The Night-Born
1913
Jack London's collection opens in a San Francisco saloon where the 'night-born' gather to discuss society's corruption and the recent death of a young boxer. At its heart lies Trefethan, an aging man who spins a tale of his youth among Native American tribes, where he encountered Lucy, a woman who embodied the wild, untamed spirit the day-world cannot comprehend. These ten stories pulse with London's fascination with the primal forces beneath civilization's thin veneer: boxing matches that strip men to their animal core, wars that reveal the blood-lust beneath patriotism, and encounters with the Mexican landscape and its people that expose the savage and the romantic locked in eternal struggle. The collection builds toward a philosophy of those who live by instinct rather than convention, who find truth not in society's rules but in the blood-pulse of existence itself. For readers who crave London's raw, unsentimental vision of what lies beneath the surface of American life, these stories remain as vital and unsettling as when they were first written.
