WOLF HOUSE

I was not able to finish the tour of London's ranch in the Valley of the Moon. Later on, I went there again. It was quiet. All I could hear was the sound of my own footsteps and the rustle made by lizards, which at the sight of me disappeared in the grass. I went up and down the hills covered with golden poppies. A story "A Golden Poppy" was about them. The road was covered with grass — hardly anybody came here anymore. It used to be that a strong, restless man, deeply in love with life, went horseback riding here.

I went toward the Wolf House. A path in the forest dipped down and, suddenly, out of thick wild bushes and trees appeared the ruins of a building done in gigantic stones. Lonely water pipes hung in mid-air. Here, the fire had been especially fierce — stone walls were partially melted. There must have been a bucket of gas or kerosene that had made the fire burn so strongly.

Evidently, there was an inside yard with a swimming pool. Now, only wild bushes and grass grew there. There were three floors with fireplaces. I walked along the thick-walled halls and empty box-like rooms. I sat, pondering, near the fireplace that Jack London never got to light up. I went into the woods that surrounded the house. Trees were everywhere. They parted and led me to a moss-covered piece of rock with just two words carved in it — "Jack London." This was his grave. It brought thoughts about the fate of this man. He had been anxiously seeking his way in life. The editors had persistently tried to mold him in the standards of an already accepted literary tradition, but he continued to write in his own way. He wrote about ordinary people and their heroes, he rose against Capitalist power, he dreamed of revolution, of life under Socialism.

However, in a way, he still deferred to what was wanted from him. Along with Karl Marx, Jack London claimed Herbert Spencer as his teacher. This philosopher adapted Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest to human society. From Spencer's theory, as well as from other reactionary ideologists, it followed that, as in the animal world, only the strongest survive. On a larger scale, the fittest races and nations survive in this world. London repeatedly failed to keep his faith in the inevitability of Socialism with these theories. This contradiction of beliefs influenced his work.

In 1909, after five weeks in an Australian hospital, London found his financial situation somewhat unstable. Because of this, he had to interrupt his trip around the world and return home instead. This also had caused him to be less rigid about his writings. Some of his works published after 1909-1910, were written only for money and did not quite fit into the pattern of his literary style. Such was true with the novels Adventure, Mutiny of the Elsinore, as well as a number of short stories from selected publications, including South Sea Tales and A Son of the Sun.

A novel, Hearts of Three, published posthumously, was especially full of sudden twists of plot and effective adventure scenes. As a basis for the work, the author had adopted a legend of magic treasures. A Mayan tribe somewhere in the mountains of Central America supposedly had hidden their treasures. The plot, though catchy, was not fully developed. The theme was taken from a screen scenario. Written but poorly under the laws of cinematography, it limited the imaginative abilities of Jack London. With difficulty, and not always successfully, London created motives for action and clashing plots. As a result, the book came across somewhat naive and not quite solid.

In 1910, the political play Theft was published, followed by the story "The Strength of the Strong." At the time, the president of the United States, William Taft, was gathering American troops and a fleet at the Mexican border to stop Mexican Revolutionaries. Meanwhile, London was working on his story "The Mexican," a short story filled with deep sympathy for the Mexican people under the dictatorship of Diaz. In this story, as in his novel The Iron Heel, a protagonist was involved in a revolution.

Beginning in about 1909, Jack London experienced deep dissatisfaction with himself as a writer. His writing reflected this dissatisfaction, sometimes bordering on despair. In his novel The Star Rover (1915), London's attention was turned toward the state of mind in which a man might be in after experiencing severe torture. In The Scarlet Plague (1915), he created a horrifying picture of natural disasters, which threw the entire humanity back into the prehistoric stage of development.

The evolution of London's work reflected changes in his language and style—at times calm and substantial, and at other moments, it was emotional and impetuous. The always strong and clear style of such novels as The Sea-Wolf, White Fang, and Martin Eden, had been replaced with nervous, scrappy, and often negligent writing in The Mutiny of the Elsinore, Hearts of the Three, and The Assassination Bureau.

The pervasive influence of conservative literary tradition, editors, publishers, and the press tragically affected the author. It would be a mistake to imagine London's life as a straightforward and rapid ascendance or as an attainment of all his goals. It was far from that. Rather, there was an interchange of successes and failures, again and again followed by tireless searching. London faced failures with his stubbornness, and they never diminished his faith in himself even under the hardest circumstances, in the most difficult moments of his life, he did not lose his strength of spirit. With truly American ability for enterprise, he turned any situation into a new achievement. He was able to see new possibilities and create new goals that saved him from despair, doubts, and a feeling of uncertainty.

London did not find gold in the Klondike, but he wrote about his experiences in his diary. He observed the life and customs of native people as well as gold diggers and, soon, his observations turned into something more valuable for him than gold. Another time, he was sent as a reporter to the Boer war in Africa. He was too late to report on the war. Instead, he found himself in England, where he obtained excellent background material for The People of the Abyss.

1903 and 1904 were years of spiritual and emotional controversy for London. He fell in love with Charmian Kittridge and decided to leave his family. Bessie refused to give him a divorce, which prevented London from openly pursuing his relationship with Charmian. Then came an opportunity to go to the Russian-Japanese War. From there, he sent his correspondence and, upon his return, devoted himself to public leadership. He traveled all over the United States giving lectures on socialism, writing articles, and then became the president of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.

During his trip around the world on the Snark, London fell sick with a dangerous tropical disease. In the middle of the trip, he had to return home. Having barely overcome the illness, London went on a trip through California and Oregon in a wagon led by four horses. Soon after that, he went off to sail around South America on the ship Dirigo. Traveling for him was both rest and gaining new experiences for future books.

Led by his drive for adventure and search for new plots, Jack London went to Mexico as a war reporter, but soon became sick. He sought proper treatment at his ranch in the Valley of the Moon and, after a short while, set off again to Hawaii to write. In 1914, rightly he declared: "I have always been a fighter. And I have never written or said anything that I could not back up later on."

He was honest and truthful to himself and others. "Who am I to be ashamed of my own experiences?" he wrote in response to editor's warning concerning a publication of his autobiographical stories. "Thanks to my past I have become the person I am now. If I am ashamed of my past, I should be ashamed of what that past turned me into."

And just a year before his death, London's astonishing words: "I assure you . . . that having come through all of the game of life, and of youth, at my present mature age of thirty-nine years I am firmly and solemnly convinced that the game is worth the candle. I have had a very fortunate life; I have been luckier than hundreds of millions of men in my generation. Yes, I have been lucky, and while I have suffered much, I have also lived much, seen much and felt much that has been denied to the average man. Yes, indeed, the game is worth the candle."

The last years of his life were unsuccessful for London, though. His child from the second marriage, a child he wanted so much—died at birth. Wolf House burned. Like his character Martin Eden, London grew tired. He had a severe kidney disease, uremia, which robbed him of his strength. Meanwhile, publishers demanded more books written according their tastes. Having to compromise and go along with their demands, London developed a deep antipathy towards the writer's profession. He also left the Workers' movement. This decision was influenced by the victory of opportunism in the American Socialist Movement. He broke his old friendship ties. Charmian tried to create a new world for him, but it was not possible. It could not replace what he once had. To live, for Jack London, was to explore something, to be helpful to people, to do something important.