As Professor and Chair of Communication Studies at Sonoma State University, author and editor, Jonah Raskin puts Jack London's revolutionary writings into context in his latest book, The Radical Jack London. Furthermore, you can read more about Jonah and his book on his website, The Radical Jack London. Among other books, he is author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation (UC Press, 2004) and For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman (UC Press, 1997)
The Radical Jack London in 1968
By Jonah Raskin
Had Jack London lived until 1968 he would have been 96 years old - not a biological impossibility. After all, his close friend, Upton Sinclair, lived until ‘68 and the ripe old age of 94. It’s tempting to imagine London ’68, the year that changed America and the world, and that London would have loved because upheaval inspired him, and engaged his deepest sympathies.
London was always young – he died in 1916 at the age of 40, and even at 40 there was something boyish about him, as his friends noted. He would have fit in with the youthful students who stormed college campuses in ’68, and he would have been attracted to the youth-orientated culture of the 1960s. In 1905, along with Upton Sinclair, London founded the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, an organization of radical students, and the forerunner of Students for a Democratic Society, the Sixties group that opposed the war in Vietnam. An extremist almost all his life, London wrote about war and revolution, and it’s likely that he would have written about the war in Vietnam and the cultural revolution that created hippies, Yippies, feminists and Black Panthers. He smoked hashish, rejected the sexual mores of his time, went back to the land and was drawn to Asian spirituality.
1968 was a pivotal year for me. It was the year I was arrested as a protestor, went to jail for the first time, and began to write for underground newspapers. I was not then a big fan of Jack London’s work but I knew about it and him. I admired his 1908 novel The Iron Heel, which describes the coming of a brutal dictatorship to the United States. At times in 1968 it seemed like the United States was headed in that direction, especially when the police attacked demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. London’s prescience couldn’t have been more in evidence.
What London didn’t share with the radicals of 1968 was a sense of outrage about racial injustice. In fact, at times he would be downright racist himself. He identified himself as a white man, praised the white race and looked down at people of color. That’s the part of him I like the least, and it’s the part of him that his biographers andcritics have for the most part declined to explore, much less condemn. When I began to write The Radical Jack London I knew I would have to tackle the issue of race and racism. I think I have done it in a level-headed way and I’m proud of my approach. It’s not the first time I have written about that subject. I did it in my first book, The Mythology of Imperialism, which I wrote in 1968, and in many ways The Radical Jack London is a continuation of my own scholarship as a young man aiming to describe the links between culture and politics, which the academic world of that era was eager to deny. Without a big stretch of the imagination, I can see Jack London with us in ’68, marching, chanting defying the powers-that-be.
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