And in The Iron Heel (1908), an astonishing political fantasy judged by Leon Trotsky to be a work of genius, he imagined the rise of fascism in America.

In 1907 London sailed for the South Pacific. The Cruise of the “Snark” (1911) recounts the writer’s grueling two-year journey through the islands of Polynesia and Melanesia in search of untouched civilizations. Forced to abandon his travels in Australia owing to illness, he returned to California in shattered health. Yet London soon produced South Sea Tales (1911), The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii (1912), and A Son of the Sun (1912), works that attempt to reconcile his dream of an unfallen world with the harsh reality of twentieth-century materialism.

By 1913 London was the highest-paid writer in the world. In that year alone he published The Night-Born, a collection of stories; The Valley of the Moon, a novel of California ranch life; The Abysmal Brute, a fictional exposé of professional boxing; and John Barleycorn, a memoir about his struggles with alcoholism. In 1914 he traveled to Vera Cruz to cover the Mexican Revolution for Collier’s magazine. Jack London’s final years were spent at his ranch in the Sonoma Valley, where he died of uremic poisoning on November 22, 1916. His last works of fiction include The Mutiny of the “Elsinore” (1914), The Strength of the Strong (1914), The Scarlet Plague (1915), The Star Rover (1915), The Little Lady of the Big House (1916), The Turtles of Tasman (1916), The Red One (1918), and Island Tales (1920).

“Jack London was an instinctive artist of a high order,” said H. L. Mencken. “There was in him a vast delicacy of perception, a high feeling, a sensitiveness to beauty. And there was in him, too, under all his blatancies, a poignant sense of the infinite romance and mystery of human life.” 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.” As E. L. Doctorow remarked on the front page of The New York Times Book Review: “To this day Jack London is the most widely read American writer in the world.”

CONTENTS

Biographical Note

Introduction by Gary Kinder

FROM THE SON OF THE WOLF

The White Silence

The Son of the Wolf

In a Far Country

To the Man on Trail

The Wisdom of the Trail

An Odyssey of the North

FROM THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS

The God of His Fathers

Siwash

Grit of Women

Where the Trail Forks

At the Rainbow’s End

FROM CHILDREN OF THE FROST

In the Forests of the North

The Law of Life

Keesh, the Son of Keesh

The Death of Ligoun

Li Wan, the Fair

The League of the Old Men

LATER KLONDIKE TALES

Bâtard

The Story of Jees Uck

Love of Life

The Sun-Dog Trail

The Wit of Porportuk

To Build a Fire

Maps

Notes

INTRODUCTION
Gary Kinder

So Weatherbee sinks a hatchet into the base of Cuthfert’s spine just as Cuthfert launches a bullet into Weatherbee’s face. By now, I’m laughing out loud. London’s got me imagining the scene from about 500 feet up to accentuate the insignificance of their existence; I picture their cabin as a speck aglow with the light of a fire.

For months these two have been bickering like the Odd Couple, Felix and Oscar of the Yukon, buried in snow, surrounded by trees, hemmed in by mountains, enshrouded in the darkness of an arctic winter. All around stands an enormous and forbidding landscape that itself would guffaw, except it does n’t care. London has orchestrated the scene so skillfully that by the time the two kill each other, I’m really enjoying myself. London seems to be having a good time, too.

People who justify their existence by categorizing the works of others cannot decide whether Jack London is a “romantic realist,” an “ethereal idealist,” or a “literary naturalist.” But none of that matters. Jack London is an extraordinarily gifted writer, a thinker, a seeker of truth and detail, who went off adventuring in exotic lands, and recorded his adventures as graphically and accurately as his immense talent would allow. From there, I just want to sit back and enjoy the show.

Besides his gift for words and syntax, his humor, his affection for the true good in people, here’s what I love about Jack London: He puts himself in situations to serve as his own crucible for observing human behavior, and then synthesizes those complex observations. I am tempted to quote all of the first two paragraphs from “In a Far Country,” which is where we meet Weatherbee and Cuthfert, but I will choose snippets instead. Like the opening sentence: “When a man journeys into a far country, he must be prepared to forget many of the things he has learned.” The easy stuff is exchanging “a dainty menu for rough fare, [a] stiff leather shoe for the soft, shapeless moccasin, [a] feather bed for a couch in the snow.” And that’s where a romantic deludes himself. “His pinch will come in learning properly to shape his mind’s attitude toward all things,” continues London, “and especially toward his fellow man. For the courtesies of ordinary life, he must substitute unselfishness, forbearance, and tolerance. Thus, and thus only, can he gain that pearl of great price,—true comradeship. He must not say ‘Thank you’; he must mean it without opening his mouth, and prove it by responding in kind.”

Against these warnings, London juxtaposes Weatherbee and Cuthfert. “The one was a lower-class man who considered himself a gentleman, and the other was a gentleman who knew himself to be such.” Then London manipulates events to seal these two together in a tight space. They join a party of argonauts on an arduous journey bound for the Klondike.