We now kick off the weekend with cecilia who explores the political themes of jack lon londons writing. [inaudible conversations] hello, thank you for coming to the southern festival. We hope that you will make a donation either on the website, at the app because this festival is a nonprofit event and we want to continue to keep it free event and open to everyone and we rely on your donations for that. Im delighted to introduce you cecelia tichi, she specializes in 19th and 20th century american literature, focusing on commentary social critic to country music. I mean, she covers a wide variety of topics. In addition to her scholarly book, she has also written mysteries about country music. I mean, shes a reneissance woman. Thank you for coming to hear about jack london. She was one of the pioneer of america. These are books that have become classics. That are still in reading lists in high schools, junior highs and thats the jack london that we think we know. He went to the gold rush in 189798. He found almost no gold. But the gold was the cluster of stories that he got listening to people, Ghost Hunters in their salons and when he came back home to oakland, california, determining to be a writer, it was the alaskan experience that he first was able to tap and whats so interesting at the moment he was right in sync with the american public. People were reading about exotic places. For the first time america had with disposable income, extra money and the time to spend an evening in leisure reading in parlors and dens and so on. So london hid it right for the market and he always knew that he was a man of the market. He would say to his editors, you know that i deliver the goods, i deliver to the market marketable wears and he always knew that he was dependent upon his readers, he had no other source of income. But the jack london that i dont think we know well, if at all, worked at some of the most jobs that the industrial system had produced. What jack experienced and stored up in his muscle memory was the recollection sering, scarring of how it was to be an Industrial Labor in the first guilded age. That was his initial lifetime. Born in 1876. That was the 1 100th year birthday of the independence. There was a worlds fair celebrating america. For the fist time america took a stage as a world power and a manufacturing power, railroads, mills, mines, 10 million visitors saw that philadelphia fair that summer. It was a a bounty of good things that the industrial system had brought to america. Jack london, however, lived the under side of that guilded age. If we asked what woman ever wants a piece of guilded jewelry. Nobody i know. Because underneath the shine there was something less valuable. At the top george pollmans palace, augustus swift, home sewing machines, all the goodies, but jack london lived the life of the workers that were making these goods and it wasnt pretty. Yes, he had some of the boy jobs custmair, he had a paper route. He set pins in the bowling alley, but in addition he had other kinds of jobs, he worked in a jute where pay patatos are made and he worked as many hours as the boss he said staid on the job. Once he felt he worked around the clock and im sure that was true. He worked in a cattery. He saw his coworkers finger slice off and, of course, there were no laws. He was seduced, ill say, by an employer who said if he started at the bottom of the Electric Company workforce, he could rise to the top. He started shoveling coal to heat up a boiler for steam power and he shoveled. His wrists swelled and throbbed. He was being paid less than two men who had previously had that job and he quit. I think if he had not, he might have impaired his wrists possibly a lifelong disability. One of these jobs a steam laundry, highly mechanized, highly mechanized, starch, heavy iron irons. They got the name from the metal, iron. Over 100degrees and on and on and he realized from these jobs that he and any number of young men and women in the United States would work out their jobs and by midlife they would be, and he said it, like old horses ready for the rendering glue factory. How did london get out of that life . Its a serious question. We know she shipped out on a sailing voyage on the sea. We have to realize that was hard too, he came back home. He went to the gold rush. He felt that if he did not escape manual labor he too would be dead sooner than later. He had two advantages. His mother was an educated woman from a family of merchants and bankers and thought jack how to read and every spare moment he loved reading. Two there were two oakland, California Public librarians. They saw this kid come up, bruised but brighteyed and they helped him. The first one who became poet laurette and the second a man named frederick banford. Fresh flowers on his desk. Those two librarians and the mother that insisted that her son learn to read and how he took to reading. Back from the gold rush, facing more of the manual labor jobs and and i have to say facing as well the possibility that if he once lapsed into crime, crime, because shortly he had lapsed into crime. He saw there was easy money. He borrowed. He bought a sail bout and boat and would steal oysters. He would treat his friends in the bar and salon to good times what he realized that if he lapsed again into crime, he would be in san quentin prison. Writing became a lifelong for a different kind of life. He began to toil 1618 hours a day t sames hours in the jute mail mill but this time from breaking off the manual labor so awful. We have to ask to what extent did he flee those Early Experiences or to what extent might he have embedded messages for his readers to take hold of. I want to show you im going to put it against my chest. This is a reproduction