The Sea-Wolf

Posted on May 17, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Sea-Wolf
© 1906 Jack London
Reprinted in Tales of the North, © 1979.
pp. 183-330

Humphrey van Weyden never imagined that a simple ferry ride across the San Francisco Bay would take him so far. Following a collision at sea, he is rescued by one Wolf Larsen, the dread lord and master of the sealing schooner Ghost — a man quite unlike any other van Weyden has ever encountered. The Wolf is the embodiment of brute strength, wild cunning, and savage brutality who dominates his ship, striking fear into the hearts of all aboard her. Wolf is inescapable — but to obtain his freedom, van Weyden must somehow find the strength to do so.

While The Sea-Wolf follows the Ghost on a sealing expedition from San Francisco to Japan on peril-fraught seas, the adventure and struggle here is between two men —  one impotent if morally courageous, and the other gloriously strong but bankrupt as a man. Each fascinates the other: they circle one another like Buck and his counterparts in The Call of the Wild. While van Weyden attempts to make a life for himself aboard the Ghost, determined to survive, the two grapple over their respective worldviews — treating the reader to a philosophical discussion about morality, the meaning of life, and the measure of a man.

The Wolf is a fascinating character, ferociously strong in both body and in spirit. He is almost ‘the unfettered‘, the Nietzschean superman, but he lacks something to strive for. He lives for nothing, only exists, and so he languishes for all his strength. In the end it is what fate they create for themselves as the plot tests them which proves which is the better man — for while van Weyden can develop the strength and cunning he needs to stand on his own two feet, independent of others, the Wolf is capable of growing beyond himself — to live as a man, and not simply exist as a beast.

The Sea-Wolf enthralled me, not just for the wild energy London’s characters and plotting seem to possess, but to witness the triumph of the human spirit — not just van Weyden’s growth, but his ability to maintain the nobility of humanity while at same time harnessing the beautiful, wild strength inside.

A note about this version of the story: the publishers printed the novel in four magazline-like columns and supplemented the text with stunning artwork by W.J. Aylward. Tales of the North collects The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Cruise of the Dazzler, The Sea-Wolf, and fifteen short stories. I received it for Christmas years ago but never realized what a tremendous boon it was until I opened the book to see if it contained The Sea-Wolf: I’d been planning on checking that out from the library.

Related:

  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The strong but bitter Captain Nemo reminded me much of the Wolf. 
  • The Iron Heel, Jack London
  • The Call of the Wild, Jack London.
  • The Fountainhead/Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. While I’ve never read them,  the Wolf uses the objectivist arguments for selfishness against van Weyden in the course of their discussions.
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Teaser Tuesday (17 May)

Posted on May 16, 2011 by smellincoffee

I fell asleep reading a book, and when I awoke…it was Teaser Tuesday!

The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb’s leading blacksmith in a misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of a mare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of three witnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-him was a good enough defense for  anybody. 

p. 5, To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee

“I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” I wanted to cry aloud.

p. 326, The Sea Wolf. From Tales of the North. Jack London.

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Top Ten Miner Characters

Posted on May 16, 2011 by smellincoffee

This week, the Broke and the Bookish are covering…Top Ten Miner Characters!

1. Des, Darth Bane: Path of Destruction (Drew Karpyshyn)

It’s a hard life being an abused miner’s son, forever trying to work off your father’s debt  and getting nowhere. But when he kills a man in self-defense and joins the armies of the Sith to escape, Des’ path changes completely, and —

“Minors, not miners!”

…oh. Whoops!

*cough*

Top Ten Minor Characters in Literature

1. Athena (Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordian)

Although the mother of one of the series’ lead characters, Athena doesn’t make many appearances beyond glowering at Percy because he’s getting her daughter into trouble. She intimates that foul things will befall him if Annabeth is hurt.  But I like the goddess Athena in general, so I looked forward to her every (marginal) scene. She stands for wisdom, justice, and civilization in general, so she’s hard not to appreciate that. Add the influence of her patron city Athens upon history, and the fact that she’s a lady-of-war, and you’ve got a deity worth reading about.

