Thank you. Bruce. Hello my name is mark levine. Im an affiliated scholar. Program today is called jack london, apostle of the American West. And its being coupon sorried by Stanford University library ris. As bruce was describing, the center is dedicated to advancing scholarship and public presentation on the past, future of Western North america. This is very appropriate pan ford for them. And the University Library comprehensive range both digital formats in support of research and construction here at stanford. Today we ingnaw grate a new center. It is designed to place a spotlight on the humanities in the American West. Arts west offers the stanford community, innovative public programming on the writers artists and cultural leaders that make it further ground for artistic vision. It offers two distinctive series t great writers of the west focuses on western literary heritage and the great artist of the west elevates the western liberal arts. We begin today with jack london whose legacy endures 100 years since his death in 1916. We have gathered a stellar cast. Experts and scholars to share with us insight into the mans unique biography. And his relationship and influence on western fiction. He also had a deep connection to stanford, even though he briefly attended uc berkeley. He often lectured. Involved with a stanford graduate student, who remained life long friends and colleagues. And the Stanford University press published his letters and complete works. Our program today will consist of four presenters, followed by audience participation. Our speakers today are the following and theyre extended by it was in the program so i will not bore you with that information. Its there. We begin with sue and jean reece man, sue is with the hundreding ton library and jean is university of texas at san antonio and both of them will be giving us presentation today. Then followed will be peter blaja, historian with the huntington library. People will be talking about the era in which jack london lived in california. Lastly well have Donna Campbell from Washington State university. Donna will be talking about jack london, his relation to western europe and other writers so far. And she said shes going to talk a little bit about the bah ham yeenl growth. It should be quite interesting. There will be a reception immediately held which is out in the red lounge. Make sure to tor in the red lounge, pop up exhibit of memorabilia, which was loaned to the university today courtesy of sarah and anderson benefit, the program is being filmed by cspan and the web cast will appear in early october. The web site address is west dot stanford dot edu. Lastly, i think my excellent teammate who is helped me organize todays wond iful event. Lane center associated director who helped keep me on target and ms. Natalie, our gifted graduate student cue rated the exhibit. We also thanked the University Library ris and the center for the arts for supporting this effort. I please ask you to turn off all mobile devices and cell phone. I turn it over to bruce king, director of the lain center, theyll be moderating the new we wenter. I think one minor change i think gene is going to go first. Okay. Achieving lasting global acclaim with the call of the wild in 1903, londons brief but remarkably productive career took him to many far away places in the world and allowed him contact with diverse cultures, some ton the brink of disappearance and others undergoing dramatic change. London sailed aboort a pacific sealed vessel. Jussed an office and reverse the km pli meanted the poor. The end of war in 1904 and the u. S. Invasion of the cruise in 1914 as war correspondent. He toured top universities on socialist speaking engagements, urging the children of harvard and yell to spoke about it. He covered the sanfran ses koeest quake. He to unorthodoxed. Londons writings have come under new writing by scholars but also for what they teach us about dynamic cultural and historical issues of the era. There has been class jus tus, race, imbrags and u. S. Impeerlism. Though, nearly, any bookstore in the world offers a selection when i heard it. Up until now the absence photographed through book shell efs was a glaring and someone around the world. Photos, up until recently had very points about them. London himself was one of the most imgrayed likely known that he was one of the leading photo kournlists in his day. During Certain International news events, would be a drop cal, oun wf hoiz cleser collaborators was honored, a stanford kbrabed aroun. Rodeo, and parade. Young mothers with their children, the womens market of in the Solomon Island. The sneering lips of white slave traders. Before the ship, her view of Indigenous People and their cultures would have been painted. Any learned in his student days from leading scholars at berkeley and stanford. After the boy developed to resemble france boax thanes then. London sense of the potential of human drama comes through in his photos, especially which focus on hue minnesota fa the ill a the disenfranchised. He rarely di min niches his subjects, their dignity and self predominant. Most of captains native and neither personal or is information. The nay vifs are not types in his work nor alien. His friends especially in those many expressive faces he ap which you ared from aum people, struggling, homelessness, oppression, natural disassic. Invasion, colonization, racism, slavery, disease, et cetera. London documented issues of lasting global and significant issue. He was there with his note pad and cam rad one at a time and places in most people had ever seen anyone this different, there to witness some of the most defining rachel news, in the urn of the century. Theyre trer vor trolls there. s always living there unt scene untim today have much to tell us about the people who lived then at home and abroad pictured by one of the times most imtre mid at these events. Were going to play a lirtle tag team so jean will be back. On the slide projector you can see jack london as he was set to be