The Art of Manliness - #579： Jack London's Literary Code

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast the literature

00:00:11.560 of jack london has long been given the short shrift by scholars they say he wrote some good

00:00:15.520 dog stories for boys but beyond that didn't showcase any literary genius or high-level

00:00:19.720 craftsmanship well my guest today begs to differ with this assessment his name is earl labor he's

00:00:24.320 the pre-minute jack london scholar and 91 years young i've had earl on the podcast two previous

00:00:28.720 times the first to discuss his landmark jack london biography it's episode number 67 and the

00:00:33.420 second to discuss his own memoir the far music and that's episode number 370 for this episode i drove

00:00:38.400 down to earl's home in shreveport louisiana to talk to earl about the overlooked literary genius of jack

00:00:43.180 london and the big themes that london wrote about in his novels and short stories we begin our

00:00:47.340 discussion with earl's story of how he became a jack london scholar and why london's work was

00:00:51.200 historically neglected by academics we then dig into london's literary themes by first discussing

00:00:55.700 how he used the klondike as a symbolic proving ground for men and how success in this wilderness

00:01:00.040 depended on one's ability to mold oneself to jack's northland code earl uses excerpts from my favorite

00:01:05.660 london story in a far country as well as to build a fire in the call of the wild to showcase the

00:01:10.460 tenets of this code as well as london's literary artistry earl then explains how london shifted his

00:01:15.220 themes later in his career with his agrarian writing how his wife charmian changed his perception

00:01:19.620 of real women and his female characters and the influence psychologist carl jung had on london's last

00:01:24.540 works consider this episode a master class on the literature of jack london after it's over

00:01:29.040 check out our show notes at awim.is slash london all right earl labor welcome back to the show

00:01:44.040 thanks brett great to be here again so we had you on i'm gonna say five years ago six years ago to talk

00:01:51.620 about your jack london biography then we had you on again to talk about your memoir the far music

00:01:57.820 which i know a lot of our listeners enjoyed this time i've made a trip down to shreveport louisiana

00:02:04.440 come shake your hand because i wanted to meet you after all these years and then to talk more about

00:02:09.080 jack london uh particularly about the literary themes of jack london because that's what you spent

00:02:15.200 in your career writing about researching about lecturing about was jack london and his literature

00:02:21.500 so i think the first question i'd like to start off with is how did you get started or how did you

00:02:27.040 become a jack london scholar i'm going back to 1948 brett a professor at smu named george bond

00:02:40.080 taught a course in the american novel and among the novels he chose not only hemingway and faulkner and

00:02:50.300 fish gerald he chose an obscure novel by jack london titled martin eden my best friend p.b lindsey a

00:03:01.320 combat veteran from the second world war a couple of years older but much older in many ways

00:03:09.220 took that course and told me earl martin eden is very powerful novel you need to read it at that

00:03:18.220 time i had some other interests mostly extra literary but four years later i'm on a weekend

00:03:26.820 pass to new york city from the recruit training center in bainbridge maryland downtown manhattan just

00:03:35.440 strolling around looking at the sites walked into this newsstand and saw a 25 cent penguin paperback

00:03:45.660 of martin eden well my friend had recommended it i thought i'd look at it i took it down and bought it

00:03:55.560 put it in my hip pocket to take back to the bus i started reading it on the bus back to the base

00:04:03.060 could not put it down brett i stayed up all night i didn't wasn't up exactly i stayed in my bunk with

00:04:12.060 my flashlight on i was so fascinated with that novel and i said when i go back to get a phd

00:04:21.000 jack london is going to be my subject and that was the beginning of my serious study

00:04:27.640 and that was a while before i got to that because i had some other obligations at the time

00:04:34.540 uh to uncle sam in the military uh training recruits that uh that base in maryland

00:04:43.260 also uh spent some time on a uss hail destroyer but when i got out of the navy i had a family a wife

