Brunch Book Review: The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

A Brunch Book Review: “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London
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Brunch Book Review: The Call of the Wild by Jack London

I owe a lot to the previews for the new big screen adaptation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The movie looked interesting to me, both Harrison Ford and the CGI enhanced dog looked adorable in all the right ways. The film didn’t look too maudlin, always a plus as far as I am concerned. After a few trailers for the film I was committed to seeing it. However, I also decided I needed to read the book, a classic of modern literature, before seeing the movie. I could not remember if I had ever read it. I thought that it might have been some required reading in high school. If I had read it, I could remember not a single detail. Thus, was a reading project born. 

Jack London didn’t have to work very hard to please me. I am exactly the target audience for wilderness adventures set in the Northwest Territories, or Alaska, of adventurers, dog sleds and abundant wildlands. One of my favorite books ever, is A Naturalist in Alaska, by Adolph Murie (which probably deserves its own review). That book is about one of the great 20^th Century wildlife biologists and his studies in Alaska. So, London was, as the saying goes, pushing at an open door. 

The Call of the Wild is an adventure told from the point of view of a big dog named Buck. This is not an anthropomorphized animal adventure in which all the animals are given human voices, human inclinations, and are generally just humans in animal guises. That can work, as host of animated films, books and even comic book demonstrate. That is not how London approaches the adventures and trials of Buck the dog. London tries to get in the canine head of his appealing hero and explain Buck’s life through a lens filtered deeply by the genus Canis. Specifically, London’s pays a great deal of narrative attention to the things that would, and clearly do, matter to domesticated dogs. Buck’s world is chiefly focused on understanding and predicting human behavior, as well as the dominance hierarchies that drive all dog life.  Both of these behavioral drivers become all important when Buck is conscripted into the life of a sled dog. There is a third thread to London’s narrative, and it may the most tantalizing part of the book. That thread is the meditations the narrator has about the very nature of a dog’s behavioral and mental life. These meditations form the core of London’s call of the wild, which is a tug I suspect London thought many domesticated beings felt. 

Buck represents a dog who, perhaps like many dogs, really feels his wolfish origins deep in his sturdy frame. The further and longer Buck is kept in wildlands and left by the dog handlers to manage his own safety among the other sled dogs the more he seems hear an ancient part of his nature. He is, after all, behaving quite wolfish so how could the ancient rhythms encoded in his genes not help but be awakened? Buck seems to feel this call more than his pack mates. Most of them are actually sled dog breeds and seem born to life in the sled harness. They live to pull and will try to do so even when injured or too old to manage. The sled dog is as neurotic and obsessive in its way as is the herding dog, that lacking cattle or sheep to herd, will try to keep its family in a tight group on a walk or a hike through the woods. Buck is not a purebred dog. He is the product of a mixed breed pairing. Like many mutts, Buck has benefitted by having a robust phenotype, without showing many of the problems of dogs that are the product of long lineages characterized by excessive in-breeding. Buck demonstrates none of the neuroses of his sled dog fellows. He is huge, fast and smart. And while we never hear a direct anthropomorphized word from him, he is an interesting and engaging hero.

I don’t really want to overly summarize the novel. Better for Buck’s adventures to be a surprise revealed by turning pages and reading. Buck meets a lot of people and critters. Most of them are nice, or at least not mean. A few are the opposite, and some are plain bad. London also seems to know the culture of sled dogging of the time. Most of the sled pilots aren’t mean to the animals. Many even show clear affection for the dogs. The men aren’t engaged in sport though, and sled driving is a life of serious and often dangerous work. How accurate London’s portrayal of this life and its insular culture are is a mystery to me. Whether London is accurate or exercising creative license, his writing is so strong the description of life in the snow and ice feels more than accurate. 

I want to point out London’s attempt to grapple with natural history, and, whether he knew it or not, evolutionary history. 

London, like any author of popular fiction, wants to tell a rousing and engaging tale, but at times his narrator’s voice seems almost preoccupied with deep questions about animal lives. Buck is the lever London uses to pontificate about natural history. And Buck is a fine lever indeed. Like all domesticated dogs Buck straddles two behavioral worlds. As a mutt, he doesn’t’ necessarily share the neuroses of working dog breeds. His considerable intellect doesn’t obsess over a job like the minds of many working breeds seem to. He works so hard in the sled, because he enjoys the praise of the humans. Buck works hard to be dominant with other dogs too, and one suspects he does this for the canine accolades his pack mates give him for such efforts. London suspects that the dogs suffer different mental constraints, based on their history of breeding. The sled dogs hear the call only as it extends to the maintaining and governance of canine dominance hierarchies, which is to say a pack order. The sled dog team certainly needs a leader to guide it, but beyond that, the hierarchy serves no real purpose in the dogs lives anymore. For Buck it means more, because he isn’t shackled to or overly possessed by the singular purpose of pulling a sled. Buck seems as if he could take or leave the sled. This is not the case of every dog in his orbit. Buck’s instincts are different than the instincts of his sled dog pack mates. The only clear signals of Buck’s domestication are his fondness for, and comfort around humans. But he was, from the first moment we meet him, a dog with a strong wanderlust. This trait only grows more and more powerful in Buck as gets farther and farther from civilization. 

