kubrick and one of my students uh after reading the center sentinel in a science fiction class
00:55:55.800
wrote to clark and got an answer mr clark had you read jack london's the red one and clark actually
00:56:03.960
answered said no but i wish i had you know because the similarities anyhow i recommend the story for
00:56:12.600
a number of reasons but i found out that london had not read young at that time so there's the
00:56:21.240
primordial vision again but it turns out that uh those half dozen i think five or six stories he read
00:56:29.720
based on you finally with the water baby are clearly based on union theory and as far as i know
00:56:37.420
london's the first one to do that well let's talk you said you want to read something from the water
00:56:41.920
baby to give us an idea of this want to go ahead and do that it's a totally dear have you read it i
00:56:47.460
have not no it's a totally different story we're talking now about the water baby which is the last
00:56:54.980
story jack wrote before he died it was written just a few months i think maybe a little more than a
00:57:02.440
month before his death and it's totally different from the other earlier stuff in that there's almost
00:57:10.460
no action mostly it's dialogue between two men a young fellow named john lacana and that's jack
00:57:22.300
london's hawaiian name and an old man named kohokumu and that's the hawaiian for voice of wisdom or
00:57:34.680
our old man of wisdom or what have you and the young man is they're sitting out in a boat
00:57:45.680
offshore offshore talking and the young man has got a headache and not feeling too well
00:57:55.000
the old native is in great shape he's 70 something years old been uh evidently drinking at a big party
00:58:05.880
the night before racing hell and having a good time he's feeling great in fact at one point
00:58:12.020
uh dives down about 40 more feet and and brings up an octopus that he's been fishing for there
00:58:20.940
but they're having a dialogue and the young man represents the rational western approach uh civilized
00:58:32.120
approach what have you logic and what have you the old man is talking in terms of myth
00:58:39.420
and what have you and uh here's a key passage a couple of key passages so let me explain to you the
00:58:49.720
secret of my birth the sea is my mother i was born in a double canoe during the kona gale
00:58:58.420
the channel of kohokumu from her the sea my mother i received my strength whenever i returned her arms
00:59:08.440
as for a breast clasp as i have returned today i grow strong and immediately i grow strong again and
00:59:19.440
immediately she to me is the milk the giver of the life swords
00:59:24.620
and here's the young guy says well that's a queer religion you got there and the old man says when i was
00:59:34.600
younger i muddled my poor head over queer religions but listen oh young wise one to my elderly wisdom
00:59:44.360
this i know as i grow old i seek less for the truth from without me and more of the truth
00:59:55.700
from within me why have i thought this thought of my return to my mother my rebirth from my mother
01:00:05.120
into the sun you do not know i do not know say that without whisper of man's voice or printed word
01:00:12.980
without prompting from other where this thought has arisen from within me from the deeps of me
01:00:21.400
that are as deep as the sea i am not a god i do not make things therefore i have not made this thought
01:00:30.720
i do not know its father its mother it is of old time before me and therefore it is true
01:00:40.240
man does not make truth man if he be not blind only recognizes truth when he sees it there's much more
01:00:52.120
in dreams than we know dreams go deep all the way down maybe to before the beginning
01:01:02.600
right that's you so we've talked about different things that jack london hit on during his career
01:01:09.700
we talked about his northland code this idea of adaptability of true comradeship of imagination
01:01:18.800
we've talked about his themes of agrarian writing and working with nature and we talked about this
01:01:25.680
idea of love love that runs throughout his stories what do you think like after when you taught you
01:01:32.000
know seminars on jack london what did you hope your students would walk away with some big ideas
01:01:39.860
that would change their life and they would maybe think differently because they read these jack london
01:01:46.760
stories i think maybe a sense of adventure in other words moving out seeking or what have you
01:01:55.680
not and by the way not just physically but intellectually seeking that there's so much
01:02:02.740
out there to be enjoyed if we'll just look for it and open our minds to it and that there's a
01:02:10.280
a world of possibility in terms of relationships that we are maybe overlooking because of the various
01:02:18.540
problems we've got socially now we could go into what's going on in our currently restrictive
01:02:25.980
society or what have you but the sense of openness and simply enjoy life while we can there's so much
01:02:35.900
there which jack was still seeking at the very end there's so much life has to offer if we just open
01:02:43.780
our eyes to it and get out and experience it i think a sense of excitement a sense of joie de vivre
01:02:53.800
love of our fellow human beings and maybe not just human beings but also the animals because jack
01:03:03.080
absolutely loved animals as well as people you know especially horses and dogs those are things i think
01:03:11.180
they may have found uh also uh a general uh sense of uh excitement that they may have been
01:03:22.420
missed in in their daily lives or whatever and how has jack london changed your life
01:03:29.580
i mean you've spent how much decades well i think he's done a lot for me in terms of relationships
01:03:39.300
it's amazing that they uh places i've been and uh people i've met and the number of people out there
01:03:48.660
who are absolutely uh taken with jack london for one reason or another most of what we've been
01:03:55.820
discussing today that there's a sense of openness there to london that you may not find in other
01:04:04.720
authors there's so many different possibilities for living if you just open yourself up to them
01:04:11.500
fantastic well earl this has been a fantastic conversation thanks so much for having us here
01:04:16.800
down in shreveport it's been my pleasure thank you so much my guest today was earl labor he's a
01:04:23.060
preeminent jack london scholar and also the author of the landmark jack london biography jack london
01:04:28.000
in american life earl also wrote the forward to the re-release from penguin classics of white fang
01:04:33.100
call the wild other short stories both are available on amazon.com just look up earl labor also check
01:04:38.460
out our show notes at aom.is slash london where you find links to resources where you delve deeper
01:04:42.680
into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of
01:04:54.060
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01:04:57.700
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