THE Jack London COMPLETE CLASSICS The Call of the Wild UNABRIDGED Read by William Roberts CLASSIC FICTION 3 CDs NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 1 27/11/08 17:28:21 CD 1 1 The Call Of The Wild (start) 6:25 2 The Judge was at a meeting... 8:05 3 Four men gingerly carried the crate... 6:05 4 As the days went by, other dogs came... 6:38 5 2: The Law Of Club and Fang 5:30 6 By afternoon, Perrault, who was in a hurry... 7:36 7 Three more huskies were added to the team… 5:54 8 This first theft marked Buck as fit to... 5:07 9 3: The Dominant Primordial Beast 6:19 10 Perrault And Francois, having cleaned out... 7:11 11 At the Pelly one morning... 9:24 Total time on CD 1: 74:24 2 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 2 27/11/08 17:28:21 CD 2 1 Seven days from the time they pulled into... 5:58 2 But Spitz, cold and calculating... 6:44 3 4: Who Has Won To Mastership 6:11 4 The general tone of the team picked up... 8:02 5 It was a hard trip, with the mail behind... 7:39 6 5: The Toil of Trace and Trail 6:55 7 The dogs sprang against the breast bands... 7:55 8 Late next morning, Buck led... 6:31 9 Mercedes nursed a special grievance – 5:29 10 It was beautiful spring weather… 4:54 11 This was the first time Buck had failed… 4:52 Total time on CD 2: 71:21 3 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 3 27/11/08 17:28:21 CD 3 1 6: For the Love of a Man 6:39 2 But in spite of this great love he bore... 8:06 3 Later on, in the fall of the year… 5:58 4 That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed... 7:36 5 The crowd was watching curiously... 4:04 6 7: The Sounding of the Call 6:04 7 There was nothing for the dogs to do... 7:11 8 On the opposite side of the watershed... 6:54 9 ‘Never was there such a dog’ said John Thornton… 7:41 10 At last, at the end of the fourth day… 7:13 11 Night came on, and a full moon rose high... 7:14 Total time on CD 3: 74:50 Total time on CDs 1–3: 3:40:35 4 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 4 27/11/08 17:28:21 Jack London The Call of the Wild It was originally intended just as a story to add their own deeper fears and desires. about a dog, a companion piece to one On the other hand, London was intrigued called Bâtard. But when reviewers claimed by the impact of the environment on the it as an allegorical fable that touched the individual, on the effects of circumstance deepest elements of the human condition, on morality and behaviour. Much of his life London accepted the interpretation, but was spent trying to find a balance between insisted that it had been unconscious. the softening comfort of civilisation and He wrote a story, people liked it – he got a proper relationship with nature, both lucky. This is both true and disingenuous. human and environmental. And his search On the one hand, Jack London had been – as well as his own character – gave him trying to make a living as a writer for five some experience of the harsher aspects of years before The Call of the Wild, and each. was doing so not just out of a desire to He was born in 1876 in San Francisco, express himself, but to support his mother California, but within nine months, his and his own family. Stories, journalism father – a common-law husband to his and books had already been published, mother, Flora – had left, and Flora had and he wrote with a dedication borne out married John London. He was a widower of necessity as much as inspiration. It is and a veteran of the Civil War who had entirely possible to create a fable without been introduced to Flora by Jack’s wet- being aware of its symbolic potential – the nurse, Virginia Prentiss, who was a former work itself can carry ideas that are outside slave. Jack’s relationship with Virginia was the conscious decisions of the creator, or close and long-lasting, but his childhood can contain sufficient capacity for readers and much of his early adult life was unsettled 5 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 5 27/11/08 17:28:21 and unsettling. It was also dogged by the Bering Sea. It was not a particularly safe constant threat of poverty. The family time to be catching seals, quite apart from moved around California looking for work the usual dangers of long sea voyages; but as Jack’s step-father’s various businesses it furnished him with material for an essay failed or were insufficiently profitable. that he entered in a competition, and won. As a result, by the time he was sixteen, On his return, he worked in a jute factory Jack had been a newspaper delivery boy, and as a coal shoveller, both occupations worked on an ice-wagon, in a cannery, in where he was again exploited as he had a bowling alley and as an oyster pirate. In been in the cannery – overworked and this he was successful, but it was hardly underpaid. He was not alone in this, and a career choice; although his delight in his growing convictions concerning the the sea and sailing eventually earned him politics of poverty persuaded him to join a an opportunity to turn gamekeeper with huge protest march to bring the workers’ a job as a patrolman for the California anger more directly to the attention of the Fish Patrol. As was to happen on several government. But something in Jack London occasions, his appetite for something was searching for that combination of profoundly important to him was both self-discovery and wilderness that marked encouraged and facilitated by women. so much of his greatest works. He left the Virginia Prentiss loaned him the money to march and went off on his own, working buy his first boat; and earlier, at his local when he could, as a tramp when he could library, the librarian and poet Ina Coolbrith not; and being arrested for vagrancy as a guided his voracious appetite for reading. result. Later, Anna Strunsky would collaborate Over the next four years, he managed with and inspire him. to complete his formal education, But before that, he had some continue writing, develop his socialist adventuring to do, and he joined a beliefs (joining the Socialist Labor Party), schooner’s crew on an eight-month sealing learn boxing and wrestling, expand his voyage that went as far as Japan and the intellectual horizons, fall in love, drop out 6 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 6 27/11/08 17:28:21 of university, work whenever he could – Bessie May Maddern, which brought them often exhausting work – and finally sail two children, failed after just three years; with his brother-in-law to Alaska for the but his second, to Charmian Kittredge, Klondike Gold Rush. And it is here that lasted from 1905 until his death eleven The Call of the Wild, published in 1903, is years later. And throughout the last decade set. London had travelled across Canada of his life, he was attempting to build a before, but this expedition, however kind of earthly paradise in an area called much it failed as a money-maker at the Glen Ellen. He named it Beauty Ranch, time, furnished even more direct material and bought more and more land around for his writing, and an even deeper sense it as his success increased, eventually of what it was to be a man – or any animal owning 1,400 acres. And within it was – facing nature in desperate times. It was to be his dream home, Wolf House. Here not a happy experience in many ways. amid the woodland scenery was an ideal While he was there he became ill from combination of raw (if benign) nature scurvy, and had to return – working his and comfort. But his tireless energy and passage on boats and trains – when he dedication to the ranch, his house and his discovered his step-father had died. From writing was undermined by personal and then on, he dedicated himself to making a natural disasters. living as a writer. He had always been a drinker – since His range is much greater than his the age of five when he tasted the beer he most famous tales suggest: he wrote on was taking to his father – and his health social deprivation in England, was twice was further damaged by tropical illnesses a war correspondent, wrote travel pieces, contracted on his travels. His relationship novels, journalism, short stories and with his daughters and his first wife poetry. He continued sailing widely round deteriorated; and Charmian lost one the world when his health allowed, gave child after just two days, and another in a lectures, and twice ran unsuccessfully for miscarriage. And then, not long before its mayor of Oakland. His first marriage, to completion in 1913, Wolf House burned 7 NA392312 Call of the Wild unabridged booklet.indd 7 27/11/08 17:28:21 down in a fire probably caused by the worked through them all in an attempt spontaneous combustion of oily rags left to build something lasting and good.