Jack London on Sexual Orientation:"Flatly, I am a lover of women"

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.

Maurice Magnus had written to Jack London with this inquiry:

But — and here is my question — we cannot deny 'sex.' And unquestionably a man like Burning Daylight did have strong sex. What did he do with it? ... You don't say. Do you evade that for the sake of Anglo-Saxon prudery of your readers? Tell me please.

Here is Jack London's reply:

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

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