The Art of Manliness - #67： The Manliness of Jack London With Earle Labor

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00:01:51.420 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. A few years ago,

00:02:12.480 we did this extensive series about the life of Jack London, the writer who wrote such greats as White

00:02:17.660 Fang, Call of the Wild, Seawolf, and just tons and tons of virile manly short stories. After I finished

00:02:25.160 the series, I learned that the foremost expert and scholar on Jack London, his name is Earl Labor. He's

00:02:31.020 the curator of the Jack London Museum in Shreveport. He teaches American literature at Centenary College

00:02:36.480 of Louisiana. He's been working on a biography of Jack London for the past couple decades. And it came out

00:02:43.540 last year. I picked up a copy, read it. It's great. It's the best biography that I've read on Jack

00:02:48.000 London. And I had to get him on the show to discuss the life of Jack London because to me, Jack London,

00:02:54.480 there's so much we can learn as men from his life. He just lived an incredible, fascinating life,

00:02:59.780 full of adventure, full of hard work, full of discipline, full of romance. I mean, he was the

00:03:05.840 complete man. Anyways, Professor Labor and I talk about the life of Jack London, his work, and what

00:03:12.100 lessons men can take from his life today. So stay tuned. Earl Labor, welcome to the show.

00:03:21.480 Thanks, Brett. It's good to be here.

00:03:23.580 Okay, so you have studied the life and career of Jack London for your entire academic career,

00:03:31.160 professional career. And you've been working on this biography for decades. What's the origin of

00:03:38.440 your interest in London? Well, I first got the call, I'm going back over 70 years. When I was in

00:03:48.780 grade school in Tuskehoma, Oklahoma, we had a little library there. And one day I found a book titled

00:03:59.020 Jack London's Stories for Boys, and I got very interested in that. And so I read that, read The

00:04:05.620 Call of the Wild. Didn't hear any more about Jack London, actually, for the next several years.

00:04:11.900 He never was mentioned when I went to high school or none of my classes in college. However, my best

00:04:20.720 friend, World War II veteran, combat infantryman, he was only a couple of years older than I was,

00:04:29.220 but seemed far older, I guess, because of the experiences he hadn't been through. Anyhow,

00:04:35.000 he was taking a course at SMU in the modern American novel under Professor George Bond. And

00:04:43.020 seems incredible because London was untouchable by most of the academics then. But Dr. Bond,

00:04:51.120 along with Faulkner and Hemingway and some of the other writers like Fitzgerald,

00:04:57.700 assigned Jack London's Martin Eden as one of the novels in that course.

00:05:03.100 My friend P.B. Lindsay read it. He told me, he said, Earl, you got to read this

00:05:08.200 novel by Jack London. I said, what are you talking about? He says, Martin Eden. I said,

00:05:13.600 I've never heard of it. He said, well, you'll find it, you'll find not only interesting, but

00:05:19.600 relevant and powerful. Well, Brad, at the time, I was more interested in some other things,

00:05:25.880 mostly extracurricular. But when I was in the Navy stationed at the Recruit Training Center in

00:05:32.500 Bainbridge, Maryland, had a weekend pass up to Manhattan and was browsing in a newsstand there

00:05:39.920 and saw this 25-cent paperback of Martin Eden. I remember my buddy had recommended it, so I said,

00:05:47.940 well, I'll give it a try. I started reading it on the bus back to the base, and I was captivated.

00:05:55.900 In fact, I was so captivated that I finished it that night in my bunk with a flashlight,

00:06:03.880 and I vowed if I ever went back for a degree, a PhD, I was going to make Jack London the subject

00:06:14.600 of my dissertation. And that's where the interest really was sparked.

00:06:20.360 So, yeah, that's very fascinating. You mentioned that for a while in your education and in your

00:06:27.360 schooling, you didn't hear much about Jack London. And it might be because a lot of people think of

00:06:33.900 Jack London as simply a popular, i.e. lowbrow adventure writer for young adults, but that really

00:06:41.740 does a disservice to his work. How has Jack London's standing as an author changed over the years,

00:06:49.420 and has he gotten more respect in academia?

00:06:52.380 Well, there's been a dramatic change in the last 50 years, Brett. I think the problem from the outset

00:07:01.200 was that most people, including the critics and members of the academic establishment,

00:07:09.060 hadn't read much Jack London and Penny London, maybe some of his dog stories.

00:07:13.700 Some of them hadn't even read the Seawolf, which is one of his bestsellers, in fact, made into more

00:07:23.220 movies than any other film I know about. It's been made into, I guess, a dozen different film

00:07:29.140 versions. What I'm saying is that they hadn't bothered to read London. Also, the fact that he was popular

00:07:37.540 happened to be a kind of negative with a lot of members of the, what, the establishment or the

00:07:46.920 literary elite. Let me just stop for a moment and say one reason that I think they disliked Jack

00:07:54.680 London was that he's so easy to read for the common or general reader. You don't need a college

00:08:01.120 education or you don't need a college professor to tell you how to understand Jack London, not like Ezra

00:08:09.300 Pound or T.S. Eliot or James Joyce or even William Faulkner. In other words, he threatened to put the

00:08:17.640 critics out of business, take your bread off their table. You can understand why they might not want to

00:08:26.580 deal with him. Anyhow, I'm going back to, I think, the dramatic change. Well, let me give you one other

00:08:36.580 story here. One of my favorite stories, and I mentioned this in the biography, 1963, Sam Baskett,

00:08:44.380 Michigan State University and president of the Michigan College English Association,

00:08:48.080 introduced me to the annual conference of the association as, quote, the other Jack London

00:08:56.200 scholar, unquote. Of course, there were a few others at the time, but that gives you an idea of what the

00:09:01.640 situation was with the establishment, the academic establishment. I'm saying the great awakenings,

00:09:11.480 I call it, really took place starting about the mid-1960s with the publication of the one-volume

00:09:20.620 edition of his letters edited by King Hendricks and Irving Shepard. My own book, Great Short Stories of

00:09:31.400 Jack London, was published in the Harper Perennial Classic series. Franklin Walker's Jack London and the

00:09:39.880 Klondike, which is still a very major work on that period in London's life, came out then. Perhaps

00:09:48.740 most important was Hensley Woodbridge's monumental bibliography, which provided a kind of a basic

00:09:58.660 research tool for London scholars. And shortly after that, Woodbridge founded the Jack London newsletter,

