Jack London, working class laborer, writer, adventurer, farmer, environmentalist, and 100% Westman. In his 40 short years on this planet he lived live to its fullest. In his own words:
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London worked as a child laborer, oyster pirate, fish and game warden, coal stoker and war correspondent. He tramped the country and sailed the South Pacific in a boat of his own design. He was a rancher and farmer, he pioneered sustainable farming methods producing crops from land others had abandoned as farmed out and worthless. In 17 years he wrote 50 books. As a writer he committed himself to writing 1000 words a day regardless of the circumstances. It is said of Jack that he lived a life as close to an architypal hero as one man could, and a tragic one at that.
Jack London
Born
January 12, 1876
San Francisco, California
Died
November 22, 1916 (aged 40) on his farm
Glen Ellen, California, U.S.
Jack was born out of wedlock to Flora Wellman. The father was William Chaney and itinerant astrologer. In today’s terminology Flora Wellman and William Chaney could be described as progressive free love hippie types. When Flora became pregnant with Jack, William Chaney abandoned her. Shortly after Jack’s birth Flora married John London, a disabled civil war veteran. The family lived in Oakland, California.
In 1876, the year Jack was born, the nation was still convulsing from the effects of the civil war and reconstruction, Custer had just made his last stand at the Little Bighorn.
As a child, Jack labored as a farm hand, hawked newspapers, delivered ice and and was a pin boy in a bowling alley. What free time he had was spent in the Oakland free library. In his middle teens , Jack began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. It was the life of a beast.
Desparately Seeking a way out, using a combination of saved and borrowed money, he bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank. He then went out on the San Francisco Bay and taught himself to sail. and Like French Frank he too became an oyster pirate. Poaching oysters was very lucrative, Jack could make more money in one evening pirating oysters than a months wages working at the cannery. After a few months, and a few close calls with the law, the razzle-dazzle became damaged beyond repair. Jack then decided to switch sides and hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol, tracking down and arresting Oyster pirates and other poachers.
As a schoolboy, Jack often studied at Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, a port-side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend university and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold was later to lend Jack some tuition money to get him started at the University. Heinhold embodied the spirit of the West, he saw something in Jack and wanted to help. When we come along side of our people and lend a hand we are at our best as a people.
In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest.
His mother urged him to enter a contest being promoted by the San Francisco Morning Call. The newspaper was offering a 25-dollar prize for the best descriptive article. Jack wrote about the typhoon his ship had endured off the Japanese coast. On November 12, 1893, the Call published Jack’s article as the winner. A 17-year-old with only a grade-school education had triumphed over students from the University of California and Stanford University. This marked the beginning of London’s career as a writer.
Jack desperately wanted to attend the University of California, at Berkeley. When Jack found out he could gain entrance into the University of California via challenge exams he quit high school and devoted himself to a summer of intense study. He passed the challenge exam and was admitted to the University of California at Berkley in 1896. Discipline and Industriousness at work in life of this Westman. Financial realities however forced him to leave in 1897, he never graduated, but he never quit on his dreams either. There is no evidence that he ever wrote for student publications while at Berkeley.
During his time at Berkeley, Jack continued to spend time at Heinold's saloon, where he was introduced to the sailors and adventurers who would influence his writing. Heinold's was the place where Jack met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea. Mclean was the basis for Captain Wolf Larsen, in the novel The Sea-Wolf.
Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon is now unofficially named Jack London's Rendezvous in his honor. It still stands today and is much the same as it was in Jack London’s day, including the gas lighting.
Jack worked at a jute mill and then got a job shoveling coal in a power plant. It seemed like he was doing the shoveling of 2 men, the work was arduous, his wrists became so swollen that he had to bind them with leather straps. Jack later found out he was indeed doing the work of two men, and as a scab at that. When Jack came looking for a job he was young and fit. The bosses fired 2 men and gave the job to Jack. Jack was also to find out that one of the men killed himself in despair at not being able to provide food for his family. Jack quit in disgust. He was never the same after that.
This event brought Jack to the realization that something was very wrong with society and the world. It was a world that forced six- and seven-year-old children to work in coal mines and canneries for their mere survival, while at the same time the wiley capitalist oligrachs indulged themselves in the comfort and ease of their prosperity. His stark childhood experiences with capitalism implanted the seed of socialist rebellion which later matured into an active political struggle against the ruling oligarchy.
Jack then joined the Klondike gold rush and spent the winter of 1897 in the Yukon. Of the Klondike Jack said “here men don’t talk, they think” The gold that Jack came back with was in his notebook where he recorded the sights and sounds of the Klondike. It was to provide the background for many of his stories.
Jack concluded that his only hope of escaping a life of brutish physical labor was to get an education and "sell his brains". He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game.
Jack began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public audience with a strong market for short fiction.
In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post for $750, and the book rights to Macmillan publishing. It was to become one of his most famous and widely read books. It was an immediate success. But he had sold it for a flat fee. He received no royalties from the millions of copies that sold in America and abroad. But, the popularity of The Call of the Wild played an important role in setting Jack up for later financial success. Call of the wild can and should be read as an allegory of Westernkind.
The story follows a pampered house dog named Buck, —a mix of St. Bernard and Scotch collie that is stolen and sold into the Klondike gold rush to be a sled dog.
Buck begins as a pampered pet dog but then is forced to adapt to survive in the wilderness of Canada. He first submits to “the law of club and fang,” doing all he can to avoid beatings and fights, but, as time progresses, he becomes more self-conscious. More self aware of his connection to his kind in their natural state. A state that been both pampered and then beaten out of him. Buck succumbs fully to the call of the wild when he encounters a pack of wolves that he will come to lead. Buck comes to realize that the strength of the pack arises from the strength of the individual and that in a world of collectives individualism is suicide.
In 1905, Jack married for the second time to Charmian Kittredge. his true soul mate. They shared many adventures till Jack’s untimely death in 1916. In spite of the outdoor life that Jack and Charmian led his health was chronically poor. Bad teeth, gout, drinking, smoking, and a love of nearly raw duck suppers all took their toll and contributed to his health problems. But it was his use of a mercury based ointment while he and Charmian sailed aboard the Snark, that was to lead to the kidney failure that took his life at age 40.
Jack once remarked to his wife Charmian that “I wouldn’t mind if you laid my ashes on the knoll where the Greenlaw children are buried. And roll over me a red boulder from the ruins of the Big House.
Most of Jack London’s books are out of copyright and available free at Project Gutenberg, link in the description. So help Jack continue to battle the Oligarch class by not buying his books from Amazon. Knowing you are reading them without putting money into Jeff Bozo’s pocket makes the reading all the more enjoyable.
References:
Most of Jack London’s books are out of copyright and available free at Project Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/120
and free libravox audio books, use the LibraVox app to download and listen.
Jack London - Books, Quotes & Death - Biography
Jack London: Socialist and Racialist - American Renaissance
jack london The Short, Frantic, Rags-to-Riches Life of Jack London | At the Smithsonian| Smithsonian Magazine
Jack London Biography | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver
Jack London Biography - Childhood, Life Achievements & Timeline
jack London Ten Interesting Facts About Jack London
Jack London Surfing: A Royal Sport - Surf Simply
Jack London Call of the Wild Study Guide | GradeSaver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddDaGjHhHIY