EMERGENCE OF NATURALISM

(1905) celebrates the lust of the flesh as expressed in prize-
fighting. Before Adam (1906) goes apparently still further
afield in a quest for the primitive and moves among the half
arboreal ancestors of the race. White Fang (1905) reverses
The Call of the Wild and brings a wolf among dogs.

The Call of the Wild, summary as well as summit of Lon-
don's achievement, is the story of a dog stolen from civiliza-
tion to draw a sledge in Alaska, eventually to escape from
human control and go back to the wild as leader of a pack of
wolves. As in most animal tales the narrative is sentimental-
ized. Buck has a psychology which he derives too obviously
from his human creator; learns the law of the brute wilder-
ness too quickly and too consciously; dreams too definitely of
the savage progenitors from whom he inherits, by way of
atavism, his ability to contend with a new world. This sym-
pathetic fallacy, however, has behind it a reality in London's
own experience which lends power to the drama of Buck's
restoration to the primitive. In something of this fashion
the young tramp had learned the hard rules of the road; in
something of this fashion the gold-seeker had mastered the
difficulties of the Klondike face to face with a nature which
made no allowance for his handicaps and which apparently
desired the destruction of the men who had ventured into
the wilderness. Out of his experience he had built up a doc-
trine concerning the essential life of mankind, and out of his
doctrine he had shaped this characteristic tale. But the doc-
trine is not excessively in evidence, and the experience con-
tributes both an accurate lore and an authentic passion. The
narrative is as spare as an expedition over the Chilkoot Pass;
it is swift and strong, packed with excitement and peril.
Moreover, it has what almost none of Jack London's red
blood rivals had, and what he later deprived himself of by
his haste and casualness: a fine sensitiveness to landscape and
environment, a robust, moving, genuine current of poetry
which warms his style and heightens the effect while enrich-