00:04:52.400 and a child and i had to have a job so i went to work for hager uh company in dallas men's slacks

00:05:01.320 was really lucky in terms of that was an up and growing company but um i found that the intellectual

00:05:09.900 challenge of men's pants were a bit thin after about six weeks i was doing okay from their point

00:05:16.640 of view but i wanted to get back into teaching so the same professor george bond called me one saturday

00:05:24.960 morning in early 1955 and said earl there's a little college liberal arts college over in shreveport

00:05:36.240 looking for an instructor if you're interested in getting back into teaching i'll recommend you

00:05:42.340 three weeks later i was teaching at centenary college and i've been teaching on and off at

00:05:51.180 centenary ever since then until my retirement a few years ago took off a few years for various things i

00:05:58.340 may have mentioned in some of my early works such as a fulbright lectureship in denmark for a year

00:06:05.660 etc etc etc but mainly i've been teaching and working on jack london ever since so for your phd you did

00:06:15.200 the first major study on jack london as a true literary artist and you were really breaking new

00:06:20.580 ground because for a long time the literary establishment didn't take london's work seriously

00:06:25.620 and very few scholars had studied his craftsmanship why was that and what's the status of london today in

00:06:32.460 literature particularly in terms of scholarship well it's it's on the rise for sure has been for the

00:06:38.620 past generation or so it's amazing to see what's happened in the last couple of decades but for a

00:06:46.960 long time he was dismissed as little more as i say than a hack writer for adventure stories and what

00:06:55.200 have you fortunately there have been a number of breakthroughs just in the last two or three

00:07:01.520 decades actually to be honest brett i think over the past half century or so i have a lecture that

00:07:10.260 i give sometimes on the politics of literary reputation and i explained to my students i said

00:07:16.940 look the books you read the ones you read in high school and many that you read in college

00:07:23.520 were not handed down to moses on that tablet that they're selected by a certain group and those are

00:07:32.000 the the so-called elite they decide what you're going to read they decide for example you're going to

00:07:38.020 read shakespeare and maybe author and scarlet letter which is fine but they should be also assigning

00:07:46.060 jack london's the seawolf or something in addition to call the wild anyhow london was not a part of the

00:07:56.120 the group that makes those decisions now you ask for one thing london was a western writer and they were

00:08:07.720 not part of the eastern establishment that pretty well dictated the the literary uh selections or

00:08:16.320 whatever at the time in the 19th even 20th century eric miles williamson uses the term

00:08:24.640 the ivy mafia that may not be quite fair but i think it's kind of kind of fun anyhow the idea that

00:08:32.680 it's those easterners back in the 19th century even early 20th century centered around boston new york

00:08:42.760 william dean howells was the leader of that group for a generation interesting that he encouraged

00:08:52.320 writers like amelyn garland and stephen grain even emily dickinson and here is london at the time

00:09:00.000 the most popular of all of them and virtually ignored by william dean howells now that's got to have been

00:09:09.300 deliberate i think so all of that ties into what i call the politics of literary reputation which has

00:09:19.260 impeded the recognition of jack for a number of years but finally we're getting that recognition

00:09:26.360 as a result of what's been done over the past 50 years and certainly the last generation my own

00:09:33.200 student genie campbell has become genie campbell reisman started the jack london society in about

00:09:41.760 1990 or so and ken brant is currently the executive director of that and and just in the last few years

00:09:55.380 the modern language association has published a collection of essays on london called teaching

00:10:06.480 jack london that's been edited by ken brant and genie reisman has over 20 essays by different scholars

00:10:14.860 even more recently the oxford university press has published a handbook of jack london edited by

00:10:23.520 jay williams that has more than 30 essays by different scholars in there which says something

00:10:30.100 about what's happening jack london and his status during the last decade or two so yeah he's on the

00:10:38.120 rise let's talk about some of the themes that jack london wrote about during his career and we'll get

00:10:44.940 into detail about some of these things but before we do that could you give us just a big picture

