Bakery

My pleasures have changed as I've gotten older. And older. We'll not discuss anything that might make you blush (Oh damn! you're thinking). But when I was a boy, my pleasures were mostly physical ones--riding a bike, playing baseball, running around with our dog, Sooner, and inventing adventures for us. Yes, there were some more sedentary ones--reading the funny pages in the newspaper and, a bit later, the sports pages.

I liked Cheerios, Coca-Cola, Snickers, Popsicles (orange was--and is--my favorite), hamburgers, hot dogs, ice cream (vanilla), cake (yellow with chocolate frosting), oyster crackers (a fondness that became deadly as the decades rolled on), mashed potatoes, cherry pie (especially the ones my mom made), applesauce (especially my mom's), oatmeal (on cold days), brown sugar, OJ, Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, my mom's cherry cake, and on and on.

Later, I added basketball (my career ended, quickly, in college). Tennis. I played on our Hiram College team for four years and was fortunate our team was pretty (very?) bad, allowing me plenty of opportunities to play. And lose. I would continue playing at a local racquet club, early in the morning, but by the time I was in my forties, my knees and elbows and ankles were issuing dire (Dyer) warnings about continuing.

In 1978 I began jogging and was soon doing 4-6 miles/day, a habit I continued up into the late 1990s, at which time the Dyer Warnings (which I'd tried to ignore) bore some dark fruit in my bones and relevant tissue, and I can run no more.

(Add to this the delights of vertigo, a recent foul companion, and running becomes even more impossible, as if something could be more than impossible?!?)

In the 1990s I began riding an exercise bike (an Airdyne), an activity that is boring but burning (of calories). But soon my jogging- and hiking-weakened left knee said No more! So I've found another bicycle-like machine I "ride" now, one that does not put so much stress on that left knee. And I walk fairly brisk laps around an indoor track.

By the time I was in college, I'd become a Big Reader, a habit that has rather accelerated than diminished over the years. I'm one of those people who read multiple books simultaneously. I often have up to ten books I'm reading at any one time--not counting the one I'm reviewing that week for Kirkus Reviews (I've done nearly 1400 for them since 1999, when I began the gig).

I read several newspapers (hard copies) every day--the Plain Dealer, the New York Times, the Akron Beacon-Journal.

My eating habits have changed--dramatically since youthful days when my metabolism resembled that of a volcano. (Now it's more like a cold, very dead stone--which gets me thinking of Cold Stone Creamery, two blocks from our house, a place I go only to be, you know, cordial and sociable to visitors and family.)

Breakfast: a homemade scone (zero cholesterol); my favorites--maple-pecan, cherry-walnut, apricot-walnut); we've had a handyman working here a couple of days the past two weeks, and he's taken to calling this the Scone Place (I was baking one day when he was here), and in addition to his salary he includes a warm scone, rapidly consumed.
Lunch: a piece of homemade sourdough bread, toasted, with local jam; a cup of vanilla non-fat yogurt with some fruit (usually blueberries & strawberries); 8 oz of pomegranate juice (good for guys with prostate issues)
Supper: 1 apple; 1 banana; chicken or fish; rice, couscous, or baked potato--no toppings; veggie (I love peas, corn, carrots); a piece of warm homemade sourdough bread, sans toppings.

No desserts, though Joyce has recently introduced me to the pleasures of diet Popsicles. I'll have a couple in the evening. Otherwise, no seconds or snacks. Not that I don't want them, mind you, but I'm on a long-term med (Lupron), among whose most delightful side-effects is its insistence on my gaining weight if I so much as sniff a donut or think about a Snickers. So far I've been on it a few years, and I've managed to keep my weight from ballooning. (Add to that the Fat Gene that flourishes on the Dyer Chromosomes, and I have a life-long battle on my hands!) Another treat courtesy of Lupron: I have far less energy that before, so riding the exercise bike, walking laps, etc. becomes ever more odious, even depressing.

Well, this is a long way 'round Robin Hood's barn to get to the main point, which, obviously, I'm going to have to explore in a subsequent post (this one is already way too long)--viz., that among my later-life pleasures has been baking ...


To be continued ...

Frankenstein Sundae, 263

A reasonable question arises from all of this: Did Jack London know who Mary Shelley was? Did he read any of her works—especially The Last Man? There are various answers. The definitive three-volume edition of London’s letters does not include her name in the comprehensive index—though he does, twice, mention her husband, Bysshe.

