Jack London, Ian Beck: White Fang (2019, Alma Classics)
288 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2019 by Alma Classics.
The story of a wolf/dog cross, who is raised by Indians, and becomes a deadly fighter.
I fell in love with this story when I first read it when I was about 12 years old and read it over and over. Now, over 16 years later, I decided to pick it up again. While I am far more critical of some of the content these days, I still enjoyed the story very much. It was a very nostalgic re-read for me.
It starts well but at the same time there is some real rubbish in this book. The scenery is nice, but the main character is a dog (or a wolf that thinks that he is a dog).
Jack London proposes one interesting notion of dogs perceiving humans as gods in roughly the same way people assign intention forces beyond their control. But "Unlike man, whose gods are of the unseen and the overguessed, vapours and mists of fancy eluding the garmenture of reality, wandering wraiths of desired goodness and power, intangible out-croppings of self into the realm of spirit -- unlike man, the wolf and the wild dog that have come in to the fire find their gods in the living flesh, solid to the touch, occupying earth-space and requiring time for the accomplishment of their ends and their existance.
First real "novel" I've ever read. That's how I started to love Jack London's narrative style. Straight to to point, wild and sometimes plain cruel.