of the jacket, the cover of the book, the call of the wild t novel that made him famous in 1903. Im going to walk a little bit so you can see. Dogs, three rows of dogs, the dogs are in harnesses. The dog thats taken from his home, kidnapped, taken north to the yukon where it is strapped into harness with other dogs and we see them here. What matters is to see that theyre all in harness. They are a work crew. If one reads the call of the wild in school these days, very often the message is quite simply this is a transcribe out to tribute but for a long proird period in that novel we see the her low dogs and we see the brutality. So, of course, theyre rivals for food, ie, rivals for wages. Wages too low to support life. When we hear dogs singing in a minor key, a song for life pleading for life, when we see the dogs as skeletons, we are looking at an expression of whats gone wrong in industrial america. That there are too many people working like dogs and london called himself in those manual labor toils a work beast, and therefore, he used the dog and other types of beast to tell about what is wrong in america. Too many workers in harness, underpaid, no freedom of their own and when one dog, and its in the story, one dog is too exhausted to recover, its muscles are in a state of complete depletion, its cut off , so london discovered a way to talk to the upperclass readers who were happy to buy his books and what he was trying to do is shape public opinion. Here, for instance, is the situation that he faced. The uppermiddleclass readers. He felt that there were 3 million of them in a population at the time of 80 million. They sent their children to school, of course, they did. They would never dream of sending their boys and girls into a factory or a mill. But they thought that the children of immigrant were the children of the poor and certainly ought to be at work. They would help their family with their wages, and they did. And they would learn discipline and they would build their characters. So there was this split between the lives of the children of the well off and the children who happened to come from poverty. London is one of a group of reformers who saw a future of i iliterate adults and in his novels and in his short stories, and lets remember, he wrote 50 books, he wrote hundreds of short stories, many, many were best sellers and the magazines who carried stories were mass magazines, out in the millions, so you could find a way to read jack london and everyone loved jack london but embedded in his stories and in his novels i want to say we have an opportunity to see an embedded reformist message that taps into our own time. We are in and we see it all of the time in print and announced in media, we are in a second guilded age, and what does this mean . Wage inequality thats so vast thats captured public attention, that occupy movement of a few years ago seems to have have melted away but that 1 and 99 is pair of figures that somehow stuck. We have children of immigrant, some undocumented to be sure but not getting the proper schooling they they need. We have safety concerns. Water that seems to periodically make the news for lack of testing and kind of arrogant to let the environment to become unsafe. I would extend it to jack londons interest to agriculture because he started farming. He did nothing halfway. He had first wanted just a weekend retreat. He had become a celebrated writer, wherever his train stopped, reporters flocked to take pictures, photographers to capture a quote, he wanted to get away and in sonoma, california, if you havent visited, its now in the wine country but volunteers are maintaining the park and it was his ranch or farm, you know out west theyre falled called ranches. Well, that was one thing to see that going on in sonoma and then his research told him that it was going on everywhere in the United States, not only in the cotton fields which are crops that quickly deplete soil but also in the vegetables and fruits, farmers who jefferson called stewards of the earth were not such stewards. This is what they would do, start a farm, they would move on do another farm. Ive worked three farms out and so london thought this wont work for america. He had been in east asia as a sailor and he saw the ter terrorists patties and he thought these people have been feeding themselves or centuries on this method and we need to do Something Like it. He began a research program. London always wanted to research and learn the facts about what he was about. At this time the United States department of agriculture had realized that erosion and depletion of nutrients were causing havoc and jack london resolved not to use any chemical additives on his soil, not to use gasolinepowered machinery on his farm. At the end of his life, he was winning state fair, california state fair prizes, blue ribbons for prized livestock. He wanted to establish a program that would be a model to the nation. Here we are in the second guilded age with agriculture thats causing all kinds of problems with pesticides, runoff and with depletion of water and so here again jack london leading the way and he used the word sustainable one time and urged, urged the Young Farmers in training at the agriculture schools not only to trust their textbooks, but look around, look at what asia was doing, look outside of the academy. London felt strongly that although although colleges and universities were doing a wonderful job in some ways they were a closed book. They were not sufficiently understanding the underside of the industrial world. Make no mistake, jack london was no light, he didnt want to return where people were making their own soap, he loved the bounty of a new industrial system and he was very clear about