April 23, 2009
Downtown Sacramento feels like New Orleans today. Steamy. Mid-afternoon and I write from Temple, a smallish cafe at on the intersection of 10th and K streets. The ice is slowly melting in the tall glass of iced coffee sitting before me. Two books lie just to its left. Jack London's Martin Eden and John M. Findlay's Magic Lands: western cityscapes and American culture after 1940. Its my second pass through Eden, the story of an uncouth, working class youth and his aspirations to culture. Chapter one relates Eden's anguish experienced in the home of an educated, elite family. Feelings of shame attend his physical and social awkwardness. A coarse, worldly sailor in the presence of a cultured 'lady' for the first time, Eden's consciousness of social inferiority accompany feelings of intense erotic desire.
London's description of the scene sketches out the great contrast between social classes. The distance is palpable. But he also wants the reader to see in both male and female characters the presence of irrational, extra-conventional, natural instinct. This raw passion pulses through Eden as 'strength' and aggressive desire. In the ethereal angel, Ruth, the instinctual is present though repressed beneath socio-cultural convention. The untamed masculinity seen in Eden (a transient sailor, bar-fighter, etc.) is said to both frighten and arouse her.
We also see Martin as sensitive, responsive to beauty as he admires the art decorating the walls. He takes intense delight in the books of poetry the room holds. In them he recognizes the beauty of truth, the light, the bigness of Swineburne's poetic vision. Emotional and tough. Sensitive yet rugged. Possessed of exquisite physical strength while desirous of the higher life of Mind.
Are the contrasts not too stark here? Is not Martin Eden a little too perfect. Admire him though we might, doesn't London sound like he is rehashing Freud or Rousseau. The sensual and the spiritual, etc. etc. I'll keep reading.