2. Young Mister Leach, The Sea Wolf. Jack London.

I haven’t actually finished The Sea Wolf, but barring supernatural intervention I’m sure Mr. Leach’s time has passed. Mr. Leach is a boy, perhaps one on the cusp of adolescence. He signs on the sealing schooner Ghost as a cabin boy, not realizing what a tyrannous and brutal monster its captain is. While all the grown men he ships with cower in fear of the ship’s master, Leach stands trembling in anger and defiance, refusing to submit — displaying the manly courage that the narrator, despite his age and size, yet lacks.

3. Fred, A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens.

“What right have you to be merry? You’re poor!”
“What right have you to miserable? You’re rich!”

Fred is Ebeneezer Scrooge’s nephew, the only child of his beloved sister Fran. Fred — Scrooge grudgingly admits — reminds him much of Fran, in kindly temperament and cheerful disposition. Fred cajoles his uncle to find the meaning in the season, and refuses to regard his grumpy uncle with anything less than affection…even though Scrooge is often insulting toward him.

4. Professor Binns, Harry Potter series.
As a student of history, the all-too-brief mentions of Harry’s history classes always intrigued me, as did the idea of a professor who was a ghost. Pity he made the subject dull for his listeners, though.

5. Mr. Bush, Horatio Hornblower. C.S. Forester

In the first three Captain Hornblower stories, Bush serves as Hornblower’s faithful first lieutenant, though later stories indicated that the two gentlemen had a storied earlier career when they were both lieutenants. The books’ version of Mr. Bush and the movies’ vary a bit in personality (the movies are all set during their earlier days), but I like them both the same. Every time Lieutenant, then Captain Bush appeared by Hornblower’s side I smiled with inexplicable pleasure.

6.Two-Bit, The Outsiders. S.E. Hinton
Two-Bit is one of the most memorable characters in Hinton’s novels for me, though I don’t know if my mental impression of him fits with that which she put forth in fiction. I see a man with luxurious, frizzy red sideburns and a purple-flannel shirt.  Two-Bit is notable for his charm and theatric talents: at the novel’s midpoint, he breaks the tension by going into an act that reminds me of “Gee, Officer Krupke” from West Side Story.

7. The Turtle, The Grapes of Wrath. John Steinbeck.
Remember reading The Grapes of Wrath and witnessing Steinbeck cut away from the action every chapter or so to follow a turtle walking up the highway?   There aren’t many scenes I remember from the book, but that’s one of them.

8.Polly Espey, “Love is a Fallacy”. Max Shulman
This short story is one of my favorites from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Essentially, Dobie teaches her to think logically, in hopes of turning her into an intellectual giant worthy of his romantic affection, and she turns it against him.

9. Lucien Wilbanks, multiple John Grisham novels. (A Time to Kill, The Last Juror)
Wilbanks is an interesting character. If I recall correctly, he served as an iconoclastic mentor in Grisham’s original work, but in The Last Juror — set in the seventies — cast him in a more despicable, almost villainous light.

10. Nova Stihl, Death Star. Michael Reaves.

Death Star is the story of A New Hope from the viewpoint of soldiers and civilians aboard the Death Star, and Stihl is one of the more interesting characters in the varied cast. He’s a student of philosophy — the kind who would be studying Stoicism or Zen Buddhism were this novel set in our universe. He’s such an interesting character that I’d like to see more of him.

