Normally we think of viral memes as the domain of social media, to be reposted and shared across platforms. Yet, for those of you who will soon receive a copy of The Crocodile, you'll find that Dostoevsky himself prominently emblazoned one of these memes on the opening pages. It reads: "Ohe Lambert! Ou est Lambert? As tu vu Lambert?" Translated this means: "Oh Lambert? Where is Lambert? Have you seen Lambert?" Is Lambert one of the characters in the story? Why is this French epigraph to a Russian tale set in St. Petersburg inquiring after a French man? First we must answer, who the heck is Lambert? Let us begin by turning to the New York Times, September 3rd 1864, the...
This particular short story is one that is not very well known by readers, even those who might be familiar with Dostoevsky, which is one of the reasons why we found it a great option for our next publication.
Something that you might not know about Jack London is that apart from being one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, he was also a photojournalist, socialist and more importantly a prolific photographer, capturing his surroundings on the various adventures and travels he embarked on throughout his life. There are roughly 12,000 photographs of his (archived in the Huntington Library in California) that bear witness to a particular proximity to the people and places that he encountered. When you look at some examples more closely, and specifically the photographs he took of people, you can tell that the camera angle is not positioned from above or far away (as an observer might look at the scene)....
The Call of the Wild doesn’t tell a pretty story, but a powerful one untouched by bookishness, and one that—immediately upon publication—secured London a place in the canon of American literature.
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