82 SMITHSONIAN.COM | November 2019headlines, and he spent money like a mov-
ie star. He sailed across the South Pacifi c in
a ruinously expensive custom-built boat.
He bought a 1,000-acre estate in Sonoma
County and built a 15,000-square-foot
mansion there, Wolf House, which burned
down just before he moved in.
He never lost his taste for adventure.
He worked as a war correspondent in Ko-
rea and Japan, and later covered the Mex-
ican Revolution. He lived in Hawaii and
Australia. From his prolifi c pen fl owed 23
novels, several books of nonfi ction, seven
plays, and hundreds of poems and short
stories. Of his fi ctional works—novels
and short stories—more than 80 were set
in the Far North and drawn from the nine
months that he spent there. It continued
to sustain him, much as Joseph Conrad
drew lifelong inspiration from his youth-
ful adventures at sea.
At the time of his death in 1916—he
was 40 and died of kidney disease ex-
acerbated by alcoholism—Jack London
was one of the most widely read authors
in the world. Although the writer later
was praised by such luminaries as George
Orwell and Jorge Luis Borges, his reputa-
tion went into decline after his death. The
American literary elite dismissed him as a
hack who produced popular novels about
dogs and wolves. According to London’s
biographer, Earle Labor, these critics were
both unfamiliar with the range of Lon-
don’s work—he also wrote about philos-
ophy, war, astral projection, politics and
many other subjects—and also misled by
the tough “plain style” that London pio-
neered. “Even his popular classics are en-
riched with multilevel meanings beneath
the action-packed surface,” Labor says.
“Jack was gifted with what Jung called
‘primordial vision,’ which unconsciously
connects the author to universal myths
and archetypes. He has infl uenced count-
less other writers, including Ernest Hem-
ingway, James Jones and Susan Sontag.”
In recent decades, according to Labor,
there has been an “exponential outpour-
ing” of Jack London scholarship, geared
toward reclaiming his reputation. “His in-
ternational status—both as an outstand-
ing writer and as a major public fi gure—
has always been exceptionally high,”
Labor adds. “Now he’s fi nally achieving
recognition in his own country as a major
author for all literary seasons.”Ross-Simons Item #892700
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