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Guns

Posted on May 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

Guns

© 1976 Ed McBain (Evan Hunter)
213 pages
Summer. It’s too hot for a job like this. Day like this, anything could go wrong. Doesn’t help that this is the thirteenth job Colley has done with this crew.  They don’t have any hold-ups about the job though, a raid on a liquor store. Should be an easy mark. So he has to do it. But something’ll go wrong. Day like this, it has to. 
“POLICE!” A guy with a shield and a gun, charging toward Colley as he stands watch in the store. He sees the gun and follows his instincts: he shoots. Bang.  The guy drops to the ground. Colley just killed a man. He’s a murderer — a cop-killer, and now  all bets are off.
Guns is the riveting story of Colley Donato, a career hood whose fortunes are reversed when a simple armed robbery goes southward, fast. After the firefight that ensues,  two cops are injured, possibly dead, and Colley’s own partner is bleeding out. While he and his third man — a driver — get the injured gunman to safety,  their lives are forfeit in the city. Colley has to get out fast, but he’s motivated by desperation. Live by the gun, die by the gun — and he can’t seem to shake off the bad luck.  
As Colley runs through the city, he ruminates. The novel is told entirely from his head,  almost in the form of his thoughts — an approach which has worked well for Michael Shaara and his son.  This tack carries the faint risk of seeming disjointed, but McBain does it grandly. Colley’s reflections on the past flow perfectly with his actions in the present, so readers are treated both to the fascinating story of his life as a hood and his thrilling flight from justice — or revenge, depending on how sympathetic you find Colley and the police.   I stayed up entirely too late trying to finish this novel, and am still suffering from it now,  but it had me. There’s a brutal authenticity here, great pacing, and compelling characters. I can’t wait to read more of Ed McBain. I understand he has a long-running series of detective stories, so I’ve a lot to look forward to. 
Related:
  • Rumble Fish, S.E. Hinton
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City of Bones

Posted on May 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

City of Bones
© 2002 Michael Conelly
464 pages

High in the Hollywood hills lies the body of  a young boy, buried for two decades, whose bones bear the scars of a lifetime of abuse. When a dog finds the bones, Hieryonymous Bosch and the LAPD are drawn into a disturbing case that will haunt their minds and cost the men and women in blue the lives of one of their own. While a twenty-year old murder seems a tough prospect to resolve, Harry has two leads: a convicted child molester living nearby, and the boy’s own broken family.

I keep returning to Connelly’s series out of affection for the main character (who, in my head, takes the form of Liam Neeson in Taken), the loose-cannon detective who lives to make a difference and piss off as many politicians as he can in the process. Connelly spins a good yarn, but City of Bones is more emotionally intense than any of the other Bosch novels I’ve read. The story of the victim and his family are disturbing enough, but as the case wears on, more innocent lives are lost and Bosch is faced with a personal crisis. The case reveals that everyone has skeletons  waiting in their own closets…and some are not pleasant to unearth.  I’m hoping my library carries Lost Light, the next novel in the series, so I can see what will come of Harry’s unprecedented and unexpected decision in the novel’s endgame.

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Welcome…back?

Posted on May 13, 2011 by smellincoffee

The past couple of days have been a little strange, not being able to read any blogs. While I don’t post every day,  there are a number of blogs (book-related and otherwise) I visit several times a day. Since Blogger’s status page also inaccessible, I received updates from their twitter page. I only lost one post (which has since been restored), though there were a couple of comments lost as well. I don’t think an outage like this has happened before, at least not in my years (late 2006) using it.  I am not too disgruntled: accidents happen.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I’ll also be finishing The Sea Wolf by Jack London, which I started a few days ago.  Now that blogger is back up and running there are a couple of book reviews I hope to publish tonight or tomorrow. I’m also going to look into backing the blog up on my hard drive. Since I already have a wordpress address reserved (mostly to prevent another blogger from using the name and thus getting people confused — that has happened), I may use it as a mirror one day. Currently they are no posts there — I have not developed it at all.

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This Week at the Library (11 May)

Posted on May 11, 2011 by smellincoffee

My home library sits next door to City Hall on Selma’s downtown thoroughfare of Broad Street. Today I parked closer to City Hall than I usually do, and looked up at a lamp post to see a peculiar sign hanging on it. I’d first spotted the sign back in December, when taking photos of Selma during Christmastime, and it baffled me. Was murder sanctioned to one side, and forbidden on the other?   I decided to ask the librarian, who had heard inquiries before. To the best of her memory, a mourning father had put it up after the death of one of his children — but she wasn’t sure. I suppose City Hall would have more information. I wonder if every city is littered with objects like this with strange stories to them?

