Just the one version, I believe - this post is not a retelling of the story and doesn’t quote the story in full. I’m riffing on it - it made me think about humility, that’s all. And many thanks 🙏🏻🫶
I first read this Jack London story when I was about twelve, I think. It was a "bonus story" after White Fang, sort of how John Steinbeck's shirt story Junius Maltby was an afterthought in The Red Pony print copy.
I think of these little stories surprisingly often, more than their famous counterparts. They gut punched my twelve year old sensibilities. London sketched fear so primally. A twelve year old is still scared of shadows and being embarrassed on the playground. As a twelve year old Catholic school girl, one of my preoccupations was making sure my socks were the "correct" length and shade of navy blue to avoid negative attention. Then here was this story of a man who died alone in the frozen Alaskan tundra. It was not his actual demise that had the most impact on me. It was his fear of dying after he realized he was likely going to die and how he dealt with that. To this day, I immediately envision the man burning his hands in his last desperate, ultimately failed, attempt to rebuild his fire, what that symbolized.
What are contemporary twelve year old travails compared to that? Oh, they still existed. A story, however powerful, cannot fully supplant the stresses of twelve year old social life, but it definitely tempered it some. I bring this up because you have an uncanny way of telling your own stories and sharing your own contemplations in ways that unlock some of my own. I've been thinking lately of how books—stories—got me through my life to this point, how they not only gave me an escape but changed and formed me, how they offered useful guidelines and just as importantly, maybe more so, useful antitheticals—who and what I _didn't_ want to be. I didn't want to become the man.
If you'd been a Girl Scout, like me, you would have learned to build a fire. But not really, because you'd have no opportunity to practice, or you'd have not taken any real interest in practicing until you were in your 30s, in a house with drafty windows, and uninsulated floors, and a wood stove.
"Both fire and ocean were and are completely unaware that I was and am this ridiculous sort of animal that goes around personifying everything—elements, rain, wind, time and space and rock and sky—and telling stories about vast, immutable forces as if those stories are actually about humans, of all the small and petty things; as if they ever were."
As if they ever were.
Love the picture of you and Zeke, just behind the fire.
London is truly a great, spare writer. A while ago I read several of his works plus biographical info on him, his Oakland years, early seafaring days as oyster pirate, Wolf House and his death. His last book, focusing on drowning, forget title, was -- sad. One article said he was the first 'superstar,' like the John Lennon of his day (that status-not medium). Think the Saturday Evening post serializations catapulted him to stardom. I'm glad for your post, as I got to reflect on him. Thank you.
waiting for part 2: -- the energy of this -- its rhythm and voice -- is so compelling. We had only stoves for 20 years in North Wales. Here in the forest in France there's heating (really rubbish heating) and a stove that is so poorly designed we don't use it -- this made me ache for those fires, for the ritual of building them daily in winter.
Few stories are as bleak as To Build a Fire. Maybe Sartre’s The Wall. In London’s story, we watch in growing desperation as each chance to survive fails, until there are no more chances. In The Wall, there are no chances for survival, except one so unlikely and absurd that all the survivor can do is sit on a curb and laugh when he is freed and not shot after a night in anticipation of death.
Every morning, I build a fire in our stove and I taught my daughter to how to build one when she was little. I never taught her not to touch the stove when it was hot because she learned it so quickly herself. After she finished her graduate degree and was settling into her career, she once told me how difficult it was to find a guy “who was more of a man than I am.” Her criteria was simple enough and included skills such as changing a flat tire and building campfires. My criteria, which I kept to myself, was that her man who could build a fire and change a flat was not an ass like Hemingway or London in their regard for women. If that had been the case, Hemingway would have had no need to shoot himself. It would have been on the house.
Reading Jack London here brings back memories of when I was a girl and read Call of the Wild which my brother was given but likely didnt read. London's words lit a fire in me. Your memory of bonfires on the beach in CA sounds idyllic. I love the beach but we are no longer allowed to have fires on the beaches here.
Marya, your ability to take anything at all, including this week's fire-building, and turn it into a riveting memoir, essay, and social commentary is breathtaking. I don't know now whether to reread Jack London, build a fire, read Jack London by a fire I've built, or build a fire and contemplate my own fire history.
Might there have been two versions? I know my version exists. BTW, you are terrific, and thank you.