that. The problem he said, is that those who have created this system, the vanderbilts is they made it possible for a vast number of americans to enjoy the bounty of the production of this rich country and the products coming out of the factories and mills, theyve made this possible but they stand aloof from it. They have reserved the good things of the world they created for a very small number of people and what is necessary is to open it up. How to do that, i have given one example with the call of the wild in which we see the mistreated sled dogs, how to get public attention for the wrongs of the guilded age. That was what london was up to. He wanted to sort of plant a seed, capture thinking that the reader doesnt even know, the reader is thinking, we could call it brainwashing, she didnt have that term, but its something of what he wanted to do of the wellbeing on those who unlike him were not getting rich from writing and had no other opportunities to enjoy the industrial world but jack finally was able to enjoy. He was the First American author to earn 1 million, and lets remember that the 5cent piece in that time was the coin of the realm. All from his loyalties. People said to him, look, london, when you make some money your are going to stop worrying about the poor, youre just going to come over and enjoy our side of things. London never came over to the other side, he said for the rest of his life he said that he was a socialist and that he identified most avidly with workers, what did socialism mean to him, two things, arent we, he asked, social beings, dont we want to live together as social beings all of us, one, two, shouldnt the organization of our world be better than it is, cant we figure this out and do better for ourselves, those were his two principles of socialism, but too often those i sms merged in the public mind and londons wife said that when he gave lectures that were socialistic in ideas his book sales slump and maybe thats thats true. Here, for instance, what he would say standing up on a stage in new york where 4,000 people came to hear him, Yale University t president of yale was there, conservative professes professors, london would ask why in this country of 80 Million People are 1 million inproperly fed. Why in this country 80,000 children living out their lives in textile mills. What does the great capitalist say to answer this. He cannot and will not. We the people must do better. Of course, london add adversaries. Not everyone was thrill today here his mandate, injunction to come forward and reform but many, many more appreciated his fiction, his stories and novels and in them, in them were embedded life lessons. Let me talk about one separate from the call of the wild, in londons novel martin eaton and was very pop swlr, its still in print, we as readers, ally with martin, young man, shes been a sailor, he wants to get educated, hes trying to find his way, he has a girlfriend that comes from the upper middle class so hes watching his verbs. We found in the summer that martin is broke, busted. The girlfriend and her family are in a mountain resort. Martin goes to the mountains as here is the scene in the terrace, fanning themselves trying to keep themselves cool, meanwhile in the laundry its martin and his coworker toiling all day, toiling half the night, starch, steam iron, fear of coaching a lady ice we are stuck out there on the terrace back in the laundry, we want him to do well. London is asking what side are you on, can you do something about a world in which slave labor is making it possible for some people to enjoy leisure, shouldnt everybody have some leisure. Ask anybody who has read that novel in the last while and they will say, i remember that laundry scene. Absolutely you remember the laundry scene because london made clear that his reform imperatives had to be a part of fiction. Here is whats difference between jack london, others have come to affluent families. They saw American Culture failing in so many regards. Workplaces that made you sick, children toiling in the mills when they should be in school and on and on. But they wrote reports very often, maybe made speeches. The reports appealed to the intellect. Fiction could appeal to the heart as well as to the intellect. Heart and mind, that was londons, that was londons dual goal. When we look back at jack londons life and writing and what it means, we ask for today, so what why should we go back and rethink this this singular figure, celebrated and american letters to this day, and one answer is that his is a lesson on how an individual taking hold can make a big difference in a society that really needs correction. Londons life span moved from the guilded age into the progressive era when we had legislation involving children and school, kindergarten movement, workplace safety, these were issues that came into the into the United States and into into the thinking, not only of political figures, but of citizens, citizens who london said had been stirred in their minds, in this phrase, he said, i want to stir a noble discontent to appeal to the best of our moral and ethical drives and to convert that discontent into action. So londons life span is one that, i think, can really could really be a model for this world were in now that once again needs so much attention for society and wellbeing and i need to name all the terms. I want to read you a little passage from my book and i want to show you some footage, we are up for that. Okay, good. The passage comes at the point when jack london had been on speaking tour and gave his talk in new york, gave his talk at yale but he had always been on tour throughout the u. S. , speaking at colleges and universities, he wanted young people to know what their possible gas