00:10:06.260 which gave the Jack London folks a forum where they could exchange ideas and articles and what have

00:10:14.760 you. And toward the end of that decade, Russ Kingman, who had a very successful advertising

00:10:22.340 business in Oakland, decided to move up to Glen Ellen near the Jack London State Park and Ranch and

00:10:29.640 opened up a Jack London bookstore. And that later became a kind of mecca for London fans, as well as

00:10:36.940 some good many scholars. He also inaugurated the annual Jack London birthday banquet, which is still held

00:10:44.740 every year and attracts participants from not only this country, but overseas as well. I'm trying to

00:10:53.020 give you a short history because I could go on all afternoon with this. But anyhow, things really took

00:10:58.820 off in the 1970s. I know that several major journals, including Modern Fiction Studies, published

00:11:06.760 Centennial Issues, 1976, the centennial of Jack's birth. Also, we got my edition, my, excuse me, my book,

00:11:20.600 Jack London in the Plain United States Author Series, which is the first major

00:11:25.280 critical biography, first book-length critical biography or study of London's works as artistry.

00:11:34.960 And also, Jim McClinox's study of his short stories came out that year. And not long after that,

00:11:41.480 a few years after that, Chuck Watson's book on London's novels came out. By the way, in the 1980s,

00:11:53.800 our edition of the letters, three-volume edition of London's letters published by Stanford got first,

00:12:00.860 got the front page reviews in both the New York Times and the London Times Literary Subliminal.

00:12:08.000 So that was something, I think, that kind of waked up a few people to the fact that London might be

00:12:14.820 more than just a hack that wrote some boss stories. Also, that along about 1988 or so,

00:12:23.880 Clarice Stass's biography about both Charmian and Jack, American Dreamers, was the first major study of

00:12:34.400 Charmian, the most reliable one, I should say, because she had been pretty well, I think, disparaged or

00:12:45.880 downplayed in some of the earlier biographies. Of course, by now, we've got the Jack London Foundation,

00:12:53.420 which was also established by Russ Kingman back in the 70s, and it puts out a quarterly newsletter

00:13:02.240 and also sponsors the annual Jack London Banquet. We've got the Jack London Society, which has been

00:13:11.800 going very steady now for almost two decades, which was founded by one of my own students,

00:13:20.260 Gene Raisman, who's done some definitive studies on London short stories, as well as the racial issue

00:13:27.720 and things of that sort. And they put out a quarterly journal, too. So we're moving ahead,

00:13:35.940 finally, after all those years. So I guess that kind of gives you an idea of what's happened the last

00:13:45.160 50 years, which has really been an amazing burgeoning of scholarly interest in Jack London.

00:13:52.360 Very good. Let's take a quick break for a word from our sponsor. All right, so this episode is

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00:14:53.580 slash manliness, that's squarespace.com slash manliness, and enter in offer code man,

00:15:00.260 M-A-N at checkout. And now back to the show. So as I read your biography, one thing I discovered was

00:15:08.920 that much of Jack London's fiction was based on his own life and experiences. And the man,

00:15:16.020 man lived an incredible life. I mean, he had so many adventures before he even turned 30 years old.

00:15:23.560 For our listeners who aren't familiar with Jack London's life, can you give us some of the

00:15:28.140 highlights of his youthful exploits?

00:15:31.100 Well, let's see. See if I can keep this fairly brief for you because it's such an interesting

00:15:37.940 period of his life. You know, he had a very tough childhood coming from a working class family and

00:15:46.560 what have you, sometimes on the verge of poverty. He later claimed he had no boyhood at all,

00:15:52.960 which wasn't quite true, but that's the way he remembered it. Had to go to work at a factory

00:15:59.700 as soon as he finished grade school, sometimes working 12, 15, even some. On one occasion,

00:16:07.840 I think he said about 18 hours of stretch there. One of his most powerful stories, The Apostate,

00:16:14.520 tells about that kind of experience. Jack himself wasn't quite like the poor young fellow in The

00:16:22.840 Apostate, but there was a kind of emotional autobiography in that work in terms of the

00:16:29.140 terrible working conditions back before we had child labor laws and what have you. He had enough

00:16:35.840 of that factory work at the age of 15, said he was tired of being a factory work beast and became a

00:16:42.400 member of a gang out there called the Oyster Pirates of San Francisco Bay. Now, these weren't kids.

00:16:49.900 These weren't teenagers. These were full-grown men. They were criminals, pretty hardened criminals in

00:16:58.100 some cases. But he managed to get $300 from his Aunt Jenny Prentice, who had been this wonderful

00:17:12.080 African-American woman who had been his wet nurse and almost like a second mother to him ever since his 0.69

00:17:19.040 infancy. Anyhow, she lent him enough money to buy a boat from one of the veteran pirates named

00:17:28.280 French Frank. And so he joined that bunch of grown criminals. He said later on, the miracle of my 0.99

00:17:36.820 life is that I live to be 21, because most of my buddies were either dead or in prison by then.

00:17:42.640 And that was true. He spent a year with the Oyster Pirates. What they were doing, of course, was raiding

00:17:49.580 the commercial oyster beds around the very area there, which were guarded. They were guarded.

00:17:57.200 They had the big companies that owned them or put guards out there, so it was risky business. They had

00:18:03.500 to do most of their work at night. And still, it was touch and go with the authorities and with the

00:18:13.200 policemen. He managed to survive. And after a year, they had decided he was going to change and go to

00:18:20.220 the side of the law. So he joined the California Fish Patrol. Now, he wasn't going around arresting some

00:18:26.280 of his buddies up where he had been, but he went down south so that it was a different area for him

00:18:32.960 to police. He spent several months with the California Fish Patrol. And then, at the age of 17,

00:18:41.620 he shipped as a Navy-bodied citizen aboard the Sophia Sutherland on an eight-month voyage for the

00:18:54.080 Northwest Pacific Ocean to hunt seals. This was one of the most important phases of his younger years

00:19:01.440 because he got to see a lot of the world, including a number of islands in Japan, before they actually

00:19:08.680 hit the sealing grounds out there. He also got a lot of the material that he would later use in his

00:19:15.520 novel, The Sea Wolf. After that voyage, he came back, had to work again for a while in the factory,

00:19:22.960 but after another year or so, he decided he was going to hit the road again, and he joined

00:19:30.300 the western contingent of Cox's Army, this army of the unemployed that was marching on Washington back 0.93

