Martin Eden (3 page)

First published as a book in 1909,
Martin Eden
was too early for its audience. The myth of individual success through hard work still dominated American culture. Horatio Alger inspired, whereas Jack London depressed. The revolutionary idea that hard work and success were self-defeating in an unlovely mechanical society was unpalatable, both to radicals and to Republicans. London had been liked by the left wing for his socialist views, yet Martin Eden's ambition seemed an attack on socialism, a glorification of the Nietzschean hero and man on horseback. Although London might protest that the novel was an attack on individualism, not socialism, he had made it so autobiographical that his radical readers could not distinguish him from his leading character. He might be conscious that his socialist sympathies separated him from Martin Eden, but by confusing the facts of his own rise to fame with his hero's, he risked condemnation as an apostate. There was already a contradiction between his life-style and his political professions. As Mark Twain commented, if Jack London got the kind of society he wanted, he would have to call out the militia to collect his royalties. Many of London's socialist comrades took
Martin Eden
to be the testament of the man who had deserted the cause by sailing away on the
Snark,
and by becoming a rancher. One of them wrote to him, wishing him the same fate as Martin Eden's: “When you swallow the last mouthful of salt chuck you can hold before sinking, remember that we at least protested.”

To established critics,
Martin Eden
also seemed a failure. It denigrated capitalism and self-improvement and ambition without providing any alternatives. London had been known for his celebration of man's struggle for survival, his will to live in the bleakest of conditions. Now, confused with the hero of his book, London seemed to preach futility and deny the elemental and archetypal force of the message in his previous books about nature, the Klondike, and the sea.
Martin Eden
was universally condemned, and London's reputation sank, until the publication in 1910 of a vigorous, optimistic Klondike adventure story,
Burning Daylight,
which did not preach a thing, but entertained. As the reviewer in
The Bookman
declared, it was a pleasure to see London return to using his power as a storyteller, after passing through “the sad phase of unrest out of which
Martin Eden
grew—it's certainly sad to have one's emotions take such unpleasant forms.”

Ironically, contemporary reviews of
Martin Eden
confirmed the disgust London felt for readers and reviewers, expressed in this passage about his hero:

Posterity confirmed London's disdain. If
Martin Eden
was a failure at the time because it was before its time, it proved to be the only one of his fifty books that his publishers, Macmillan, kept in print in a cloth edition for seventy years, selling a quarter of a million copies. Against its author's intention, it appealed to young writers determined to succeed by force of will and dedication, without benefit of innate talent. The novel's disillusion with bourgeois values suited the iconoclasm of the 1920s and the anticapitalism of the Depression decade of the 1930s. Its uneasy balance between the drive to succeed at all costs and the despair that follows victory seemed truthful. Only the problem of Martin Eden's suicide—paralleled by the early death of London from excess in 1916—prevented full acceptance and critical acclaim.

In the general reevaluation of London's work begun by Maxwell Geismar and Franklin Walker,
Martin Eden
has taken a significant place. Its force and appeal have survived the passage of time; its flaws and unevenness are less relevant. Always popular in France and Italy, Germany and Russia, the novel has been recently adapted into a television series that proved more successful in many European countries than even
Roots
or
Holocaust.
(CBS will screen the television series in the United States.) For Jack London was the incessant Californian pilgrim. However great his self-destructiveness, his mind ranged after the infinite possibilities of mankind. If he despaired from time to time, he also sought a new vision on a renewed earth.
Martin Eden
was his autobiographical novel. His determination and his questings make it live.

—Andrew Sinclair

The Abysmal Brute.
New York, 1913.
The Acorn Planter.
New York, 1916.
Adventure.
New York, 1911.
Before Adam.
New York, 1907.
Burning Daylight.
New York, 1910.
The Call of the Wild.
New York, 1903.
Children of the Frost.
New York, 1902.
The Cruise of the Dazzler.
New York, 1902.
The Cruise of the Snark.
New York, 1911.
A Daughter of the Snows.
Philadelphia, 1902.
Dutch Courage and Other Stories.
New York, 1922.
The Faith of Men.
New York, 1904.
The Game.
New York, 1905.
The God of His Fathers.
New York, 1901.
Hearts of Three.
New York, 1920.
The House of Pride and Other Tales of Hawaii.
New York, 1912.
The Human Drift.
New York, 1917.
The Iron Heel.
New York, 1908.
Jerry of the Islands.
New York, 1917.
John Barleycorn.
New York, 1913.
The Little Lady of the Big House.
New York, 1916.
Lost Face.
New York, 1910.
Love of Life and Other Stories.
New York, 1907.
Martin Eden.
New York, 1909.
Michael, Brother of Jerry.
New York, 1917.
Moon-Face and Other Stories.
New York, 1906.
The Mutiny of the Elsinore.
New York, 1914.
The Night-Born.
New York, 1913.
On the Makaloa Mat.
New York, 1919.
The People of the Abyss.
New York, 1903.
The Red One.
New York, 1918.
Revolution and Other Essays.
New York, 1910.
The Road.
New York, 1907.
The Scarlet Plague.
New York, 1915.
Scorn of Women.
New York, 1906.
The Sea-Wolf.
New York, 1904.
Smoke Bellew.
New York, 1912.
The Son of the Wolf.
Boston, 1900.
A Son of the Sun.
New York, 1912.
South Sea Tales.
New York, 1911.
The Star Rover.
New York, 1915.
The Strength of the Strong.
New York, 1914.
Tales of the Fish Patrol.
New York, 1905.
Theft: A Play in Four Acts.
New York, 1910.
The Turtles of Tasman.
New York, 1916.
The Valley of the Moon.
New York, 1913.
War of the Classes.
New York, 1905.
When God Laughs and Other Stories.
New York, 1911.
White Fang.
New York, 1906.