in the city of london and that was in 1982. In 1982 she was oppressed upon by legal to report on the after fath of his new york. He did not get associate withholding back, they said, cancel that, theres nobody tell so come home. He said, lets not to that. He wasnt going to turn and go on. He had always wanted to spend time living in the poorest of the cities. London wanted to see for himself, he always wanted to see erg for himself to understand exactly what was going on and the situation. So he spent seven weeks living in the east end. The first thing he did was go to pun r pawnshop and that you see jook on the right to his right, to our left is a man that we only know az bert. My frayed jacket was the badge, which was tlar class. It made me a like kiechbd and in place of the fawning and two respectful attention i hithered to receive. I shared with them a conrad ship. It was mate now and a fine and hardy word with a tingle to it and a warmth and gladness, which the other term does not possess. So london ventured out on to the streets of the east end of the city and began experiencing and witnessing all of the riggers and do depravation and degradation of life among the poor and homeless. He wrote back home to his good friends george in california. Ive read of missouri and seen of it. This beats anything i could everybody have imagined, actually, i have seen things and looked a second time in order to convince myself that it was really so. This, i know. The stuff im turning out that is his writing will have will never seen magazine poublicatio. Youll read some of my efforts to depict it some day. Well, he wrote in rather short order a nonfiction study of poverty called the people of the abis. Years later after he written most of his 50 books in just 40 years of life. He commented that that was the book that meant the most to him and took the most out of him as a young man. One can see why, to read it is to experience the life that the people experienced on a daily level. One of the aspects of the poor that london particularly felt was the sad and tragic is the plight of the children. Youll see it recurring theme of childhood and child likeness throughout all of the pictures that we show you today. London loved children and he loved promise the innocence of children, so in the east end of london, he looked at the energy, the innocence, the high spirits of the children and knew that in a life of hardship and poverty, those qualities and the purity of the children would never last, but all too soon they would be degraded by a life of dep pra vadepravation. He wish that society and political culture will change to allow those children to grow up to have a future. At another part of the people of the abis he wrote this, we went up the narrow gravelled walk on the benches on either side was a raid amass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of which impelled to diabolical flights of fancy than he ever received to achieving. It was a welter of all manner of loaf and skin diseases, grossness, indecency, leering and faces. These creatures huddled there, sleeping for the most part or trying to sleep. There were a dozen women hudded there sleeping for the most part or trying to sleep. It was the sleeping that puzzled me. Why were nine out of ten of them asleep or trying to sleep, but it was not until afterward that i learned. It is the law of the powers that be that the homeless shall not sleep by night. This is a view of the line of homeless men waiting outside the Salvation Army shelter for a dinner and a place to sleep over night. London experienced this, as well. He stood in line. He had to get there as early in the day as you could. It might be on a day that you have nothing to eat all day and you went and stood in line. You might have to wait for four, five six hours to get a place in the Salvation Army or other shelter. If you were lucky enough to get in you would get dinner and a bed, before dinner you had to listen to an hour long sermon. London makes no bones about it in his book, he was appalled by that, that people who were weak from lack of sleep and food were made to sit on a hard bench through a hard sermon before they could get any food. He was critical of all of the charitable groups, including the Salvation Army. It was with some enjoyment that i found in collection of the papers years later i found a we seept for a check that he had written donating to the Salvation Army. I was please head got his kind of disapproval of their actions at that time. London was a great admirer of oscar wild, especially a pamphlet that he wrote called soul of man even though i could often figure, they agreed completely on socialism and its hopes and dreams. The best among the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient and rebellious. Charity they feeled to be a ridiculously inadequate part of social restitution, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tir ranny. He writes, oh, the joy of meeting with them. They are entities. The girl who slanged or spoke in slang, the criminals who shamelessly plied their trays et cetera, et cetera. I was puzzled by that word entities i read it again and again, so i checked it out in the Oxford English dictionary, one of the means of the word entity is a person who is a real person to wrecken with. Comfortable with him or her herself and able to meet the world open faced full forward. He admired the people who stood up for themgss and he always did. The city was the source of poverty and a polluted place that stavred both the soul and the body. He looked to the soil and rural life as a place that would restore physical hemt and psychological well being. When he found the land he wanted in 1905 in the sonoma valley, he wrote to the editor, 130 acres of the most beautiful, primitive land to be found anywhere in california. Like so many immigrants before him who had traveled over land or around the horn to reach the land of golden dreams, london recognized the special meaning and opportunity of california he believes that his ranch