Writing about Jack London, as Cecelia Tichi did in The Sun (“Why Jack London Still Matters,” 2/04/16), reminds me of the parable of the blind men and the elephant. One blind man feels the truck and describes it. Another feels the tail and explains what it feels like, and so on. No one sees the entire elephant. Tichi doesn’t see all or even most of Jack London. It’s true, that we need social reforms today, but to look to Jack London as a reformer who might inspire contemporary movements and causes is to overlook a man who was profoundly pessimistic and who predicted, in his best fiction, global pandemics and brutal dictatorships.
Moreover, at the height of his political trajectory, he wasn’t a reformer or a progressive, but a revolutionary who urged armed insurrection and assassinations. Read his essay “Revolution” which would probably scare the daylight out of Bernie Sanders. Then, too, to look at Jack London as a role model is to ignore a man who was for much of his life a white supremacist and a male chauvinist. The causes he advocated were Prohibition, which brought violence, corruption, and organized crime, and the notion of the White Republic, a California without Asians and without red, or black men and women.
If readers and critics want to know and describe Jack London, they had better read widely and deeply in his work and not reach conclusions after a smattering of information. Otherwise the blind will led the blind.
Jonah Raskin, Santa Rosa
. . . so nobody’s perfect.
Prof Raskin’s revelations will be surprising for many readers. I’m glad someone who has actually studied London has the chutzpah to enlighten his readers. True, no one’s perfect, but adulation without full disclosure is bound to end up embarrassing someone. Or many someones.