Bertha Newberry, Mrs. Carlton Bierce, Charmian London, Carrie Sterling, James Hopper, Dick Partington, George Sterling, Jack London on board of the Snark.
(It is considered a boy’s adventure novel. In the novel, J...)
It is considered a boy’s adventure novel. In the novel, Joe Bronson, dissatisfied with his dull life at school, runs away and joins the crew of a sloop he sees in San Francisco Bay. He finds the captain is involved in criminal activities. The nautical activities on board a sailing boat are authentically described, and there are convincing descriptions of boats enduring stormy weather at sea.
(When Humphrey Van Weyden finds himself struggling in the ...)
When Humphrey Van Weyden finds himself struggling in the freezing waters of San Francisco Bay, he thinks the worst that can happen to him is drowning. After he is rescued by the Ghost and its captain, Wolf Larson, Humphrey discovers that there are fates far worse than death.
(Joe Fleming, a youth of 20, earning his livelihood as a s...)
Joe Fleming, a youth of 20, earning his livelihood as a sailmaker and supporting his mother and sisters by his trade, augments his income by prize-fighting before so-called sporting clubs. On the eve of his marriage to Genevieve, an employe' in the Silversteins' candy shop, Joe is to fight his last bout before a club, having promised Genevieve to give up the game, which, while it seems wrong to her, is to him a clean and manly as well as lucrative occupation.
(Jack London's classic adventure story about the friendshi...)
Jack London's classic adventure story about the friendship developed between a Yukon gold hunter and the mixed dog-wolf he rescues from the hands of a man who mistreats him.
(London takes us back to the Pleistocene when we still liv...)
London takes us back to the Pleistocene when we still lived in the trees. Written in the first person, the story revolves around the vivid, interlocking dreams from childhood that involve racial memories and the knowledge of his prior existence as a man-like creature named Big Tooth.
(Predicting future changes in society and politics, it chr...)
Predicting future changes in society and politics, it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. The main narrative covers the years 1912 - 1932, in which the Iron Heel oligarchy arose in the United States.
(The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The...)
The novel takes place in the Yukon Territory in 1893. The main character, nicknamed Burning Daylight was the most successful entrepreneur of the Alaskan Gold Rush. The story of the main character was partially based upon the life of Oakland entrepreneur Borax Smith.
(After many delays, he set out with his wife Charmian on a...)
After many delays, he set out with his wife Charmian on a prolonged voyage to the South Pacific. He taught himself celestial navigation on the trip and includes details in one of the chapters. After visiting Hawaii and the Solomon Islands, his trip was cut short by illness.
(One of the few survivors recounts the story of life befor...)
One of the few survivors recounts the story of life before and during the plague to his grand-children who have problems believing any of the tales. The plague had struck quickly with most people dying within minutes with no cure in sight. The victim would turn scarlet red before dying.
(A lengthy story that mirrors Jack London's own life journ...)
A lengthy story that mirrors Jack London's own life journey from Oakland that ended at his dream house in Glen Ellen, California, The Valley of the Moon is an intriguing view into life in California at the turn of the 19th century. A working-class couple, Billy and Saxon Roberts leave their city life in Oakland behind to find a better life in the country. They visit an artist colony in Carmel before moving north to the Valley of the Moon.
(Life has lost its savor for Mr. Pathurst. New York, fame,...)
Life has lost its savor for Mr. Pathurst. New York, fame, women, and the arts have all become tedious. Searching for excitement, he books passage on a cargo vessel sailing from Baltimore to Seattle on a route that travels around the treacherous Cape Horn. Pathurst encounters more than he ever expected in rough seas, turbulent storms, and a mutinous crew. His epic struggles aboard the sailing ship Elsinore have given him a new love for life, but will he survive to profit from it?
(An interesting science fiction story involving a prisoner...)
An interesting science fiction story involving a prisoner, Darrell Standing, at San Quentin State Prison who is serving a life sentence for murder. His jailers routinely torture him using a canvas device called the jacket to squeeze his entire body. He learns to withstand the torture by entering a trance state where he travels among the stars and experiences past lives.
(The Little Lady of the Big House features a love triangle...)
The Little Lady of the Big House features a love triangle between a rancher, Dick Forrest, his wife, Paula, and her lover, Evan Graham. All characters can be traced back to London and his friends and family.
(Jerry of the Islands tells the story of an Irish Terrier,...)
Jerry of the Islands tells the story of an Irish Terrier, a dog from the Southern seas, rather than the cold North. Jerry's life is colored by his experiences in the rough and sadly, racist land of Melanesia.
(The follow-up book to Jerry of the Islands, this story fo...)