As an adventure novel, The Call of the Wild certainly works. It hits all the beats an adventure novel should. An added bonus? There is no badly written romance. But I think it really shines when London is contemplating the strange evolutionary history of dogs in a serious way. London seems to understand dogs, and the effects a history specific breeding may have on a dog’s mind. His observations may not actually be correct, but they are plausible ideas when set against the evolutionary history of Canis lupus domesticus. The language is not the language of an evolutionary biologist but that of a person who knows quite a bit about nature, and dogs, and who seems to love them both. That said, the book is a product of its time. There is a black dog named Nig, for instance. But the casual racism that characterized the times is not as bad as it is in other novels of the same period. This is a classic you should visit, or revisit. 

10/10.

Social Distancing Projects. The Omelett.

Social Distancing has suddenly given me a lot of time to do things other than Jiu Jitsu, which has been my all consuming obsession for almost two decades. To take the sting out of that, I’ve decided to try to improve other aspects of my life. One of my current projects is to improve my range as a cook. I’m not bad around the kitchen, but I’ve always known there could be improvements. The current cooking technique on which I am focused is, the basic omelet. Here is my guide. Jaques Pepin. Here is another view of his approach as described in The New York Times. Pepin has a host of YouTube content and had a show on PBS for years called Fast Food My Way. That show is gold.  I only recently discovered it, and you should watch it. It has a host of great ideas for your Distanced Kitchen.

What are you doing during our time of social distancing? Catching up on reading, I’m sure, but what else? Put it in the comments below.

Brunch Book Review: “The Poppy War” by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War begins as many fantasy novels do. It focuses on the challenges and ambitions of a much put upon young protagonist. In this case that much put-upon protagonist is an orphan of war, Rin (Runin Fang). Rin was adopted by almost universally awful in-law parents. They are anxious to marry the girl off, and collect a handsome dowry, as soon as they can. Both “parents” tend to utilize her as slave labor. She works in their store keeping the books, or takes care of her adoptive brother Kesegi. Kesegi is the only person in the family who cares about Rin, it seems. In addition to the chores her in-laws demand, Rin is studying for a test, the Kedju, which will get her into the realm’s premiere centers of learning. Success on this test is the key to a better life for an orphan being raised by hateful guardians. 

Needless to say, Rin passes the Kedju. Not only does she pass, she scores the highest score in her province and has earned a free trip to the most prestigious school in her world, Sinegard. Sinegard, depending on a student’s strengths, can train people in a variety of academic and military disciplines. Martial arts are a core component that everyone must train in. Sinegard is an academy that trains the leaders -- military, academic, political -- of the nation of Nikara. As the training ground of Nikara’s future leaders, everyone at Sinegard is obsessed with a small island nation called Mugen. Mugen is a consistent source of military trouble. It may be small but Mugen’s military is strong and capable. That is probably enough background to allow me to review the book for people who haven’t read the novel.

I started out quite enjoying The Poppy War. My interest and enjoyment flagged with almost every chapter. Especially after the Sinegard portion of the book ended and the “war” section of the book began. The book itself seems to begin showing a “Mulan/Brave/Cinderella” vibe. Young woman overcomes gaslighting in-laws, and class expectations is the basic story skeleton Kuang begins with. Quite abruptly she turns the book into a quite serious war novel. There is a spiritual subplot Kuang begins during Rin’s education at Sinegard. It involves the lost art of training and developing shamans. Shamans have special martial arts powers gifted to them by their relationship with Nikara's gods. With this thread, Kuang engages in her messiest storytelling. The gods can mostly only be accessed by consuming a variety of mind-altering drugs. It is hard to know what Kuang wants us to take from this situation. Rin and her allies will be ingesting quite a lot of drugs, some more serious than others (opium, heroin, mushrooms, and numerous nameless substances). The spirit world seems almost as dangerous as the drugs. The gods can take possession of the shamans’ bodies, or fuse personalities with shamans, or something. It’s all kind of confusing. Whatever the mechanics, a person’s individuality can be subsumed, unpleasantly, into the stronger personality of the god the shaman serves. More about that later maybe.

