The Call of the Wild in Around the Year in 52 Books

Mar 11, 2019 John Warner rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-classic

When I initially read this American classic, I was in either elementary or high school. It had all the elements to entice a young boy. It is an adventure which occurs during the Yukon gold rush. The story's protagonist is Buck, an 140 lb St. Bernard and Scotch Collie mix, who is abducted from an easy life as the pet in St. Clara, California, and sold to dog traders who eventually sells him to mail couriers as a sled dog in the Yukon Territory. Buck will need to tap in to his more primeval instin ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Sep 27, 2014 Nadine in NY Jones rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, children-s, classic, gutenberg, wolves, dogs, 1001-books

One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted), distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry he w

One night he sprang from sleep with a start, eager-eyed, nostrils quivering and scenting, his mane bristling in recurrent waves. From the forest came the call (or one note of it, for the call was many noted), distinct and definite as never before,--a long-drawn howl, like, yet unlike, any noise made by husky dog. And he knew it, in the old familiar way, as a sound heard before. He sprang through the sleeping camp and in swift silence dashed through the woods. As he drew closer to the cry he went more slowly, with caution in every movement, till he came to an open place among the trees, and looking out saw, erect on haunches, with nose pointed to the sky, a long, lean, timber wolf

Wow, this is a brutal, visceral love song to dogs.

I read White Fang when I was 8 or 9 years old, and I LOVED it. It sat in my lay of top ten favorite books for decades. And for some reason I never read another book by Jack London. My library had Call of the Wild, of course, but I didn't like the cover, it showed fox terriers and I wanted wolves!

I remembered that White Fang had a rough go of it, but I still wasn't prepared for this book to be so BRUTAL! It's a children's classic! But then again, children are brutal.

From what I remember of Black Beauty, this is a shorter, better, more visceral account, if Black Beauty were a dog, named Buck, in the Yukon.

Even better, London seems to have a slight fixation on past lives, and also throws in some philosophical musings on the living of life, like this:

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

As sometimes happens in older stories, there is some bigoted ickiness that prevents this from feeling like a full five star read. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review