To Build a Fire

3.5. and it's actually not for what To Build A Fire is, but for the short story tacked onto the end of my edition of this book by London: Love of Life.

To build a fire is immensely written and I honestly can't recall if I ever read Jack London's famous books, but this was spectacular. I had to pick this up as I'm currently dealing with a heavy snowy day and negative degree wind chills, here in Portland.

But in my cynicism I just found the man to be as dumb as he was written to be. So in 18 pages (my ed.) It was okay. The best quality being the writing of nature itself and just how desperate you can try to build a fire and save your life.

However, Love of Life was much better and this is probably the unpopular opinion. It's a similar-ish premise (man, nature, bad weather) but perhaps without quite the frantic quality as from the man To Build A Fire.

We have a man traveling with his friend Bill, when while crossing the river he slips on a rock and sprains his ankle. For whatever reason you can conjure, Bill abandons him without even looking back. We get his adventure over 20ish pages, encountering colder days, rain, and some snow. His main issue is his hunger, and how hunger in a survival situation controls all else. It was honestly riveting.

I want to mention that my copy of this book was apparently independently published? And when I found my other copy (that had these short stories and more by jack London) I noticed stark differences. Some sentences were removed and or changed. Also a lot of the “cruelty” was reworded to make it seem more softer and not as harsh. I prefer my copy, relishing the brutal aspects within survival and how far one can go when wanting to continue living even after realizing that just dying would be easier. Maybe not all copies are this drastically changed but thought I'd mentioned it. My fav passage from Love of Life...

“Then began as grim a tragedy of existence as was ever played - a sick man that crawled, a sick wolf that limped, two creatures dragging their dying carcasses across the desolation and hunting each other's lives.”

That insane passage was almost entirely rewritten in the other copy. So I'll be keeping this one instead :)