The cover of the book was well blurbed. It has garnered praise from critics at the Washington Post where it was, in 2018, rated one of the “top 5 science-fiction books of the year.”. A critic at Booknest said, “I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year.” Wired magazine, called it, “…. this year’s Harry Potter.”

Needless to say, I don’t share any of these opinions. After seeing Rin’s resourcefulness, and kindness in her home village and her resolve at Sinegard, I liked her less and less as the chapters moved into the war story. Kuang seems to take every likable attribute of any character in the novel away from the reader. This leaves readers very little to hold on to. My interest in both the characters and their challenges diminished inversely with their increasing meanness. Rin, who begins the story strong, smart, and resourceful, devolves into a whiny, somewhat lovesick, increasingly stupid, and less than moral teenager. As this change happened, it became harder and harder for me to return to the novel. The challenge of returning to the book was made even more difficult by the depressing tone of the last part of the book. To be clear, Kuang leaves us with the following scenario at the end. The shamans can mostly only utilize the powers of the gods by becoming hopelessly addicted to hard drugs. The gods also don’t care about their champions or humans generally. They will do things for humans, but there always seems to be a price. The gods are assholes. The heroes are moody, morose assholes. The country this group of heroes fight for is very nearly lost to the forces of Mugen. Nikara is also led by a queen who commands total love, awe, and respect (she is a powerful shaman after all), but her chief mode of maintaining power is to betray her citizens and sacrifice them (and the occasional loyal soldier) to Mugen ambition. Strangely, this betrayal comes as a shock to Rin late in the book, despite the fact that at Sinegard Rin herself had reasoned that Nikara had sacrificed a whole people to affect peace with Mugen. “NO IT CAN'T BE” seems like a wrong-headed reaction from a person who has already deduced that her country would strategically make genocidal sacrifices.

After the novel’s Part One, I was never satisfied with any of the story elements. Many reviewers, both professional and amateur, commented on the epic world building Kuang does. Sadly, I did not see evidence of this. I was knocked out of the story over and over again by Kuang’s clear allegory. Kuang is dealing in the obvious and it detracts from the work. Nikara is China, Mugen is Japan. The Poppy War is the thinly allegorized history of the conflict, quite old, between Japan and China. Kuang clearly thinks Japan is the historical villain and makes this allegorical proxy as bad she can. Nikara (China) is the better half in this conflict (though not wholly great it has its social issues and civic challenges). Obvious allegory is maybe the worst thing a writer can do. The more obvious and heavy-handed the allegory, the more it denies the reader freedom to just appreciate a story as it is. Allegory can also damage the literary quality of timelessness. No matter where a writer sets an allegorical tale, it will always be about a specific time, a specific place, a specific event. A reader even mildly “up” on the allegorical subject matter will be unable to avoid said subject. For me, Kuang’s allegorical approach was simply too much. It also lacked nuance. Its allegorical Japan were almost horror show villains. The behavior of Japan’s government and military during WWII (and other times) has been far from wholly honorable, it’s true. But China also has its own fairly damning history of its own when it comes to authoritarianism, brutality, colonialism and Imperialism. The Poppy War sometimes felt like propaganda.

Added to this allegorical mixture is the fact that almost with each passing page, the likeable characters become more and more unlikable. Most of Rin’s school days nemeses become worse too. The net effect being almost no likable or relatable characters for almost two thirds of the book. That makes for some tough reading. 

The appreciation of art is pretty subjective. My reaction to the story elements may not be your reaction. There are no really mechanical flaws in the book. It’s solidly written. It’s not overly saccharine, though there is a love story that seems more YA than adult reading. But that could also just be me. I find most love stories in most genre and media to be annoying, badly conceived, and bizarrely simpleminded. They almost never seem to imitate the way real people fall in love. Tastes vary of course, as do experiences. So, if you like reading about awful people, and depressing conflicts in which no honorable or kind action or impulse is ever rewarded The Poppy War may be the book for you. Kuang herself has said she wanted to make something that would appeal to Game of Thrones fans. I’m absolutely sure she has done this. Full disclosure, I also detested Game of Thrones. The Poppy War is dark and depressing but it isn’t poignant, enlightening or insightful. Its villains are wicked, violent, awful and utterly without compassion, but so too are most of the book’s protagonists. In the right hands a depressing book can be a good and worthy read. In the wrong hands reading is an unpleasant slog.

6-7/10