00:19:38.640 in 1893 to protest the kind of terrible working conditions that they had, and he spent several

00:19:47.900 months with them. He quit that army, he quit that group at Hannibal, Missouri, and decided to light

00:19:57.780 out on his own Hobo. Now, back then, Hobo meant the road, as he called it, meant the railroad. There

00:20:05.680 weren't any highways to speak of, and all the travel like that, most of it was by train, and so he hopped

00:20:14.460 cars, which was kind of a risky business too, freight cars and what have you, and managed to get on up

00:20:20.800 east, saw a good deal of the east, but he wanted to see Niagara Falls, got in late one night in a

00:20:31.280 sidecar pullman, he called it, a boxcar, strolled out and took a look at the falls at night, and they

00:20:38.960 were so beautiful. Then he flopped, as he said, in a nearby field to get some sleep, wanted to get up

00:20:45.740 the next morning to see the falls by daybreak, but he never made it. As he was walking through

00:20:51.140 downtown Niagara Falls, he got tapped on the shoulder, and this constable, who was actually a

00:20:58.040 kind of bounty hunter, got a, I think, a buck forever hobo that he arrested, arrested him, and he

00:21:04.780 was brought before court and sentenced to 30 days in the Erie County Penitentiary. He said,

00:21:12.420 Judge, I'm not a vagrant. I've got money. The judge says, Son, you argue, I'm going to give you 60 days.

00:21:18.680 So Jack shut up and took his 30 days, but that was one of the most important experiences of his life.

00:21:25.520 As he said later on, I saw things in that penitentiary that I can, I can't write about. I can scarcely

00:21:34.360 think about him. We know enough now about some of the conditions, especially if we've seen that

00:21:39.800 movie, The Shawshank Redemption. We know enough about the way prison conditions were back then to

00:21:46.960 kind of imagine some of the stuff he saw. Anyhow, that was enough to determine him to go back and

00:21:53.800 get an education. So when he got out of jail, he did a little more sightseeing, then headed back to

00:21:59.360 Oakland, went to high school, spent, oh, let's see, spent, I think, a year and a half before he

00:22:07.780 decided he was going to try to get in college, managed to pass the entrance exams to the University

00:22:13.980 of California, Berkeley by studying intensively on his own, and spent one semester there, then had

00:22:22.420 to drop out because of financial conditions, and that we're going now to about 1897 when he's 21 years

00:22:33.260 old. This is the time of the great Kondike gold rush, which is, I think, the greatest gold rush in the

00:22:43.960 history of American culture or whatever. And he managed to get up there, and he spent a year in

00:22:52.720 the Klondike. And he said later on that was where he found himself. And that gives you, he came back

00:23:02.700 and then started writing intensively to become what he thought would be a successful writer. So that gives

00:23:10.800 you some idea of his youthful experiences. Very good. So you mentioned that he had a bit of formal

00:23:20.240 schooling, did grade school, did some high school, and then he went to college for a bit. But he was

00:23:27.900 largely self-educated. He did a lot of studying on his own, and teaching him how to himself how to write

00:23:34.460 on his own. Where do you think he got that discipline and tenacity to stick to his strenuous

00:23:40.360 study regimens? And are there any takeaways for our college days listeners that they could use from

00:23:46.800 Jack London? Well, Brad, he had amazing self-discipline. It's just absolutely astonishing. Also, he was

00:23:57.600 tremendously motivated to succeed to pull himself out of the social pit as he had witnessed it. He later said to

00:24:07.040 himself, poverty made me hustle. At the same time, he had this incredible willpower and self-discipline. By the way,

00:24:16.880 I've counted more than 600 rejections he got during the first five years of his career. But he refused to give up

00:24:24.100 him when his friends and family were telling him to get a steady job. Sometimes he would spend

00:24:32.500 all in writing itself. He'd spend 12 or 14 hours a day. He tried to limit himself to two or three

00:24:40.740 hours sleep a night, but he couldn't get by on that. He finally managed to get a set regimen of five

00:24:46.660 hours a night, which he stuck with the rest of his life. He was a voracious reader. That was one of the

00:24:57.940 factors, I think, in his success. But I'm going back to your question about his self-education.

00:25:04.020 He had fallen in love with books, he said, when he was about, I think, five years old or so.

00:25:09.940 And he tells about some of the earlier books he read, such as Washington Irving's Alhambra and

00:25:19.460 a couple of other famous travel books or what have you. Also, a story by an author named Wida about a

00:25:31.780 young Italian boy who succeeds, what have you. In other words, he had been a voracious reader from his

00:25:39.300 very early childhood. And I think that was one of the reasons that he was able to maintain this kind

00:25:46.420 of self-motivation to become a writer himself. Okay, so you mentioned all the rejections

00:25:54.660 London faced when he was first starting out. Besides being a voracious reader, what else did he do to

00:26:02.580 improve his writing?

00:26:03.540 Oh, incidentally.

00:26:08.100 Let me back up a little bit here. You mentioned, I clipped in, college-age listeners, what could

00:26:16.420 they get from Jackson? Oh, sure.

00:26:18.100 May I back up for that just a minute? I got to bring in my, if you don't mind, I asked my daughter,

00:26:26.260 Andrea, about this question because she was a student of mine not too many years ago in my

00:26:34.500 Jack London course. By the way, I have a 22-year-old daughter. I lost my wife to cancer 25 years ago.

00:26:46.660 I have four wonderful children from that marriage. But Andrea has been a godsend to me, and she's

00:26:56.340 become a kind of Jack London fan. I asked her this question, by the way. I said, well, what would you

00:27:02.740 say about these students? She said, you know, Jack wrote a thousand words minimum a day. She said that'd

00:27:11.540 be, and she said that'd leave most college students balking. She said, at the same time,

00:27:24.340 said most students would still do well to have his kind of motivation and his kind of schedule. So,

00:27:33.380 I just wanted to bring that in, if you didn't mind. We'll move on now. Tell me what the next

00:27:39.460 question was, please. Well, how did he improve his writing during those years he was getting all

00:27:46.020 those rejection letters? Ah, well, let me see if I can get that from the outset. For one thing,

00:27:56.580 I think the fact that he was a reader helped him considerably. But at first, when he was trying

00:28:06.420 to break into the literary marketplace, bear in mind, Brett, that there were about 500 magazines out

00:28:13.460 in those days, that we didn't have television, we didn't have movies, we didn't have the radio,