London, Jack, and Strunsky, Anna.
The Kempton-Wace Letters.
New York, 1903.

London, Jack, completed by Robert L. Fish.
The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.
New York, 1963.

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Nietzsche in Anglosaxony: A Study of Nietzsche's Impact on English and American Literature.
Leicester, 1972.

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Soviet Attitudes Toward American Writing.
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Jack London: American Rebel.
New York, 1947.

Hendricks, K., and Shepard, I., eds.
Letters from Jack London.
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Through the South Seas with Jack London.
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Pictorial Life ofJack London.
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Jack London.
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The Book of Jack London,
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Jack London and His Times: An Unconventional Biography.
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The Dream of Success.
Boston, 1955.

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Jack London: Essays in Criticism.
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Jack London.
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The Fiction of Jack London: A Chronological Bibliography.
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Jack London and the Klondike.
San Marino, California, 1966.

—————.
The Seacoast of Bohemia: An Account of Early Carmel.
San Francisco, 1966.

Calder-Marshall, A. “Introduction.”
Martin Eden
(The Bodley Head Jack London). 4 vols. London, 1965.

Etulain, R. “The Lives of Jack London.”
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Martin Eden.”
In
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edited by W. Stegner. New York, 1965.

The text of
Martin Eden
is that of the first edition of the book, published by The Macmillan Company in 1909. No Collected Edition of the works of Jack London has yet been published, and London himself refused to revise his printed works. Punctuation and spelling have been slightly modernized; the author's very occasional archaisms and grammatical errors have also been corrected; for example, “bicycle shop” has been substituted for “cyclery” and “wafting” for “wafture.”

T
he one opened the door with a latch-key and went in, followed by a young fellow who awkwardly removed his cap. He wore rough clothes that smacked of the sea, and he was manifestly out of place in the spacious hall in which he found himself. He did not know what to do with his cap, and was stuffing it into his coat pocket when the other took it from him. The act was done quietly and naturally, and the awkward young fellow appreciated it. “He understands,” was his thought. “He'll see me through all right.”

He walked at the other's heels with a swing to his shoulders, and his legs spread unwittingly, as if the level floors were tilting up and sinking down to the heave and lunge of the sea. The wide rooms seemed too narrow for his rolling gait, and to himself he was in terror lest his broad shoulders should collide with the doorways or sweep the bric-a-brac from the low mantel. He recoiled from side to side between the various objects and multiplied the hazards that in reality lodged only in his mind. Between a grand piano and a center-table piled high with books was space for a half a dozen to walk abreast, yet he essayed it with trepidation. His heavy arms hung loosely at his sides. He did not know what to do with those arms and hands, and when, to his excited vision, one arm seemed liable to brush against the books on the table, he lurched away like a frightened horse, barely missing the piano stool. He watched the easy walk of the other in front of him, and for the first time realized that his walk was different from that of other men He experienced a momentary pang of shame that he should walk so uncouthly. The sweat burst through the skin of his forehead in tiny beads, and he paused and mopped his bronzed face with his handkerchief.

“Hold on, Arthur, my boy,” he said, attempting to mask his anxiety with facetious utterance. “This is too much all at once for yours truly. Give me a chance to get my nerve. You know I didn't want to come, an' I guess your fam'ly ain't hankerin' to see me neither.”

“That's all right,” was the reassuring answer. “You mustn't be frightened at us. We're just homely people—Hello, there's a letter for me.”

He stepped back to the table, tore open the envelope, and began to read, giving the stranger an opportunity to recover himself. And the stranger understood and appreciated. His was the gift of sym pathy, understanding; and beneath his alarmed exterior that sympathetic process went on. He mopped his forehead dry and glanced about him with a con trolled face, though in the eyes there was an expression such as wild animals betray when they fear the trap. He was surrounded by the unknown, apprehensive of what might happen, ignorant of what he should do, aware that he walked and bore himself awkwardly, fearful that every attribute and power of him was similarly afflicted. He was keenly sensitive, hopelessly self-conscious, and the amused glance that the other stole privily at him over the top of the letter burned into him like a dagger-thrust. He saw the glance, but he gave no sign, for among the things he had learned was discipline. Also, that dagger-thrust went to his pride. He cursed himself for having come, and at the same time resolved that, happen what would, having come, he would carry it through. The lines of his face hardened, and into his eyes came a fighting light. He looked about more unconcernedly, sharply observant, every detail of the pretty interior registering itself on his brain. His eyes were wide apart; nothing in their field of vision escaped; and as they drank in the beauty before them the fighting light died out and a warm glow took its place. He was responsive to beauty, and here was cause to respond.