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Hurdling the Social Pit: Contextualizing London's Tramp Diary

Hurdling the Social Pit: Contextualizing London's Tramp Diary Hurdling the Social Pit Contextualizing London’s Tramp Diary Clint Pumphrey and Bradford Cole, Utah State University If Jack London were here today, he would likely scoff at an in- depth his- torical examination of the journey detailed in his 1894 Tramp Diary. Th ere is nothing to examine, no great revelations to discover, the motivations were simple, he might say. As London insists in Th e Road, a collection of vignettes about his tramping experiences, “I went on ‘Th e Road’ . . . because— well, just because it was easier to than not to” (120). But a curse of being one of the world’s great literary talents is that there are research- ers willing to dissect every detail of your life, even when you insist that no dissection is needed. In this spirit of scholarly denial, this essay argues that London’s tramping was a product of broader social and economic undercurrents that are evidenced by the very words London used to sug- gest otherwise. Additionally, it will explore how the Tramp Diary, hastily scratched in a tattered address book now housed at Utah State University Merrill- Cazier Library’s Special Collections and Archives, can be used as a tool for teaching students http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Studies in American Naturalism University of Nebraska Press

Hurdling the Social Pit: Contextualizing London's Tramp Diary

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Publisher
University of Nebraska Press
Copyright
Copyright © Studies in American Naturalism
ISSN
1944-6519

Abstract

Hurdling the Social Pit Contextualizing London’s Tramp Diary Clint Pumphrey and Bradford Cole, Utah State University If Jack London were here today, he would likely scoff at an in- depth his- torical examination of the journey detailed in his 1894 Tramp Diary. Th ere is nothing to examine, no great revelations to discover, the motivations were simple, he might say. As London insists in Th e Road, a collection of vignettes about his tramping experiences, “I went on ‘Th e Road’ . . . because— well, just because it was easier to than not to” (120). But a curse of being one of the world’s great literary talents is that there are research- ers willing to dissect every detail of your life, even when you insist that no dissection is needed. In this spirit of scholarly denial, this essay argues that London’s tramping was a product of broader social and economic undercurrents that are evidenced by the very words London used to sug- gest otherwise. Additionally, it will explore how the Tramp Diary, hastily scratched in a tattered address book now housed at Utah State University Merrill- Cazier Library’s Special Collections and Archives, can be used as a tool for teaching students

Journal

Studies in American Naturalism – University of Nebraska Press

Published: Sep 19, 2019

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