London: I merely scratch a living

Less than a year before publishing his famous novel The Call of the Wild, Jack London was stuck in a rut. He had lived in the Klondike for a few years, using the experience as inspiration to several of his early works, but found himself $3000 in debt. On July 12, 1902, he wrote to a friend:

Concerning myself, I am moving along very slowly... Some day I shall begin to do things, until then I merely scratch a living. Between you and me, I wish I had never opened the books. That's where I was the fool.

London was 26 years old, a college drop-out, and his marriage to Bessie Maddern (who, he said, he married out of friendship rather than love) was not happy. The woman he really loved, Anna Strunsky, had moved to New York. Even so, while in the Klondike he had read John Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy and he determined that he too could be a great writer.

About a month before the letter quoted above, London published his first short story about a dog, originally titled "Diable — The Dog." In it, a half-wolf, half-dog named Diable (later re-written as Bâtard) is brutally tortured by his owner Black Leclère. The dog becomes angry and violent, earning the nickname "Hell's Spawn." One night, Diable takes revenge by attacking his owner in the night. Leclère survives, but refuses to have the dog put down, reveling in their violent bond. When Leclère is falsely accused of killing a fellow prospector, he is tied up, and Diable finally finishes what he started:

...His eyes chanced to fall upon Diable, head between fore paws and stretched on the ground asleep... He studied the animal closely, striving to sense if the sleep were real or feigned. The dog's sides were heaving regularly, but Leclère felt that the breath came and went a shade too quickly; also he felt there was a vigilance or an alertness to every hair which belied unshackling sleep. He would have given his Sunrise claim to be assured that the dog was not awake, and once, when one of his joints cracked, he looked quickly and guiltily at Diable to see if he roused... A few minutes later [the dog] got up slowly and lazily, stretched, and looked carefully about him... Assured that no one was in sight or hearing, Diable sat down, curled his upper lip almost into a smile, looked up at Leclère, and licked his chops.

*Some of the information from this post was found in Jack London: A Life (1997) by Alex Kershaw.

Jack London's fire: Never travel alone

"Never travel alone," Tom Vincent had often heard since taking on the challenge of the Klondike, though he often laughed at it. Though determined he was strong enough, he soon had "an experience that taught him respect for the frost, and for the wisdom of the men who had battled with it." Vincent is a character in Jack London's short story "To Build a Fire," first published in Youth's Companion on May 29, 1902.

Vincent has carefully prepared for his trip through the frozen tundra. Though the day is extremely cold — even considering the locale — he feels strong enough to challenge nature. When he stops to a quick bite to eat, however, his fingers frosted much more quickly than he expected. He employs his usual tactics: running briskly for a few minutes, rubbing his hands against his cheeks, and all seems fine. His plans, however, are quickly ruined when he falls through ice into a few feet of freezing water. As his body succumbs to numbness, he attempts the simple task of building a fire — a simple task that could save his life:

...Great care must be exercised; that with failure at the first attempt, the chance was made greater for failure at the second attempt. In short, he knew that there must be no failure. The moment before a strong, exulting man, boastful of his mastery of the elements, he was now fighting for his life against those same elements — such was the difference caused by the injection of a quart of water into a northland traveller's calculations. 

The reader is led to worry: will he survive?

No need for concern; the story is aimed for children and, naturally, has a happy ending and a lesson learned. London apparently was not satisfied by this and, some years later, re-wrote "To Build a Fire." This version is much darker and the narrator, now unnamed, has with him a canine companion. In the last few paragraphs, the story is told through the eyes of that dog in a method reminiscent of his novel The Call of the Wild (also set in the Klondike), which he published shortly after his first version of "To Build a Fire." In the later version of the story, there is no life lesson for the narrator to learn.

The Sea-Wolf: Then everything happened

After having signed up just over a week earlier, a teenaged Jack London shipped out from San Francisco aboard the Sophia Sutherland on January 20, 1893. The sealing expedition was bound for Japan and many experiences on board were later translated into The Sea-Wolf, a novel which London published in 1904, the year after his more famous book The Call of the Wild.

The Sea-Wolf features a character named Humphrey van Weydon, nicknamed "Sissy" for his lack of masculinity. A gentleman and occasional literary critic with a substantial inheritance, van Weydon starts the story aboard a ferry, living a calm, boring upper-class life. "Then everything happened, and with inconceivable rapidity": his ship is destroyed and he is cast adrift before blacking out in the cold water.

When he awakens, he is aboard a sealing vessel named Ghost. Within moments, he witnesses the callous removal of the dead first mate, who is unceremoniously cast into the sea (London himself witnessed a similar burial at sea aboard the Sophia Sutherland). Another crew member is promoted in his place, leaving room for "Hump," as the protagonist is now renamed — though his membership in the crew is not voluntary. The captain, described as a gorilla or tiger (or later, "devil"), is Wolf Larsen, a powerhouse of a man who takes Hump under his wing. Throughout the book, the two debate "immortality" versus "materialism"; the human soul versus animalistic survival instincts; the nature of manhood and masculinity. According to the captain:

"I believe that life is a mess... It is like yeast, a ferment, a thing that moves and may move for a minute, an hour, a year, or a hundred years, but that in the end will cease to move. The big eat the little that they may continue to move, the strong eat the weak that they may retain their strength. The lucky eat the most and move the longest, that is all."

Wolf Larsen is, without doubt, one of the most horrifically compelling characters in American literature. He is manipulative, cruel, intense, and unstoppable. Soon enough, Hump sees his old "sissy" nature being replaced by one closer to Wolf Larsen's image, at the same time gaining power and influence (as well as animosity) aboard the Ghost. Both allies and enemies, the tension between the two never ends and the reader of The Sea-Wolf is in constant fear that one will kill the other. Contemporary Gilded Age readers were shocked by the violence, cruelty, and nihilistic philosophical debate; readers today might feel equally shocked and equally enthralled. As Hump describes to a newcomer aboard the Ghost:

"You must understand... and understand clearly, that this man is a monster. He is without conscience. Nothing is sacred to him, nothing is too terrible for him to do. It was due to his whim that I was detained aboard in the first place. It is due to his whim that I am still alive. I do nothing, can do nothing, because I am a slave to this monster."

Jack London: the reign of primitive law

On January 12, 1876, Flora Wellman gave birth to a son (it is unclear if she was married at the time, or if William Chaney was or was not the boy's father). After injuring herself, she left the baby with a caretaker until after her second marriage, when she took him back and re-named him Jack London.

London's most famous book was certainly The Call of the Wild (1903), a story of Alaskan adventures told through the eyes of a dog named Buck. London originally planned it to be a short story of about 4,000 words but it quickly became a novel. Full of both pathos and violence, the book was a gritty and dark look at the nature of both man and beast:

He was beaten (he knew that), but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his afterlife he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law... The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect, and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. (From Chapter 1)

The work was first published by the Saturday Evening Post, which paid the cash-strapped London $750. When printed in book form, Macmillan publishers worried about taking a risk on the relatively unknown writer. Instead of offering royalties, they paid London $2,000 outright. When it became a huge success, London made no additional money.

But when still a teenager, London already had cash problems — that and a need for adventure propelled him to sea. On his 17th birthday, January 12, 1893, he acquired a space on board the schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for Japan to hunt seals. Already known locally as a bit of a ne'er-do-well with a drinking problem, London set sail about a week later. This experience inspired the next novel he published in his own name after The Call of the Wild. He named this one The Sea-Wolf, published in 1904.

*I must acknowledge a debt to James L. Haley, who provided some of the information in this post in his 2010 book Wolf: The Lives of Jack London.