Jack Kelly writer
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JACK LONDON
(American Heritage.com)
On July 25, 1897—110 years ago today—a ship called the
Umatilla embarked from San Francisco with 472 men and
women crowded aboard, 182 more than it was licensed to
carry. Passengers yelled “Hurray for the Klondike!” as it left
the dock. Among those setting off was an impetuous 21-year-
old named Jack London. Like many of those aboard, London
was destined to return with empty pockets, but he would
smelt the adventures he had into classic tales that would win
him immortality and make him the first American author to
become a millionaire from his writing.
Just 11 days earlier, the steamer Excelsior had docked in
San Francisco with electrifying news: Prospectors had struck
rich veins of gold near the Klondike, a tributary of the Yukon
River on the Alaska-Canada border. The impoverished
London borrowed money from his sister, agreed to take her
aging husband along, and joined the rush. “I had let a career
go hang,” he later wrote, “and was on the adventure-path
again in quest of fortune.”
His brother-in-law turned back as soon as they reached
Alaska and came face-to-face with the glistening white wall of
the Chilkoot Pass. London joined the 22,000 intrepid men
and women from every corner of the world who trudged over
the pass that autumn, each lugging hundreds of pounds of
provisions for a year in the wilderness.
Surmounting that obstacle was only the beginning. To reach
the Yukon, London and a handful of companions built two
boats, sailed down a lake, and shot through several sets of
ferocious rapids. By mid-October they had arrived at Dawson
City, the squalid boomtown that served as capital of the gold
country. There they learned that the best claims had already
been grabbed by experienced prospectors, “sourdoughs”
who had been sniffing out gold in the North for years.
The drama was unfolding in a land of frozen starkness. “At
fifty below spittle crackled on the snow,” London would write
in his short story “To Build a Fire,” “but this spittle had
crackled in the air.” Miners fought temperatures that could
plunge to 70 below zero and a barren terrain that provided
scant sustenance. Those who knew what they were doing
worked through the dark winter burning wood to melt
permafrost so they could dig through layers of muck and
sand looking for pay dirt. In the short summer they
constructed sluices to direct the water that separated the
gold dust from the piles of rubble. A few became fabulously
wealthy.
London and his companions had done some halfhearted
prospecting on the way and registered one unproductive
claim. The future author spent much of his time haunting the
Dawson taverns and listening to the sourdoughs’ stories. He
then settled down for the winter in an abandoned log cabin
on an island in the Yukon River 75 miles south of Dawson.
He was known for his volubility and generosity; a fellow
prospector called him “a dreamer who was a man among
strong men.” During the winter his hovel became the social
center of a small community of would-be miners and travelers
who gathered to swap tales, some of them true.
By spring a diet of bread, beans, and bacon had laid him low
with scurvy. A Jesuit priest at a makeshift hospital got him
back on his feet. In June he decided he had had enough and
joined the thousands who were fleeing the backcountry. Still
others continued to stream in. Perhaps 100,000 in all tried
their luck on the Klondike.
London and several companions rode a handmade boat
1,500 miles down the Yukon to the Bering Sea. There he
enlisted as a stoker on a steamship headed south. From
British Columbia he rode freight trains back to Oakland. At
some point the novice author cashed in $4.50 in gold dust,
but his real wealth was stored in his head. He felt a powerful
empathy for the “white silence” of the north. “It was in the
Klondike I found myself,” he wrote.
He had gathered an enormous reservoir of stories,
characters, and settings. “I have been managing to pan out a
living ever since on the strength of the trip,” he wrote in
1900. What was more, the yearlong adventure had tempered
his will. He approached his work with the same determination
that had allowed him to lug his grubstake over a glacier and
endure the hardships of the wilderness.
London lived on short rations and odd jobs for a while, but
two years after his return, the publication of his first book,
The Son of the Wolf, assured his success. In 1903 he
brought out The Call of the Wild, solidifying his reputation.
The Klondike material was providing the foundation for a
prolific career. He went on to write a total of 50 books in less
than 20 years.
His writing was never stylish. “It is the substance that counts,”
he asserted. But he could turn out clear, direct, sometimes
riveting prose. His model was Rudyard Kipling. His precursors
were writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte.
Critics have often dismissed London as beneath true
literature. His stories need little explication. Moreover, he
reflected the social Darwinism and racism of his time,
attitudes that offend the modern sensibility. Yet some of his
work has proved enduring, and he had an ability to probe
deeply. “Nature has many tricks,” he wrote, “wherewith she
convinces man of his finity.”
He spent most of his adult life writing and farming on a ranch
in northern California. He occasionally pursued additional
adventures, reporting on the Russo-Japanese War in 1904
and sailing to Hawaii in 1916. He was a socialist and a
thoroughgoing humanist. Plagued by ill health, he died at
only 40, in 1916. “The greatest story London ever told,” the
literary critic Alfred Kazin once said, “was the story he lived.”
