And one suspects that at times Eden is more hallucination than autobiography. At its worst, Martin Eden merely cribs from DeQuincey (the end of chapter four) or rather pathetically echoes Conrad’s Youth (“And he was only twenty-one, and he had never been in love before”), while at its best it never rises to the inspiration of Call of the Wild or even The Sea-Wolf. Jack, of course, bragged that he never waited for inspiration, but perhaps he should have. Jack, no doubt, wrote too much on this voyage—as he always wrote too much. But he saw writing more as an act of the hands than of the mind. And he had to pay the bills. Martin (the real Martin) described the inception and composition of the novel:

 

Jack was writing a new book. While in Honolulu, he had told me of it, and he was then preparing his notes for it.

“Look here, Martin,” he called to me one day, at the Seaside Hotel.

I came to where he was writing.

“Look at this,” he directed, holding out a sheet of paper. “There’s the title of something new I’m going to write. And I’m going to make you half-hero of it, what’s more.”

I looked at the paper. On it was the title, “Martin Eden.”

Jack then went on to explain. The name was a combination. Jack had used my Christian name and the surname of an old friend of his called Eden. The story, he said, would be drawn largely from his own experience; it would treat of the struggles of a young fellow who was determined to “make good” at writing; of his eventual success; and of his unhappy death. But it was to be more than a story. Through it was to run a certain cosmic undertone that would make of it a record of universal truths. Beyond the mere recital of details incident to the plot would be a biological and sociological significance. The thing would be true, not only of Martin Eden, but of all life, of all time. In a way, a value would be put upon life and the things of life that would ring true, even though the view-point would not be that of the smug bourgeoisie.

When he was not too sick, Jack worked on this book. (Chapter VI)

 

As far as being a sea story, Martin Eden isn’t. Jack was on a voyage; he wasn’t writing about one. At the beginning of chapter nine, Jack disposes of an entire South Sea voyage in one paragraph. The book is about education ashore, not afloat. And yet Jack couldn’t write convincingly about that, about culture in its literal sense, either: medieval Kant, Saxon Chaucer, and their ilk are slips that cannot be ascribed to the characters. But there are some places where the voyage creeps in; the description of Eden’s room applies to the below-decks of the Snark in both detail and tone:

 

A small closet contained his clothes and the books he had accumulated and for which there was no room on the table or under the table. Hand in hand with reading, he had developed the habit of making notes, and so copiously did he make them that there would have been no existence for him in the confined quarters had he not rigged several clothes-lines across the room on which the notes were hung. Even so, he was crowded until navigating the room was a difficult task. He could not open the door without first closing the closet door, and vice versa. It was impossible for him anywhere to traverse the room in a straight line. To go from the door to the head of the bed was a zigzag course that he was never quite able to accomplish in the dark without collisions. Having settled the difficulty of the conflicting doors, he had to steer sharply to the right to avoid the kitchen. Next, he sheered to the left, to escape the foot of the bed; but this sheer, if too generous, brought him against the corner of the table.