His best-known work, Call of the Wild, is a study in the use of simple wording to breathe life into characters and the complexities they face. In many of London’s stories set in Alaska, nature is not a soothing refuge. It’s brutal and unforgiving. This, too, draws people to his work.
Call of the Wild is also a story about a dog, Buck, who learns how to live in the wild. A review, published in The St. Louis Republic newspaper in 1903 said: “Jack London seems to possess an intuition of the dog life, and the dog heart, an insight which must have come from communion with some big, noble, shaggy friend; and the story is related with a simple, direct, dramatic force which enchains interest; and which is art.”
A b/w photo of Jack London, from a negative taken between 1906–1916
Photo credit: Arnold Genthe Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division
Image source: Library of America
“When it is 75 below zero, a man must not fail in his first attempt to build a fire.”
-American writer Jack London, born on this day in 1876.
#WriterSky #BookSky #CallOfTheWild #History #BOTD