Years before the first hockey mom or pit-bull ever set foot in Alaska, novelist Jack London populated that forbidding landscape with pulp fiction adventurers.
In January 2009, Paul Malmont will revive London’s biography in an adventure novel called Jack London In Paradise. Published by Simon & Schuster, the book was edited by Marysue Rucci and agent Susan Golomb sealed the deal for Malmont’s second novel.
Taking advantage of Malmont’s expertise with imaginary Alaska, GalleyCat asked him what crusty old Jack London would think about our vice-presidential candidate from Alaska. Malmont was frank:
“Jack, having seen first-hand how industrial progress led to corruption and exploitation in the north, would never have chanted, ‘Drill, baby. Drill.’ I also think that of all the candidates’ biographies he probably most would have identified with Obama and his humble origins and would have appreciated his time as a community organizer helping those struggling to climb out of what he called the abyss.”
“A socialist for most of his life London apparently voted for the Republican Charles Hughes in 1916. The labor movement was one of the signature struggles of his era and I think that was more important to him than the culture issues of today.
“On the other hand, Jack appreciated a strong woman and I think he would have like some of Palin’s frontier style. He always felt that the salvation of America would come from the west (specifically California) and he might have wanted to see some of those western qualities in her. But the women he really responded to were the ones who had some intellectual heft to them — like Anna Strunsky or his wife, Charmian — who questioned the world around them and looked for answers in art and science.
“He would not have had much patience for Palin’s (and I paraphrase him here) satisfied conception of her own righteousness. He would have a hard time with Palin if he’d discovered she wasn’t a Darwinian believer. I don’t think Jack London would have been a Palin supporter. Because of labor, and his mistrust towards capitalism and an unfettered free market, I think he’d be voting Democrat. But he might have been a Ron Paul man.”