• 3 months ago
Transcript
00:00Mush, on you huskies, north to Alaska!
00:07C'mon, move!
00:10Aw, c'mon you guys.
00:13If we win this race, I promise I'll split the prize money with you.
00:18Uh, well, the prize is ten dollars.
00:27Hmm, that didn't go well.
00:33Dear Tim and Moby,
00:36Who was Jack London?
00:38I heard he was a good writer, but I don't know any of his stories.
00:41Can you tell me?
00:43From Boas
00:45Thanks for writing in, Boas.
00:47Jack London was indeed a great writer, from the early 20th century.
00:51He wrote a lot of short stories, but he also wrote novels, non-fiction, political essays, you name it.
00:57London was born in San Francisco in 1876.
01:01His family was pretty poor, so Jack was expected to chip in to help make ends meet.
01:06By age 10, he was selling newspapers.
01:09Although he dropped out of school at age 13 to work full-time, he never gave up his love of books.
01:14With recommendations from a friendly librarian, he read voraciously down at the Oakland Public Library.
01:20Anyway, Jack had an incredible youth.
01:23Before he turned 20, he had worked as a coal shoveler at a power plant,
01:27joined an army of unemployed men who marched on Washington,
01:31became a hobo who traveled on trains through the United States,
01:35and worked on a seal-hunting ship that sailed all the way to Japan.
01:39Yeah, he sure did a lot of living.
01:42But after years of back-breaking labor, he decided to make a living with his mind, as a writer.
01:48At age 19, he returned to Oakland and finished high school.
01:52He even finished a semester at college before embarking on one more adventure.
01:57Gold had been discovered in the Yukon region of northwest Canada,
02:01and London set sail to make his fortune.
02:04It didn't work out so well.
02:06He failed to strike it rich, got very sick, and returned to California after less than a year.
02:12But he brought a motherload of story ideas back with him.
02:18Well, two of his most famous novels, for example.
02:21The Call of the Wild was published in 1903.
02:24It's told from the point of view of a dog named Buck,
02:27who's stolen from his owner's home and taken to Alaska, where he becomes a sled dog.
02:31There, he discovers the wild animal that lay hidden inside him.
02:36White Fang, published in 1906, is also told from the perspective of an animal,
02:41a fierce wolf-dog hybrid who is eventually tamed.
02:46Many of London's short stories are set in the Yukon, too.
02:50To Build a Fire is one of his best, a classic struggle of man against nature.
02:55A guy falls into freezing water and has limited time to, well, build a fire,
02:59and warm his body before he dies.
03:02You should read it. It's a real thriller.
03:05Actually, there's much more to these stories than just action and adventure.
03:09London was part of a new environmental consciousness in America.
03:13Like Theodore Roosevelt, the president at the time,
03:16London felt that modern life had cut people off from nature.
03:20In his view, spending time in the wilderness was essential to both physical and spiritual health.
03:28So, even though Call of the Wild is about a dog, it's really aimed at us.
03:33Buck's journey from the comforts of civilization to the danger and thrill of the outdoors
03:38is like a recipe for modern people.
03:43True, most of us can't just check out of life and go live in the wilderness.
03:47But London also wanted to change how society was organized.
03:50Like many artists of his time, he was a socialist.
03:54That means he believed society's wealth should be shared, more or less equally, among all its members.
04:00Much of his writing reflects that belief, centering on the daily struggles of the lower classes.
04:05In fact, the same year that Call of the Wild came out, he published People of the Abyss,
04:10a first-hand, non-fiction account of life among the poorest residents of London, England.
04:15He also ran twice for mayor of Oakland on the Socialist Party ticket
04:19and gave speeches and lectures on behalf of the cause.
04:23You're right, he was incredibly productive.
04:26In fact, he tried to write a thousand words a day, every day.
04:29That's how he was able to fill up something like 50 volumes of prose in such a short time.
04:34He died of kidney failure in 1916, at just 40 years of age.
04:40His legacy?
04:41Well, London's writing is admired more for its spirit than for any technical brilliance.
04:46At his best, he's thrilling and immediate.
04:49You can practically feel the Arctic wind when you read his Tales of the North,
04:53probably because he really experienced it.
04:55Many later authors, from Ernest Hemingway to Jack Kerouac, saw London's personal adventures as a model,
05:01not just for living, but as a way to fuel their art.
05:05You're taking notes on our adventure? Cool!
05:10I've notified my lawyers, you know.