380 EURAMERICA Discovering that collecting would both bring him in constant proximity to wild animals and earn him a living, he amicably divorced and took off for Singapore—the center of the Asian wildlife trade (Barnard, 2019: 62-65). In Singapore, his base for thirty years, Buck bought more animals from the shops of Chinese middlemen than he captured, but recreated his persona as an intrepid pursuer who caught his prey through cunning, persistence and brute strength. Buck portrays himself as a man of action, both capturing animals and keeping them alive in his camp in Katong village outside of Singapore. Also as an established member of the international set that congregated at the Raffles Hotel bar, he personified the romance of colonial life, common enough in British literature, but less familiar to Americans starring a fellow American. He rose to prominence between the two World Wars, rarely alluding to either social discontent in Asia or Europe, or the extinction of species, and instead embodied the vitality and growing prosperity of the United States. His narrative expresses naïve optimism and the assumption of an eternal plentitude of wildlife in faraway jungles, despite, or perhaps because of, the warning signs of extinction in North America. Buck’s emphasis on animal savagery plays to an ecophobic strain in American culture that came from experiencing its own wilderness as dangerous and needing to be civilized (or eradicated). It also appeals to the machismo of the rugged individual male proving himself against fierce nature as epitomized by hunternaturalist President Theodore Roosevelt (terms of office 19011909). Buck not only describes the beauty and danger of the jungle, but emphasizes the allure of the mysterious Far East as a place of excitement and opportunity where even a poor boy could exploit racial privilege to hold sway. His narrative exudes brash Texan confidence that he alone can provide the American public with the animals it wants, especially when World War I prevented the premiere animal trader, the German Carl Hagenbeck, from operating. When the 1929 financial
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