Jack London, Jack Johnson and the Fight of the Century – The Public Domain Review

Jeffries eventually agreed to leave his alfalfa farm in Burbank to face Johnson. In 1910, London was back in the United States and provided extensive commentary prior to the fight, totaling about a dozen articles, each covering a different aspect of the upcoming match. In one he described the men individually; in another he described them one after the other. He dissected their ring tactics, analyzed their character and assessed their ‘terrible brutality’. The racial discourse in London is sometimes bewilderingly inconsistent, contradictory and sometimes downright bizarre. For example, he wrote about ‘protoplasmic force’ and the effects of ‘cell generation’. London did not forget the one-sided abuse he witnessed in Sydney, but through racist gymnastics he portrayed Johnson’s talent as a liability. Johnson was more of a ‘boxer’ than a fighter: too smart, too stylized and even too affable a person to remain a champion. On the pages of the The spokesperson reviewLondon is pulling back The call of the wildernessin which Jeffries is depicted as ‘still red in fang and claw’, more ‘Germanic tribesman and warrior’ than civilized modern man. London has inverted the usual racial stereotypes of brutality and civilization, and yet Johnson still comes out worse.