Jack London — The Call of the Wild
With the release of the new film version of Jack London’s masterpiece, The Call of the Wild — starring Harrison Ford — was the San Francisco born novelist a prototype Hemingway?
Although Ernest Hemingway thought of himself, when a young man, as a rough neck hustler ready to draw a knife when mixing with hoods in Chicago, and riding with hobos on the rails. He was nothing of the sort of course, whereas the youthful Jack London was, according to literary historian, Van Wyck Brooks, something of a water-front hoodlum already, and handy with both gun and knife. Apparently you didn’t mix with London unless you were even handier with the hardware.
John Griffith London (originally Chaney) was born on January 12th, 1876, in San Francisco. His father, William Chaney, was, unlike Hemingway’s father, no doctor, but a wandering astrologer and something of a snake oil salesman who left home before the boy’s birth, never to return.
Pregnant, and with no support, John’s mother, Flora Wellman, tried to shoot herself with a pistol, but failed. And although not badly injured, Flora was considered ‘deranged’ by the authorities with the consequence that John was fostered out to an African-American, Virginia Prentiss, a former slave who became one of the most positive influences in Jack London’s life.
