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To: SamAdams76
I'm ashamed to admit I never read Jack London. Now that you have reminded me of my shame, I will get a copy of "Call of the Wild" and start reading.
I'm not much of a novel-reader. I tend to stick with scientific/historical articles and textbook-oriented material (for my own interests)- - no excuse, though. It's so easy to plop in front of the TV or PC and let a mind turn to mush. I wasn't aware of the Welles radio production. Every Christmas, we are sure to watch the 1952 Alistair Sim version of "Scrooge" which I think is the best portrayal of the story.
I also enjoy "Great Expectations" and "Nicholas Nickleby."
159 posted on 01/29/2003 8:42:09 PM PST by stanz
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To: stanz
Call of the Wild is an easy read and a good introduction to London's work. In fact, it is his definitive work. The story is narrated from a dog's point of view as it adapts from a life of sheltered comfort to a life of toil, struggle and constant danger. One of my favorite reads.

To whet your appetite, here is a sample paragraph from this masterpiece:

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck, leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight. He was sounding the deeps of his nature, and of the parts of his nature that were deeper than he, going back into the womb of Time. He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars and over the face of dead matter that did not move.

162 posted on 01/29/2003 8:54:06 PM PST by SamAdams76 ('Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens')
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