00:10:50.580 overview of sort of an outline of the themes that he wrote about both in his fiction and in and in

00:10:56.660 his non-fiction i'm looking here and i'll simplify this to me i was just looking at my introduction

00:11:04.180 the portable thematically london london's works move from the foolishness of pride ruthlessness of greed

00:11:14.040 blindness of racial prejudice and the senselessness of war to the indomitability of the human spirit

00:11:23.240 the unfailing salvation of true comradeship and the ageless wisdom of the great mother and the water

00:11:33.260 baby i could talk later about the great mother and the archetype and the water baby which is london's

00:11:41.140 last story which is very revealing but in more general terms i like to say that one of the overriding

00:11:49.800 themes is love love of adventure love of life love of humanity love of nature love of man for woman

00:12:02.220 comradership comradership comradery love of seeking and what have you it's it's it's a kind of passion

00:12:12.840 that he has and my biography of talk about the seeking drive for example that london had in extreme

00:12:22.160 measure that the neuroscientists have discovered generation ago is that basic drive along with fear

00:12:31.600 and hunger and hunger sex and the rest of it that leads mammals to seek new adventures even at the

00:12:40.520 expense of food and and ferret sometimes anyhow it's fascinating to see this at work trying to think

00:12:50.140 of other things of course the hatred of anything that was restricting that deprived human beings of

00:12:58.720 of their essential humanity and liberty or what have you those seem to be themes that run throughout

00:13:06.720 his work one thing that he i think was a common theme throughout all of his work is this idea of man

00:13:13.260 versus nature and nature being sort of a proving ground for men and i think you've written about this

00:13:21.160 as nature there's like four types of environments that london wrote about where you see this motif of

00:13:28.500 man versus nature can you talk a bit about that i'm talking about symbolic wilderness symbolic wilderness

00:13:33.920 yeah i'm going back now about what 50 more years and um texas scholar university of texas scholar named

00:13:43.840 gordon mills published a very fine article in 19th century fiction on the symbolic wilderness contrasting james

00:13:56.220 fenimore cooper's version of that wilderness with jack london's saying that fenimore cooper's wilderness was

00:14:04.100 pretty consistent uh what have you but jack london's version of the symbolic wilderness was uh confusing

00:14:15.440 and didn't seem to have any uh sense of uh organization or what have you so i thought about it i said well

00:14:25.860 i don't think gordon mills has read jack london's work carefully enough there are four different

00:14:33.200 versions the northland then there's the polynesia which i call london's paradise lost and there's

00:14:41.420 melanesia which i call the inferno and then there's the valley of the moon which is jack london's pastoral

00:14:49.520 wilderness or what have you and each has its own distinctive characteristics

00:14:54.760 the uh qualities that a man needs to survive in the northland are totally different from what he

00:15:05.760 needs to survive in melanesia and the northland i think these are spelled out pretty clearly in the

00:15:13.820 opening of in a far country i think one of your own favorite stories my favorite story give me a

00:15:20.560 minute i'd like to read that let's do it because it's my favorite it's the favorite thing that jack

00:15:24.300 london never wrote brett this spells it out i'm reading the beginning of in a far country

00:15:31.100 which i call an exemplum in other words if a preacher's delivering a sermon he wants to tell

00:15:40.140 a story a pretty in what dramatic story to illustrate his sermon and that's sometimes called an exemplum and

00:15:51.220 that's what that's what we got in a far country and here's the sermon when a man journeys into a far

00:16:00.820 country he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned and to acquire such customs as

00:16:09.080 are inherent with the existence of the new land he must abandon the old ideals the old gods and

00:16:19.080 often times he must reverse the very codes by which his conduct has hitherto been shaped to those who

00:16:29.000 have the protein faculty of adaptability the novelty of such change may even be a source of pleasure but to

00:16:39.400 those who happen to be hardened in the ruts in which they were created the pressure of the altered