Today I returned a few books unread — Catholics and the Holy Bible, since I’ve gotten tired of the subject:  The Middle East and The First Salute because I wasn’t as interested in them as I thought I was (I’ll probably return to Salute in July, as part of my usual Independence Day reading), and Evolution and Society. While a collection of essays from scientists applying the idea of evolution — change through time — to their various disciplines appealed to me, the first few essays were very dry and I never got into it. For some reason I’m in the mood to read stories, so most of this week looks to be fiction.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. I’m not sure how I managed to get out of high school without ever reading this, a classic of southern literature, but I did and so I have no idea why people keep praising Atticus Finch. But I’m going to find out.
  • Guns, Ed McBain. For some reason I’ve been enjoying cop stories, and this fellow is apparantly famous for his 87th precinct series. I don’t know if this is connected or not, but it had a fairly straightforward title.
  • Sharpe’s Tiger,  Bernard Cornwell. I think this is where Sharpe saves Wellesley’s life and begins to rise in the ranks.

And because all play and no work makes smellincoffee a vacuous boy,…

  • Earth Science Made Simple, Edward F. Albin. This series is usually pretty good, so I’m hoping to bone up on my rocks and weather.
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The Undiscovered Country

Posted on May 10, 2011 by smellincoffee

Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country
© 1992 J.M. Dillard
Adapted from the movie, © 1991. Screenplay and story by Leonard Nimoy, Denny Martin, and Nicholas Meyer.

“I give you a toast: to the undiscovered country — the future.”



Some nights I ignore the bed for the floor, and a few mornings ago I awoke resting in front of one of my bookcases, having scattered some of its contents across the floor during the night. The Undiscovered Country was laying beneath my pillow,  and I decided to see how J.M. Dillard treated my uncontested favorite trek movie. Dillard has done Trek movie novelizations before, to good effect, and my fondness for this movie saw me tuck in rather greedily . The Undiscovered Country is the last movie to feature the whole of the original-series cast, and it gave them a proper send-off with a topical plot, focusing strongly on the characters and providing viewers with adventure, action, mystery, humor, and meaningful reflection in bounds.

The plot, topical for the early 1990s when the Soviet Union had finally collapsed and put an end to the decades-old Cold War,  is primarily one of politics. A devastating environmental disaster threatens to destroy the Klingon empire unless they divert their resources from the military, and thus end the long-running ‘cold war’ between themselves and the Federation. This is the perfect opportunity for two idealists (Spock and the new Klingon chancellor, Gorkon) to propose a radical initiative: peace.  Spock volunteers his friend and captain James T. Kirk for the duty of escorting Gorkon to Earth to work toward peace and disarmament, but things go awry.  There are those on both sides who balk at the idea of sudden change, and then Gorkon is assassinated at the hands of individuals in Starfleet uniforms, Captain Kirk and Doctor McCoy are imprisoned. Spock must endeavor to unravel a conspiracy before the fragile opportunity for peace is destroyed.

Dillard is an old hand at Trek novelizations, and here she presents the story of The Undiscovered Country near-flawlessly, ironing out a few wrinkles from the movie and enriching the overall experience by fleshing out characters who the movie ignored for the sake of time and giving various scenes additional depth. While movies have to be expedient in choosing which characters to develop and which scenes to incorporate into the plot, a story in novel form is allowed to be more deliberate. The novel  is supportive of the movie, allowing readers to see more into the story — to see into Kirk’s emotional conflict, as he struggles against bitter hatred against the Klingons who killed his son.  Dillard also tells the story of the Klingon’s point of view and puts the spotlight on Valeris,  Spock’s protégé and potential successor. Her background and point-of-view chapters make her an especially intriguing character to experience.  I imagine it’s a tricky thing to depict a conspiracy from the conspirator’s point of view without giving too much of the plot away for the reader, but Dillard walks the line impressively: there’s only one odd little inconsistency when a character appears to be oblivious to something he had to have known.   This is scarcely noticeable overall, though, and I’d declare this novelization a triumph, fulfilling my high expectations.