00:28:21.300 we certainly didn't have computers or what have you, and that the magazine was the major

00:28:26.900 cultural medium or what have you at the time. So, there are a lot of chances for a writer to break

00:28:34.980 in with short stories and poems and articles and what have you, even novel serials. So,

00:28:42.820 he was trying to write the kind of stuff that was being published in the popular magazines. 0.68

00:28:49.780 Now, most of that was sentimental crap trap and what have you, was second rate. So,

00:28:54.900 what he was trying, what he was producing was third rate. Bless his heart. I've read,

00:29:01.140 in fact, we published some of those stories in our complete edition, in the Stanford edition there,

00:29:08.660 and you can understand why they were rejected. But what he did, he began copying the works of

00:29:19.860 Kipling. He was reading intensively such contemporaries as Joseph Conrad and Robert Louis Stevenson,

00:29:29.140 even some of the earlier masters like Poe and Melville actually copying some of their works

00:29:35.540 to get a feel of what it was, especially Kipling's plain style. He also said he read Herbert Spencer's

00:29:46.500 pamphlet, Philosophy of Style, which taught him to use words that would

00:29:52.420 clearly convey the meaning of his stories. In other words, unlike some of the contemporaries or

00:30:01.380 modern writers I mentioned earlier, I'm thinking of Faulkner and Henry James and James Joyce,

00:30:10.340 he wrote so clearly that the reader could understand what he was telling without any help from the

00:30:17.940 professors or the critics. That's one reason, as I say, he's not been very popular with the establishment.

00:30:25.620 Now, back to his year in the Klondike, which was a turning point in his writing,

00:30:33.060 he said, it was in the Klondike I found myself. He said, you get your true perspective up there,

00:30:38.660 I got mine. He didn't do any writing up there. He did a lot of listening. He did a lot of first-hand

00:30:47.540 observing. Of course, he had some interesting experiences himself. Most of what he wrote about

00:30:52.740 later on was stuff that he had heard other miners, sourdoughs and tenderfoots talk about,

00:30:59.780 some of the legends up there. Anyhow, when he came back, he had something really substantial

00:31:06.900 to work with, as well as he had been over that year kind of mulling, and I think his style

00:31:16.020 was improved, even though he hadn't been writing up there. I think he needed that period of kind

00:31:22.980 of maturing or whatever. When he got back, he was still a little unsure of himself, as you can tell

00:31:29.940 from his letters back in 1898 or so when he came back. But early in 1899, the Atlantic Monthly accepted the

00:31:44.260 story of his story called An Odyssey of the North. And they said, Dear Mr. London, we'll accept your

00:31:53.700 story here, give you $120 plus a year's free subscription to the Atlantic Monthly if you'll let

00:32:02.020 us cut, if you don't mind cutting about a third of it. He didn't like the idea of cutting it, but he was

00:32:09.620 going to take their offer because $120 then was three or four months pay in the factories. Plus,

00:32:19.940 and this is the most important thing, if you made it in the Atlantic Monthly, you were in because that

00:32:27.060 was probably the most important magazine, not only in America, but maybe in the world. And once he got

00:32:34.180 into the Atlantic Monthly, he was set. Let me mention something else, though, in terms of his success.

00:32:44.660 There have been several studies of genius, successful genius, not only in writing, but also in sports

00:32:52.740 and music and mathematics and computers and what have you. And a common denominator there,

00:33:01.140 according to some of the experts, is thousands of hours spent in practice. At least one, maybe two of

00:33:10.500 these experts have set 10,000 hours as the standard there of practice. And Jack London would have met

00:33:20.740 that standard in terms of the hours he spent reading and writing and perfecting his trade. Once he had

00:33:27.460 perfected that, that was it. In other words, once he began producing his best work in, say, 1900 or so,

00:33:39.380 from then on, he did that without too much trouble. It was amazing he could turn out these stories,

00:33:47.620 as I say, minimum 1,000 words a day. What he did often was to mull a while. He'd make notes and then

00:33:55.620 mull over the stories. But once he started writing, he'd get it down there. And almost,

00:34:03.060 without exception, there were very few revisions that he would make. It's amazing what he was able

00:34:11.940 to produce. Anyhow, I hope I've answered your question.

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00:35:18.980 And now back to the show. You did. So one thing that I've noticed in Jack London's fiction,

00:35:27.540 then I also saw this in your biography when you talked about personal letters from Jack London,

00:35:34.180 was he had this idea of living a life with the spirit of adventure and romance. First,

00:35:41.540 what did London mean by that? And then second, do you think people today in the 21st century

00:35:48.740 are capable of living a life filled with the spirit of romance and adventure?

00:35:52.580 Oh, it's a good question, Brent. Let me, uh, uh, let me see here. I guess if you read my book,

00:35:59.940 you've read Jack London's famous credo where he says it's better to, I mean, the function of man is

00:36:06.900 to live, not to exist. He wants to be a meteor and all that. So I think that pretty well in one way

00:36:14.100 sums up his attitude. But, uh, I say in my biography, he was a natural born seeker. Uh,

00:36:22.100 and I, and that's something I think that no other biographer is quite said in the same way.

00:36:27.860 And that this is one of our most basic, uh, primal drives that, excuse me, uh, that the, uh,

00:36:39.620 scientists have discovered in the last few decades, along with the drive for what food, fear,

00:36:48.100 and, uh, all the sex of what have you, that in all mammals, there is this deep seated primal, uh,

00:36:56.180 seeking drive often that, uh, pushes us to seek new, uh, adventures, even sometimes,

00:37:05.620 though it may be at the risk of life. Sometimes it means, uh, uh, that this drive overrides some

00:37:12.260 of those other fundamental drives. Anyhow, I'm saying that Jack was a natural born seeker and

00:37:17.780 had an extraordinarily powerful seeking drive like you, Tennyson's Ulysses. He wanted to drink

00:37:24.340 life to the leaves and savor every drop of it, even if it meant risking his own life. Romance and

00:37:30.660 adventure meant seeking new worlds, uh, to explore, uh, dangerous, unexplored, what,

00:37:38.740 terror and incognito, including the worlds of the mind, by the way, wasn't just out there

00:37:44.660 geographically, but he was, uh, uh, he was a seeker in terms of knowledge throughout his life,

00:37:50.740 even to the end of his life. Note, for example, I talk about his discovery of the work, the theories

00:37:58.180 of Carl Gustav Jung just a few months before he died. He said to charming his wife, I'm standing

00:38:06.020 on the edge of a world so new, so terrible, so wonderful. I'm almost afraid. Look over into it.

