New Penguin Classics Edition of “The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories”
https://penguinrandomhousehighereducation.com/book/?isbn=9780140186512
The Call of the Wild, London’s elemental masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog during the Klondike Gold Rush. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada’s Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog hybrid struggling to survive in a human society every bit as brutal as the natural world. This volume of London’s famed Northland novels also includes an early feminist story “The Night-Born,” and a pro-labor story “South of the Slot.” These works echo and enrich the themes of The Call of the Wild and White Fang with their unique emphases on the primordial, the instinctual, and the quest for social justice. London’s narratives in this volume focus on issues of continuing relevance to contemporary readers, including the value of the wilderness, animal rights, socioeconomic oppression, and gender inequity. This edition also includes an introduction by preeminent London scholar, Earle Labor, as well as a comprehensive biographical note on London’s life and works by scholar and executive coordinator of the Jack London Society, Kenneth K. Brandt.
Hey, Ken, congratulations! This will always be the copy I assign. What a great, lean, spare, brilliant thing to do to put those 2 short stories together with The Call and White Fang. The 4 selections just resonate. Hope you are looking forward to a very happy holiday. People are already very excited about the fall 2020 Symposium. I am very happy to hear we can go out on a boat! My ex is from San Diego, and that was the most fun thing to do.
You know one thing I was thinking about is that the ALA started at a biker motel under the freeway near Mission Bay and Mission Beach in June 1989 as the California State U Symposium on American Literature, the brainchild of Alfred Bendixen and Jim Nagel, who had talked over at the previous year’s MLA the total rejection of “author-centered” scholarly research in favor of theory by MLA. A coalition of author (and area) societies, they decided, was needed, each society putting up its own panels—decentralized. It quickly moved to the Bahia Hotel on Mission Bay; we always met there for maybe 10 years. It is (or was) a great sprawling place that used to have a hotel building of every Southern California hotel design possible on premises—always a question. Would you get a 2000 sf “bungalow” with a full kitchen and a sliding glass door or two out to sand, water, and boats, or a horrid room in one of the “high-rises.” The JLS party was it, crashed especially by modern poetry people. Milo used to send down cases of wine and glasses.
There would be no Jack London Society without the ALA without Alfred especially—Jim handed over his active role very early on, just a couple of years. I started working on forming JLS at Alfred’s tutelage and for the specific reason that if we had a Society that had its own conferences, board, bylaws, etc., we could have a place each year at ALA. I am wondering whether you would consider (and I guess the Board) some kind of honor we could award him there. We would pay his way, ask him to give maybe a lunchtime speech (?), and give him a modest honorarium. Now I think my limited but reliable endowment at UTSA could pay for much of this, I think the plane ticket and a good honorarium, say $750 or so, if the Society could cover his hotel. This would mean a great deal to him, and without him you kind of wonder how American literary studies would be now.
Cheers, Jeanne
Sent from my iPhone
Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Professor of English, Jack and Laura Richmond Endowed Faculty Fellow in American Literature
University of Texas at San Antonio
One UTSA Circle
San Antonio, TX 78249
210-458-4374
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