I am not the first to observe this phenomenon. Here is a fragment from Nabokov:
"Carrying his purchase, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with tape, under his arm, he entered the bookshop and asked for “Martin Eden.” [A novel by Jack London]
“Eden-Eden-Eden,” the tall, dark woman quickly repeated, rubbing her forehead. “Wait, you don’t mean a book about a British statesman?”
“I mean,” answered Pnin, “the famous work – a novel by the famous American writer Jack London.”
“London-London-London,” said the woman, holding her temples.
Mr. Tweed, her husband, a writer of local poetry, came to her aid with a pipe in his hand. After some searching, he brought out an old edition of "The Son of the Wolf" from the dusty depths of his not very prosperous store.
“I’m afraid that’s all,” he said, “that we have from the books of this author.”
— Strange! – said Pnin. – The vicissitudes of glory! In Russia, I remember, everyone – children, adults, doctors, lawyers – everyone read and reread it. This is not his best book, but okay, okay, I'll take it."
In USSR, Jack London was sold in millions of copies, and his novel 'Martin Eden' was one of the most favored by the Soviet readers. The same thing can be said about Theodore Dreiser and his 'American Tragedy', 'The Financier', etc.
James Fenimore Cooper was also very popular, especially his 'The last of Mohicans' but not only. His whole literary heritage, quite forgotten in the US, was instead acclaimed in USSR.
Even after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, these authors haven't lost their status, as modern publishers re-edit their works. Jack London stands out, with 'Martin Eden' being one of the most beloved books by Russian readers, and 'The white fang' a popular novella among the children.
I remember reading so-called 'Leatherstocking tales' by J. Fenimore Cooper (a series of novels about United States in the 18-19th centuries) when I was 11 years old, and falling in love with this period of history and especially the culture of native Indian tribes, of which I knew nothing about before that.
by ArthRol
43 Comments
Interesting. In the US London is mostly remembered for White Fang and Call of the Wild. He is now regarded as a children’s author.
mark twain wrote a hilarious hate-review of cooper, just in case you’re interested.
I think O. Henry is another example of this; maybe there are more
I find that my kids are no longer so interested in these old books . Another one that was once incredibly popular is James Oliver Curwood
Mark Twain was very popular. Kurt Vonnegut. Hemingway. Steinbeck. I had all of their books when I was teen in USSR.
I love Jack London for Martin Eden, People of the Abyss and The Iron Heel but they were all books I had to seek out on my own. Growing up in the US, the only mention of London in school was in reference to Call of the Wild and White Fang. And whenever I’ve brought up London’s work, he seems to be dismissed as a children’s adventure author. It’s a damn shame.
Martin Eden is a beloved book? It’s one of his most depressing to me, but then again this is Russia so that checks out.
Jack London is awesome. Rich stories in awesome places with awesome characters – usually dogs!
I loved the Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper. Twain’s bashing of it didn’t ring true to me
Just about every student in the US reads The Call of the Wild or Last of the Mohicans at some point so this post seems pretty uninformed b
Calling London and Cooper forgotten in America is just flat-out incorrect.
Now I’m curious about the opposite. If the major ex-Soviet/Russian authors known in the English speaking world hold the same regard in ex-Soviet/Russia.
TIL that Jack London, James Fenimore Cooper, and Theodore Dreiser are “forgotten authors” in the United States. I’m immediately familiar with all of them.
Do you mean the few American classics taught in high-school for Universal Lit and in 1st Uni American English courses?
I don’t think most people in Eastern Europe read them for personal pleasure.
Jack London and especially his book “The Sea-Wolf” is very popular in my and older generations in Germany. It is in fact one of my most beloved books of my youth. The last German film based on his book was made in 2008, so it seems still kinda relevant.
Now I have to read it again, let’s see if it still holds up. Thank you for the reminder.
I read Dreisers An American Tragedy recently. It’s great, feels really fresh and relevant now.
London is still pretty popular in the West I think.
I’ve read “John Barleycorn” (*König Alkohol* in German) in my youth and it impressed me to this day. It’s autobiographical but also one fantastic story after another. Is London really that obscure in the US?