The first is in an 1899 letter to an early friend and supporter, Cloudesley Johns (who later wrote a memoir mentioning London).[1] In London’s letter, he says that he’s reading Shelley’s poetry with Mabel Applegarth (an early love, later fictionalized in Martin Eden); the second is in a 1910 letter to a San Quentin convict, Henry W. Noyes, who’d sent London some of his verse, asking for advice. In this latter letter, London indicates some fondness for Shelley’s work.

He warns Noyes about the poor market for poetry (some things have not changed!), says some kind, supportive words about Noyes’ work, then offers this: The intrinsic value of the poems is not to be considered. If they were as great as Shelley’s, the publishing situation in the United States to-day would still be the same.[2]

Now, whether this indicates an intimate knowledge of Bysshe’s poems—or if it’s just a toss-off—is probably not too hard to infer. We all (most of us?) toss off comparisons like this one—sometimes alluding to famous works that maybe we haven’t, uh, actually read? Let’s guess how many allusions to, oh, War and Peace or In Search of Lost Time are based in the writer’s/speakers deep familiarity with those works?

In another way … what about London’s considerable personal library? In 1986, scholar David Mike Hamilton published a book about London’s library, focusing on his annotated volumes.[3] London owned more than 15,000 books (many, not all, unfortunately) are now in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, a place I spent many hours while working on my own London projects.

Anyway, there are no works listed by either Bysshe or Mary Shelley, and neither name appears in the index. So … this does not, of course, prove that London never read Frankenstein or The Last Man, but it does make me hesitate, finally decline, to imply that he did. Yes, he knew Bysshe’s poems (to some degree)—and he probably knew that his wife had written Frankenstein.

But it’s just (apparently) a coincidence that two writers on whom I spent a couple of decades wrote novels with the same general notion—that a disease can wipe us all out, and that when that wiping commences, as Yeats wrote in “The Second Coming”: things fall apart; / the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

---

[1] “Who the Hell Is Cloudesley Johns?” mss. at Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.

[2] The Letters of Jack London, eds. Earle Labor, Robert E. Leitz, III, I. Milo Shepard, 3 vols. (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1988), 70, 943.

[3] “The Tools of My Trade”: The Annotated Books in Jack London’s Library (Seattle: U of Washington P).

Oh, what I have NOT read ...!

the copy I read

Last night, I finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). Reading along, I realized, very quickly, that I'd not ever read it before--except in an old Classics Illustrated comic, those books-in-comic-book form that my parents allowed in the house, especially during those years when I was reading little else but comics, the backs of cereal boxes, the sports pages (and funnies) in the Cleveland Plain Dealer--i.e., most of my junior high and high school years.

However, as I look at this Classics cover, which I just found on Google, I don't feel any surge of recognition and familiarity. Maybe I didn't read this one?

I'm going to blog a bit about Stevenson's novel (novella, really) on Sunday, but, suffice to say, it was not at all what I expected from the vast amount of Dr. J & Mr. H allusion aswirl in the popular culture.

I am continually astonished by what I have not read; I continually ask myself, How did I not read that?

About ten years ago now, when my cancer veered into one of its more serious phases (then retreated for a bit), I decided I was going to read the great books I'd never gotten around to (so, so, so foolish: such a list is endless, as I've subsequently realized). And so I read, among others ...

• Tolstoy's War and Peace
• Proust's In Search of Lost Time (aka: Remembrance of Things Past)
• Cervantes' Don Quixote
• Stendahl's The Red and the Black
• Stern's Tristram Shandy
• Turgenev's Fathers and Sons
• Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained

There were others--but I'm getting embarrassed. There were times (blush, blush), earlier in my life, when I had feigned and/or lied about my familiarity with these titles (and many, many others). But I don't think I'm alone in this mild social deception ... am I?

Since 2007--and my I'd-better-hurry-up-and-read-these fatalism (my time's-winged-chariot-hurrying-near phase)--I've read quite a few other things I'd somehow never gotten around to (and, of course, feigned/lied accordingly). Just a few ...

• Stevenson's Treasure Island
• Eliot's Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, and others
• Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau
• Bellow's The Adventures of Augie March (and others)

Oh, there are so many more I read--but nothing like the number still remaining before me, most of which, of course, I will not live long enough to read.

But I have started a new category of books-I-read-in-bed: "Famous Books I've Lied about Having Read." Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was in that slot on my little shelf till last night; I'm not sure what will replace it.*

What I've learned about these books, so far, is they very rarely resemble what I expected--and then, only in the most superficial ways. I'll say, too, that most are far better than I expected (or feared?).