station would be a head of them in their creaser and his wife he had newly remarry. Now divorced. He had two daughters in oakland and let me say he supported his exwife, he sported his daughters, his mother and an African American nurse maid, a nanny who had cared for him when he was just an infant. He had serious financial obligations. He has come back from the lecture tour which was pretty demanding and draining and hes back at the ranch literally and everybody thinks, hes settling down, hes going to form. At his home, jack london reached for pencil and began a letter to cosmopolitan magazine. Can i have your attention, please. If you registered for a library card [inaudible] [laughter] trust me, we will be out of here in 20. All right. Should i i was going to ask the the cameraman it was february 1906. Quote, the queal is layed, london seem rooted of acre ranch, his wife blame it had rigorous tour but jack relied on healing powers of his blessed ranch as he called the sonoma farm anchorage. He scanned the newspapers for possible story ideas convinced that the daily papers represented life in its raw essentials. He bought twoseated rig to bring about guests to bring ellen from the railroad and he ordered fruit treats, jack selected the best one she later tallied them. They were at home for the foreseeable future. Jacks pronouncement the keel is laid, shattered the notion. The keel in question was the wood spine of a alabama that ran to about the stern of the 45foot sailboat that he had ordered from San Francisco across the bay from oakland. The boat under construction was custom designed by jack with two vital goals in mind, beauty and strength. Qualities that he prized in every realm of life. Just as he stabled handsome saddle horses and gloves for fitness, jack london kept quick escape with friends. Yeararound sailing, San Francisco bay was his passion, while he enjoyed the summers for sea breeze off the pacific, he rebelled in the wintery and his sailboats were unbeatable for what he called hard work and excitement because small boats tested a mans ability to take wood and iron and rope and canvas and compel it to will. It meant jack london was taking his claim to worldwide sailing adventures to begin next autumn with a small crew he intended to sail the wild world and encounter lands and people firsthand under his command. Recreational but to jack london the trip around the worldment one thing, personal achievements and living. Thats an example of the book. I would like to show you some footage of jack london at his ranch. This is one of the eighth segments of archival Motion Picture footage that i have made arrangements to include in the ebook version. Not everyone likes the bound book, some people like to read on tablets, ibooks, kendals so i have arranged to be included aztec person here and we want number seven of eight, jack london on his ranch and here we go. This is actually jack london on the ranch, photographer out there, thats the cottage, theres jack helping his wife, shes going writing. There he is, okay, she rides off, has a good time, there is their cottage, again, and were going to see in a moment jack driving a hay wagon. Here he is. Here he comes. What year is it . This is about 1913, 1914, i can tell because london does not look well. He will die of mercury poisoning in his kidneys from dosages of medicine, the piglets, his doctor had said it will shorten your life, mr. London, behind in stone you see what was called the pig palace. This as not as smoothly running as it is in the ebook, here he is grooming the horse. The camera comes up somewhat close. Hes laughing, back to the cottage, we will get back to him in just a moment with his trooper hat, there he is. If you read leaps youll probably maybe guess what hes saying, no idea, but thats jack, his health, again is failing, its toward the end of his life but this is just one of the of the little clips that i thought in an ebook why not, so theyre there as a bonus. Anyone who cares to book one of these today i have a stash of dvds with all of the segments and i will give you one. You pop it into your computer and it tells you what page in the book everything is correlated to. I thank you and we should have some questions and then we have to exit the building according to our voice from the cloud. [laughter] all right. Are there any questions . Thank you, thank you. [applause] does he get to make his trip . Excellent question. He does make his trip. Here is the problem, between the time he ordered his boat and the timefinished the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906, april 1906, it created a terrible shortage of wood and other supplies so the custom yacht, 45 feet long that had supposedly watertype compartments, everything just right, it leaked, the food was ruined, all kinds of problems, jack london did make it to hawaii and there for several months the boat was repaired. They sailed to the south seas. Island after island. The book from that experience is called the cruise of the snark and its available in paperback. In that cruise to the south seas, about 18 months in he and his wife had to abandon the trip. They all had been so sick. He had slaughtered his arms and legs that had something that solomon sores, viral, they knew they just couldnt go on. They put the boat up for sale and returned to the u. S. And thats the book and his doctor his doctor back in oakland, said, mr. London, this will shorten your life, and he did, he died at age 40, november 2nd, the same day that John F Kennedy died. Library closes in 10 minutes. [inaudible] thank you. Youre welcome. Is there another question, concern . Something. [laughter] yes, sir. [inaudible] was he threatening with blacklisting as a socialist . Harrison ottus who was