To Build a Fire

The dog did not know anything about thermometers

one of my favorite stories as a young'un

3.5. and it's actually not for what To Build A Fire is, but for the short story tacked onto the end of my edition of this book by London: Love of Life.

To build a fire is immensely written and I honestly can't recall if I ever read Jack London's famous books, but this was spectacular. I had to pick this up as I'm currently dealing with a heavy snowy day and negative degree wind chills, here in Portland.

But in my cynicism I just found the man to be as dumb as he was written to be. So in 18 pages (my ed.) It was okay. The best quality being the writing of nature itself and just how desperate you can try to build a fire and save your life.

However, Love of Life was much better and this is probably the unpopular opinion. It's a similar-ish premise (man, nature, bad weather) but perhaps without quite the frantic quality as from the man To Build A Fire.

We have a man traveling with his friend Bill, when while crossing the river he slips on a rock and sprains his ankle. For whatever reason you can conjure, Bill abandons him without even looking back. We get his adventure over 20ish pages, encountering colder days, rain, and some snow. His main issue is his hunger, and how hunger in a survival situation controls all else. It was honestly riveting.

I want to mention that my copy of this book was apparently independently published? And when I found my other copy (that had these short stories and more by jack London) I noticed stark differences. Some sentences were removed and or changed. Also a lot of the “cruelty” was reworded to make it seem more softer and not as harsh. I prefer my copy, relishing the brutal aspects within survival and how far one can go when wanting to continue living even after realizing that just dying would be easier. Maybe not all copies are this drastically changed but thought I'd mentioned it. My fav passage from Love of Life...

“Then began as grim a tragedy of existence as was ever played - a sick man that crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two creatures dragging their dying carcasses across the desolation and hunting each other's lives.”

That insane passage was almost entirely rewritten in the other copy. So I'll be keeping this one instead :)

A pretty interesting and a highly descriptive read. I can still feel the chills down my back, traversing through the Alaskan wilderness.

Published in 1908, (rather than the 1902 version, which is more aimed at the young reader) Jack London's short story does indeed revolve around building a fire.

Set in the Yukon in Canada, the only character in the book, and his husky are setting out on an all day walk out to a mining claim where other men were already working, but it is a cold walk. Minus 50 f, is cold, but he suspects it is colder even than this. Spit freezes before it hits the ground; breath causes crystallisation on his beard, as does the tobacco he chews, which runs from his lips. The husky has an awareness that this temperature is not suitable for travelling, but the husky also knows the man can make fire, and fire revives.

The man does make a fire, and warms himself up while he eats lunch, and prepares himself for the second half of his journey. It is after than that events take a turn for the worse.

The man is very self-aware - he knows what he needs to do; he knows what not to do. He takes a few risks and perhaps doesn't admit to himself that he hasn't thought things through until it is too late. Each step through this journey he knows what needs to be done, and yet sometimes he uses poor judgement.

For a story published in 1908 it reads well. It is not archaic, or complex. The story structure is not unfamiliar, and while the setting is perhaps not familiar it is described in a way that makes it available for the reader to see and feel. Jack London is famous for the stories he writes about wolves, and this dog, described as ‘a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf', he writes of its thoughts and assessments of the man.

Jack London doesn't write happy stories; and this is no exception. Not happy, but perhaps it tells a good lesson to be learned with regards to respecting nature and natural conditions.

Available free here

4 stars.