As I've aged, my pleasures have become more sedentary. I used to like exercise; I hate it now. (It's exhausting for me these days--even moderate activity.) So ... streaming films and good TV, talking with Joyce, going to a good movie, sitting in the coffee shop and reading a book, baking, writing doggerel, and reading, in my warm, warm bed, the Great Works of Literature I'd Always Lied About Having Read--these are my recent and (more or less) permanent pleasures (insofar as any human pleasure can be permanent).

*FYI: The other "slots": Famous Writers Whose Complete Works I'm Reading (right now it's Wilkie Collins), Recent "Serious" Novels, Recent Works of History, Recent Works of Science, Thrillers and Detective Novels.  I read a chap or so each night in each of them--when, that is, I'm being a Good Boy. Sometimes, lethargic and lapsarian, I stream an episode of The Rockford Files, which I've now seen, in its entirety, about 732 times.

Frankenstein Sundae, 262

Last time I mentioned that I thought I had a first edition of London’s The Scarlet Plague (I could see the damn thing!), but repeated searches of the same place (a bookcase where I keep all my London books) turned up the same result each time (imagine?!): nada.

But this morning … I found my copy. Which is not a first edition but is part of what’s called the “Sonoma Edition” of London’s works—reprints issued by Macmillan (London’s publisher throughout his career, with a few exceptions) in the 1920s following his death in 1916. My copy of Plague is odd because the volume contains two of London’s shorter novels—Plague and The Call of the Wild. Both, of course, show what happens when the world radically changes—for a dog (Wild), for humans (Plague).

As I also wrote, I read Plague in November 1986, near the beginning of my London mania. (Was I reading it on my forty-second birthday, November 11? I was not keeping a regular journal at the time, so I don’t know.)

Anyway, for your edification (?), here is my 1986 summary of that book (I’ve made no changes):

Futuristic, short novel in which a great plague, in 2013, destroys nearly all of humankind. Sixty years later the story begins as 3 savage boys (Edwin, Hoo Hoo, and Hare-Lip) accompany an old man they now call “Granser,” who once had been Professor James Howard Smith, prof. of Eng. Lit. at Berkeley.

The boys, who frequently taunt Granser & show him little respect and who speak like savages & have no learning at all (“What’s education?” one asks; “What’s money?” from another), convince Granser to tell them the story of the Plague—which he does, consuming most of the rest of the book.

The Scarlet Plague, caused by micro-organisms, killed quickly (15 min–2 hours), symptoms being the scarlet color and progressive numbness from the toes to heart. Millions died all over the world, and the world quickly became brutal & wild as groups called Prowlers (from the slums) shot, plundered, & burned.

Granser was immune & wanders for years alone before he encounters a brute, Bill the Chauffeur, who is keeping & terrorizing Vesta Van Warden, the billionaire’s wife Bill had once worked for. Granser can’t defeat him, so he leaves & discovers other survivors near: Glen Ellen!—joins them, sires children, etc. Keeps books in dry cave in case they’re needed—Edwin, perhaps, the most gentle may one day want them.

Some things to note here. London himself had attended Berkeley for a year (before dropping out and heading off on the gold rush). London—like many other writers and thinkers and thoughtful people of all sorts—knew that ignorance and poverty were the great threats to civilization. London’s own ranch was in Glen Ellen, a tiny community north of San Francisco in the Sonoma Valley.

The Somoa Edition I DO have.

Next time--some similarities to Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) ...

The 1st edition I DON'T have

Thereby Hangs a Tale (Tail?) ...

Shakespeare uses this phrase more than once--though the first time I recall it was when I was teaching The Taming of the Shrew to 8th graders back in the late 1980s, early 1990s.  The marriage between Petruchio and Katherine (the "shrew") has occurred; they are in transit from Pisa (site of the wedding) back to Verona (where he lives); his servant Grumio has gone ahead to make sure everything is ready for their arrival--oh, is it!

Anyway, Grumio is telling the others about an "accident" that occurred during the muddy trip home. Another servant, Curtis, asks him about it, and Grumo replies: Out of their saddles and into the dirt; and thereby hangs a tale (4.1).

Okay ... this morning I got a message on Facebook from a friend in town. Here it is: Inquiring minds want to know ... who is that rabbit you break fast with each morning?

I wrote back, telling her ... (see title of this post).

So ... so I break my fast each morning with a rabbit? Sort of ...