00:16:46.280 environment is unbearable they chafe in body and in spirit under the new restrictions which they do not

00:16:54.920 understand this chafing is bound to act and react and producing diverse evils leading to various

00:17:04.040 misfortunes it were better for the man who cannot fit himself to the new groove to return to his own

00:17:11.800 country if he delayed too long he will surely die the man who turns his back upon the comforts of an

00:17:21.240 elder civilization to face the savage youth the primordial simplicity of the north may estimate success at an 0.71

00:17:30.600 inverse ratio to the quantity and quality of his hopelessly fixed habits he will soon discover if he be a

00:17:40.120 fifth candidate that the material habits are the less important the exchange of such things as a

00:17:49.080 dainty menu for rough fare of the stiff leather shoe for the soft shapeless moccasin of the feather bed for a

00:17:59.080 couch in the snow is after all a very easy matter but his pinch will come in learning properly to shape his

00:18:08.520 mind's attitude toward all things and especially toward his fellow man for the courtesies for the

00:18:19.240 courtesies of ordinary life he must substitute unselfishness forbearance and tolerance thus and thus

00:18:30.840 only can he gain the that pearl of great price true comradeship and that's the key i think to the northern code

00:18:43.000 and the two incapables in the far country as it spells out cannot do that they're they totally

00:18:50.920 unfitted to come up there in the first place and they pay the price well yeah i think what i love about

00:18:58.200 the the intro to in a far country is that it perfectly encapsulates and summarizes jack london's what you call

00:19:07.000 the northland code so you know from what that we just read there what you just read there part of the

00:19:12.360 northland code is adaptability exactly it's also true comradeship exactly those seem to be the two

00:19:19.400 important things for london when it came to the northland code both are important there's another factor

00:19:26.920 he doesn't mention here he mentions later in addition to adaptability camaraderie and what have you all

00:19:35.880 that there's another factor that comes up very clearly in that great classic to build a fire and

00:19:49.000 we're talking about the man who does not have a name in this version incidentally i've seen the

00:19:58.440 original manuscript and at first when he started this story jack london gave the man a name

00:20:06.600 i think as i recollect something like john collins but after about a thousand words meaning after i

00:20:14.200 think the first day he comes back and says this story would be more effective if i made this every

00:20:21.880 man instead of a specific man now by the way you know there's an early version of the story that

00:20:28.440 we found king henriks and i found the summer i was working with him out at utah state that was

00:20:35.400 published what say six years earlier and youth companion totally different from this by the same

00:20:42.200 title but the young man in there is given a name and he survives but this guy is not going to make it

00:20:48.840 and here's why by the way london opens this story talking about how weird the situation is up there

00:20:57.720 very very cold 70 something degrees below zero no sun in the sky but all this the mysterious

00:21:07.000 far-reaching airline trail the absence of sun from the sky the tremendous coal the strangeness and

00:21:17.240 weirdness of it all made no impression on the man it was not because he was long used to it

00:21:26.760 he was newcomer in the land at chichai quo and this was his first winter the trouble with him was that he was

00:21:37.160 without imagination he was quick and alert in the things of life but only in the things and not in the

00:21:48.120 the circumstances 50 degrees below zero meant 80 odd degrees of frost such fact impressed him as being

00:22:01.080 cold and uncomfortable and that was all it did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature

00:22:12.120 of temperature and upon man's frailty in general able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and

00:22:23.480 cold and from there on did not lead him to conject to the conjectural field of immortality and man's place

00:22:37.160 in the universe now this is a master stroke of the artist in other words here's a story that is so

00:22:44.840 definitely and beautifully woven together the reader doesn't realize that suddenly there's a profound

00:22:53.320 philosophical message in this story it's more than about just a man's getting cold and dying from

00:23:01.000 freezing to death but there's another message underlying this which he's just slipped in there

00:23:08.360 but he's done it so so definitely so artistically you read right on through and don't don't stumble