00:38:11.380 Uh, his use of the word almost, I think, is important, because he mastered his fear and

00:38:18.260 underwent a really major, uh, psychological and philosophical transformation or awakening,

00:38:26.340 perhaps I should call it, before his death and produced some of his finest stories the last

00:38:31.860 several months of his life. Actually, a bit of irony here, uh, he had been writing with what

00:38:40.900 Jung calls, uh, a primordial vision from almost from the start. I mean, the Call of the Wild,

00:38:49.140 for example, is, is full of what we call myth and archetypes and what have you. It's a wonderful

00:38:55.620 book in terms of, of that universal appeal. But, uh, as I say, London realized at the end there that

00:39:04.020 he had, he had been missing something. And I think he was undergoing a significant, uh, what spiritual

00:39:10.820 awakening as well as philosophical awakening toward the end there. Brett, I think that it's still

00:39:18.420 possible, but it's much more difficult now. We, and it's, it's much more difficult now for folks

00:39:26.340 than it was for me when I was coming along. Uh, there are so many more restrictions and what have

00:39:34.100 you. Too many young people, I'm afraid, are trying to get their romance and adventure playing video games

00:39:41.220 and watching spectacular videos and, and what have you. They're bombarded with all these things that

00:39:50.340 we didn't have when I was growing up, for example, and no television. Then we didn't have the radio,

00:39:55.860 but, uh, back when Jack was coming along, they didn't even have that. So, uh, young folks had to go

00:40:02.420 out on their own to, to seek adventures instead of finding them on a computer screen or TV screen or what

00:40:10.500 have you. Uh, I see, I've got something for Andrea here that I'm, I'll share with you if you don't mind.

00:40:17.620 Uh, uh, it says it's definitely possible. She said to live with the spirit of adventure, but many

00:40:24.020 American lives seem to be too small and too regulated. I guess that's something else. We're

00:40:30.100 closed in by restrictions or whatever that we didn't, that we didn't have back in those days.

00:40:35.460 Uh, she says if guided tourists in there and that doesn't bring new schedules along for their 0.86

00:40:42.100 vacation, that's it. And also she says financial constraints, but back in, in Jack's day and mine,

00:40:52.420 financial constraints were something we broke to go out to find adventure and, and romance or whatever,

00:40:58.260 because, uh, uh, we sometimes made money doing that. I can tell you more about my own experience

00:41:05.300 later on, but Jack, of course, when he got out, uh, uh, hobo and he, he managed to, to get food and,

00:41:13.780 and even money sometimes to keep going out there. It's just that it's more difficult, I think,

00:41:20.340 in every respect, uh, for folks now, it's still there, but, uh, it's not as easy to get.

00:41:28.100 Let's, uh, let's discuss the manliness of Jack London, because this is the art of manliness after

00:41:34.340 all. Uh, he did all these manly deeds. He was extremely competitive, extremely driven,

00:41:42.020 uh, tried to be physically strong, um, raised hell. He was a known ladies man, et cetera, et cetera.

00:41:48.820 But he was also very sensitive and had a deep, rich, emotional life. Um, what do you think Jack

00:41:56.660 London can teach other men about being a man? 0.77

00:42:00.740 It's a great question, Brad. Uh, uh, I don't know that many of us could match, uh, London and

00:42:13.700 all those aspects of what we call manliness, but, uh, we can certainly practice the art of

00:42:22.820 manliness as you've kind of demonstrated in your website to your listeners. Um, let me,

00:42:30.660 uh, let me see if I can clarify this a little further in terms of what you've already brought

00:42:39.460 up here. First, I think it's important to know that Jack wasn't merely the macho man.

00:42:48.100 Uh, I think London was what, what I would call the complete man who had accepted his

00:42:56.420 on him or sensitive feminine element as an essential component of his, of his whole self. Now I'm

00:43:04.900 getting into union psychology here, but the idea is that each of us has elements of both the masculine

00:43:13.060 and feminine. I don't mean in any kind of literal sense, but those characteristics we associate with

00:43:18.820 those two, uh, genres in our psyche and that in order to become a complete person, we've got to assimilate

00:43:29.220 and recognize and appreciate those elements. I love, uh, for example, I'm quoting that, uh, famous photographer,

00:43:38.580 portrait photographer, Arnold Genthy, who is a good friend of Jackson, uh, described London's face as,

00:43:46.820 as I'm quoting here, poignantly sensitive. His eyes were the eyes of a dreamer. And there was almost

00:43:56.260 a feminine wistfulness about him. And yet at the same time, he gave the feeling of a terrible and

00:44:05.620 unconquerable physical force at unquote. At the same time, Jack despised cowardice in a man.

00:44:14.820 He, he, he could weep, but he never could whine or whimper. He was, I'm, I'm thinking of other

00:44:24.980 characteristics. He was fearless. Now I'm going to say that by example, uh, men, a true man should be

00:44:36.340 fearless, but not foolish. There's a limitation there. And sometimes Jack simply didn't recognize his own limits,

00:44:43.140 I think. I think also in terms of this idea of man in this from Jack, we get the concept of self

00:44:51.940 reliance and self determination, but not self absorption. In other words, and not totally wrapped

00:45:02.500 up in oneself. I mean, some of Jack's, uh, uh, uh, major characters, I'm thinking of Wolf Larson and

00:45:10.340 Martin Eden die because they're too self-absorbed in a sense. And they're not interested enough and

00:45:18.820 kind enough to the other human beings around them. Also, of course, there, there's the business,

00:45:25.540 I think in getting close to nature, if we can, and if possible, get closer to nature in the wild.

00:45:32.420 Uh, and it is possible nowadays. In fact, uh, I still, I, one of my, uh, grandsons,

00:45:42.580 he, he lifts weights, he plays rugby, and he goes out, uh, climbs mountains in the Rockies every

00:45:49.220 summer. So he's found a way to find that adventure, even though we have difficulties nowadays doing it.