As the picture below shows, "my" seat at the Open Door Coffee Co. in Hudson is next to a window, very near the road (Clinton St.) and very near the stoplight at Clinton and Main. Over the past couple of years, a former student of mine from Aurora (decades ago)* has driven along Clinton with her young son on the way to school. He has a pet bunny. A real one. Every day--when the stoplight cooperates, and they pause very near my window to wait for the light--he shows me the bunny, pets him, etc. I once ran out and petted it!

One day--just this past October--I got the idea to buy a toy bunny. I quickly acquired a stuffed Peter Rabbit and placed him one morning in the position you see below. And I waited.

And it wasn't too many days before the red light cooperated; the little boy saw my rabbit; some joy (on both sides!) ensued! Our bunny relationship has evolved over the months. I will hold Peter and do something with him (scratch his ears, wiggle an arm); the boy will do the same with his. It's awesome.

Lately, he's been initiating the bunny-movements--and I've been the imitator. And it's a good thing: I was running out of ideas.

Though there are times when I, fussing around with the bunny, feel a little ... weird. Other patrons look at me, surely thinking, What is that Old Perv up to?

Some people have come over to ask me about the bunny (who, by the way, now sits on my table every day, even on weekends). I tell the story. The Perv notion evaporates. (Or so I have decided to think!)

Anyway, the Bunny Thing has become a time of absolute pleasure for me. The boy (and his mom!) seem to enjoy it, as well. He's probably thinking, This is way better than school! And--a former student myself, a former teacher--I agree!



*I've not mentioned their names--but will if they want me to.

Sunday Sundries, 131

1. AOTW--A Two-for-One!  Yesterday, waiting to leave a parking lot and to head out onto the thoroughfare, I waited for two cars approaching from my left; both turned before they got to me into another driveway. BOTH FAILED TO SIGNAL. So I had to sit and wait a while longer before I could get out into traffic. ("Justifiable homicide, your honor!" Jury unanimously agrees.)

2. I finished two books this week--the first from my in-bed pile, the second from my afternoon's reading.

     - I've enjoyed reading Michael Harvey's detective novels--set in Chicago and featuring Michael Kelly, a hard-boiled dude (as the genre demands, for the most part). Harvey himself came from Boston and was an investigative journalist, so his latest novel, Brighton (2016), though it deviates from his previous books, is not really a surprise. He's writing about his old neighborhood and his former profession. It is a story with roots in the past--the death (and some consequent killings) of the grandmother of our "hero" (loose term here), Kevin, who's just won a Pulitzer at the Boston Globe. Kevin gets drawn back into the old neighborhood--its dangers, its precarious alliances. Memory and the present dance together all the way through.

But though I admired the novel (tricky stuff going on here), I just did not get as caught up in it as I do with his Chicago mysteries. Just a preference.

     - I also finished the debut novel by Brit Bennett, The Mothers (2016), a novel that got a lot of wonderful reviews--the reason I ordered it and read it. The novel focuses on three principal characters, all of whom are African American (as is the author): Luke, a once-promising athlete whose careen topples because of an injury; Nadia, an extremely bright young woman who hooked up with Luke in high school; Aubrey, a young woman who's fairly invisible in school but whose life later intertwines significantly with the lives of the other two.

One device I really liked in the novel--"The Mothers" are the voices of older women in the church that all of the characters are more or less involved with--the Upper Room. They function at times almost like a chorus--nameless voices commenting on the other characters, on the evolving plot. (Some are named as we go along.) A clever and very effective idea.

What propels the plot is an abortion. I'll not say who or how. But let's just say that Luke and his parents (he is the pastor at the Upper Room) do not exactly distinguish themselves as the story unfolds.

I found my interest drifting as the story moved along--though, as I said, I admired much of what I read--and was quite moved by individual moments. The final paragraph is a dazzler--in the voice of The Mothers:

Then she disappeared around the corner, and as quickly as we'd seen her, she was gone. We will never know why she returned, but we still think about her. We see the span of her life unspooling in colorful threads and we chase it, wrapping it around our hands as more tumbles out. She's her mother's age now. Double her age. Our age. You're our mother. We're climbing inside you. (275)

Not bad, eh? I look forward to reading her subsequent novels as they come out. A talent.


