Jack London: A Writer's Fight for a Better America

In this persuasive reappraisal of Jack London, Tichi (Civic Passions) argues that the self-made man and bestselling author was also a dedicated social reformer. London was raised in poverty during America's Gilded Age%E2%80%94an era that Tichi describes in rich detail%E2%80%94and grew up sharply aware of the nation's gross inequities in wealth. He occasionally decried this situation publicly, but Tichi contends that his essays and fiction most effectively advocated change. She sometimes risks overinterpreting the extraliterary dimensions of London's fiction%E2%80%94are the overworked sled dogs in The Call of the Wild really "surrogates for mistreated industrial workers," and does the dictatorial captain of The Sea Wolf really stand in for "Gilded Age moguls who held the social order in their collective vise"?%E2%80%94but Tichi makes a compelling case for these books as having laid the foundation for London's more overtly political fiction: the Hawaian island stories, which criticized American imperialism; The Iron Heel, a futuristic dystopia about the rise of tyrannical oligarchy; and The Star Rover, an impassioned critique of the American penal system. Bolstering her analysis of London's writing with nuggets of progressive thinking mined from his correspondence, Tichi brings a fresh perspective to an author and thinker frequently dismissed as a mere writer of adventure fiction. 33 illus. (Sept.)