00:23:15.000 over it it's a wonderful uh example of what london was gonna was doing later on i'll talk about how he

00:23:21.960 does that in the call of the wild but anyhow i wanted to bring in as a factor and he mentions that other

00:23:28.760 places too the importance of imagination if you're going to make it up there and later on when he's

00:23:35.320 talking about survival in the uh in the in melanesia he said one of the things there to survive whoever

00:23:44.680 going to make it doesn't need any imagination he's just got to be as mean as the savages around there

00:23:50.760 and resort to stuff that as as bad as they do it's totally different from the northland we're

00:23:58.520 going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show well so back

00:24:04.840 this idea of imagination and going back to in a far country i think it's related to one of the the

00:24:11.800 things that seem to be wrong or something that that london talks about not only in a far country but you

00:24:16.920 see it in the call of the wild white fang london went up to the klondike when people were going up

00:24:23.160 there for the gold rush but in his stories he talks about one of the problems with the incapables and

00:24:29.720 some of the other characters who don't fare well in the klondike is that they went up there with

00:24:35.720 impure intentions almost they didn't have the right intention it's like with the incapables they went

00:24:41.720 they didn't london said they they had sentimentality about the klondike but they didn't have the spirit

00:24:48.120 of true romance and adventure what was the difference in london's mind well in london's mind i mean

00:24:54.360 sentimentality is this illusion that you're going up having a beautiful what a lovely time out with

00:25:02.760 nature or whatever going to have uh uh going to have a pretty easy time just enjoying the beauties of

00:25:10.200 of nature without really understanding the reality of the situation and that's uh i think percy

00:25:18.840 cufford is the dilettante who thinks that he's just uh he's read a lot of romantic stuff about the

00:25:27.720 animals etc it's going to be some kind of wonderland up there winter wonderland which of course it's

00:25:34.920 not and the other with uh weatherby car carter weatherby i think it's going just for strictly

00:25:42.680 materialistic gain or whatever thinks he's gonna become a millionaire without it having to do too much

00:25:50.440 to achieve that but the idea of true adventure but i'm going back to seeking again you you want to go

00:25:59.000 regardless of the danger and you want to find out what the new frontiers are like you're willing to go

00:26:06.680 ahead and even risk your life to uh to grow to find uh find out what your limits might be and test them

00:26:16.920 find out what nature is really like speaking realistically and speaking about in the far

00:26:22.840 country you've written about this you make the case that the incapables as you call them london use

00:26:29.320 that use those characters as a way to explore the seven deadly sins what was going on there so is this

00:26:38.040 actually a sermon i got something i had fun with that but uh i would if you give me a minute i'll check

00:26:48.760 it out here after an overeager show of industrious cooperation they abandoned the austere discipline

00:26:58.920 of the code discipline is a key their spiritual degeneration as they succumb to each of the seven 0.96

00:27:10.120 deadly sins is initially dramatized in their social relationship first pride is manifest in a foolish

00:27:22.360 arrogance that precludes the mutual trust requisite to survival in the wilderness mutual trust also a key

00:27:32.200 there the i'm quoting here the one was a lower class man who considered himself a gentleman and the other

00:27:40.680 was a gentleman who knew himself to be such from this it may be remarked that a man can be a gentleman

00:27:49.880 without possessing the first instinct of true comradeship next appears lust as they consume with sensual

00:28:01.400 promiscuity their supply of sugar mixing it with hot water and then dissipating quote the rich white syrup

00:28:10.600 over their flapjacks and bread crust this is followed by sloth as they sink into a lethargy that makes them

00:28:19.800 rebel at the performance of the smallest chore including washing and personal cleanliness and for that

00:28:28.920 matter common decency accelerated by gluttony their moral deterioration now begins to externalize itself in

00:28:40.520 their physical appearance i'm afraid they were not getting their proper shares and in order that they may not be