the publisher no one made as much money sympathizing with the poor like london. After he gave a lecture on socialism and the need for it, he would be called this man who calls himself london, so he was either, you know, he was either stock up or if his politics became too dicey for the capitalists who were running the newspapers after all advertising was their lifelong also, other capitalists enterprises, he was scorned and critic. Blacklisted, im not sure. I will say this, some of the writings, shocking to see, bounced around from one big magazine to another and would end up in a small socialist magazine like wilcherd. He was damped down by the powers that be when they felt he was too too brassy and too public and too popular. [inaudible] he did. A great story called the dream of debbs. He he was a member of the socialist party until late in life when he just got frustrated as we now are with our political dysfunction and he felt that the socialists were squabbling and not making the kind of headway that they should be making and he resigned not because he was disaffected as a socialist, he just thought the organization was was just what i said, just dysfunctional. He was allied, Founding Member of the socialist organization to help college and University Students understand the benefits of that of that political set of ideas. Are we done . I think were done. Sir. Can you tell us what he might think today . [inaudible] yeah. Okay. Just this one you know, one last sort of because ive been asked that question, what about jack today, one, he would be everywhere on social media, he would be tweeting, he would be out there. He would also be writing fiction that urged urged rethinking of whats been done to deprive workers in america of their rights. He would be out in front. I was asked would he still write fiction, absolutely he would. And lets remember three names of writers that he would ally today, walter mosley, African American, very popular writer who has taught us a lot about racism for the last 20 years. Walter mosley, barbara who went undercover as a journalist and told us what it was like to be a server in a place say like dennys or crack cracker barrell and also john whose latest novel Gray Mountain exposes the Coal Industries rape of the Appalachian Mountains and the choking of the streams below and what it has done to kentucky to tennessee. London would be here at the southern festival of books. [laughter] all right, on that note [applause] im going where i have the next half hour. I hope to see somebody. [laughter] please join us at the signing and if you want we are taking donations. Books are for sale up there on the plaza. Youre watching book tv on cspan2. At 7 00 p. M. David takes a look at desire to communicate with the dead following world war i. At 9 15 escape from north korea. And also Author Interview after words reports on the big business of College Football and at 11 00 Gloria Steinem recalls for life and career. That all happens here tonight at book tv. And now on book tv is the author of car wars, the rise t fall and the resurgance. A man called henry ford came and by 1918 he ran most of them off with the model t. The interesting part of electric cars that audience was mainly women because the the gasoline powered car required the Upper Body Strength or required the man of the family to get in and start it up. They didnt want that. They wanted a car that was clean, wasnt knowsy, go in and push the button and you, the woman of the house drives off on your own and goes wherever the hell you want. That lasted until henry ford came along and invented a car that was to cheap that everybody had to have it and that was the end of the electorate car. Todays electorate cars are they selling, are they pop swlear, popular, are they efficient . They are extremely efficient. The problem is the price of the cars is too high. Its over 70,000 but in about a year or two theyre going to see a revolution where tesla or manufacturing will come in with a 30,000dollar car, when people realize they are cheaper to maintain and cheaper to fuel, you will see a quick revolution and people will be driveing these and will make cities not only cleaner but quieter. Why has it taken this throng take to this today . A technology thats about 120 years old. Theres Something Like 5,000 moving parts in a conventional fossilfueled driven car. In electric car is like 100. The owner of the electric car will not have as many problems, his or her fuel will be cheaper and the car will be competitive with the car of a gasolinepowered car, when those lines cross, you will see a lot of behavior change. Right now the price of gasoline is about 2, if you want a bet against it going up, i think youll lose. But when it does go up, electrics will take over the market. Are americans reluctant to trust electric cars at this point . Well, i think a lot of them dont know what it is. But when they see cities becoming cleaner and quieter, when they see their maintenance and fuel bills go down, theyre not going to do this because it helps the climate or prevents global warming, theyre going to do this because it helps their budgets and when that happens, be the seller of electric cars because the rest of the industry is going to hurt. Prior to writing this book, what were you doing . I was a reporter with the wall street journal and when i discovered a lot of interest in the electric cars, i contacted detroit and sort of had control of who wrote about cars. Hey, i want to write about electric cars and they told me, no way, theres no manufacturerrer thats ever going to do this. Hey, i have a story of my own and so i began looking toward it and you get inventors and hot riders and sort of really add. Good afternoon. I m tom putnam, director of the