3. We somehow missed a recent season of Grantchester, which we are now streaming via Amazon Prime. It's a detective series, England, post WWII, a vicar working with a detective (though the former is the principal character, the latter is not far behind). We enjoy the stories, the twists, etc. But what's so weird to me? The vicar (Sidney Chambers) is played by James Norton, the actor who played a psycho/killer/rapist/sadist on the series Happy Valley (a most ironic title!). So ... every time the vicar smiles beneficently, I expect to see the killer leap out and stab a parishioner. It's as if the same person played Superman and Hannibal Lecter! (Link to trailer for the series.)


4. We've--slowly, slowly--been working our way through all the films of the Coen Bros., in the order that the work appeared. This week we finished Barton Fink (1991), the story of the eponymous BF (John Turtoro), a successful NY playwright who goes to Hollywood to make some $$ as a screenwriter, but just can't seem to get it going--until he meets a rooming-house neighbor, John Goodman, who turns out to be, uh, even more than meets the eye.

I had forgotten that there is a character in the film very much based on the sad case of William Faulkner, who'd also spent some Hollywood time (WF does have screen credit for The Big Sleep, 1946!). The character in the film looks, acts, talks like him--and, like WF, is often inebriated. Simultaneously amusing and sad. (Link to film trailer.)

On to Fargo (1996)! So much fun to watch the Coen Bros. evolve ...


5. Final words--some words I liked this week from my various word-of-the-day online services ...

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--a word that reminded me of the title of Robertson Davies' 1972 novel, The Manticore, part of his Deptford Trilogy.

manticore, n.

Forms: α.    ME mantecora,   ME manticeros,   ME manticores,   ME mantissera,   ME matyttory transmission error,   ME 16–18 mantichora,   ME– manticora,   ME– manticore,   15 mantycor,   15 mantycore,   16 martichora,   16 martichore,   16–17 marticora,   19– mantichore,   19– manticor;   also Sc.  pre-17 manticora.  β.   15 mantigora Sc.,   15–18 mantiger,   16 19– mantegre,   16–17 mantyger,   17–18 montegre.

Origin:Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. Partly a borrowing from Latin, combined with English elements. Etymons: French manticore; Latin mantichoras, man n.1, tiger n.

Etymology: <  Middle French manticore (1246 in Old French; also manticora (13th cent. in Old French), mantichore; French manticore) or its etymon classical Latin mantichoras (post-classical Latin manticora, 12th cent. in a British source), a fabulous beast of India or Africa <  ancient Greek μαντιχώρας (Ctesias, quoted in Aristotle Hist. Animalium), variant of μαρτιχόρας (the form preferred by modern editors; another variant is μαρτιοχώρας) < an unattested Old Persian compound meaning ‘man-eater’ <  Old Persian martiya man (Persian mard) + a derivative of a verb meaning ‘to eat’, cognate with Avestan χvar-, Middle Persian χwardan, Persian khordan to eat (compare markhor n.). The β forms have sometimes been reanalysed as <  man n.1 + tiger n. by folk etymology (see man-tiger n. and compare mantegar n.). Compare also mariche n.

 1. A fabulous monster having the body of a lion (occas. a tiger), the head of a man, porcupine's quills, and the tail or sting of a scorpion.

▸a1398  J. Trevisa tr. Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum(BL Add.) f. 260v, Mantichora.

c1400 (▸?a1300) Kyng Alisaunder(Laud) 7094 Ther he fond addren..and manticeros [v.r. manticores].

1481 Myrrour of Worlde(Caxton) sig. evijv, Another maner of bestes ther is in ynde that ben callyd manticora.

1494 Will of Henry Eburton (P.R.O.: PROB. 11/10) f. 101v, A standing cuppe of syluer with a couering with a straunge best called a mantissera enprinted in the botome.

a1529  J. Skelton Phyllyp Sparowe(?1545) sig. A.viii, The mantycors of ye montaynes Myght fede them on thy braynes.

a1530 (▸c1425)  Andrew of Wyntoun Oryg. Cron. Scotl.(Royal) i. 772 [In India] thare is..A best thai call manticora [a1550 Wemyss mantigora], Off wysage..lyk..Till a man.

1607  G. Wilkins Miseries Inforst Mariage sig. I2v, Mantichoras, monstrous beastes, enemies to mankinde, that ha double rowes of teeth in their mouthes.

1646  J. Howell Lustra Ludovici 174 The Beast Marticora which is of a red colour, and hath the head of a man lancing out sharpe prickles from behind.

1717  J. Gay Three Hours after Marriage iii. 61 Fossile: How have I languish'd for your Feather of the Bird Porphyrion! Nautilus: But your Dart of the Mantichora!

