“A brain seller was only at his prime when he was fifty or sixty years old, and his wares were fetching higher prices than ever. But a laborer was worked out or broken down at forty-five or fifty. I had been in the cellar of society, and I did not like the place as a habitation. The pipes and drains were unsanitary, and the air was bad to breathe. If I could not live on the parlor floor of society, I could, at any rate, have a try at the attic. It was true, the diet there was slim, but the air at least was pure. So I resolved to sell no more muscle, and to become a vendor of brains.”--Jack London, “What Life Means to Me” (1905)Jack London died on this date in 1916. For a long time, a number of reference books led me to believe that his death came by suicide. Now, the matter seems somewhat murkier: he was already worn down and deathly ill (alcoholism and renal failure among what afflicted him), so it’s still unclear if his morphine overdose was accidental or not.
But what is worth remembering about the author of The Call of the Wild, The Sea Wolf, and numerous great stories is not his death but what he made of his life. With the odds deeply against him, he became an autodidact and one of the most famous men of his time.
Ironically, though London was a racist who trumpeted a “Great White Hope” who could dethrone black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, his fierce struggle to rise above his circumstances by improving himself intellectually resembled that of Malcolm X.
(By the way, from the way many American white-collar businesses are forcing 50-and-over employees into early retirement, they no longer seem to believe, as London did, that “brain sellers” are in their prime at this age. That is one of the tragedies of our time.)
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