Just the one version, I believe - this post is not a retelling of the story and doesn’t quote the story in full. I’m riffing on it - it made me think about humility, that’s all. And many thanks 🙏🏻🫶
I first read this Jack London story when I was about twelve, I think. It was a "bonus story" after White Fang, sort of how John Steinbeck's shirt story Junius Maltby was an afterthought in The Red Pony print copy.
I think of these little stories surprisingly often, more than their famous counterparts. They gut punched my twelve year old sensibilities. London sketched fear so primally. A twelve year old is still scared of shadows and being embarrassed on the playground. As a twelve year old Catholic school girl, one of my preoccupations was making sure my socks were the "correct" length and shade of navy blue to avoid negative attention. Then here was this story of a man who died alone in the frozen Alaskan tundra. It was not his actual demise that had the most impact on me. It was his fear of dying after he realized he was likely going to die and how he dealt with that. To this day, I immediately envision the man burning his hands in his last desperate, ultimately failed, attempt to rebuild his fire, what that symbolized.
What are contemporary twelve year old travails compared to that? Oh, they still existed. A story, however powerful, cannot fully supplant the stresses of twelve year old social life, but it definitely tempered it some. I bring this up because you have an uncanny way of telling your own stories and sharing your own contemplations in ways that unlock some of my own. I've been thinking lately of how books—stories—got me through my life to this point, how they not only gave me an escape but changed and formed me, how they offered useful guidelines and just as importantly, maybe more so, useful antitheticals—who and what I _didn't_ want to be. I didn't want to become the man.
If you'd been a Girl Scout, like me, you would have learned to build a fire. But not really, because you'd have no opportunity to practice, or you'd have not taken any real interest in practicing until you were in your 30s, in a house with drafty windows, and uninsulated floors, and a wood stove.
"Both fire and ocean were and are completely unaware that I was and am this ridiculous sort of animal that goes around personifying everything—elements, rain, wind, time and space and rock and sky—and telling stories about vast, immutable forces as if those stories are actually about humans, of all the small and petty things; as if they ever were."
As if they ever were.
Love the picture of you and Zeke, just behind the fire.
London is truly a great, spare writer. A while ago I read several of his works plus biographical info on him, his Oakland years, early seafaring days as oyster pirate, Wolf House and his death. His last book, focusing on drowning, forget title, was -- sad. One article said he was the first 'superstar,' like the John Lennon of his day (that status-not medium). Think the Saturday Evening post serializations catapulted him to stardom. I'm glad for your post, as I got to reflect on him. Thank you.
You, sweet, crazy lady.
Are the fire to your followers.
To them, you are the lightly resin’d volatile pine shaving of the literary world.
May you and your followers burn bright, hot and fearsome.
Burn it to the ground,
Till the world stop turnin round.
waiting for part 2: -- the energy of this -- its rhythm and voice -- is so compelling. We had only stoves for 20 years in North Wales. Here in the forest in France there's heating (really rubbish heating) and a stove that is so poorly designed we don't use it -- this made me ache for those fires, for the ritual of building them daily in winter.
Few stories are as bleak as To Build a Fire. Maybe Sartre’s The Wall. In London’s story, we watch in growing desperation as each chance to survive fails, until there are no more chances. In The Wall, there are no chances for survival, except one so unlikely and absurd that all the survivor can do is sit on a curb and laugh when he is freed and not shot after a night in anticipation of death.
Every morning, I build a fire in our stove and I taught my daughter to how to build one when she was little. I never taught her not to touch the stove when it was hot because she learned it so quickly herself. After she finished her graduate degree and was settling into her career, she once told me how difficult it was to find a guy “who was more of a man than I am.” Her criteria was simple enough and included skills such as changing a flat tire and building campfires. My criteria, which I kept to myself, was that her man who could build a fire and change a flat was not an ass like Hemingway or London in their regard for women. If that had been the case, Hemingway would have had no need to shoot himself. It would have been on the house.
Reading Jack London here brings back memories of when I was a girl and read Call of the Wild which my brother was given but likely didnt read. London's words lit a fire in me. Your memory of bonfires on the beach in CA sounds idyllic. I love the beach but we are no longer allowed to have fires on the beaches here.
Marya, your ability to take anything at all, including this week's fire-building, and turn it into a riveting memoir, essay, and social commentary is breathtaking. I don't know now whether to reread Jack London, build a fire, read Jack London by a fire I've built, or build a fire and contemplate my own fire history.
I so enjoy traveling along with the thoughts in your mind. The way they meander, pause, reflect, correct, then meander again.
You were born knowing how to build a fire, dear Marya. its within you.