1863  C. Kingsley Water-babies iv. 166 Unicorns, firedrakes, manticoras.

1920  R. Graves Country Sentiment 39 Sing then of ringstraked manticor, Man-visaged tiger.

1952  G. Sarton Hist. Sci. I. iv. 121 The mantichore can be easily recognized as Persian, for Aristotle had its story from Ctesias (V b.c.) and its name is Avestan.

1981  J. May Many-colored Land iii. xi. 390 Hideous trolls, spectres, manticores, shambling dark presences seized the soldiers in spine-crunching embraces.

 2. Heraldry. A monster represented with the body of a beast of prey, the head of a man, sometimes with spiral or curved horns, and sometimes the feet of a dragon.

c1470  in MS BL Add. 40742 f. 11 (in figure of badge of Hastings), Mantecora.

1562  G. Legh Accedens of Armory f. 88v, Supported with a Mantiger Argent..and a wiuerne Or.

c1600  in  S. Baring-Gould  & R. W. Twigge Armory Western Counties(1898) (Cotton MS.) 89 Radforde: Sa: 3 mantygers arg.

1610  J. Guillim Display of Heraldrie iii. xxvi. 183 Mantegres, Satyrs, Monkfishes,..and whatsoeuer other double shaped Animall [etc.].

1766  M. A. Porny Elem. Heraldry(1777) 196 The Montegre.

1780  J. Edmondson Compl. Body Heraldry II. (Gloss.), Man-Tyger, or Manticora, an imaginary beast..supposed to have the body..of a lion.

1894  H. Gough  & J. Parker Gloss. Terms Heraldry(new ed.) 519 The Mantiger or Lampago, called by writers Montegre and Manticora, also occurs.

1909  A. C. Fox-Davies Compl. Guide Heraldry xiii. 232 The Manticora, Mantegre, or Man-Tiger is the same as the man-lion, but has horns attached to its forehead.

1969  J. Franklyn  & J. Tanner Encycl. Dict. Heraldry 215/2 Man-tygre, an heraldic tygre having the horned head of an old-man; hence identical with the lympago... Also called manticora.

     - from dictionary.com

asomatous  \ey-SOH-muh-tuh s, uh-SOH-\

adjective

1. having no material body; incorporeal.

Quotes

As opposed to something asomatous, a word, my dear boy, I know will have immediately leapt into your brain, meaning, as you doubtlessly know, without bodily form.

-- Leon Rooke, Swinging Through Dixie, 2016

Origin of asomatous

Asomatous entered English in the mid-1700s from Late Latin asōmatus, which derives from the Greek asṓmatos "disembodied, incorporeal."

Frankenstein Sundae, 261

The Last Man and Jack London ...

The writer whose works and life I pursued with some passion (madness?) before Mary Shelley was Jack London. In the 1980s and 1990s I read all of his books, visited many of the sites that were significant in his life (two trips to Alaska and the Yukon), read all the other biographies of him, published an illustrated and annotated edition of The Call of Wild (1995) and in 1997 published a YA biography (Jack London: A Biography).

As you may remember, 1997 was the year that my Mary Shelley obsession ignited, so Jack drifted off on his ship (he’d owned several vessels, including the ill-fated Snark, about which both he and his second wife, Charmian Kittredge London, wrote volumes), and I turned exclusively Mary-ward.

The relevance here? When I read that in 1826 Mary Shelley had written a novel about a plague that wipes out most of humanity, I was acutely aware that Jack London had done much the same in his (much briefer) novel The Scarlet Plague, 1915, a novel that followed after what many consider his most significant works, The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea-Wolf (1904), White Fang (1906), and Martin Eden (1909). He wrote many other fine works—but these are probably the ones that remain most prominently in the public awareness.

I read The Scarlet Plague, I see in my notes, in November 1986. I was on a sabbatical leave that year from the Aurora (Ohio) City Schools—and my sabbatical proposal had been … to read the works of Jack London and to travel to relevant sites in his life. Our new eighth-grade literature anthology included The Call of the Wild, and I felt I didn’t know enough (to say the least!) about London, the Klondike Gold Rush (the historical context of the novel), and numerous other things, so I applied for and received that sabbatical.

I have a single page of handwritten notes—a plot summary of the novel—and later I seem to have expanded them—a page and a bit more on a dot-matrix printer (the print is fading as I type this!). I have a first edition of the novel—but where? I just went through my London collection and came up Plague-less, so this may be another developing story!

So how did London handle the same sort of story that Mary had written nearly a century earlier?