White Fang by Jack London

I read this one on the not-technically-a-recommendation of Tasha, who usually has a much different taste in books than I do. Fortunately, we both like crazy old Jack London.

White Fang is the story of a wolf-dog who is raised through the many different stages of human interaction. He is born in the wild, but before he is a year old his mother takes him to live in an Indian camp. When he has become a full-grown dog, he is sold to a man who owns a dog-fighting ring. After he is nearly killed in a fight, he is rescued by a man who takes him to live domestically in California. It's kind of an anti-call-of-the-wild thing.

What I enjoyed particularly in this book was that it was kind of an observed progression through the evolution of human society. Rising from the wild to the hunter to the semi-barbaric to the comfort of civilization, White Fang's observations of humanity at each stage throw light on old Jack's perception of how humans got from fighting wolves off their backs to having wolves beg for tidbits under the table. It is a story about a wolf, but is also a story about the domination of humans, and what that might mean to an outside observer.

It is not a long book, and it as lots of lovely bits about the North and the Wild (which are proper nouns to Jack). The style of the writing always generates the ominous feeling of the Wild being very near by. It is a happy but threatening thing, and it makes me all tingly. I imagine all those freeze-dried explorers felt the same before they got lost went crazy or became lunch or all three.

Here's a song that I imagine Jack would have liked. Now I have to go watch the 90's film version of White Fang, which I'm sure Jack would not have liked at all.