Jack London, who died when he was only 40, packed more life into those few decades than most people could manage – or endure – in twice the time. He was a gold prospecter, a sailor, a tramp, a hobo, a journalist, a writer and a war correspondent.

The Road tells of London’s life on the road, as a tramp and a hobo, riding the trains, cadging meals off kind families, following the signs left by other travellers on the road, signs that told whether a town had good pickings or a mean sheriff inclined to throw vagrants in jail.

Among the many fascinations of the book is London’s ambivalence: it was a hard life and often brutal but its freedom clearly appealed greatly to London. His views, as expressed in his later works, were clearly influenced by the social Darwinism of the time, which viewed life as essentially an amoral struggle for survival. But bound with this was a deeply romantic view of freedom and the possibilities available to a man around the next corner or over the next hill. The two come together in The Road, a celebration as well as a requiem for a way of life that could only be spawned by poverty.

I presume that Cormac McCarthy read London’s book before writing his version of The Road. It strikes me that there would be an interesting thesis to be had from comparing and contrasting the two stories.