Wolf: The Lives of Jack London (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Wolf: The Lives of Jack London Kevin J. Hayes (bio) Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, by James L. Haley. New York: Basic Books, 2010. xvi + 364 pp. Cloth, $29.95. After the Jack London Society's Tenth Biennial Symposium in Santa Rosa last November, I left California excited to keep researching London's life and writings. Consequently, when I received an invitation to review the latest London biography, I readily accepted. Before continuing my review, I must fess up: I did not spend all my time in Santa Rosa at the symposium. Having worked there as a bicycle mechanic for a few months a few decades ago, I played hooky one afternoon to seek out my old haunts, which proved to be a difficult task. The bike shop is now a restaurant supply house; the breakfast joint where I used to enjoy huevos rancheros has closed; and the deli where I ate lunch has given way to a Whole Foods Market. If I had this much trouble trying to reconstruct a tiny part of my personal past, imagine how much more difficult it is to reconstruct the life of someone who lived a hundred years ago, especially someone who lived as varied and adventurous a life as Jack London. This is the task James Haley sets for himself in Wolf: The Lives of Jack London. Haley gets off to a shaky start. His prologue gives readers a brief overview of London's early life from childhood until his trek to the Klondike, where, on January 27, 1898, he made up his mind to become a professional writer. Since this prologue mentions some of the most crucial turning points in London's life, I wondered upon reading it whether Haley gave away too much too soon. Such proves to be the case. For the next several chapters, he retells the story of London's early life, but every detail that he repeats from the prologue seems redundant. Not until Haley is more than [End Page 199] a third of the way through the book does he get back to January 27, 1898. Now, I thought, the redundancies will end. But they do not, for there is much else that is redundant in Wolf. The book's structure partly contributes to its redundancy. To relate the story of London's life, Haley tells it as a series of lives. Chapter 1, "The Work Beast," describes London's time as a factory worker during his adolescence and early teens. Chapter 2, "The Oyster Pirate," relates how and why London learned to sail: to raid the commercial oyster beds of San Francisco Bay. Twelve additional chapters treat London's other lives in the following order: seal hunter, tramp, student, prospector, aspiring writer, muckraker, war correspondent, lover, celebrity, sailor, rancher, and jade. Though the early chapters proceed chronologically, from Chapter 7, "The Aspiring Writer," to Chapter 14, "The Jade," there is much overlap in terms of chronology. Furthermore, these chapters create some strange breaks in the narrative. The Call of the Wild receives one paragraph at the end of the muckraker chapter and further brief mention in the chapter treating London's time in Korea as a war correspondent. In short, the multiple lives structure forces Haley to slight the most important part of London's life: the books he wrote. Haley begins his acknowledgments with an observation: "The idea of publishing a literary biography in today's marketplace is a brave one." His words remind me of something my editor said when I wanted to title my Jefferson biography "The Road to Monticello: The Literary Life of Thomas Jefferson." "We can't use the phrase 'literary life,'" she told me, "That's the kiss of death." So, how did Haley manage to publish a literary biography in today's marketplace? The answer is: He didn't. Wolf is a biography of Jack London, but it scarcely qualifies as a literary biography: it downplays London's writings to concentrate on more exciting aspects of his life. The Call of the Wild is not the only book to receive short shrift. The Sea-Wolf is subsumed within the Korea chapter. The Iron Heel...