User:ADavis/sandbox - Revision history

ADavis: remediated article

2025-04-10T23:23:00Z

remediated article

ADavis at 15:20, 8 April 2025

2025-04-08T15:20:06Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:20, 8 April 2025
Line 1:		Line 1:
	~~{{Byline\|last=Kaufmann\|first=Donald L.\|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}~~

	{{dc\|dc=T\|HE MAILER "SEEDS" STIRRED}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and achieve its final "coming of age," now superior to its English and European counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.		{{dc\|dc=T\|HE MAILER "SEEDS" STIRRED}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and achieve its final "coming of age," now superior to its English and European counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.

ADavis at 20:13, 5 April 2025

2025-04-05T20:13:41Z

Show changes

ADavis at 23:28, 25 March 2025

2025-03-25T23:28:55Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:28, 25 March 2025
Line 19:		Line 19:
	clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.”And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his		clearly many contemporary and later writers were inseminated with Whitman “seeds.”And Norman Mailer was one of those who had more than his
	share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of		share. For the Mailer scholar, legacy quotient is based more on his authorial singularity and less on the common characteristics of his generation of
	contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings ~~(awkward space?)~~ {{pg\|280\|281}}		contemporary writers. Whitman’s death announced that the nineteenth-century American Realism of Howells and James had ended. In its wings {{pg\|280\|281}}

	was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic		was formed the new Literary Naturalism that might be called the “dynamic
Line 145:		Line 145:

	But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more		But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more
	like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg\|287\|~~289~~}}		like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg\|287\|288}}

	antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the		antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the

ADavis at 23:12, 25 March 2025

2025-03-25T23:12:35Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:12, 25 March 2025
Line 1:		Line 1:
	{{Byline\|last=Kaufmann\|first=Donald L.\|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}		{{Byline\|last=Kaufmann\|first=Donald L.\|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}
	~~THE~~ MAILER ~~“SEEDS”~~ STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
			{{dc\|dc=T\|HE MAILER "SEEDS" STIRRED}}, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
	achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European		achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European
	counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.		counterparts, soon to be the new superpower’s final word.

ADavis: added abstract

2025-03-25T18:33:00Z

added abstract

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:33, 25 March 2025
Line 1:		Line 1:
	{{Byline\|last=Kaufmann\|first=Donald L.}}		{{Byline\|last=Kaufmann\|first=Donald L.\|abstract=Mailer is placed within the American literary tradition as a direct descendent of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Naturalism.}}
	THE MAILER “SEEDS” STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and		THE MAILER “SEEDS” STIRRED, as the Twentieth Century dawned and American literature soared. The last century would climax in the late 1920s, and
	achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European		achieve its final “coming of age,” now superior to its English and European

ADavis at 19:17, 21 March 2025

2025-03-21T19:17:55Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:17, 21 March 2025
Line 248:		Line 248:
	A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg\|294\|295}}		A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg\|294\|295}}

	canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. ~~these~~ qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.		canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. These qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.

	{{Review}}		{{Review}}

ADavis: finished drafting remediation

2025-03-21T19:03:03Z

finished drafting remediation

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:03, 21 March 2025
Line 237:		Line 237:

	On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg\|293\|294}}		On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg\|293\|294}}

			lar, quintessential book. With this media-enshrined novel, Twain had touched his (and his country's) mother tongue's central nerve. Now it was exit time for London, Davis, and all earlier American writers. At the Nineteenth Century's closing, if there were to be only one man and one book standing it would be Twain and ''Huck''.

			Those who question Mailer's legacy quotient might ponder this question: Will Mailer and his literary contemporaries survive such stringent legacy quotient guidelines, previews of future "cuts." Davis is an automatic no-show, too minor and ephemeral. Crane seems pinpointed with Hemingway and, thus, a Mailer dead-end. And Dreiser, who would live on into Mailer's own time, must be considered as a potential Mailer legacy/literacy "Godfather."

			The Norris-Mailer connection, indeed, was vital, and mostly from Norris's twin literary trademarks—bigness and sensationalism, especially in his more abstract prophetic stance (not found in the London canon) in his "Responsibilities of the Novelist," the lead essay in a posthumous (1903) collection. There, Norris pontificated on a cosmic-global level, on the upward march of American literature, symbolizing the fulfillment of Western civilization's destiny. All of this would seem to be strong academic "meat" for a heavy thinker like Mailer. In a "nots and bolts" more practical America, the London canon remained the best media package and best rejoinder to the legacy of Mark Twain. Yes, the London career and canon were robust with survival knowledge about the nature of authorial megalomania and media response. It all came down to control. And who had it, the writer or media?

