Jack London
White Fang
1906
That one was a beautiful book, lavished with imageries of nature to ravish our
heart and take it away. Strange to think this is all about a wolf, but while
other books take great pains to tell you of humans, London managed in a single,
supple, easy stroke to make us feel at all points and in all ways exactly as a
wolf would, in his mind, in his body, in his feelings. From the moment White
Fang is introduced, we go from observers of nature unravelling before us, eyes
strained at the immensity of it, to a conscious part of it. Nature is judged, characterised,
and, in true Naturalist fashion, given all the power. We’re a wolf and we never
go out of it, just like White Fang can only be what he is and what he is shaped
to be by his environment. I rarely met with a book that could get me as close
to an unnegotiated animal character and as far from the humans dealing with him
as this one (except for the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies and I wonder
whether there isn’t some influence there. Would be interesting to look that up).
And as attached. It’s not an emotional attachment as much as survival instinct
instructing us poor human readers to cling to White Fang’s coat as fleece
might, never dare to let go. Of course, this is all about us. It’s always about
us. But while the metaphor was explicitly laid out, it never ceased being about
the wolf either.
And the novel is so well written, in a straightforward, Spartan sentence style, but with a digging of the one true word not unlike the style of haiku. London says it exactly as it is, yet he only speaks poetry. Albeit a sorrowful and heartbreaking poetry. It is a very wise book and one that aims to be so; not telling you a story as much as using the background of a story to explore living beings’ heart and soul. I was enthralled with the first page and if my enthusiasm sometimes wavered when the tale turned too cruel or too repetitive (London has the tendency to hammer the point in when he explains something. But his style is so clear, so knowing, that these further elaborations only encumber the book), it found me again only a few pages later. Clearly, Jack London knew how to write, so that I’m suspecting what he wrote about was not as important as his gift of writing to us. His style is like an adventurer: the persona takes over the nature of the adventure. And all that matters is that writing here is an adventure you just have to hop on.
And the novel is so well written, in a straightforward, Spartan sentence style, but with a digging of the one true word not unlike the style of haiku. London says it exactly as it is, yet he only speaks poetry. Albeit a sorrowful and heartbreaking poetry. It is a very wise book and one that aims to be so; not telling you a story as much as using the background of a story to explore living beings’ heart and soul. I was enthralled with the first page and if my enthusiasm sometimes wavered when the tale turned too cruel or too repetitive (London has the tendency to hammer the point in when he explains something. But his style is so clear, so knowing, that these further elaborations only encumber the book), it found me again only a few pages later. Clearly, Jack London knew how to write, so that I’m suspecting what he wrote about was not as important as his gift of writing to us. His style is like an adventurer: the persona takes over the nature of the adventure. And all that matters is that writing here is an adventure you just have to hop on.
P.S. As I understand it, London was a partially
racially-prejudiced man conscious of his prejudices and striving to rise above
it; hence, it’s difficult, when he qualifies the white men at the fort as
“superior” to the Native Canadians, to understand whether he truly sees them as
their superiors or is simply representing in White Fang’s terms the
relationship of hierarchy existing between the two at the time. His depictions
of the Native Canadians camp were also picked upon by people for its featured cruelty,
but the white men were portrayed just as badly so I did not find any offense in
it. It was rather as humans that readers could take offense.
Tags: late late legacy of the 19th century, the Klondike Gold Rush, poetry as philosophy and living beings' heart and soul laid bare, natural observation more than a social or cultural one but can any of those two ever be devoid of nature?, the human race as the sum of the worst of every race (and a little good, still), survival and instinctive quest, heart-wrenching serfdom between animals and men, Canadian industrial revolution, life in the late 19th-century Canadian wild, hurt and hurt again, and hurt some more hero or the case of the lone wolf, three-quarter wolf, one-quarter dog, and man made wolf (into dog), the savage in the wild
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