The Call of the Wild

There are 3 posts tagged The Call of the Wild (this is page 1 of 1).

Let’s move to the Yukon and kill

I finished The Call of the Wild yesterday and I’ve been thinking a lot about regression. Essentially, I’m wondering if Jack London considered the transformation of Buck (the “hero” dog of the book) as a victory or a tragedy.

There are certainly tragic elements to Buck’s regression. The whole journey is kicked off by Buck being stolen, mercilessly beaten, worked ’til near-death, and starved. Each of these tortures drives him a little closer to being a “wild animal.” The final tragedy, though, is the murder of his owner, John Thornton, at the hands of the Yeehats (a fictional tribe of Native Americans), who kill Thornton because…that’s what Indians do, I guess.

All of these events are what drive Buck to his destiny, which is to join a pack of wolves and live as his ancestors did and forgo his silly old life as a “pet.”

While all of these events are tragic, Buck’s transformation is presented as a good thing. He’s done it! He’s achieved his destiny! Buck has cut ties with civilization and now lives in the Yukon, leading a pack of timber wolves, having all sorts of puppies, and killing all sorts of bears and moose and the occasional gold digger. The Yeehats still whisper about Buck around their campfires, telling stories of a “Ghost Dog” that’s bigger, faster, and smarter than any other animal in the woods. Probably because one of the last things Buck does is rip the throats out of the tribe of Yeehats that killed his owner.

Hooray for destiny!

I can see the allure of this fantasy, but it is just that: a fantasy. I am strongly inclined to believe that Jack London intends for Buck’s transformation to be seen as noble; he’s going back to his roots, thriving in his ancestral memories, becoming closer to nature.

And you can, too! Or, at least, that’s what Jack London wants readers to think.

There are several scenes in The Call of the Wild in which Buck inexplicably dreams of hunting alongside an ape, which we can only take to represent the ancestral memories of humanity. Or, more specifically, ancestral memories of a time when monkeys and dogs worked together.

I get the metaphor, but that assuredly never happened. Humans that domesticated dogs were Homo sapiens, not some kind of knuckle-dragging half-ape that roosted in trees. The point that London is trying to make, though, is that these ancestral memories exist in humans, too, and we can follow in Buck’s footsteps! And we should!

All we have to do to achieve this destiny is be willing to rip the throats out of all those who wrong us and embrace the childish notion that running around the goddamned Yukon hunting and gathering and freezing half the time is somehow fun.

I think Lord of the Flies captures this idea of regression more accurately: The reason that creatures devolve is because they are stupid and afraid, not because they are noble.

There’s a thin layer of snow covering the ground this morning. It is 6:00 AM, the sky is slate gray, and I’ve decided to read Ten Years in the Tub by Nick Hornby next.

I first came across Nick Hornby about 25 years ago when High Fidelity came out, and he was one of my favorite authors for a while. About a Boy is a terrific book.

Ten Years in the Tub appears to be a collection of short, humorous articles Hornby wrote for a British magazine — articles about the books he was reading at the time.

So, in essence, I’ll be writing a book blog about a book version of an early book blog.

Sigh. Maybe I should spend some time in the goddamned woods.

Tales of a drunken magician

Whoo-ee it’s been a rough morning. New Year’s Eve was…intoxicating. Sarah and I went over to a friends house to eat some ribs and have a game night, during which we tried to explain the rules of Magic: The Gathering to an absolute beginner. There were four of us in all, and the other three of us were well seasoned MTG players.

We used a set called “Magic The Gathering Game Night,” which has five single-color decks and is about the the most easy-to-grasp way of learning the game. (Honestly, there are so many new rules and skills and tokens that I wouldn’t call it “easy” to pick up. It’d take months to actually master.)

The issue wasn’t so much playing with a beginner as it was that we were all drinking heavily. I brought over a bottle of strawberry soju to get us started, and after that it was all whiskey and wine and champagne until the ball dropped. By the time we got well into the 4-person free-for-all, it was a lot of, “Wait, so that guy is riding on the dragon?”

“They’re not, like, together or anything, it’s just that this dragon creature gives that creature flying.”

“So is he on top of him, like that machete is on top of that other guy?”

“No, the machete is equipment, not a creature…”

Everyone’s first game of Magic is like this, and I enjoy teaching new players how the game works. The game ended in a bit of a mess as we all collectively decided to make bold, sweeping plays that were the MTG equivalent of swinging for the fences every turn. I kamikazed one player and was promptly slaughtered the next turn, which left only a few more rounds for the remaining players. Everyone had fun, which is what the point is, and then we watched Game Changer until passing out.

Today, though, is not as much fun. It’s going to be a slow and low-impact sort of day. The most strenuous thing I plan on doing is ordering a pizza. I’m no spring chicken, and a night of drinking requires a bit of recovery time.

I didn’t quite finish The Call of the Wild yesterday, but I’m over the half-way mark and having a lot of a-ha! moments in which I remember what happens in the story.