			Let us consider the life and works of Jack London and their connection to Mailer. During the heady days of literary Naturalism and its Quintet, London was the one writer who came the closest to controlling the media of his time. London was his own star performer and he played quite well for two short decades joining those few select icons (Twain, Hemingway, Fitzgerald) who are still universally recognized and respected. "Wolf" London survives today in the U.S. and overseas. His legacy quotient is well earned.

			A century or more in the future, will Norman Mailer be among such august literary artists? Already there are some early positive signs for the future, those budding literary quotient seeds. For example, in their shared trait of literary megalomania, Mailer's mode, unlike London's, was expressed only secondarily through his character, personality, and career—but primarily through his protean canon. Big-theme writers tend to impress "Ivory Tower"{{pg\|294\|295}}

			canon academicians. As for being the combative media writer, Mailer, both in the ring and on the page, was a singular battler with the media, and a controller and survivor. these qualities will play an important role in determining the Mailer Legacy.

			{{Review}}

ADavis: added pages 12-15

2025-03-21T17:19:18Z

added pages 12-15

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:19, 21 March 2025
Line 194:		Line 194:
	Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined		Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined
	the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg\|290\|291\|}}		the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg\|290\|291\|}}

			He wrote two Socialist treatises, ''War of the Classes'' and ''The Human Drift''. Zola’s “social bottom” now obsessed him. With his recently acquired fame,
			he traveled to England and did a “live” documentary treatment of London slum life, a shocker about sweat dens and garbage eating in ''The People of the Abyss'' (1903). This volume was the first of later social exposés, including ''John Barleycorn'' (1913), an autobiographical memoir, a polemic in support of the
			Prohibitionist Movement, his prose still highly readable and self-revealing. Soon, his hard drinking would cause serious health problems.

			London's cultural and political radicalism shaped his fiction. In his 1913, ''The Valley of the Moon'', the hero and family, victimized by urban plutocrats, escape to idyllic Agrarianism. The title refers to a California utopian community, a haven from dreaded Capitalism. There the hero and wife return to the "land" and await their son's birth, a cultural and literary scenario recognized as neo-primitivism.

			The more apocalyptic aspects of the classic Marxist class struggle are the centerpieces of London's ''The Iron Heel''. It was truly omniscient, structured as a fragmentary historic document, told
			through a diary (1912-32) of several decades of Capitalistic persecution. Titanic class warfare was being waged between Plutocrats and the Masses, the latter's only hope of a Socialist Utopia. Such was not to be, at least in 1932, when the diary stopped. But readers were informed that after three hundred years of a dystopian nightmare, only then could blessed collectivism be restored and advanced into Utopian Socialism. Such was the tonal dichotomy of a famous writer who introduced to Literary Naturalism very readable and, yet, high quality Marxist ABCs. This radical political fallout prefigured what the 1930s "proletarian literature" and, later, would foreshadow Mailer's political odyssey from an early flirtation with Henry Wallace's tepid US communism and his gradual shift into a somewhat ambiguous, self-proclaimed "left-conservative."

			With his breakthrough ''Son of the Wolf'', London was hailed as the "American Kipling," a counterpart to England's incredibly popular manly author, well known for his plain style. This development resulted in highly profitable, reader-friendly prose. it sported clear images—that is, a skilled blend of concrete sense details plus a smoothing flowing story or plot and catchy, moderate tonal passion and sincerity. Such was the formulaic prose that brought Kipling both fame and wealth.

			In both the London and Mailer canons, there is a medley of thematic, tonal, and mood crossover effects. For example, London's 1905 novel, ''The'' {{pg\|291\|292}}

			''Game'', featured a prizefighter—a Mailer fixation. And there was a plentitude of Maileresque thematic clouds, filled with metaphysical power preoccupations, hovering above one of London's best novels, ''The Sea Wolf'' (1906), famed for its Nietzschean captain of the "Ghost," a sealing schooner. Within Wolf Larson, London had transplanted the atavistic dog formula, the "Buck-half," on to a human seafaring environment, with its demonic antagonist. London said that his anti-hero symbolized "an attack on the superman philosophy." As for this novel's legacy, scholars have called Wolf Larson the "Zolaesque Captain Ahab of literary Naturalism."