would be a socialist model that would benefit people and he determined to establish a part of the ranch as a res bit where labor workers from oakland and other cities could come for hellful rest and recovery. In 1911, he decided to launch a threemonth journey north. Covering 1,500 miles took to oregon and back. Which some of my friends refer to as my best seller, which equals only the paradise by adam. The theme of healing by return to the soil occupied london for the final years of his life in such stories as canyon and such novels as the valley of the moon. In this 1913 novel, the valley of the moon, we see the protagonist replicate jack four horse trip as they journey through the country side fleeing the lives of work beast in oakland in search of their own belly of the moon where they may find health and peace in the beauty of the land. Here is a quote from the point in the novel where they come upon the valley of their dreams all the eastern sky was blushing to rose which descended upon the mountains touching them with wine and ruby. Rising, inundating, drowning them in its purple. In which and wine wooded burned and smoldered. It was aromatic. Oe oats of many sorts, ferns and grapes grew lush beside the stream. Well in great contrast to the peace and came april 18th, 1906 and i think we all know what happened that morning the great San Francisco earthquake struck. Here we see a page from the diary and she has headed that notation in red letters, earthquake. They were living at Wake Robin Lodge and they were awakened, they got on horse back to ride all over the land and see what the damage was. They hopped a train to santa rosa and observed and then they hopped a train coming down to San Francisco and did the same thing. They spent 24 hours walking all through San Francisco and got out in a little skiff out on the bay to look back on the city that had undergone such devastating ruin. He called it the story of eyewitness and his was the first eyewitness account of the earthquake and fire to be published about the San Francisco tragedy. Here is a little section near the begins, in which youll hear short telegraphic sentences that give you the immediacy of being there on sight. Not in history has modern been so completely destroyed. San francisco is gone, nothing remains of it but memories of fringe of dwells houses. Its industrial section is wiped out. The factories and wear houses, the great stores and newspaper buildings the hotel and palaces are all gone. Remains only the fringe of dwelling houses on the out skirts of what was once San Francisco. Here we see the west side looking north on larkin street from city hall. San francisco stock exchange, everyone money couldnt survive. Saint frap sis of the church from montgomery avenue. And here we see dupont street. Jack wrote this, within an hour after the earthquake shot, the smoke of San Francisco burning was a tower, reddening the sun, darkening the day and filling the land with smoke. Im going to turn it back to gene now. [ applause ] [ applause ] [ applause ] [ applause ] we turn to japan. The war of 1904 is not very well remembered today, but it was a great great significant at the time, as it was the first time an asian nation had beaten the european one, the czar and the emperor of japan competed for control of eastern asia and sea ports. The world did not think japan was capable of fighting the russians, they the entire russian feet at port arthur in one day in a surprise attack and the war was on. London was set by the sind cat to cover the news. He was extremely frustrated at japanese censorship while attached to their troops. He kept getting arrested and sent back with the other correspondents. The japanese did not want the high cost of their own men to be publicized. London saw only one battle, the battle of the river, which was decisive. But because he could not photograph action, he turned his to the lives of every day people behind the lines who had been effected by the war, beggars, ordinary villagers, village leaders, japanese soldiers with their injured feet. He made more photographs here that almost anywhere else. Arrested twice in the process, Teddy Roosevelt was the one to get him out of Court Marshal in japan. Youll notice here that london is shown with a japanese officer as though hes sort of our man, discussing the war that didnt work out. And youll notice the of the stand camera with the cloth, that is not what he used. He was portraying the people that were victimized, but the so he was somehow americas representative. Thats on the Passenger Ship on the way, where unfortunately jack fell off the part of the deck and broke both ankles which was going to trouble him for the rest of his life. This is caught on to in harbor, man making pipes and soul and this one he called barber. This is a picture of the japanese and here youll notice something that i hope youll continue to notice, his gifted eye competition, especially with leanier convergences, ditches were broken down, they scored with great grooves by the wagon wheels and every the patient and peasant people and one received gazing into the faces of the men who had done these thing an impression of strength. This is a Little Village he says arrive at the Village People scared to death. Already have had russian and japanese soldiers we put the finishing touch. They swear they have no room for us, no fuel, no charcoal, no food for our horses. We stormed the village, force our way into the stables, captured 25 pound of barly hidden in a mans trousers and so forth and so forth for two mortal hours and this is but one of the days. This is the red cross wagon, about which he writes an entire disspach. You can see whats happening, the snow comes, it melts, it comes, it melts, the russians were assailed from three sides. The day was loss, they knew it. They fought on. Night was falling as the japanese drew closer, the russians turned loose their horses, destroyed or threw away their guns. Bayonet encountered bayonet and threw handkerchieves a token of surrender. This