The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and Other Stories - Softcover

London, Jack

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140186514 ISBN 13: 9780140186512

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1995

Synopsis

The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories collects some of Jack London's most profound and moving allegorical tales. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Andrew Sinclair with an introduction by James Dickey.

The Call of the Wild, London's masterpiece about a dog learning to survive in the wilderness, sees pampered pet Buck snatched from his home and set to work as a sled-dog. White Fang, set in the frozen tundra and boreal forests of Canada's Yukon territory, is the story of a wolf-dog struggling to survive in a human society every bit as violent as the natural world. This volume of Jack London's famed stories of the North also includes 'Batard', in which an abused dog takes revenge on his owner; and 'Love of Life', in which an injured prospector, abandoned by his partner, must struggle home alone through the wilderness, stalked by a lone wolf.

In his introduction, James Dickey probes London's strong personal and literary identification with the wolf-dog as a symbol and totem. Andrew Sinclair, London's official biographer and the volume's editor, provides a brief account of London's life as a sailor, desperado, socialist, adventurer and acclaimed author.

Jack London (1876-1916) was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco, California. By the age of sixteen he had left school, worked in a canning factory, spent time as an oyster pirate and been a member of the Fish Patrol in the San Francisco Bay. In 1893 he joined a sealing cruise, which took him as far abroad as Japan. In 1896 he was caught up in the gold rush to the Klondike river in north-west Canada, which became the inspiration for The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906).

If you enjoyed The Call of the Wild, you might like Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, also available in Penguin Classics.

About this title

Review:

William Roberts gives a gruff backwoods urgency to the tale of Buck, a kidnapped St Bernard/collie cross who becomes the toughest sled dog in the Yukton - yet awards his final loyalty not to fickle men but to the wolf pack. --Christina Hardyment, The Times

In the great tradition of classic animal stories, Jack London's CALL OF THE WILD, read by William Roberts, is a wrenching story. From the peril Buck the sled dog faces in the Arctic to the suffering he endures under brutal masters, listening to his adventure is no tame experience. Roberts has a voice that could have belonged to one of this era's gold panners. He sounds like a grizzled man who would never display overt emotion but who, nonetheless, can tell a captivating yarn. While Roberts doesn t use great character range, he lets London s writing especially the passages about the mysterious, enchanting call of the wild ring with its startling beauty. --AudioFile

Jack London's deceptively simple direct way of writing combined with one of best dog stories ever, is why this book is such an enduring classic. And TV, film and stage actor William Roberts's reading is perfect. His robust voice, his ability to keep listeners glued, and the fond care with which he reads is spellbinding. When gold is found in the Klondike, there is a great need for sled dogs. Buck, part St. Bernard and part Scotch shepherd is stolen and moves from his happy life as king of the Santa Clara ranch where he lives a life of adventure, peril, though also often cruelty, to Alaska. There is a string of tales from his taming to the ways of sled pulling, to the inept trio who are doomed, dog fighting, survival, and finally to meeting John Thornton and their mutual love and understanding for one another. The longer he lives in Alaska, the more in tune with the ancestral ways of his dog ancestors Buck becomes, dreaming of old half clad masters and shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves until he is drawn deep into the wilderness. This listener found this to be one of the best recordings I've listened to in a long time; I had to be careful while driving and listening because I got caught up in being in one of my favorite places and living the life of a dog. Any parent or librarian looking for something short and exciting for a child, young adult or family listening can't go wrong with Roberts's performance and Call of the Wild, a guaranteed hit! --Mary Purucker, SoundCommentary.com

This was the story first published in 1903 that made the struggling writer Jack London famous. Listen to William Roberts's majestic reading and you will understand why. Set in the 1890s Klondike gold rush, it tells how Buck, a huge wolfhound, is stolen from his pampered Californian home and becomes a sled dog in the arctic wastes of the Yukon. As brutal as his successive masters are, the pack of dogs he is harnessed alongside is even deadlier. How Buck survives the rule of club and fang is a classic, once misguidedly described as a children's book because it is narrated by a dog. Of course it is an allegory civilisation versus the old primordial instinct for survival at any price but for pure excitement and adventure it has no equal. --Sue Arnold, The Guardian

Any parent or librarian looking for something short and exciting for a child, young adult or family listening can't go wrong with Roberts s performance of Call of the Wild, a guaranteed hit! --Mary I. Purucker

Book Description:

A new edition of this exciting tale of the sledge dog, Buck, and his heroic adventures

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0140186514
• ISBN 13: 9780140186512
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Sinclair Andrew