As I endeavor to be a writer I have been drawn by Mr. London and his high adventure tales ever since I was a young boy.
Especially White Fang.
Have you ever read anything that stuck with you so well that you incorporated it into the fabric of your life.
The dog fighting arena portion of White Fang is one of those for me.
The scene in the dog pit White Fang faces all manner of breeds. Everything from a Mastiff to a Bulldog and all comers in between.
Being very smart White Fang learns to circumvent his instinctive dog behaviors and develops a new behavior for the fighting ring.
He doesn’t do any ramping up, no bluffing, no spitting and snarling in hopes of instilling fear into the opponent. He doesn’t ever know what is coming next day to day so he learns ATTACK!!
As soon as the doors of the cages are opened he springs into action and tumbling his opponents off of their feet before they know what is going on he severely injures or kills his opponents quickly.
Too quickly for the men there betting on the fights. The fight wrangler then has to hold White Fang back while the other dogs go through their ramping up rituals. Sadly for them still to no avail. Until the… well, just go read it.
I adopted that little piece of information into my own behaviors. Growing up on the small side and facing what I faced when I was smaller, I learned to be quiet and wait while the other kid did all the hooting and hollering and ramping up and when they stepped in close, POP!
I would at least get one good one in.
As I read and learn more about Mr. London I can say I do not agree with all of his professed opinions or ideology, but what I do see as a ‘GOAL’ is a man who appeared on the writing scene at a new time in printing in which his particular style and experiences were able to capitalize on. That, I think, anyone who writes today and see’s the writing world, knows something different is transpiring.
So who is going to be the internet age, self publishing, hybrid publishing, vlogging, blogging, instagraming, YouTube version of Jack London today?
“You, me, them… everybody, anybody, nobody?”
Here is a short excerpt I found about Jack London.
By L.E. Doctorow in the New York Times, December 11th 1988.
“Jack London was never an original thinker.
He was a great gobbler-up of the world, physically and intellectually.
He was the kind of writer who went to a place and wrote his dreams into it.
He was a workaday literary genius/hack who knew instinctively that literature was a generous host,
always having room for one more at her table.”
So I have chosen.
I am using Mr. London as my ‘GOAL’. I am committing to reading more of his work and have just completed two short readings that I want to go back and reread, already.
Will I get up to the Klondike, hunt a Grizzly Bear, take a safari on the Serengeti or end up in Haiti helping a friend spread the word of God or maybe hunting Red Stag in the wilds of New Zealand??
A cliche’ here would be, “Only time will tell.”
My writing coach and I are baseball fans and I like the excerpt portion of calling Mr. London a ‘hack’.
We talk a bit about my individual posts being like batting cage practice, you have to put the work in and take your hacks.Â
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