The Call of the Wild and Selected Stories (28 page)

In contrast, John Thornton is a man whose competence, as well as his ability to feel and honor real bonds, is a fulcrum for Buck's growth and the expansion of his emotional and moral world. Thornton himself is able to negotiate the northern territory with almost as perfect a set of skills, as a human, as Buck develops as a dog. Dog and man make a complete partnership. The love between them teaches Buck something new and brings out in him a loyalty and a sense of devotion to something larger than himself that weights the civilized side of the internal battle he is undergoing between his wild and his domestic drives. But the gold that Thornton is seeking—and which he finds—is not the same ore that Buck finally finds within himself. Perhaps Thornton goes too far into the wild. Perhaps gold takes him where he should not go. In any case, his death (in a quintessentially nineteenth-century and non-PC event) releases Buck to answer the call and return to the wild.

When we are young, we love stories with well-defined beginnings, middles and ends. A clear arc to substantiate our own futures. As we grow older, we may grow more interested, by necessity or passion, in stories that break that mold and present the mix of things: the daily soup of past, present and future, where both time and the moral universe have become filled with shades of gray, and the arc seems less clear, the ride not quite the clear flight of arrow to target. But we can always return with pleasure to the classic flow that a story like
The Call of the Wild
presents, scary in its warnings, comforting in its clarities, and universally satisfying in its victories. Life, after all, does have a beginning, a middle and an end.

—Tobey Hiller

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Cruise of the Dazzler
(1902)

A Daughter of the Snows
(1902)

The Kempton-Wace Letters
(1903)

The Call of the Wild
(1903)

The Sea-Wolf
(1904)

The Game
(1905)

White Fang
(1906)

Before Adam
(1907)

The Iron Heel
(1908)

Martin Eden
(1909)

Burning Daylight
(1910)

Adventure
(1911)

The Abysmal Brute
(1913)

The Valley of the Moon
(1913)

The Mutiny of the Elsinore
(1914)

The Scarlet Plague
(1915)

The Star Rover
(1915)

The Little Lady of the Big House
(1916)

Jerry of the Islands
(1917)

Michael, Brother of Jerry
(1917)

Hearts of Three
(1920)

The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.
(completed by Robert L. Fish) (1963)

The Complete Short Stories of Jack London
. 3 vols. Eds. Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz, and Milo Shepard. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 1993.

Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings
. Ed. Richard W. Etulain. Logan: Utah State University Press, 1979

Jack London Reports: War Correspondence, Sports Articles, and Miscellaneous Writings
. Ed. King Hendricks and Irving Shepard. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970.

The Portable Jack London
. Ed. Earle Labor. New York: Penguin, 1994.

Auerbach, Jonathan.
Male Call: Becoming Jack London
. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.

Cassuto, Leonard and Jeanne Campbell Reesman, eds.
Reading Jack London
. Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 1996.

Hedrick, Joan D.
Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

Hodson, Sara S., and Jeanne Reesman, eds.
Jack London: 100 Years a Writer
. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library Press, 2002

Johnston, Carolyn.
Jack London: An American Radical.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984.

Kershaw, Alex.
Jack London: A Life
. New York: St. Martin's, 1998.

Kingman, Russ.
Jack London: A Definitive Chronology
. Middletown, CA: Rejl, 1992.

Labor, Earle and Jeanne Campbell Reesman.
Jack London
. Rev. ed. New York: Twayne, 1994.

London, Charmian.
The Book of Jack London,
2 vols. New York: Century, 1921.

London, Joan.
Jack London and His Daughters
. Berke ley, CA: Heyday Books, 1990.

———.
Jack London and His Times
. New York: Doubleday, 1939.

Lundquist, James.
Jack London: Adventures, Ideas and Fiction
. New York: Ungar, 1987.

Nuernberg, Susan M., ed.
The Critical Response to Jack London
. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.

Perry, John.
Jack London: An American Myth
. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981.

Schroeder, Alan.
Jack London
. New York: Chelsea House, 1992.

Stasz, Clarice.
American Dreamers: Chairman and Jack London
. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988.

Tavernier-Courbin, Jacquline.
The Call of the Wild: A Naturalistic Romance
. New York: Twayne, 1994.

———, ed.
Critical Essays on Jack London
. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1983.

Walker, Franklin.
Jack London and the Klondike: The Genesis of an American Writer
. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1966.

Watson, Charles N., Jr.
The Novels of Jack London: A Reappraisal
. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.

Wilcox, Earl J., ed.
The Call of the Wild: A Casebook with Text
. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1980.