00:45:57.060 I think he's, he's got the idea of manliness there. I hope that gives you some, some idea or

00:46:04.340 an answer to your question. It did. Um, so one thing I found as I was reading your biography is that

00:46:12.980 while there's so much to admire about Jack London, he also had his flaws, um, like any person. What were

00:46:21.460 Jack London's biggest flaws that haunted his career and personal life? Oh my, well, he was subject to

00:46:28.820 fits of depression. I think he was, he may have been bipolar. Uh, he hated bullies, but especially in

00:46:38.580 the later years of his life, he could do some bullying himself, especially when he was suffering

00:46:44.020 from some of his, uh, medical ailments and what have you. Uh, as tremendous seeking drive, I think

00:46:54.420 might be considered a fault in view of the many times he, he endangered his life and even the lives of

00:47:01.860 maybe his wife, Charmin, and some of the crew members of his boat, the snark there.

00:47:06.900 Yeah. In other words, he was an extremist. And I think that can be dangerous. He also refused to

00:47:19.380 accept reality at times. He loved life and, and was in denial of the fact that he was so very,

00:47:26.340 very ill up to the very end. He was also in denial about his alcoholism. He always claimed that he was

00:47:36.740 not, uh, uh, drunkard. And that I think is true. I mean, nobody ever saw him after he was grown,

00:47:45.700 but, uh, out of, out of control. In fact, his wife, Charmin, said he just got more intense

00:47:53.620 intellectually. And I think his friends say the same thing. I think there's no question, though,

00:47:59.700 that he suffered the symptoms of, of alcoholism. And I know that's an ailment. I don't know

00:48:06.660 whether it considered a flaw in his character, but it's certainly a problem that he had.

00:48:11.620 And he was also in denial in terms of, uh, taking enough exercise and doing the right kind

00:48:20.260 of eating, staying on a healthful diet after he, after he got older. Those are the,

00:48:27.300 the flaws that I think of just offhand.

00:48:29.620 Okay. Um, it sort of leads us to the, my next question. Let's talk about his death

00:48:36.100 because it's something that's very controversial. Um, many people, including some Jack London

00:48:42.260 biographers believe that London committed suicide and they use this belief to tarnish London and his

00:48:49.780 legacy. But you come to a different conclusion in your biography. Um, how did Jack London die?

00:48:56.100 This is a major issue, Brett. And I've been contending with this for the past, uh, half century or more.

00:49:06.020 This canard or fly, whatever you want to call it, uh, started in 1938 with a publication of Irving

00:49:14.660 Stone's sailor on horseback. And it's been perpetrated, uh, and perpetuated ever since then.

00:49:22.180 And it's amazing to me that it's, it's held on the way it has in the, in the light of,

00:49:28.900 of all evidence. I guess a lot of, uh, scholars, even, even the serious scholars think it's more,

00:49:37.060 somehow more colorful or whatever than he commits suicide, but there's not a shred of evidence

00:49:42.900 that he committed suicide. In fact, on the night before his death,

00:49:49.300 I think the last letter he wrote was a letter to his two daughters in saying he was going to be down

00:49:55.220 in Oakland, wanted to take them out to a picnic the following week before he went on a trip to

00:50:00.500 New York City. There's no, no indications that he was thinking of suicide. There's some possibility.

00:50:08.900 We don't know for sure. There's some possibility that he may have administered, uh, uh,

00:50:15.780 self-administered morphine the night, uh, before he died, but it's been clinically proven that that

00:50:23.700 was not the, probably not the cause of his death. Uh, there've been several studies done recently by

00:50:31.220 distinguished physicians and medical scientists, what have you demonstrating that the probable

00:50:40.900 cause of his death was, uh, uh, stroke and heart failure. Now he was suffering from kidney problems

00:50:50.660 for the last three years of his life. And there were four attending physicians during his dying hours

00:51:00.020 there, all of whom attributed his death to natural causes. The newspapers at the time, uh, also said

00:51:08.580 that his death certificate signed by Dr. Porter also attributes his death to uremia. Now, because he had

00:51:17.700 been suffering from kidney problems, that seemed to be the logical thing, but the, that is the symptoms

00:51:24.740 when they found him that last morning, uh, he was in a sort of paralytic state. One, his, there was that,

00:51:35.220 uh, what, uh, what we call cyanotic, cyanotic, uh, coloring in his face. And, and, uh, uh,

00:51:44.020 as I think Charlie said, he, he, he tried to beat the, the, uh, bed with one arm, but the other arm

00:51:51.700 could not move. All of that points to the symptoms of, of stroke, I think. And that's what I've tried to

00:52:00.820 make clear in my biography. I've, and if you look at my end notes, you'll see a good deal of, uh,

00:52:06.740 substantiation of what I've just said there about his, about his death and even about the,

00:52:13.300 the drug overdose, which is, I say, uh, that, that is, is highly debatable even in itself.

00:52:21.060 So you are a, uh, a college professor and you teach a course on Jack London and his work.

00:52:29.700 What do you hope your students get out of reading Jack London's fiction?

00:52:33.140 Well, let me, uh, uh, let's see. I think, uh, uh, he's, he's got plenty to stay for,

00:52:49.220 to stay for our, uh, all of us nowadays and including, uh, uh, uh, my students and others,

00:52:57.100 the whole business of, uh, uh, of seeing what adventure may, may be possible for them.

00:53:05.660 The, uh, possibility maybe of getting out of the city. And I think perhaps as important as anything,

00:53:15.740 the importance of reading, but also connecting what you read with life. I, I keep thinking about

00:53:24.380 Emerson who said, only so much do I know as I have lived. And so with Jack, and I think even with

00:53:31.660 students today, it's important to, to relate what they're reading and, uh, even what they're viewing

00:53:41.180 on video or what have you to real life, to make that vital connection. The world's still a very

00:53:48.300 fascinating place, even though we're restricted in so many ways that we weren't when I was

00:53:54.220 growing up and certainly when, when Jack was growing up. My, my students invariably have

00:54:01.900 been very, uh, positive in their responses to London's work and his talk of adventure and what

00:54:09.820 have you. And I think more than one has actually, has actually gone on the adventure trail himself or

00:54:18.060 herself as a result of readings of Jack. And I'm hoping in any, in any case, it's opened their minds

00:54:25.580 to worlds out there that they might not have dreamed of otherwise.

00:54:32.140 Um, Herodotus, the famous historian, um, said that biography should be used as moral instruction.

00:54:40.300 And are there lessons you hope readers will take away from the life of Jack London after reading

00:54:47.100 your biography?

00:54:47.980 Uh, another good question, Brent. I'm trying to, uh, let me see how I can best approach this.