			London emulated Crane, Norris, and Davis, and turned into a gutsy, flashy war correspondent, covering the Russo-Japanese War and other headline chaos. He copied Twain, and embarked on a lecture tour, both street-side
			among the proletariat and among eggheads at Yale and Harvard. The Klondike man, as ever, was a work beast, and now, also a spend beast. He reconditioned a great house called “Beauty Ranch”—1,500 acres, 100 employees, and at $3,000 per month a luxury mecca for worldwide guests, high and low. While this opulence was at a proliferated cost, still there was financial success. For example,
			the serialization of ''The Sea Wolf'' earned $4,100, and made the novel a bestseller. During this period, London earned about $75,000 a year, but was always about $200,000 in debt, yet he still wrote about 1,000 words per day. And his fluid, inner circle friends, employees, and strangers, milked and robbed him blind, not unlike the fate of some of today’s celebrities.

			In 1911 there was a new wave of fame and success, and in 1913, London unveiled “Wolf House,” a magnificent dream castle built in one year, of solid stone, and a cost of about $100,000. Soon after construction it was destroyed
			by fire, probably arson. London’s luck had turned. The work beast wrote about ten hours per day to keep financially afloat. His body gave way. Those prolonged global cruises had brought him multiple tropical physical ailments and his overall health collapsed.

			London became a breathing medical alert, a sick man beset with headaches, rheumatism, dysentery, painful kidney or renal nephritis, and
			excess weight from overeating and heavy drinking. And there were mental maladies. He mourned the loss of an infant child. He also suffered from
			spousal problems—a passive and jealous wife, which only intensified London’s melancholic yearnings for the glorious past. He was despondent over what he saw as declining sales and fame. Now, toward the end, he became
			disillusioned with Socialism, and dropped pacifism and turned hawkish, a{{pg\|292\|293}}

			supporter of World War I against Germany. He died in 1916, apparently from
			uremia or a stroke or heart failure or (some whispered) suicide, but his strong legacy lived on.

			The postmortem legendary London impact was impressive. In less than two decades, the work beast’s canon could boast about more than two hundred short stories, twenty novels, three plays, and over four hundred nonfiction pieces and some sizeable pulp junk. London admitted that he was
			“more business man” than writer. His mammoth Darwinian-Spenserian struggle to achieve success was powerfully rendered in his “personal” novel, ''Martin Eden''.

			London’s powerful legacy factor was also enhanced and sustained by American literature’s breakthrough into a global presence. In 1991, the International Copyright Law was initiated. No more foreign “pirated” editions.
			Instead, both international and American literary and artistic works could
			be copyrighted, and from there into a wide-open global market. This copyright bonanza, coupled with America’s Twain-fed fascination with plain prose, instantly made London America’s most translated writer. Indeed, his work was translated into more than eighty languages. In a more radical political context, London’s fame subsided in his home country, but elsewhere
			it soared, especially in the young Communist Russia, and resulted in four “complete editions,” in the old USSR. London was enshrined as America’s foremost International Author.

			In London’s day, when the media was still somewhat primitive, he had become a complex celebrity. On one level, he was the new flashy literary globalist. On a personal level, he concocted an idiosyncratic multiple myth
			of himself, as if he were living simultaneous lives—the radical politico, the mythic Naturalist, the risky adventurer, the conspicuous consumer. And all of his front page literary agency was nurtured, clearly, by authorial megalomania. London loved being called “Wolf.” Thusly, he signed his letters and book inscriptions, and his bookplate featured an engraved picture of a wolf’s head. So in this earlier America with its quaint media, a virtual one-man show was about to exit.

			On the brink of the Twentieth Century, with its media ready to go heads-on with electronics, American literature had a threesome, a trio of virtual one-man celebrity shows (Twain, London, and Davis) but only Twain would prevail with the highest legacy quotient standard. All of this notoriety was because of one book, ''Huckleberry Finn'', then as now, America’s most singu-{{pg\|293\|294}}

ADavis: added pages 8-11

2025-03-21T01:42:54Z

added pages 8-11

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:42, 20 March 2025
Line 126:		Line 126:
	woman in a new real environment. A potential twentieth-century bestseller,		woman in a new real environment. A potential twentieth-century bestseller,
	instead, got snuffed out and Dreiser, readerless, had vanished.		instead, got snuffed out and Dreiser, readerless, had vanished.

