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Jack London
on Sexual Orientation:"Flatly, I am a lover of women"
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During his short life, Jack
London wrote prolifically, drawing from his experiences
in California, the Far North, tropical islands, and the open
seas. He is best known for his novels Sea Wolf and The
Call of the Wild.
The
Jack London List Server, sponsored by the University of
Chicago, posted the material below on August 17, 2000.
October 23, 1911
Dear Maurice Magnus —
In reply to yours of September
21st, 1911, which has only just now come to hand, having been
forwarded to me via various comrades in the Socialist movement.
Nay — but I have always
imagined Wolf Larsen and Burning Daylight as "knowing"
women — but I did not think it necessary explicitly so
to state in my writing.
You are certainly right. A
certain definite percentage of men are so homosexual, or so
nearly homosexual, that they can love another man more than
they can love any woman. But then, I dare say, no homosexual
man is qualified to say whether a fictional woman is real or
not to a normally sexed man. A man who is normal sexually conceives
of women in ways repellant to a homosexual man.
Surely, I have studied the
sex problem even in its "most curious ways." I, however,
have drawn men-characters who are sexually normal. I have never
dreamed of drawing a homosexual male character. Perhaps I am
too prosaically normal myself though I do know the whole literature
and all the authorities of the "curious ways."
I think I know the problem
you suggest, and I think I know it fairly thoroughly and scientifically.
Unfortunately, those who figure vitally in that problem constitute
too small a percentage of the human race to be an adequate book-buying
inducement to a writer.
I think I get your point of
view. Am I wrong? Do you get my point of view? Flatly, I am
a lover of women.
Sincerely yours
Jack London