The most intriguing thing about it is Jack London’s persistence in emphasizing some kind of natural order to life, or at least a natural order to dogs. The main character is a big dog called Buck who gets dognapped and sold into dog-slavery, working up in Alaska pulling dog sleds. Buck goes from being a relatively spoiled pet into something more wild, and in doing so constantly realizes and utilizes natural instincts that bubble into his mind from his ancestors.

If there’s anything that The Call of the Wild can be criticized for, it’s probably that philosophy — that society is just a thin veneer of grace poured over the potatoes of our intrinsic, base nature. Lord of the Flies gets into that same territory, and all sorts of people take issue with that book.

Are dogs (or humans, for that matter) inherently good, or do we all become thieves and murderers when we are pushed too far? I think there’s an element of truth to the idea, but it perhaps isn’t as dire as novelists make it seem. We can all surprise ourselves when the chips are down, but I don’t think we’re all absolute monsters when we lose civility.

Jack London should remember that there is nothing natural about Buck or his situation. He is driven to stealing food and fighting for his place amongst the other dogs because humans force him to, not to mention that his entire existence is the culmination of years and years of selective breeding.

His instincts are about as natural as those of modern cattle, who do not at all resemble their wild ancestors.

And I’d completely forgotten there was a Harrison Ford version of the The Call of the Wild that came out in 2020! Hot damn, I finally have a chance to watch that CGI-riddled mess.

I really like Harrison Ford as an actor, but I imagine the wildest place anyone went when making this movie was the back lot at 20th Century Studios in Burbank. Why bother going into the WILD to make a movie called The Call of the Wild? It’s cheaper to have dozens of artists animate it. And why on earth would you use an actual dog in a movie about dogs?

The result is akin to David Attenborough using CGI in his next nature documentary. Sure, it’s possible, but what’s the point?

Killers on tape

I finished up Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol yesterday. Actually, I should say that Dead Souls finished itself. The book really does just stop.

From what I’ve been able to gather about Gogol’s fairly contentious relationship with his book, it appears that it was part of a planned trilogy that would mirror Dante’s Divine Comedy, with the main character going through Hell, Purgatory, and finally Heaven. If that’s the case, then I suppose the part of the book that was finished represents a journey through the Inferno.

That could mean that Dead Souls is less of a realistic representation of life in rural Russia in the 19th century than it is a moral allegory. You could look at all the people the main character meets — the ones from whom he’s trying to buy dead souls — as sinners, or people who have made the choice to live a life that is, by Gogol’s standards, sinful. They are (Chichikov included) greedy, wrathful, prideful, and certainly fraudulent.

The end of the published portion of Dead Souls, which may be (I’m not sure on this at all) the beginning of Chichikov’s journey through Purgatory, does have a shift in tone, as Chichikov meets a well to do landowner who is turning a tidy profit with his estate. Chichikov begins to emulate the man, and it may be that he’s moving away from his fraudulent ways and….into a life of ceaseless toil? I don’t know.

You can’t help but wonder what Gogol’s Russian heaven would have been like. Probably not accurate enough for Gogol’s liking, since people say he burned part of the book because it wasn’t holding up to his religious standards.

Sarah and I have a beautiful Bengal named Jolene. (Here she sits, defiant, after being kindly asked not to sit on my laptop.)

Jolene is a lovely cat. Affectionate, vocal, and blind as a bat. While most cats will choose to sit at windows and look at birds, Jolene always goes in for more tactile experiences. She loves boxes and plastic bags, as well as anything sticky — tape, post-it notes, stickers. She can’t get enough of them.

Last night I left about a foot of scotch tape hanging off the corner of a wall in the kitchen, about two feet up, just above cat height. Before bed, I jiggled it around a bit and Jolene came screaming in. “Tape?” she asked. “Did I just hear tape?”

“You sure did! Now kill it,” I commanded. I didn’t, however, show her exactly where it was.

I mostly did this out of curiosity. Would Jolene be able to find the string of scotch tape? It wouldn’t be easy for her, as blind as she is, but Jolene loves tape and there was a good chance she’d hunt it until she found it. And what would she do if she did?

When I went downstairs to make coffee this morning, I noticed that the tape was gone from the wall. It wasn’t long before Jolene came trotting into the kitchen to place a wadded-up ball of spit-covered plastic at my feet.

“Lose something?” Jolene asked haughtily.

Or, more likely, being a generous provider, Jolene was sharing her kill with me.

She sat near the ball of tape, purring contentedly, and I wondered if I’ve ever truly loved anything as much.

My next book will be #567 on the list, The Call of the Wild by Jack London, which I read once (perhaps?) when I was in elementary school.

I know the generalities of the plot, but I don’t remember very much detail. As I recall, though, there was a film adaptation of London’s White Fang staring Ethan Hawke that came out when I was, what, 10? That prompted me to go down a rabbit hole of boy-in-the-woods books like White Fang, Hatchet, and My Side of the Mountain. I think I tackled The Call of the Wild during that same period.

The Call of the Wild isn’t exactly about a boy in the woods — it’s about a dog in the woods — but it’s the same sort of adventure. I’m excited to see if grabs my attention the way Treasure Island did.

Let’s go, nostalgia!