Spring/Summer 2009 Vol. 20, No. 1 The Magazine of the Jack London Society GARY SCHARNHORST recovers a Jack London Interview ANOTHER WOMAN in the Life of Jack London — Jay Williams ALA & PCA/ACA Panels on Jack London JACK LONDON NIGHTS: The Tradition Continues 2 The Jack London Society President Thomas R. Tietze, Jr. Another Recovered Interview Wayzata High School, Wayzata, MN Vice President Gary Riedl with Jack London Wayzata High School, Wayzata, MN Executive Coordinator Jeanne C. Reesman University of Texas at San Antonio Gary Scharnhorst Department of English Advisory Board Sam S. Baskett University of New Mexico Michigan State University Lawrence I. Berkove University of Michigan-Dearborn Kenneth K. Brandt JACK LONDON TRAVELED to Los Angeles for a week in Savannah College of Art and Design early January 1905 to visit Cloudesley Johns and other friends Donna Campbell Washington State University and to deliver his lecture “The Scab” on behalf of the local So- Daniel Dyer cialists. While in the city, he was also interviewed for the Los An- Western Reserve University Holger Kersten geles Examiner, a Hearst newspaper, by the young reporter Con- University of Magdeburg stance Skinner, one of Johns’s friends and later a distinguished Earle Labor Centenary College of Louisiana journalist and author. London had recently reported on the Rus- Joseph R. McElrath sian-Japanese war for the Hearst papers in New York, Boston, Florida State University Noël Mauberret Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, though his conversa- Lycée Alain Colas, Nevers, France tion with Skinner was more likely the result of his eagerness to Susan Nuernberg University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh publicize his lecture than his willingness to placate an employer. Christian Pagnard The interview is noteworthy for the verbal repartee between the Lycée Alain Colas, Nevers, France principals as well as for some details it sheds on London’s life, Gina M. Rossetti Saint Xavier University particularly his love for poetry and the circumstances surround- Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin ing his interview with the future U.S. president William Howard University of Ottawa Earl Wilcox Taft in 1902. I transcribe below the entire interview as it ap- Winthrop University peared in the Examiner for January 8.1 Honorary Board Members Vil Bykov * * * Moscow University Milo Shepard “I once did an interview,” said Jack London, cocking the gray eye that Jack London Ranch carries most green at me with a judicial air. Editor I refused to be intimidated. Kenneth K. Brandt “Only one?” I asked, nonchalantly. “Then you are a mere amateur.” Savannah College of “Only one,” said Jack London, ignoring the latter half of my remarks rather Art and Design, [email protected] elaborately, I thought. “But I consider myself in a position to judge of inter- Cover image courtesy of USU Special Collec- views: because that one was so very important.” tions, Merrill-Cazier Library “Oh, well, this one won’t be,” said I, comfortably. The Call is produced twice yearly at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Department of Liberal Arts, P. O. Box 3146 Savannah, GA 31402-3146 (www.scad.edu). Members are encouraged to send their London related items to Kenneth Brandt at the above address or via e-mail at [email protected]. ISSN: 1083-6799 3 Jack London lit a cigarette and looked laughter at me In the first place, Jack London does not care to talk over the end of it. about himself. He is unaffected, modest. The public clamor “What a perfect hostess you are,” he said. “You have put that follows him has been none of his seeking. In fact, I me completely at my ease.” think he regards it as one of the penalties of success—a suc- “It is my specialty,” said I, with more modesty than ap- cess that he values very lightly, notwithstanding he has pears in the writing. worked for it hard and faithfully. “I wonder if all interviewers are like the one I tackled?” Jack London is a man who is not giving the best of him- Jack London continued from nowhere in particular. “It was self to the world because he realized early that the world Governor Taft,2 who had just returned from the Philippines. does not want the best. So he tells the world stories for its I had a certain num- entertainment—and ber of subjects on his bread-and- which I wanted him “People who say that their work is everything butter—and, being an to talk. I met him on artist, he tells it good the transport, I met to them are making a grave error. They are stories. him on the ferry, I crushing out the reality—which is worth a “To be spoiled, by met him in the Pal- anything, one must ace Hotel and he thousand-fold more than the greatest work. care for it,” said Mr. talked and talked London. “I don’t care and talked, columns My life, with all it can give me of experience, for acclaim; in short, and reams, but never I less than care for it. a word on those sub- of happiness, or of sorrow, is a far greater It was very painful to jects I had prepared me at first, but I saw for him. Oh, I got an thing to me than my work can ever be.” that I must harden interview, but it was- —Jack London myself to endure the n’t at all what I ex- expressions of appre- pected.”3 ciation that would “That is what generally happens,” I remarked. “There’s come from people who were not capable of judging— no success in an interview that is too thoroughly planned.” appreciation I would know myself to be unworthy of. “I see that you rely entirely upon your imagination. You “I have had one compliment that I value. It came to me don’t take notes,” said Jack London. in Korea. I stopped at a small mission station for a day or “You might have said memory,” I expostulated. two, and they asked me there to give a reading from my Jack London smiled the cheerful smile of the man who ‘Call of the Wild.’ It happened to be the only fiction they has scored. had. Staying at the station was a young cockney, a corre- spondent of an Anglo-Chinese weekly of some little port. He “I shall read you very critically tomorrow morning,” he had been in the Klondike. said, “and if I find any errors I shall report you.” “Well, we went over the book together as I selected por- “Very well,” said I. “In that case I shall put into this in- tions for my reading, and it did me good to hear his com- terview my criticism of your play.”4 ments and see his enjoyment as he read those lines between “Oh, come, come! that would hardly be fair. You know the lines that only the man who has been there—who has that is only the first rough draft. I haven’t even revised it and seen and known that life—can read. of course I shall rewrite it entirely—probably several times. ` “That is one of the disappointments in writing books. A You must not criticize a first draft.” certain sympathy of art or emotion will make many people “It will be the first—and only draft of this interview that enjoy the story, but there are so few who can enjoy because will be published. Remember that, and don’t criticize a first they know. So the best of it all, the truth of it, is lost. There draft.” is always a motive underneath the surface—the motive of Jack London lit another cigarette. “Suppose we cry pax,” telling the story—but I see by the reviews that are sent me he said. that, generally, even the reviewer does not suspect it. In the whiles we talked I was reminded of the fact that “I have nothing enthusiastic to say about fiction writing. we had formerly laughingly admitted—that an interview I don’t care for it. I don’t write fiction because there is an seldom takes the trend planned for it. Jack London is known impulse in me demanding that form of expression. There is to the world first as a novelist and an author of short stories, not. I write fiction because the world demands it and pays then as a war correspondent and a venturesome traveler, and for it—and I must live. But when I write it I give it the best I last as a writer on socialism and economics. have. My artistic conscience will not let me do less. So I had somewhat vaguely planned a path down which “My first love was music. Perhaps it is still strongest. My the oiled wheels of interrogatory conversation should mo- next was poetry. I would rather write a sonnet than the bile, stopping an instant here and there at the way stations of greatest novel. But the world does not want sonnets. Editors Jack London’s artistic career. But we did not stop at those and the public will not buy them—unless they are very stations, for the vehicle of our thought took the turning to trashy—and even then only occasionally. So I write fiction. the left and went adventuring in an hitherto unexplored But if I wrote what I cared for I would write poetry and country. pamphlets. 4 “My lecture tonight? Well, I am not a speaker, but I am deeply interested in all the questions that stir humanity.