Jack London had a great many interests and experiences in his short life of 40 years. A voracious reader, London’s relentless curiosity led him to extensive travels and a writing career unmatched in its variety. Many of the themes the film will explore through examination of London’s life are outlined below.
The First Modern Celebrity
Jack London, 1904
Thanks in part to his own relentless self-promotion, London was the twentieth century’s first modern celebrity, creating a myth of himself as a superman adventurer that persists to this day. His travel exploits were reported regularly in major newspapers and magazines across America. He did advertisements, endorsing products ranging from cigars to grape juice. He made deals with early Hollywood to market his stories in the new media of film, the first mass-market writer to do so. He was arguably the first member of what is today called the cult of personality. Today we have celebrities who are famous for being famous, but London “earned” his celebrity. If he often exaggerated his exploits, his impact was undeniable. The very phrase “The Call of the Wild,” for example, has passed into American vernacular as shorthand for all that is beyond our civilized existence. It is frequently used in advertising and popular culture even today. And Jack’s writings about Hawaii, coming on the heels of its annexation by the United States, fanned interest in the islands as a tourist destination. Jack also wrote admiringly of surfing, and was likely responsible for introducing the sport to mainland America.
The Artist as Sociologist
Few writers were more keen observers of the world’s various tribes than Jack London. He reveled in the details of humanity’s sub-cultures, be they Hawaiian, Native American, prospector, tramp, Anglo-Saxon, leper, or Chinese. He examined them in his writing almost as a biologist would observe a species in the wild. Indeed, his heroes were not only writers like Stevenson and Melville, but also naturalist/ philosophers like Spencer and Darwin. No other American writer attempted to get inside the minds of subjects so different from himself. James Dickey wrote: ”The key to London’s effectiveness is to be found in his complete absorption in the world he evokes. The author is in and committed to his creations to a degree very nearly unparalleled in the composition of fiction.”
Charmian London, 1909
Advocate of The New Woman
London created numerous female characters that were strong, self-reliant and independent, many based on his second wife, Charmian. They represented the “New Woman” of the Progressive Era: slightly androgynous but feminine, usually a self-supporting clerk or secretary, educated with a mind of her own. These characters are seen especially in his later novels and stories like Burning Daylight, The Valley of the Moon and The Night-Born.
Writer about Politics, Philosophy, Science and Nature
Jack London wrote on an astounding variety of subjects in his extraordinarily prolific career. His intellectual curiosity began with a reading of Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, and Darwin’s Origin of the Species was one of the books he took with him to the Klondike. Darwin’s theories informed his thinking for the rest of his life. He also frequently explored the ideas of Nietzsche, Marx, and Schopenhauer, among others, in his work.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Mythic archetypes abound in London’s work, pre-dating his discovery of Jung towards the end of life. Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious was the most heavily annotated book in London’s voluminous library, and he was writing stories with heavy Jungian overtones at the time he died.
Questioner of Ethnic Identity
London, the child of illegitimacy was the product of two mothers of different races: his biological mother Flora Chaney and his African-American foster mother Virginia Prentiss. He also had two fathers, one of whom disowned him and denied paternity. As a result, Jack had to invent an ethnic identity and ancestry for himself that continued even in death, perpetuated by his widow. He wrote frequently and insightfully about race (a topic that few other popular writers of his time considered with any depth) and often voiced the point of view of the racial “other.”
Jack with the Snark under construction, 1906
Literary Pioneer
London is credited as one of the originators of Literary Naturalism, yet pushed the envelope on the definition of that genre. He expanded on naturalistic themes with the sort of romantic adventure seen in works like The Call of the Wild. In a regional sense, London can also be considered America’s first writer of the Pacific Rim, as his oeuvre is set primarily in California, Alaska, Hawaii and the South Sea Islands. His essays about the majesty of surfing introduced that iconic Hawaiian sport to a mainland audience, and his boxing reports virtually invented modern sportswriting. And few if any other authors of the time maintained simultaneous careers as popular fiction writer and author of social and political essays.
Theorist about Race and Class
Because of his many travels, London was much more connected to people of other cultures than other writers of his time. Even though he subscribed to the Social Darwinism and pseudo-scientific racialism common in his time, London was always drawn to the underdog. He was interested in and engaged in race in a manner that other writers were not. Time and again, he would inject himself into other cultures as a participant or very close observer, then write about those cultures from their point of view. No other American writer put himself in this position. In stories like “Ko’olau the Leper” and “Mauki,” London gives the reader a sense of what it is like to be a disenfranchised Hawaiian or Melanesian indentured servant- experiences most readers would otherwise never have. This is one reason why he has remained so popular around the world to this day.
London in London, England, 1902
Also, by virtue of his humble origins, London was aware of class in ways that other writers of the Progressive Era who came from wealthier backgrounds — Edith Wharton, William Dean Howells, Henry James — were not. As a Socialist, he had a deep belief in brotherhood and championed the downtrodden of society. This sense of comradeship would eventually come up against his programmed racism, and he would work out the themes in his writing.
The ruins of San Francisco, photographed by Jack London, 1906
Photography Trailblazer
Jack London was no ordinary photographer. He was arguably the world’s leading photojournalist at the turn of the century, before the term had even been invented. London experimented with photography from almost the moment cameras became available and affordable for the general public in the early 1900s.
At the time of the Snark trip, the Royal Geographic Society had rather strict conventions about the way in which foreign cultures should be photographed. “Natives” were usually shot in a studio setting, in stylized poses before a faux-jungle background. It was extremely rare that native cultures were depicted in natural settings or a documentary fashion. Because he was not a trained photographer, Jack ignored these conventions and shot close-ups of faces, people at work, family scenes and other poses not seen at the time. This makes London’s photos a valuable archive of turn-of-the-century life in the South Seas.
London was also present firsthand, either as an adventurer or reporter, at some of the landmark events of his age-the Klondike Gold Rush, the Russo-Japanese War, the Great Earthquake of 1906, Hawaii after annexation, the Mexican Revolution, the Jeffries/Johnson “Great White Hope” prizefight- and he photographed almost all of them.