Safe Return Doubtful

by Jack London         ***** (5/5 stars)

I’ll review the best stories.

In A Far Country

is the sort of story for which I chose this book, one of survival in the frozen wastes, enabling London to do what he is best at, make his characters suffer and work for even the most basic of needs. Carter Weatherbee, the protagonist, and a group of other men are traveling to the treacherous Yukon and, as winter takes a grip, must try and reach a small settlement there. They take a vote on whether they should wait for the ice to get thinner or if they should send a team of dogs with two men, and decide on the latter. These are two city men chasing their luck in Klondike gold-rush days. This is also a crime story, which isn’t a spoiler, but hopefully an enticement to read it, and it doesn’t huge guesswork to predict what happens, but the interest is in how it happens. As much as the criminal, London makes nature itself as much of a culprit. For me, this is London at his best, in those cold and unforgiving days of the Yukon.

It’s free online at

https://www.artofmanliness.com/articl…

, and a wonderful way to spend an hour.

To The Man On The Trail

concerns a motley group of frontier men on Christmas Eve on the tail. Their celebration is interrupted by a stranger on a dog sled, who they later learn is fleeing from the law.

Malamute kid arose, cup in hand and glanced at the greased paper window, where the frost stood three inches thick. “a health to the man, on the trail this night, may his grub hold out, may his dogs keep their legs and his matches never misfire”

An Odyssey of the North

features The Malamute Kid, who is from other of London’s stories also, but here he really just plays the part of a listener, with his partner on his sled, Prince, as a another man, “He of the Otter Skins”(or Naass), on the point of hypothermia calls on them. Nass talks them through his world travels and how he got to the desperate situation he is now in. Wonderful, and at 30 pages, considerably larger than the rest of the stories in the book.

The Law Of Life

Old Koskoosh appears to be accepting of the fact that he is going to die. He has been abandoned by his tribe due to the fact that he is old and unable to keep up with them. It’s a very powerful story of acceptance that is narrated in the third person by an unknown narrator which enables a gradual realisation of the theme of what it’s about.

Li Wan, the Fair

Li Wan is a young Indian woman of mysterious origins who has never seen a white man, and is arriving in the Klondike region to the madness of the gold-mining activity there. She tries to make friends with a couple of wealthy American women who are visiting the diggings and who are interested in her native dress, but her over-protective native husband is much less friendly, coming from a culture in which the husband dominates the wife, to an almost abusive level.

In the quite splendid

The League Of The Old Men

Imber, Of The Whitefish people, is a multiple murderer who has given himself up in his old age and his case is being heard in court. The question is not if the people he killed, or of the sentence he will receive, but of why he has given himself up. Some writing, like this, should be essential reading to all in positions of power dealing with issues of immigration.

In the courtroom a translator reads Imber’s statement and interviews him,

The courtroom listened stolidly to each unadorned little tragedy, as Imber paused to remember.
“First, there was the man who came over the Ice Mountains, it’s cunning traps made of iron, who sought the beaver of the Whitefish. Him, I slew. And there were three men seeking gold on the Whitefish long ago. Them also Inslew, and left them to the wolverines. And at Five Fingers there was a man with a raft and much meat.”

The clash of cultures becomes evident to all except the law-makers of the courtroom.

“The best of our young men and women had gone away with the white men to wander on the trail and river to far places. And the young women came back old and broken, or they came back not at all. And the young men came back to sit by our fires for a time, full of ill speech and rough ways, drinking evil drinks and gambling through long nights and day, with a great unrest always in their hearts. And they were without honor and respect, jeering old time customs and laughing in the faces of the chiefs and the shamans.

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Its a wonderful piece of writing, one that etches it’s mark into the brain, never to be forgotten.

Love of Life

This is the type of survival story that for me, epitomises Jack London; the days of the goldrush, and the Yukon wilderness descended on by men who had no clue about the shills they would need on the trail, and many perished… Abandoned by his mate after twisting an ankle on a river crossing, the unnamed prospector battles starvation and wolves, and appears doome. There’s so much crammed into the 20 or so pages, as London works his magic , we have empathy for his plight, and are desperate to know how the saga ends. This is one of his very best.

To Build A Fire

is the one of these stories I had read previously, some 40+ years ago, but it has never left me, such is it’s power.

It’s a tragic tale of arrogance and a gross under-estimation of the dangers of the wilds. A fable that all who take in the outdoors in any form, would be wise to read.

A man, along with his dog, has offered to source a logging route, and is returning to his mining camp where his friends had been waiting for him, knowing that once he gets there, there is the luxury of hot food and campfires. Prior to his journey though, an old-timer reminded that under no circumstance should one go alone into the Yukon wilderness.

Again, London’s skill is to fit so much into so few pages; the fire the man strives to build symbolising life, the themes of resilience, on the man’s part, and of arrogance and stubbornness to ignore the advice of the old man. Throughout also there is a sense of impending doom, and yet as well as the environmental being a hostile one, it has a rugged beauty and appeal.

London does not give the protagonist a name, referring to him simply as “the man” throughout the story. In doing this, London places him at an even greater distance from the reader within this deadly setting, isolating him even more in the bleak and hostile surroundings.

London writes wonderfully well about dogs. Without conflict or ambiguity, the dog’s character remains the same, it’s sneer almost laughing at the man’s attitude of false sense of superiority.

Not a London quote, but from Whymper, for the many who may feel they can disregard nature’s warnings..

Climb if you will,
but remember that courage and strength
are nought without prudence,
and that a momentary negligence
may destroy the happiness of a lifetime.
Do nothing in haste;
look well to each step;
and from the beginning
think what may be the end.