			Consequently, when Crane and Norris died, their muscle-bound canons boomed on, until Dreiser’s new female reality, after a decade hiatus, resurfaced about 1925, American literature’s banner year. Earlier, after ''Jennie Gerhardt'' (a sentimental ''Carrie''), Dreiser shifted into more familiar Zola-Norris
			territory with his “Trilogy of Desire,” capped by his masterpiece, ''An American Tragedy'', published in 1925, as was another iconic novel, ''The Great Gatsby''. Those avid female readers of the Jazz Age Flappers also quickly assimilated ''Sister Carrie'' and were fascinated by how its heroine ended. Carrie, now a
			generic “sister,” had rebelled and survived, socially unpunished, emotionally
			unscathed, except for seemingly natural bemusement. Dreiser’s underlined
			theme was that females’ recourse to instinct or intuition immunized them
			from emotional tragedy. The 1920s vamps, of course, read Carrie’s “victory” as a call for the “new women” to go into a cultural free fall.

			The fourth member of the “modern” literary Quintet was Richard Harding Davis (1864–1916), an odd fit with his literary peers, a media darling of his times, and thus an essential link from Twain and London to later media
			masters, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Mailer. Davis was a leading journalist,
			a globetrotting, derring-do reporter of wars, such as the Greek-Turkish War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, and World War I. Yet he was prolific, his prose was pedestrian, and he “could spin a yarn.” His short stories,
			eleven volumes, numbering over eighty stories, were factually crafted, vivid, and exciting, with flashes of local color. His fiction had global settings, was highly theatrical with sensational plots, fast-paced with typed characters, and not exactly “serious” fiction. He wrote twenty-five plays. His novels were outlandishly romantic and superficial. His most representative novel was the
			author’s self-image, ''A Soldier of Fortune'' (1897). Davis was known as the Beau
			Brummel, or dandy-dressed, of the American press. Then, he was the ideal male—tall, handsome, tough but debonair, at ease at showy wars, in proper salons, and risqué beds—and he was blessed with a manly code of good manners (faint echoes of the later Hemingway hero).

			Davis, instead, became a media-created American male hero, to be emulated and revered.

			But the “other” Davis, the literary careerist, was radically different, more
			like the high-risk lifestyles of Crane and London. On news assignments, Davis actually tempted death. The press loved his go-for-broke front line {{pg\|287\|289}}

			antics. He called the Spanish-American War “splendid fun” and took part in the Battle of San Juan Hill, and made Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders famous. Davis became the newspapers’ darling. He had continuous access to elite personages from presidents to kings and queens, even the
			underworld.

			All this fame peaked at about age twenty-six and turned into high financial rewards as Davis began to reshape both American history and journalistic fiction. Upon the heels of the 1890 U.S. Census announcing the Closing of the Frontier, Crane toured the West, and rechristened the Wild West, the “Mild West” (see “The Blue Hotel”). Davis went out West, pressed the flesh with sportive cowboys, Texas Rangers, and even Mexican murderers. He temporarily revived the myth of the Wild West, a preview of the coming power of celebrity journalists and other media hounds to temporarily remake history.

			Davis also had “splendid fun” with the literary urban crime genre. In his story collection, ''Van Bibber and Others'' (1892), he introduced his new upper-class hero, Courtland Van Bibber, of rich Dutch ancestry, the moneyed young clubman and eternal playboy, the public consummate law-abider who, by night (like today’s comic books’ caped crime-stoppers), descended to the underworld, disguised, to save maidens and right wrongs. Such was the clever packaging of Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave away $350 million dollars and called it, “The Gospel of Wealth.” “Van Bibber’s” ultimate tone was not seriousness, but amusement. Davis’s fiction with media accompaniment had turned American literature into banal comic grand opera.

			If Mailer, during the decades of building his canon, ever pondered such quaint cultural and literary goings-on, he probably both winced and smiled at seeing a virtual repeat of those big-media shows, obvious only during
			Paine’s two brief stints, and the more prolonged follow-ups by Emerson and Twain. Mailer also probably noted (with Hemingway’s melodramatic demise on his mind) that Davis died naturally in 1916, the same year as Jack London’s more mysterious death, and how Jack (call me “Wolf”), in a much shorter lifespan, and whose one-decade career, attracted intense glaring
			media legacy quotient that threatened to eclipse Mark Twain.

			The fifth and final Naturalist was Jack London (1876–1916). His early demise was foreshadowed by a storybook life, which read like a boyish yet mannish fantasy. He was born in the slums of San Francisco—illegitimate.{{pg\|288\|289}}

			London’s early life—waterfront Oakland poverty and an eighth-grade education—was spent reading Kipling, Marx, Spenser, and Nietzsche.(Later, at age twenty-one, on his 1897 Yukon arctic-trek, he brought ''The Origin of Species'', ''Paradise Lost'', and read and reread ''Moby-Dick''.)

