In America, Jack London is honored with a postage stamp and a pedestrian mall in his hometown of Oakland, California. Indeed, his works have been translated into more languages than that of any other American writer The Call of the Wild has been rendered into eighty languages.Ĭollections of London stories in Russian have sold 200,000 copies in the initial printing, and he even appears on the cover of an Albanian anthology of American literature with Mark Twain.Īt the end of his life, Lenin requested his wife to read him a Jack London tale.

Doctorow declared Jack London to be the “most widely read American author worldwide.” His tales of wandering and freedom were what likely inspired the Beat writers. Similarly, London’s essays and science fiction stories were the precursor to anti-totalitarian works such as 1984, Brave New World and It Can’t Happen Here. His writing style and its portrayal of violence, death and action provided the foundation for what would later be known as Hemingwayesque literature, found in the novels of Cormac McCarthy.

Prior to my journey to Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon, I had been avidly reading Jack London’s books, which were not typically available at the local bookstore. Despite this, during my decade-long studies of literature, I was never assigned any of London’s books. His popularity was so widespread that he has been called the first celebrity of America. London used his thousand words a day to address matters such as poverty and class disparity, the potential for authoritarianism, Darwinism and eugenics, prohibition and alcoholism, and the status of the freedom-seeking individual in an industrialized world. When I asked around, I found that people knew Jack London as the author of dog stories, but very few had read any of his other fifty works, which went beyond animals.

I first encountered The Call of the Wild when it was among the collection of four-legged weepers on my bookshelf, including Old Yeller, The Incredible Journey, and Where the Red Fern Grows. I was sure that I had found the preeminent Jack London impersonator I had been searching for. I had rented a car and driven from San Francisco to Sonoma County, the site of London’s Beauty Ranch and the location where the author passed away in 1916 due to his hard-living lifestyle.Īs I waited, a pickup truck pulled up and I noticed the license plate was framed with Mike Wilson as Jack London. After months of communicating over the phone and exchanging emails, I made my way to Jack London State Historic Park’s visitor’s center.

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