Podcast #579: Jack London’s Literary Code, with Earle Labor
Podcast #579: Jack London’s Literary Code
The literature of Jack London has long been given the short shrift by scholars. They say he wrote some good dog stories for boys, but beyond that didn’t showcase any literary genius or high-level craftsmanship. Well, my guest today begs to differ with this assessment.
His name is Earle Labor. He’s the preeminent Jack London scholar and 91 years young. I’ve had Earle on the podcast two previous times: the first to discuss his landmark Jack London biography, and the second to discuss his own memoir, The Far Music. For this episode, I drove down to Earle’s home in Shreveport, Louisiana to talk to Earle about the overlooked literary genius of Jack London and the big themes that London wrote about in his novels and short stories.
It is a pity that Earl Labor’s work has not yet been translated into Russian. I would love to study it and perhaps learn something new and interesting from the life of the greatest writer and interesting person as Jack London. In Russia, people love and read Jack London. The total circulation of his works only in Soviet times reached 80,000,000 volumes.