The Call of the Wild: 1900-1916

by Roderick Nash (Editor)

When Jack London's The Call of the Wild was published in 1903 it became an immediate best seller. Readers were fascinated by the story of a domesticated dog from California named Buck that became the "primordial beast" in the Klondike, eventually reverting to the wolf. In describing Buck's progress from tameness to wildness, writes, Roderick Nash, Jack London passed judgment on his contemporaries. "They, too," he implied, "suffered from over-civilization," and in the early 1900's the idea struck a sympathetic chord. For many the growth and change of the United States over the previous hundred years seemed to have brought not the millennium once expected but rather a state of confusion, corruption, and debilitating abundance. For such, Buck's simple, vigorous, unrestrained life in the North was very appealing. As the twentieth century dawned, the nation found itself drawn toward virility, toward novelty, toward nature. The enthusiasm of many Americans for Buck's reversion to the primitive points the way to a general interpretation of American culture in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Even in the midst of celebrations of progress, moral absolutism, and Anglo-Saxon cultural superiority, the feeling could not be downed that the American culture had seen its greatest moments. This realization, or rather this mood, influenced many aspects of turn of the century thought and behavior. This volume, along with the others in the series, represents a unified effort to restore to historical study the texture of life as it was lived, without sacrificing theoretical rigor or informed scholarship.

332 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Frazier Nash, Roderick
Nash, Roderic Frazier
Nash, Roderick F.
Nash, Roderick Frazier

Roderick Frazier Nash is a professor emeritus of history and environmental studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. He was the first person to descend the Tuolumne River (using a raft) [from: en.wikipedia.org]

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1970 book was part of a series called The American Culture, which published eight volumes collecting original works from different historical periods. This one covers a particularly fascinating era, the time between the ascension of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency and the last days before the US enters WWI.

The title of the book comes from Nash's particular interest in nature and the outdoors - his introduction tries hard to compare Jack London's novel and Americans' interest in reclaiming their natural lives. In fact, nearly half the book is about nature and public spaces. Some of these pieces are downright loony from a 21st Century perspective - the founder of the Boy Scouts of America talks about the need to raise boys in the ways of the wild so they can avoid mental and physical diseases.

It's really interesting to read about issues from the perspectives of people who didn't know what would happen next. Heck, I don't know what happened after the Congressional hearings transcribed here concerning the plans to create a lake at Hetch Hetchy in California to provide water for San Francisco. I intend to google it one of these days.

But far more interesting to me is when things turn to arts and culture. As I recently read about Frank Lloyd Wright in 1959, it was fun to see his manifesto about architecture from 1908. H.L. Mencken turns up to make fun of some long since forgotten contemporary popular novel. But Nash includes samples from The Virginian, a novel which practically invented all Western movie tropes; Frank Merriwell Goes to Yale, which describes a baseball game starring the title hero who stars as a freshman; and Tarzan of the Apes, a book you may have heard of. These are fascinating tidbits of popular culture from the time.

There's a piece on ragtime from 1915 that declares quite wrongly that this music would continue to be creative for a long, long time. There's a piece on motion pictures that predicts this art form would get even more creative. There are competing perspectives on the Armory exhibition of modern art, including one from Theodore Roosevelt himself, who, as you probably expect, did not understand the new styles, but at least says he's glad he got to see them. And a 1913 piece on baseball makes some ridiculous cases for the ways the game makes its players better prepared for the rest of their lives, but also has some interesting things to say about the skills, the bravery, and the brains required to play it.

There are far more perspectives from wealthy people than poor, there are only a couple of women represented, and African-Americans barely exist. This says more about the way popular history thought in 1970 than it does even about the era being covered. I don't know that I'd recommend this book to anybody who doesn't already have some knowledge about the time and subjects in it. But it is interesting stuff to add to what I already knew.