The Writer’s Know-Nothingism

The life of Jack London is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of American letters. Long before Richard Hofstader gave currency to the term, London formulated the theory of Social Darwinism. A self-educated man, he bit off huge chunks of crude evolutionary theory which he crossed at once with Nietzscheanism and Marxism. He did this all within the space of a few months of cramming, trying desperately to make up for years in which he never went to school. In between his studies he worked in canning factories, laundries and power plants. He was an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay, he sailed before the mast on a sealer, he beat his way by freight across the continent, and he took a flier as a prospector in the Klondike. Life, to him, was raw—and he came easily to a tooth-and-claw socialism as the answer to what seemed to him a capitalism fit only for wolves and bears.

Reading Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, an anthology prepared by London’s nephew Irving Shepard (Hanover House, $4.95), one is impressed anew by London’s ability to dramatize ideas in conflict. Here, once again, is the brilliant prognostication of Fascism in selections from The Iron Heel. Here the strikers spout their soap-box Marxism in The Valley of the Moon. Here Martin Eden drowns himself when his intense individualism is carried over into a socialism that fails to give him the philosophical calmness and emotional surcease which he had been seeking. Here Wolf Larsen, the materialist skipper of the Ghost, shouts his Nietzschean song to the Pacific moon. And here, also, are many other things from London’s sprawling work —autobiographical bits from John Barleycorn, journalistic probings into the problem of poverty (The People of the Abyss), the joyous account of hobo days with Kelly’s Army in the big depression of the nineties, and a wide variety of short stories.

JC

About the Author

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain (1903–1995) was an American writer.

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The life of Jack London is one of the most fascinating stories in the history of American letters. Long before Richard Hofstader gave currency to the term, London formulated the theory of Social Darwinism. A self-educated man, he bit off huge chunks of crude evolutionary theory which he crossed at once with Nietzscheanism and Marxism. He did this all within the space of a few months of cramming, trying desperately to make up for years in which he never went to school. In between his studies he worked in canning factories, laundries and power plants. He was an oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay, he sailed before the mast on a sealer, he beat his way by freight across the continent, and he took a flier as a prospector in the Klondike. Life, to him, was raw—and he came easily to a tooth-and-claw socialism as the answer to what seemed to him a capitalism fit only for wolves and bears.

Reading Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, an anthology prepared by London’s nephew Irving Shepard (Hanover House, $4.95), one is impressed anew by London’s ability to dramatize ideas in conflict. Here, once again, is the brilliant prognostication of Fascism in selections from The Iron Heel. Here the strikers spout their soap-box Marxism in The Valley of the Moon. Here Martin Eden drowns himself when his intense individualism is carried over into a socialism that fails to give him the philosophical calmness and emotional surcease which he had been seeking. Here Wolf Larsen, the materialist skipper of the Ghost, shouts his Nietzschean song to the Pacific moon. And here, also, are many other things from London’s sprawling work —autobiographical bits from John Barleycorn, journalistic probings into the problem of poverty (The People of the Abyss), the joyous account of hobo days with Kelly’s Army in the big depression of the nineties, and a wide variety of short stories.