The Call of the Wild / White Fang by Jack London

That said, the main things I remember from my own childhood reading is the evocative descriptions of the Yukon and the great northern emptinesses, particularly superb passages such as the famous opening of White Fang:ĭark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. As stories about human injustice and the shape of society, they may be as sharp toothed in their politics as the Iron Heel. The books can also be seen as allegories for London’s own wild life and his journey from outcast hobo to prosperous writer. White Fang, for instance – try not to be alarmed – was partly inspired by Nietzche’s ideas about the superman. That’s not to say we’ll escape politics entirely as we read White Fang and The Call of the Wild, which are not just stories about dogs. So I propose that we read The Call of the Wild and White Fang first, discuss those two next week, and then come to Heel towards the end of the month, once we’re all feeling a bit calmer. This joint ticket proceeded to come in joint second along with The People of the Abyss – until reading group stalwart Natasha Fatale leaped in at just the right moment with a casting vote. Several ran The Iron Heel a close second.īut there was also strong support for taking London’s two classic canines-in-the-Yukon books, White Fang and The Call of the Wild, together, forming, as participants neatly labelled it, a doggy diptych. This was a popular idea, and dozens of votes were cast for other books. Last week I mooted the idea that we should run a Jack London double-header, since many of his books are so short and since his output was so varied and fascinating. There are more reasons for leaving extra time before embarking on The Iron Heel: it appears to be out of print in the UK ( although freely available online, because it’s out of copyright), so this should provide a bit of time to hunt down copies. It sounds uncomfortably like your average liberal’s worst fears, and I hardly dare read it until the nightmare of this US election is finally over. It provides a dystopian vision of the US in which the middle class are squeezed out of existence, farmers reduced to serfdom and a few oligarchs control nearly all the wealth, not to mention a private army of mercenaries, and rule – as the title suggests – by stomping on the face of all who oppose them. Orwell called The Iron Heel a “remarkable prophecy of the rise of fascism”. But, however the result goes, this has been a uniquely unsettling and frightening year for the world’s biggest democracy, so it feels fitting that The Iron Heel, London’s book about the collapse of US democracy and brutal rule by a thuggish elite, emerged as the first popular choice in our vote.

As I write this, I don’t know who will replace Barack Obama as US president. It wasn’t just the confusion of the vote that fitted our unsettling times.

The Call of the Wild / White Fang by Jack London