The Weekly, January 29, 2024
Hi all,
So I'll say more in the books section below, but I'm currently reading Jack London's The Call of the Wild. One thing that has stood out to me is how London imagines nature. When he describes the changes in Buck, the dog whose story is at the heart of the novel, London frequently distinguishes between the comfortable "civilization" of his life in California from his more brutal "natural" life under "the law of club and fang," in the North. So in London's account, "nature" is this brutal thing, red in tooth and claw, and "civilization" is this vessel of life created by people who have removed themselves from nature in some sense, allowing them to live by a higher law than that of "club and fang." This, incidentally, plays some role in the racist elements of his work, I imagine; who is "civilized" in London's account?
But the other point I want to make is that the "nature" London describes, in The Call of the Wild at least, is not "natural" at all; it's a contrivance built by human greed. To live in the way that the men in his stories live is not "natural." The life "natural" to the north is something closer to that of the Inuits and other indigenous communities there. And while that life may not look like the "civilized" life of the south in London's novella, it's also not remotely the brutalism of the gold prospectors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
There's some overlap here with what Wendell Berry says about "boomers" and "stickers," in his work—the boomers are the American folk always chasing their next big accomplishment or scheme. The stickers are those who tend to find a place and wed their life to it in as much as they can. London seems to miss the existence of "stickers" altogether in his work (no surprise given his biography) and so all that remains are places that have been subdued by boomers and places that haven't. The former are "civilized," the latter are "natural."
This is a place where I think Bucer has the better of it: This is what he writes at one point in his Instructions in Christian Love:
All other creatures exist, indeed, not for themselves. With all they are, possess, and can do they serve God in doing good to all other creatures according to their nature and order. The sky moves and shines not for itself but for all other creatures. Likewise the earth produces not for itself but for all other created things. Similarly all the plants and all the animals, by what they are, have, can and actually do, are directed toward usefulness and helpfulness to other creatures and especially to man.
So for Bucer the "natural" state is one of unchosen care and mutuality: Nothing that is made is made purely for itself.
What sets man apart for Bucer is not a capacity for "civilization" in which care actually is practiced—care is the natural state, after all—but is rather a chance to mimic God more completely because we can choose to offer care whereas the rest of creation simply does offer care. And that willing is a higher calling than the mere unthinking provisioning of another:
Only man is created after the image of God in order that he may understand and also choose spiritual things, and thereby grasp, follow, and fulfill the will of God. He requires us to desire to further the profit and salvation of all. Hence, before all creation, man must so direct his being that in all his doings he seeks not his own, but only the welfare of his neighbors and brethren for the honor of God. Thereby man will also use well and rightly all other creatures and blessedly rule them for their own welfare and proper honor.
One of the long-term concerns I have had in my writing is to recover a properly Christian conception of nature. For a certain sort of modernist, nature really is red in tooth and claw and what sets man apart is our ability, through cleverness and technology and organizing, to transcend that bestial existence. But for Christians it is simply not true that reality is naturally brutal and governed by the law of club and fang, in London's memorable phrase. Primordial reality is defined by the ways that one created thing provides for another. And the opportunity uniquely given to mankind is the chance to glorify God through, amongst other things, acts of love and service freely given to our neighbor. I rather suspect that if you compare the rampaging cruelty of the prospectors in The Call of the Wild to the traditional practices of the Inuit and other groups, you would find that the latter is both closer to the natural rhythms of the North and far more marked by mutuality and care than anything you see amongst London's prospectors.
Reading
Books
I spent last week going back over Lewis's That Hideous Strength as well as bits of Orwell and Hitchens for an essay I am writing for the Davenant Institute's forthcoming volume on Lewis's novel.
In addition, I am drafting a paper I am quite excited about for the Presbyterian and Reformed Public Theology conference in DC next month. The Princeton Civic Republicans are part of it, but I'm also going back over some Mark Lilla, Stanley Hauerwas, Martin Bucer, and Johannes Althusius while I prep and am trying to figure out how some of Tom Holland and Glen Scrivener's work fits in.
The pleasure reading I've been doing is something I stumbled into: Our church has a nice little lending library that has lots of the kind of "living books" you'd find on an elementary reading list from a group like Ambleside International. Of course, like anyone, there are books on that list that I have managed to miss up to this point in my life. So I've been remedying that with the aid of the library at church.
I have already read My Side of the Mountain this year, which I greatly enjoyed, and am now reading, as I mentioned above, The Call of the Wild. Prior to this, I've only read some of London's short stories; this is the first of his novels I've read. While I clearly have some sharp differences with London, I do find myself greatly enjoying his work. It manages to be both quite spartan in its sensibilities and remarkably vivid. I'm not sure I've read another writer who combines those two things quite as well as he does, in fact.
The ways in which he anticipates and influences later developments in 20th century American literature are obvious. It is hard to imagine Hemingway or Steinbeck without London, I think. And yet of the trio, I think I have enjoyed London's work the most. Hemingway's hopelessness somehow feels more remote to me than London's brutality. Steinbeck is another matter and perhaps I should spend more time with him than I have to this point. But of what I've read of the three so far, give me London. (It could also just be the case that I love the North in a way that I don't love the West...)
Articles
I'm behind in my periodical reading. Writing deadlines have swallowed up my time during the workday for such reading and in the evenings I've been reading London, Stout, and the others rather than magazines and newsletters.
Elsewhere
I'm trying to do more walking in the new year so several days a week I'm doing a walking commute of roughly five miles to and from the place I work for the day.
That creates lots of time for listening to something and lately my thing has been The Rest is History podcast from Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. They're absolutely delightful as co-hosts and do a marvelous job of blending real historical work with an accessible and enjoyable rapport between the two hosts.
I listened to their seven parter on JFK and have now been listening through their episodes dealing with the rise of the Nazis and the Nazis in power. Super grim listening, obviously, but important, I think, for many reasons.
Under the Mercy,
~Jake