The Iron Heel is
wonderful. I think I might have
mentioned that last time. But it’s
really good. I can’t say it enough. It makes me want to read more of Jack London’s
books. I know there are a couple more of
his on The List and I’m looking forward to them. I’ve heard odd bits and bobs about his life
as well, and he sounds like he was pretty cool (apart from a touch of racism). As a young man he was caught up in the
Klondike Gold Rush before becoming just a massive socialist. After his death, he was smeared in the press
as an alcoholic womaniser.
The Iron Heel is a
book in the form of a manuscript written by Avis Everhard and unearthed seven
hundred years later. The story itself
features both Avis’s writing and footnotes which are alternatively amusing and
depressing, written by the manuscript’s editor, scholar Anthony Meredith and
follows the tale of Avis and her husband, Ernest from the time they meet to
their launching of a doomed socialist revolution against the capitalist Oligarchy,
dubbed the Iron Heel. It’s a pretty
standard tale of young love, really. It’s
wonderful. The book’s filled with
arguments for socialism that Ernest makes against the ruling classes, most of
which would still stand up today.
London’s passion for social reform drips through the book and even when
it strays into socio-political lecture territory, it stays interesting.
One of the most interesting things about the book is
London’s ideas for his alternative timeline.
The book was written in 1908 and features a history containing both bits
that are wildly inaccurate and the bits that cut a bit too close to the
truth. The First Revolt takes place in
spring 1918, just a few months after the actual Russian Revolution and the idea
of massive corporate trusts building up and taking a stranglehold on commercial
markets leading to small businesses becoming bankrupt certainly isn’t fiction. Less close to truth, Europe becomes socialist
very early on. The whole thing’s a bit
too optimistic about the role of socialism, actually. London followed Karl Marx’s view that
capitalism was unsustainable and bases his version of the 20th
Century on that. London didn’t seem to
understand that capitalism will always find a way.
Another of the things that I loved about the book is that over
its cause it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the good guys from the bad
guys. The Everhards understand that no
revolution can occur without bloodshed but throughout the book they get more
morally dubious. They are just as
willing to execute deserters, opponents, and those that they consider as
disloyal as the Iron Heel are. There is
one incident when their hide out is chanced upon by firm Oligarchy member
Philip Wickson. Unable to execute him
without revealing themselves, the group convert him to their way of thinking
and turn him into a spy.
I loved this book.
Even though we know from the beginning that everything is doomed, it’s
almost impossible not to get caught up in the revolutionary rhetoric of the
Everhards. Their enthusiasm for change
and for social improvement is infectious.
Despite the fact that Meredith tells us both Everhards were executed,
there is a tremendous feeling of hope running through the novel. Only some of this can be attached to the
Everhards. Meredith writes at a time,
centuries in the future, when the Iron Heel has been overthrown. Even if the Everhards never see it, the book
leaves us in the knowledge that they started something; something which would
continue for generations. We’re left
knowing that there will be a day when the Iron Heel falls.
I’m now moving on to The
Secret History by Donna Tartt.
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