Some Western writers are also very popular overseas but are utterly unknown in the USA, at least. So many Koreans I spoke with while teaching in the ROK told me that Bernard Werber’s *Empire of the Ants* was their favorite book. I had never even heard of this guy, but when I finally got around to reading his book I was like…actually, this book is great!
Americans in my opinion tend to not recognize their own talented writers until Europeans or others figure it out for them. The USA’s greatest writers, who are probably Poe and Melville, were both obscure when they died and were revived by Europeans.
Gotta admit that I don’t recall that I’ve ever heard of Theodore Dreiser before, but I haven’t forgotten Jack London and James Fenimore Cooper. I don’t like Cooper’s work. I much prefer Allan Eckert’s *The Frontiersmen*.
Cooper must read a lot better in Russian than in English because I’ve found him unreadable.
These writers are far from forgotten in the US–solidly in the canon, and I read all of them during my education and university course as an English literature major.
*Pnin* was published in 1957, and the title character is already in his 50s, looking for a book from his childhood. A book that was popular in Russia 106 years ago hardly means that it’s still popular there now, or that it wasn’t popular and influential here in its time.
As historic adventure novels, James Fennimore Cooper’s works survived as children’s literature here for a longtime, but nowadays educated Americans eschew them for their racism. They employ the “noble savage” stereotype, and whitewash the American treatment of Native Americans.
Jack London is one of the most enduringly popular writers in the United States; both for his early science fiction and his tales of the North. Not sure why you’d classify him as such. Certainly none of his works have been out of print in my 50 years.
James Fenimore Cooper is a *terrible* writer who wrote a lot of nonsense about native Americans he never met. He belongs on the slag heap of history. If you actually want to learn about the Mohawk tribe, and how their existence ended despite a close alliance with American Rebel Patriots, you should read Richard Berleth.
The USSR also thought Stanislaw Lem was a good SF writer, so I wouldn’t be using them as a reference point.
Two London concepts that were influential in Russia that were in turn incorporated into globally influential Russian works.
“We” the 1921 dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin is connected to London’s own “The Iron Heel” from 1908.
“Master and Margarita,” the iconic novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, drew on London’s depiction of the historical Jesus and Pontius Pilate in “The Star Rover” from 1915.
I recall White Fang, but I wouldn’t necessarily say Jack London wrote for kids. Maybe he could be thought of as early-day young adult fiction. The story I recall from high school was “To Light a Fire” which is definitely not cutesy/ fun adventure story so much as grim survival story with a >!not-so-happy ending (The dog makes it, IIRC)!<
In science fiction, I think Clifford Simak is much better known in former Soviet countries than in the US. A couple of his books are still read here, but hardly anyone has read, say, The Goblin Sanctuary. It’s very popular among Russian-speaking SF fans because of a wonderful translation. I later read the same book in English and was a bit disappointed, because Simak was one of those early SF writers who had great ideas but not much writing skill. Books like that can actually be improved by a good translator.
Thanks for posting this! I find it rather funny because I am from an Eastern European, ex-communist country myself, and only today I found out that Jack London and Cooper are not part of the popular, mainstream culture in the West, which is appalling for me. I still remember reading White Fang and Last of the Mohicans as a kid, and I think even today it is rather common to see those books as a part of someone’s book collection or home library in my country
Jack London could be writing about Siberia. That’s not much of a stretch.
My wife is from Belarus and she was shocked that I didn’t know who Theodore Dreiser was. And I’m supposed to be the literary one.
not sure about cooper. he was quite popular in the ussr, but now… i don’t think he really is popular, but maybe people still know the name though.
also, i can add to your list robert sheckley. he was very popular american sci-fi writer in the ussr, and in the us he is quite forgotten (and it’s a shame, he’s quite good).
also, james headley chase. he was extremely popular in the ussr but i’m not sure if he was even slightly famous or known in the us.