			London, at age thirteen, became an oyster pirate, purchasing a sloop in San Francisco Bay. At age fifteen he drank heavily and had a mistress. At age seventeen he sailed for seven months in the Pacific. Still seventeen, London won a newspaper prize for an account of a typhoon off Japan. He then returned to Oakland for one more high school year and, in 1896, at age twenty, he spent one semester in college, where he joined a radical wing of the Socialist Party as an activist speaker. He was occasionally jailed.

			In 1898, after time in the Klondike, he returned to Oakland to begin serious writing. What followed was a short but brutal ordeal (he called himself a “work
			beast”). There were a sea of rejections, dramatized in his later autobiographical novel, ''Martin Eden'', and, in 1900, his breakthrough happened—
			nine collected stories, ''The Son of the Wolf'', and sudden national fame. Like
			Mailer, London achieved substantial notoriety in his mid-twenties. Yet the
			London corpus of work, incredibly large for its sixteen-year span, was a mix
			of throwaway pulp, but also some excellent writing, and thus a mixed career.

			America’s natural topographical frontier was rapidly fading after the U.S.
			Census declared the frontier officially closed. President Teddy Roosevelt embodied the “strenuous life” and London was its chief literary embodiment. The boy “oyster pirate” turned into a frontier strong man, a primitive adventurer who sniffed out new raw settings. There was the Klondike near-Arctic wilderness, then the bottomless South Seas, and onto the “submerged tenth” of London slums and the San Francisco waterfront. Interestingly, by Mailer’s time, the pristine frontier was truly closed shut.

			London’s lifestyle also turned him into a literary pioneer. Destined to become a serious writer, he nonetheless gave birth to enhanced he-man ''Argosy'' stories and other pulp magazines, and he also toughened up the sudsy Horatio Alger (how-to-succeed) Dime Novels, with a new dose of rugged individualism. Unlike his compatriot Quintet, his canon had heavy pulp content
			but it was muscular and moving, peopled at times with (successful) abysmal brutes. London’s tone, however, was excessively melodramatic, sentimental, and outlandish at times.

			London’s Naturalism, at its most exotic, took place in the Klondike-Arc-{{pg\|289\|290}}

			tic—“Seward’s Folly,” or Russia’s “white elephant gift”—that later turned into an icy golden U.S. forty-ninth state. This mammoth chunk of the near-Arctic was then mostly uncharted literary territory when London arrived
			with his gold pan, ink pen, and well-thumbed ''Moby-Dick''. He wrote about
			the awesome setting, people, and animals, especially the primal dog family. ''The Call of the Wild'' (1903) and its reverse-sequel ''White Fang'' (1906), two novels with dogs as makeshift protagonists, made London the first such
			American writer whose canon featured serious fiction that deeply probed canine consciousness. And these probings were not only high quality experiments. They are also high canon content. London’s two canine heroes—
			Buck and White Fang—could be likened to Kurtz and Marlowe in Conrad’s ''Heart of Darkness'', with canines substituting for humans in white Arctic America. Such dog destiny also played well in the Darwinian-Spenserian
			context—that is, atavism or species reversion, with Buck from domestic farm dog to wolf, and, White Fang, the opposite, from wolf to subjugated dog. After studying these two canine creations, London critics either approved
			or snidely remarked that London could fictionalize dogs better than people.

			The Mailer canon, despite its chic “now” surface, also co-existed as a primordial descent, an American version of Jung’s racial memory, as if America had its own mythic dream life, the American as civilized animal at zero-primitive—as if Mailer were retelling London’s atavistic tale of Buck and White Fang, now transformed into the “now” human condition, with infused American superpower angst. And so the Mailer canon, periodically, would lurch into Jungian night-mythos, such as America’s primordial racism
			in the celebrated essay, “The White Negro,”—or (with a global canon in the
			Mailer mind), why not switch from the customary Greek-Roman American roots and lurch back to ''Ancient Evenings'' in Egypt, more at home with magic
			rather than logic? And the Mailer canon was laced with primitive ornaments, such as Mailer’s—and his American Dream murderer, Rojack’s—lust for smell, Homo sapiens’ most primitive sense. Long live Buck and White Fang, and note how the positive legacy quotient light turns a dark green.

			London’s addiction to socialism was Americanized, less revolutionary, and more akin to the Progressive Movement. But his core beliefs, nonetheless, were fervent. At age eighteen, to protest the 1893 “Panic’s” unemployment, London joined Kell’s “March on Washington” (early intimations of
			Mailer’s “March on the Pentagon”). At age twenty, London formally joined
			the Socialist Party. Immediately, his canon turned socio-political didactic.{{pg\|290\|291\|}}