The follow-up book to Jerry of the Islands, this story follows Jerry's Irish terrier brother Michael in the Solomon Islands. The dog is working aboard a slave-hunting schooner when he has accidentally left ashore. He is taken on board another ship by Dag Daughtry and sails around the world. Not a book for young readers, the book is full of the racist language of the times in describing the treatment of the black islanders by the white colonial traders.
(London’s suspense thriller focuses on the fine distinctio...)
London’s suspense thriller focuses on the fine distinction between state- justified murder and criminal violence in the Assassination Bureau, an organization whose mandate is to rid the state of all its enemies.
Jack London was an American author, novelist, short-story writer, and supporter of socialism. He wrote popular adventure stories and social tracts, pamphlets, based on unusual personal experiences. Among his best-known works are The Call of the Wild and White Fang.
Background
London was born John Griffith Chaney on January 12, 1876, in San Francisco, the illegitimate son of Flora Wellman, errant daughter of a well-to-do businessman, and "Professor" W. H. Chaney, a wandering astrologer. Jack's parents were not married at the time of his birth.
When he was eight months old, his mother married John London, a middle-aged widower with two daughters, Eliza and Ida. The boy became John Griffith London but was called Jack to distinguish him from his stepfather and used this nickname throughout life.
From his natural father Jack inherited a superb physique and literary gift. Although he had never known his father, like him, he developed a love for the sea and the belief that the ills of society could be cured by radical social reform.
From his mother, a neurotic woman whose mental balance had been affected by an illness in late youth, he acquired a temperament which caused him to alternate between elation and despair, the conviction that fair-haired Anglo-Saxons were the master race, and irresponsibility about money. The period of Jack's youth was a time of nationwide economic depression and widespread unemployment.
Education
London entered Oakland High School in 1885, which he completed in a year. He desperately wanted to attend the University of California, Berkeley. In 1896 after a summer of intense studying to pass certification exams, he was admitted. Financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897 and he never graduated.
London's teenaged years were spent working at various jobs, many of them involved with the sea. For a time, he served on a patrol in the San Francisco Bay that scouted out and captured poachers. He also sailed the Pacific Ocean on a sealing ship. He went to Japan as a sailor and saw much of the United States as a hobo riding freight trains and as a member of Charles T. Kelly’s industrial army. Returning the next year, still poor and unable to find work, he decided to earn a living as a writer.
London set himself a daily schedule of producing sonnets, ballads, jokes, anecdotes, adventure stories, or horror stories, steadily increasing his output. Within two years, stories of his Alaskan adventures began to win acceptance for their fresh subject matter and virile force. His first book, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North that was written in 1900, a collection of short stories that he had previously published in magazines, gained a wide audience. Among his novels are The Call of the Wild that was published in 1903, White Fang in 1906, and Burning Daylight in 1910.
In addition to Martin Eden, he wrote two other autobiographical novels of considerable interest, The Road in 1907 and John Barleycorn in 1913. Other important novels are The Sea-Wolf (1904), which features a Nietzschean superman hero, Humphrey Van Weyden, who battles the vicious Wolf Larsen, and The Iron Heel (1908), a fantasy of the future that is terrifying anticipation of fascism.
During the remainder of his life, London wrote and published steadily, completing some 50 books of fiction and nonfiction in 17 years. In 1910 he settled on a ranch near Glen Ellen, California, where he built his grandiose Wolf House.
For much of the last decade of his life, London faced a number of health issues. This included kidney disease, which ended up taking his life. He died at his California ranch on November 22, 1916.
London was an atheist. He is quoted as saying, "I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed."
Politics
Jack London came to consider himself a socialist, someone who believes in the public ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth. In 1894, he became a militant socialist. In 1896 he joined the Socialist Labor Party (SLP), led by Daniel De Leon. In 1901, London would leave the SLP and join the breakaway socialists around Eugene Debs, running as the Social Democratic Party candidate for mayor of Oakland in 1901 and as the Socialist Party candidate for the same post in 1905. He quit the Socialist Party in 1916, accusing it of lacking revolutionary energy.
Views
London's life and work hold many contradictions. He was influenced by the socialistic theories of Karl Marx. He believed in socialism, and he believed in Darwin's idea of survival of the fittest. He felt his own success illustrated the concept of the superman who stands above the ordinary person and triumphs by force of will.
Although his work is often regarded as adventure stories for young people, it also deals with the adult theme of environmental determinism, or the idea that the world shapes us in ways we are powerless to resist. He was one of the first writers to seriously, though not always successfully, confront the multiplicities unique to modernism.