00:28:49.080 robbed they fell to gorging themselves in the absence of fresh vegetables and exercise the blood became

00:28:58.440 impoverished and a loathsome purplish rash crept over their bodies next their muscles and joints began to swell

00:29:09.560 the flesh turning black while their mouths gums and lips took on the color of rich cream instead of being drawn

00:29:20.040 together by their misery each gloated over the other's symptoms as the scurvy took its course covetous and

00:29:29.880 envy appear when they divide their sugar supply and hide their shares from each other obsessed with the fear

00:29:39.560 of losing the precious stuff the last of the cardinal sins anger is delayed a while by another trouble

00:29:50.040 the fear of the north and then finally at the very end they that's when they kill each other at the very

00:29:59.320 end of the thing that's the anger so anyhow there's a lot in between there but that gives you at least

00:30:06.760 rough idea as say i was having some fun just playing with that it's so much that story i think is one of

00:30:14.200 his underrated stories it's really worth a great it says so much about the code and also about london's

00:30:22.040 literary artistry yeah i think i agree you mentioned the call of the wild and so that's that's in the news

00:30:29.800 there they've got a new movie coming out based off the call of the wild disney does starring harrison ford

00:30:35.480 what themes does london talk about in the call of the wild that you think hit on the idea of the northland

00:30:42.280 code well we're back again to adaptability in the call of the wild i mean that's that's certainly one

00:30:52.120 reason that buck is able to survive because he adapts even though it requires him to become something

00:31:02.760 very different from what he was as the sort of pet ranch dog back on back on the ranch down in

00:31:11.160 california etc the kind of the code that i think animals live by

00:31:18.600 is different from the northland code that men live by in some ways for example with the animals and with

00:31:28.760 buck sometimes he has to kill to survive and that's not generally the case with the men in the northland

00:31:36.520 code but let's go back after he managed he has the will to take over to take control of the the team and

00:31:47.320 what have you he's tough he's strong but he's got spirit and finally though it's love that prevails

00:31:58.440 it's his love for john thornton that really saves him at the end of course to become the the the what the

00:32:08.680 supernatural ghost dog of the north he has to even leave john thornton and i i want to talk at some

00:32:17.000 point about the call of the wild and the fact there's so much more there than just a dog story

00:32:23.240 whenever you're ready to do that let's let's do let's move right into that let's talk about that go

00:32:27.880 ahead let me talk a little bit about the universal appeal of this novel it's been translated into nearly

00:32:35.880 100 different languages i think and it's obviously more than a good dog story it's that but much more

00:32:44.120 more and i want to talk about the call of the wild as such a rich uh work in terms of thematic

00:32:53.000 richness and also literary artistry the first six chapters are pretty matter of fact i think it starts

00:33:02.600 the book starts with something buck did not read the newspapers that's pretty matter of fact

00:33:09.320 interesting he didn't say that buck can't read he just said buck did not read the newspapers but that's

00:33:16.440 pretty that's a state and matter of fact and the first six chapters are quite realistic and what have

00:33:25.480 you but there's one section that is outstanding and i want to read that

00:33:30.920 yet there's an ecstasy that marks the summit of life beyond which life cannot rise such as the paradox of

00:33:45.160 living this ecstasy comes when one is most alive and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive

00:33:56.520 this ecstasy this forgetfulness of living comes to the artist caught up and out of himself

00:34:06.600 and in a sheet of flame it comes to the soldier war mad on a stricken failed and refusing quarter

00:34:15.800 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 0.59

00:43:23.320 women changed significantly after meeting charming from what it was in the early stuff if you want 0.97

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 0.61

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 0.96

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 0.74

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 0.99

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 0.98

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 0.78

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 1.00

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 0.96

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 0.97

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 0.98

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 manliness.com where you find our podcast archives where there's thousands of articles we've written

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01:05:30.440 podcast but put what you've heard into action

01:05:40.300 podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - January 27, 2020

#579： Jack London's Literary Code

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