“Course heading, captain?”
“Second star to the right — and straight on, til’ morning.”

Tor.com recently did a Star Trek movie marathon, featuring reviews and comments of the Trek movies by Trek authors. A.C. Crispin, author of Sarek, covers The Undiscovered Country here.

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Teaser Tuesday (10 May)

Posted on May 9, 2011 by smellincoffee

Teaser Tuesday again, from Should Be Reading.

The past had a way of coming back up out of the ground. Always right below your feet.

p. 199, City of Bones.  Michael Connelly

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The Coming

Posted on May 8, 2011 by smellincoffee

The Coming
© 2000 Joe Haldeman
217 pages

2054. Earth. The future isn’t what it used to be. The seas are rising — Florida cities are frantically trying to build seawalls for protection — and the outlook is deteriorating.  The United States is led by a perky but depressingly imbecilic woman named Carlie (who may or may not be able to see Russia from her house),  the eastern hemisphere is increasingly dominated by large, hostile alliances like “The Eastern Bloc”, and Germany and France are on the brink of war. And then down in Gainsville Florida,  astronomer Aurora Bell picks up a signal. Confirming its existence with Japan’s station on the Moon, she realizes to her shock that it’s in English.

“We’re coming”.  Repeated sixty times.  Something from outside the solar system, using an unbelievable amount of energy, is coming — and Earth has three months to be prepared. What is it? Aliens? Jesus? The revolt of the urban proletariat?  While the potential for contact with alien lifeforms would seem to take precedence,  it recedes into the background after an initial surge of interest. While the clock ticks down, people live out their lives.  In Gainsville,  a man is being blackmailed by the Mafia, who threaten to make public his homosexuality —  now a crime in the United States. His wife, meanwhile, tries to keep the president from leading the entire world into oblivion. No, Madame President, it may not be the best time to launch supernukes into orbit at a time when France and Germany are blowing up each other’s parliaments and playing chicken with their tanks on the border.  As the date of the coming approaches, tension reaches crisis level, and then —

Have you ever witnessed a small child trying to blow bubbles? Clutching a slippery bottle filled with the soapy fluid in one hand, and grasping the plastic bubble-blower in another, she carefully fills a pocket of the solution with air. It grows bigger and bigger, and you know it’s going to be a beautiful, big bubble when it escapes, and then — it pops.

If you haven’t, then read this novel and maybe you’ll experience that feeling. While the premise fascinated me, my enthusiasm never caught. There was nothing for it to catch on. Haldeman employs an interesting style of writing here: the novel is presented in a relatively seamless succession of viewpoint characters. They’re a diverse lot, with varying roles to play in the story. Some don’t even play a role in the story, they just exist because, hey — wouldn’t you want to know how pornography is filmed in 2054?  This viewpoint succession threw me off at first, until I realized that the new character was someone already in-scene, and all I had to do was make a slight jump — switch trains of thought, as it were. The problem, though, is that the trains of thought speed up and slow down at random, and often arrive at the station in rapid succession. At one point there were three jumps in two pages, and one character only had a paragraph, leaving me feeling very disoriented.

It doesn’t help that all this jumping has little bearing on the plot, if there is one. While this is advertised as a science fiction novel and bookended by the announcement and arrival of The Coming,  what science there is in here is limited to technology — three-dimensional television, interactive pornography, and semen-based  drugs. The plot consists of the announcement, people living their lives for three months, and the ending. It’s not coherent. It left me wondering, “This is it?”   There are five-star reviews for this book on Amazon, and most of them focus on the characterization and presentation of how the world might look in fifty years. I found the people and predictions to be bleak, though there were a couple of characters who I hoped would make it out all right. While the off-beat ending was unexpected (and a little disappointing), and the writing took some getting used to, the book’s central weakness for me is that so much of it is utterly relevant to the presumed plot. This is not about The Coming. This is about people living in 2054.  That may be of interest to you — it was in part to me — but don’t pick this book up expecting Contact.

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