The two stories coalesced when, a few years ago, I visited Jack London’s home. But to demonstrate the method to the Sun Valley crowd, and to prove that useless words appear even in the work of great writers, I used examples exclusively from London's The Sea-Wolf.
I had just filed for a patent on creating software to do this years later that patent would lead to other patents and eventually the algorithms that became the WordRake editing software. That same summer, I taught a course at the Sun Valley Writers Conference on how to recognize useless words. “The blood from his nose gushed in a scarlet stream over the feet of the helmsman.” “They are more like children to him, even the hunters, and as children he treats them, descending perforce to their level and playing with them as a man plays with puppies.”
London’s experience and imagination were broad and vivid, his style terse and dramatic. About 15 years ago, the editors at The Modern Library asked me to write introductions for reissues of the Jack London classics Klondike Tales and The Sea-Wolf.
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