The Valley of the Moon

Jack London can write. His characters are nuanced, his descriptions gorgeous. I don't think I've read anything of his since I read his Yukon books when I was a kid, so I approached this one out of curiosity for the sake of research. There's a lot I liked. His two lead characters, Saxon and Billy, are interesting. Billy in particular evolves through the course of the book. One thing that doesn't change throughout, however, is the white supremacist racism that is a theme throughout. It seriously is a theme, too, not a one-off use of racist slang.

It comes up repeatedly that Saxon and Billy, being the stock of original white pioneers who suffered mightily on their treks to California, deserve to live good lives. They are repeatedly show more indignant that new immigrants from Portugal, China, Dalmatia, and other places have money and land, even as it is acknowledged that entire families have worked hard to earn that. This "unfairness" isn't addressed in subtext. It is blatant throughout.

A quote: "An' him a Chink," Billy mourned disconsolately. He turned to Saxon. "They ought to be some new country for us white folks to go to. Gosh!"

Jack London and his wife even have cameos in the book, and he gets to join in on the complaining. It's almost impressive how much of the book dwells on this subject, and for all that it does add period "color," it really isn't even necessary to the overall plot. The book would be more streamlined without it, in truth.

Beyond that, it's an interesting portrayal of life in the very early 20th century in California. Saxon is a compelling lead, a woman who works hard and strives to save her husband, Billy, as he falls into drunken despair when his union goes on strike. That episode is artfully done, as pro-union London shows the devastation of strikes and the horrible things endured by scabs who are just trying to survive. Lots of nuance there. Without going into spoilers, Saxon and Billy end of exploring a lot of northern California and Oregon, and that part is especially intriguing and helped my research. show less

I haven’t read that much Jack London and I thought he only wrote nature stories about wolves and people dying in the snow. So this novel took me by surprise, especially the social commentary on working class life. The story is about a factory girl named Saxon who falls in love with a teamster/former prizefighter named Billy. Life is hard, the teamsters’ strikes keep getting busted, the cops are shooting strikers, and all the stress is driving Billy to drink and be brutal to Saxon. But just when it’s all looking bleak, they decide to drop out of city life (I think they’re in Oakland) and go on the road in search of their dreams and a peaceful place to live sustainably, and everything changes for them. It kind of reminded me of show more Steinbeck, with a bit more muscular prose style. It was really interesting to read about these rural farm places in California that I know are today very populated. The downfall: anti-immigrant sentiment and racial slurs. show less

Others have suggested this was the forerunner to Jack Kerouac's On the Road, but this is only evident in the third book. I was surprised by a dead-end thread character who reappears only briefly to show the changes in the prize-fighting protagonist as he becomes wiser. The usual Jack London class consciousness is evident but this time he seems to highlight the false consciousness of the proletariat not as a consequence of the system per se, but as the fault of an individual's lack of imagination. Although somewhat the epic, an interesting read that gripped me whenever I picked it up. And surprisingly, no classic London macabre ending to regret, although the climax is the weaker for it.

"Oakland is just a place to start."

Jack London, an Oakland, Calif. native, lived an epic American life in a short 40 years. He wrote an enormous number of novels, the most familiar of which are his adventure novels. While Valley of the moon isn't exactly autobiographical, it's a tribute to his second wife and the kind of life they tried (but didn't succeed) to build. Billy Rogers, a young prizefighter, and Saxon, a laundry worker, meet and fall in love. Despite all their best efforts, they are unable to build a good life in the city so they strike out as wanderers through a golden California, trying to find the home of their dreams.

In some ways, this is a shockingly bad novel. Billy is callow and incredibly jingoistic and portions of show more the early sections sound like they were written by Barbara Cartland. The depiction of working class life during labor disputes is well-drawn, however, and the novel picks up its pace when Saxon convinces Billy that they should try their fortunes elsewhere. Once they find their Valley of the Moon (in Sonoma), Billy out-capitalists Andrew Carnegie, which is also not terribly realistic, but the middle of the novel pays for a tedious beginning and a formula ending. show less

I can't believe I tortured myself through 500 and some odd pages! Boring and sappy. How I hate wasting this much investment in a story thinking surely it'll get better but it just gets worse. I stuck with it because the time period's union strife might've been educational but it wasn't other than some realism regarding the brutality, and I thought it'd be fun to read about the SF Bay area back then, but even that lacked in depth. Nothing but a cheesy, too drawn out story about two naive married people. It was a bit more interesting while they lived in Oakland but once they began to travel it just got too cheesy. The main characters lacked depth and acted, thought, and spoke like children. Finally, enough was enough. Just cannot do yet show more another 200 pages of this drivel. I'll give it a 2 just for some historical merit. show less