00:54:56.540 What are there? Uh, let me see. Don't be afraid of life or life's challenges. I think that's one,

00:55:04.780 uh, message they could get out of here. I think that's a moral lesson. Avoid self-pity. Be open,

00:55:13.100 fair, and honest, and dealing with your fellow human beings. Be honest with yourself. Be open to

00:55:21.740 new ideas and opportunities, but avoid extremes. I think Jack, uh, sometimes couldn't draw the line

00:55:29.900 there. He, he, he tended too often to go beyond that, uh, that line. He was an extremist. He admitted

00:55:38.380 himself. I think characteristics like kindness, decency, courage, all of these are lessons can be,

00:55:47.420 I would hope be conveyed from the life of Jack London. I know this is going to sound a little corny,

00:55:53.900 but I think a major thing that I would like my readers to, to get from this book is the importance

00:56:02.140 of love. I don't mean, uh, I mean, love in the fullest sense, love of life, love of adventure,

00:56:11.900 but, uh, also love of, uh, of nature, love of the other creatures on God's earth. And that means the

00:56:21.820 animals, as well as the human beings, Jack, Jack was very much in love with life and in its fullest

00:56:28.940 sense. And I'll mention again that, uh, this is a major theme in the call of the wild, the white 0.98

00:56:35.900 thing. And it's also a major theme in the sea wolf. If you read the sea wolf, well,

00:56:41.420 flarson is the most impressive character in American fiction, I think, but will flarson dies because he is,

00:56:48.540 he's not in love with much, even with himself. I think the, the survivor hero of the book in a

00:56:56.940 sense is Humphrey van Wade, who falls in love with this woman and, and becomes a total man as a result

00:57:05.900 of it. Just as Jack, I think fell in love with charming in London. Well, flarson reflects a good

00:57:11.660 deal of, uh, of Jack's, what he called long sickness. And he said later on that love of people

00:57:18.220 and love of a woman cured him, which I think it may have. Uh, oh, let me mention one other thing.

00:57:25.340 And I guess I can put a moral, uh, kind of moral implication on this or what have you.

00:57:32.620 Jack loved the earth, love mother earth. Remember the last several years of his life,

00:57:37.100 he devoted to restoring the earth out there in the valley of the moon, to building, rebuilding

00:57:45.820 the land. He was a pioneer in ecology. So I'm saying that I think that can be included as one of the

00:57:55.660 moral implications or perhaps I'd say inferences. I want the, the reader to get from reading about his

00:58:03.100 life. Very good. That was all wonderful, wonderful, um, insights. Um, so I'd like to talk a little

00:58:11.580 bit about your life because as I was trying to find out your contact information and in our conversations

00:58:19.900 and email, I learned that you had, have had a life that somewhat mirrored Jack London's in a few ways.

00:58:28.140 Um, you did some really strenuous and manly things as a young man, but ended up a man of letters,

00:58:35.660 like Jack London. Can you talk a bit about your, your younger life and how did those experiences

00:58:42.300 as a young man affect your work as a, an adult? Well, I appreciate, I appreciate the question.

00:58:51.020 So bear with me. Sure. Uh, there, there are some similarities now. Let me start by saying there's

00:58:57.980 no way I could match Jack London and, and either, uh, uh, his, uh, his physical exploits or his, uh,

00:59:07.980 his certainly not in his magnificent, uh, literary exploits. But I, I did have a little similarity

00:59:16.140 in my childhood. I was a depression kid. My family never suffered from acute poverty,

00:59:23.420 but we were on the edge. I never went hungry as a child, but there were times when, uh, life was

00:59:29.820 pretty tough. I mean, there were times when we certainly didn't have a car. There were times

00:59:34.700 when we were, uh, buying day old bread for a nickel of a loaf, but that was, there's nothing wrong with

00:59:41.100 that. Um, my folks, uh, sent me to Dallas technical high school to learn a trade back in

00:59:51.340 those days. Oh, usually it's only rich for kids that could afford to go to college. So I went to

00:59:58.380 Dallas tech. I, I did pretty well in machine shop, wood shop, electric shop, auto shop. Uh,

01:00:06.700 I did very well in drafting probably would have become a draftsman as my, uh, career,

01:00:14.140 except for a wonderful English teacher who spotted me virtually the first week in class as a college

01:00:21.500 material. She groomed me for four years. We wrote a theme a week. She groomed me for college and helped

01:00:28.940 me get scholarships at SMU so that I was able to, to go to college. And I was

01:00:35.740 able to write to after all that practice. I don't know if I had 10,000 hours like Jack, but

01:00:41.180 I did a lot of writing, uh, under her tutelage. And that made a big difference in my success in,

01:00:47.580 in college. But even then, uh, I had to work, uh, particularly in the summers. Uh, one summer,

01:00:56.060 I spent, uh, stringing barbed wire fence in East Texas and another summer, second summer,

01:01:03.420 excuse me, baiting hay up in Oklahoma. Uh, next summer, I worked on a maintenance crew at Lone Star

01:01:12.860 Steel in, uh, in Texas down there. So, uh, I, I, and I'd had other jobs. I were, I worked for a while

01:01:21.520 in a, when I was in school, worked in a bakery for a while, worked in a, uh, a fish market for a while.

01:01:29.200 Oh, I remember my mom wouldn't let me come in the back door. When I got home in the evenings,

01:01:34.240 she had me change my clothes out in the garage because, uh, I've been working with the fish all

01:01:40.000 day. I'm just saying that, uh, all that, I think may have been in one way good for me. It certainly

01:01:46.820 made me appreciate school. I was always ready to go back to school when the time came, but the big

01:01:52.420 adventure I had closest to Jack London came when I was, after I graduated from SMU in 1949,

01:02:00.860 my best friend I mentioned earlier, P.B. Lindsey from Gilmer, Texas, the, uh, the veteran,

01:02:09.460 he and I decided we were going to get away from all this, all the restrictions of, of society and

01:02:16.860 civilization and all that, kind of like Jack hitting the road. We were going to work the wheat harvest

01:02:21.780 all the way from the Texas handle, panhandle up to Canada. And that would give us enough, uh, money

01:02:28.580 to, uh, grub steak, whatever, to buy the supplies to go out into the Canadian wilderness and spend a

01:02:36.500 year. We even spotted a lake out there totally away from all kinds of civilization. We were going

01:02:42.760 to go out there and build a cabin and just spend a year in the wilderness or whatever. Now, Brett,

01:02:49.220 I got to admit that the good Lord was with us. We didn't make it to Canada, but we had some remarkable

01:02:54.500 adventures along the way. In fact, uh, my next book, which I'm working on right now is going to be a

01:03:02.500 celebration of that particular odyssey, which took place in one of the most significant periods in

01:03:09.860 American cultural history, which never been celebrated. I'm talking about that unique five

01:03:15.780 year period in American history between the end of the second world war and beginning of the Korean

01:03:21.540 war. Unlike the twenties, nobody's done much with that. And I think while there's still somebody

01:03:27.140 around who remembers it, it ought to be celebrated because it was, it was very different, very special.