If anyone’s interested, London’s *People of the Abyss* and *John Barleycorn* are excellent and fascinating reads. The first is about the Workhouses and the poor of London (the city) in 1902. The second is about his struggles with alcoholism. Both are non-fiction. Both are available free from Project Gutenberg.
Cooper was incredibly influential. He wrote some of the earliest examples of American Frontier Novels, Westerns, and Sea Adventures. His novels sold massively while he was alive. He was perhaps not as talented as a writer as some of his contemporaries (spelling, grammar, pacing) and was also very private.
Still studied in school if you are studying the development of the American novel.
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2007/septemberoctober/feature/in-defense-cooper
Jack London, unfortunately, has seemed to fade a bit. The Call of the Wild and White Fang are what I usually call, literate young adult books. When my neices and nephews hit 12 or 13 if they have a choice of reading assignments and one of the books is White Fang or Call of the Wild, I know they are in a decent English/Language Arts class.
Thornton Wilder is another. I served in the U.S. Embassy in the newly independent state of Kyrgyzstan in 1995-1997 and the University was having an entire day to celebrate Thornton Wilder and asked the Embassy to send someone to give a talk about him. The call went out- Anyone here ever read Thornton Wilder and I stepped up to the plate, if a bit bemused to find Wilder so well-known and beloved in Kyrgyzstan.
Any British comedy with three men is basically Jerome K
Not one of those is ‘forgotten’ in the USA. lol
I was kinda wondering why my Kazakh Russian-language tutor was reading Dreiser…
I don’t think Jack London is forgotten at all. I had an audiobook (on cassette) of Call of the Wild as a kid, and my own kids have several versions of White Fang from various collections.
I suspect he’s mostly famous for those two books though.
I’ve personally read books by Jack London and Theodore Dreiser. They are very interesting writers with a unique approach in this field.
Have you ever heard of David Hasselhoff’s music career and popularity in Germany?
Some things have much more success on the foreign market than the domestic. Nabokov actually made a similar crack about Dostoevsky, remarking that Americans love him more than his own countrymen do.
Jules Verne, to my understanding, experienced a similar phenomenon in the English-speaking world.
>I remember reading so-called ‘Leatherstocking tales’ by J. Fenimore Cooper (a series of novels about United States in the 18-19th centuries) when I was 11 years old, and falling in love with this period of history and especially the culture of native Indian tribes, of which I knew nothing about before that.
Can I ask anecdotally whether you are familiar with Karl May’s body of work?
I ask because he’s the quintessential Central European cowboy writer, still beloved in Germany but also well-known in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary. How far east did his influence go?
This is kind of an odd situation since I would never put those three writers together in terms of style, output, or literary respect. I would say all are remembered for their literary contributions and are certainly not “forgotten” today?
Cooper made a big impact in his time as the first major American novelist, but I think now he’s seen as a comparative lightweight in the group (he has been pretty famously raked across the coals for his writing style) who wrote some frontier adventure tales that are somewhat remembered today, although the most famous one (The Last of the Mohicans) was to me vastly improved by Michael Mann in adaptation.
Jack London’s body of work is still pretty respected overall (especially *The Call of the Wild, White Fang*, *Martin Eden,* and the lesser-known *All Gold Canyon*), and he wrote some fantastic stuff. His *The Sea Wolf* is one of my all-time favorite novels — even though I feel like he caved when it came to a third act — and the character of Wolf Larson will always be a terrific and memorable literary achievement to me.
When it comes to Nabokov, I’m not a fan, personally, but I would definitely say he is acknowledged as a superb talent and that *Lolita* is still regarded as a masterpiece.
Jack London is forgotten in the US? I mean, Call of the Wild, White Fang… Not exactly obscure, forgotten stuff.
Even Fenimore Cooper, I wouldn’t call him forgotten, although I would agree he is a bit more difficult than London for modern readers.
Dreiser is much more forgotten. I didn’t even know who he was.
Archibald J. Cronin is very popular in Russia, but I’ve never heard of him in the West
I think the best example of this is Mayne Reid. Very well known and read in Russia. Not sure Americans have even heard of him… All the original post authors are known and not forgotten, though Jack London might be a different level of popularity on different books