(American Heritage.com)
On July 25, 1897—110 years ago today—a ship called the
Umatilla embarked from San Francisco with 472 men and
women crowded aboard, 182 more than it was licensed to
carry. Passengers yelled “Hurray for the Klondike!” as it left
the dock. Among those setting off was an impetuous 21-year-
old named Jack London. Like many of those aboard, London
was destined to return with empty pockets, but he would
smelt the adventures he had into classic tales that would win
him immortality and make him the first American author to
become a millionaire from his writing.
Just 11 days earlier, the steamer Excelsior had docked in
San Francisco with electrifying news: Prospectors had struck
rich veins of gold near the Klondike, a tributary of the Yukon
River on the Alaska-Canada border. The impoverished
London borrowed money from his sister, agreed to take her
aging husband along, and joined the rush. “I had let a career
go hang,” he later wrote, “and was on the adventure-path
again in quest of fortune.”
His brother-in-law turned back as soon as they reached
Alaska and came face-to-face with the glistening white wall of
the Chilkoot Pass. London joined the 22,000 intrepid men
and women from every corner of the world who trudged over
the pass that autumn, each lugging hundreds of pounds of
provisions for a year in the wilderness.
Surmounting that obstacle was only the beginning. To reach
the Yukon, London and a handful of companions built two
boats, sailed down a lake, and shot through several sets of
ferocious rapids. By mid-October they had arrived at Dawson
City, the squalid boomtown that served as capital of the gold
country. There they learned that the best claims had already
been grabbed by experienced prospectors, “sourdoughs”
who had been sniffing out gold in the North for years.
The drama was unfolding in a land of frozen starkness. “At
fifty below spittle crackled on the snow,” London would write
in his short story “To Build a Fire,” “but this spittle had
crackled in the air.” Miners fought temperatures that could
plunge to 70 below zero and a barren terrain that provided
scant sustenance. Those who knew what they were doing
worked through the dark winter burning wood to melt
permafrost so they could dig through layers of muck and
sand looking for pay dirt. In the short summer they
constructed sluices to direct the water that separated the
gold dust from the piles of rubble. A few became fabulously
wealthy.
London and his companions had done some halfhearted
prospecting on the way and registered one unproductive
claim. The future author spent much of his time haunting the
Dawson taverns and listening to the sourdoughs’ stories. He
then settled down for the winter in an abandoned log cabin
on an island in the Yukon River 75 miles south of Dawson.
He was known for his volubility and generosity; a fellow
prospector called him “a dreamer who was a man among
strong men.” During the winter his hovel became the social
center of a small community of would-be miners and travelers
who gathered to swap tales, some of them true.
By spring a diet of bread, beans, and bacon had laid him low
with scurvy. A Jesuit priest at a makeshift hospital got him
back on his feet. In June he decided he had had enough and
joined the thousands who were fleeing the backcountry. Still
others continued to stream in. Perhaps 100,000 in all tried
their luck on the Klondike.
London and several companions rode a handmade boat
1,500 miles down the Yukon to the Bering Sea. There he
enlisted as a stoker on a steamship headed south. From
British Columbia he rode freight trains back to Oakland. At
some point the novice author cashed in $4.50 in gold dust,
but his real wealth was stored in his head. He felt a powerful
empathy for the “white silence” of the north. “It was in the
Klondike I found myself,” he wrote.
He had gathered an enormous reservoir of stories,
characters, and settings. “I have been managing to pan out a
living ever since on the strength of the trip,” he wrote in
1900. What was more, the yearlong adventure had tempered
his will. He approached his work with the same determination
that had allowed him to lug his grubstake over a glacier and
endure the hardships of the wilderness.
London lived on short rations and odd jobs for a while, but
two years after his return, the publication of his first book,
The Son of the Wolf, assured his success. In 1903 he
brought out The Call of the Wild, solidifying his reputation.
The Klondike material was providing the foundation for a
prolific career. He went on to write a total of 50 books in less
than 20 years.
His writing was never stylish. “It is the substance that counts,”
he asserted. But he could turn out clear, direct, sometimes
riveting prose. His model was Rudyard Kipling. His precursors
were writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte.
Critics have often dismissed London as beneath true
literature. His stories need little explication. Moreover, he
reflected the social Darwinism and racism of his time,
attitudes that offend the modern sensibility. Yet some of his
work has proved enduring, and he had an ability to probe
deeply. “Nature has many tricks,” he wrote, “wherewith she
convinces man of his finity.”
He spent most of his adult life writing and farming on a ranch
in northern California. He occasionally pursued additional
adventures, reporting on the Russo-Japanese War in 1904
and sailing to Hawaii in 1916. He was a socialist and a
thoroughgoing humanist. Plagued by ill health, he died at
only 40, in 1916. “The greatest story London ever told,” the
literary critic Alfred Kazin once said, “was the story he lived.”