01:03:32.420 So, I mean, all the veterans coming back America, there was an aura of optimism then that I think

01:03:39.140 we never had before, maybe not since. I mean, the American folks had, uh, uh, we had lived successfully

01:03:48.340 through triumphantly through a depression and, uh, and the large, the biggest war in history,

01:03:56.100 we had emerged triumphant where America was the, uh, clearly the most powerful nation in the world.

01:04:02.500 Look at what we'd accomplished. So we felt that the sky was the limit. And as a result, uh, uh,

01:04:10.420 as I say, there was a kind of aura about that period that I think needs to be celebrated. And I want

01:04:15.940 to do that in this book of mine because my friend PB and I were part of that. I mean, the idea that we

01:04:22.660 could go up there and, uh, uh, do all that was, uh, it sounds and sounds very foolish now,

01:04:29.780 but at the time we felt we could do it. After all, we were both, uh, uh, we both won gold medals

01:04:35.460 in weightlifting. And I, uh, you know, I, I did some weightlifting there, competitive Olympic lifting,

01:04:40.900 and, and we didn't know what our limits were at the time that that would come later. But that, uh,

01:04:48.020 particular Odyssey took us through the Midwest up to the, even as far as, uh, the, uh, Yellowstone

01:04:56.020 and what have you. I worked on building grain elevators. I worked, uh, uh, let's say some of

01:05:04.900 the other jobs on the wheat field. We worked, uh, uh, threshing wheat or harvesting wheat. We worked,

01:05:12.180 uh, for a while up in, uh, Kansas City. I even had a little like London. I had a

01:05:17.860 little bit of boxing experience, but unlike London, I had enough of that and decided I'd

01:05:21.860 stick with weights because I, I preferred that kind of passive resistance. And I even, uh,

01:05:28.180 had a job trimming hams and armors meat packing plan. So all of that, I think in one sense, uh,

01:05:34.900 might relate to, to Jack and what he went through. As I say, the world in many ways is more open than I

01:05:41.380 had, I had no worries about, uh, hitchhiking. All those adventures we had, not once did we

01:05:48.020 encounter drugs, alcoholism or what have you. Uh, I'll give you one example here. And if you've

01:05:54.100 got time, sure. One of our, our toughest jobs was with an alfalfa mill out in Western Kansas.

01:06:02.260 Now, some of the other work had been, I guess as strange, I certainly working in the steel mill was

01:06:09.380 more dangerous in some ways, but this alfalfa mill out west of Arne, Kansas involved our sacking dried

01:06:17.620 alfalfa feed for, uh, livestock. And they, the way it happened, they would bring in the trucks

01:06:25.140 around this fresh alfalfa and it would be dried and tied up to top of this, uh, uh, this furnace and

01:06:34.580 come down in these, uh, uh, funnels to, to, uh, uh, the, uh, workplace below where we were supposed

01:06:42.100 to sack it in 100 pound seed sacks. And each, there were three, there were three pipes coming down

01:06:48.580 and then, uh, we'd put, uh, uh, in the sack on the one that's, uh, uh, on the other one. When that

01:07:03.060 sack is full, we stretch it over, stretch it to the other one. We affect the full of that sack over the

01:07:09.300 scales. Make sure it weighs 100 pounds, exactly. If it's too much, take a little out and throw it in the

01:07:15.220 The barrel next to the air was too little.

01:07:16.840 We took a little out of the barrel and put in there.

01:07:19.680 And we load these up.

01:07:21.280 When they're full, we sew them up, load them up forward to a dolly

01:07:24.420 and wheel them out to a box quarry next to us.

01:07:27.900 Now, that was strenuous work.

01:07:29.540 It was heavy work, but that didn't bother us.

01:07:31.420 We were young and strong.

01:07:33.460 The problem was this fine green dust was in the air all the time,

01:07:40.680 and it got into our lungs, into our eyes, into our ears and what have you.

01:07:45.220 And finally, my friend got a case of best pneumonia from it.

01:07:51.080 Anyhow, that was probably the worst job we had.

01:07:55.560 But all of that, I think, helped motivate us,

01:08:00.400 at least helped motivate me to come back and get a master's degree at SMU.

01:08:06.380 I'm taking more time than I should here,

01:08:08.500 but I wanted to give you an idea of what I'm doing with that book

01:08:14.460 we're calling The Farm Music.

01:08:16.920 Yeah, I can't wait to read that when it comes out.

01:08:19.980 Well, Earl Labor, this has been just a fascinating discussion.

01:08:24.620 Thank you so much for your time.

01:08:26.100 It's been a pleasure.

01:08:27.720 I appreciate it.

01:08:28.700 As I say, I appreciate your interest and your patience,

01:08:30.920 and I look forward to corresponding with you again concerning The Art of Man in this.

01:08:36.620 Well, thank you very much.

01:08:37.980 It's really an honor.

01:08:39.980 I really enjoyed your book,

01:08:41.540 and I just love listening to what you had to say about Jack London.

01:08:45.760 My pleasure.

01:08:46.680 Take care now.

01:08:47.320 Take care.

01:08:47.640 You too.

01:08:47.920 Our guest today was Earl Labor.

01:08:50.000 Professor Labor is the curator of the Jack London Museum in Shreveport,

01:08:53.040 and he teaches American literature at Centenary College, Louisiana,

01:08:55.700 and he is the author of the biography Jack London and American Life.

01:09:01.180 You can find that on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere,

01:09:04.620 and I recommend that all of you go pick up a copy and read it.

01:09:07.520 It's a great read.

01:09:08.660 I think you'll get a lot out of it.

01:09:12.380 Well, that wraps up another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast.

01:09:15.840 For more manly tips and advice,

01:09:17.480 make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com,

01:09:21.060 and until next time, stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - May 10, 2014

#67： The Manliness of Jack London With Earle Labor

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