Race remains an acutely vexing topic in London studies. Distressingly, like other leading intellectuals of the period, his racial views were shaped by the prevailing theories of scientific racism that falsely propagated a racial hierarchy and valorized Anglo-Saxons. Perhaps the most blatant, though, was his 1901 essay The Salt of the Earth, in which he establishes that the salt of the Earth are English-speaking Anglo-Saxons, a race of mastery and achievement. He goes on to say that white people murdering those of other races is purely natural selection, non-whites are destroyed once they come into contact with superior civilization he wrote. In the face of population growth, he advocated for the genocide of the lesser breeds. Although he promoted white superiority in novels and nonfiction, London sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others-most often as protagonists, in his short fiction.
Eugenic outlook penetrated not only London’s early fiction, which addressed questions of biologically and racially perfect unions, but also pulsed behind writing that focused on the opposite pole of human perfection, that is, human degeneration. London was as fascinated by the possibility of progress toward a eugenically defined ideal as by the thin line separating well-adjusted members of society and those considered to be its outcasts, that is, people given to illness, poverty and addiction.
Quotations:
"The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."
"I am I. And I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind."
"A million years ago, the caveman, without tools, with a small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the caveman a million times, you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you!"
"Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others."
"I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself."
"Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do."
"A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog."
"The aim of life was meat. Life itself was meat. A life lived on life. There were the eaters and the eaten."
"Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel."
"Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time."
"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."
"The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end."
"The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings."
"A man with a club is a law-maker."
"I am. I was. I am not. I never am."
"One cannot violate the promptings of one's nature without having that nature recoil upon itself."
"Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them. He has no conception of the subtle atmosphere exhaled by the sex feminine, so long as he bathes in it; but let it be withdrawn, and an ever-growing void begins to manifest itself in his existence, and he becomes hungry, in a vague sort of way, for a something so indefinite that he cannot characterize it. If his comrades have no more experience than himself, they will shake their heads dubiously and dose him with strong physic. But the hunger will continue and become stronger, he will lose interest in the things of his everyday life and wax morbid; and one day, when the emptiness has become unbearable, a revelation will dawn upon him."
"Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal."
"In a saturated population life is always cheap."
"Don't loaf and invite inspiration, light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it."
Membership
Jack London was a founder and member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.
Personality
Jack London was a colorful and controversial personality who was often in the news. Generally fun-loving and playful, he could also be combative and was quick to side with the underdog against injustice or oppression of any kind. He was a fiery and eloquent public speaker, and much sought after as a lecturer on socialism and other economic and political topics. Strikingly handsome, full of laughter, restless and courageous to a fault, always eager for adventure on land or sea, Jack London was one of the most attractive and romantic figures of his time. In retrospect, London appears as a complex and tragic figure, whose conflicts prevented his reaching full stature either as a man or as a writer.
Physical Characteristics:
For years, Jack London had suffered from a painful kidney disorder, which could have only been made worse by his drinking alcohol. His doctors were concerned about his health and urged him to cut back on the use of alcohol and improve his diet. London refused and remained focused on writing so that he could fund his interests. He pushed himself to the limit, and on the 22nd of November, 1916, London died of uremia, toxins in the bloodstream.
Quotes from others about the person
"Jack London was an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his natural impatience and the quickness of his mind. His novels, even the best of them, are hugely flawed." - Dale L. Walker
"His greatness will surge triumphantly above race and time." - George Sterling
"Jack London has been called many things throughout history, among them, an author, explorer, visionary and a socialist. He has even been called the greatest romantic of his time. However, above all these fancy titles, he was a farmer and an inventive one at that." - Tyler LeBlanc
"Jack's ambition was to develop a model farm; one of the best all-round ranches in the state, combining a stock ranch, fruit, grain, vegetables, vineyard, and the like. He would have accomplished his plan had he lived, for his enthusiasm was unquenchable. His intense energy simply rioted in work. Success seemed only to stimulate him to greater and wider efforts." - Eliza Shepard
"It is a pity Jack London died young. His work is real; his books have been lived." - Joseph Conrad
"No writer, unless it were Mark Twain, ever had a more romantic life than Jack London. The untimely death of this most popular of American Fictionists as profoundly shocked a world that expected him to live and work for many years longer." - Ernest J. Hopkins
"He will be missed around here, all right, for he was mighty good to us, and there never was a man who came here who went away hungry." - One of the workmen on the ranch
"No matter what he said or did, his ever-present kindness held you. He could say the rashest and brashest things, hurt your feelings, and make you like it because there was no personal sting. He was one of the most lovable characters of his age." - Ed Morrell
Interests
Philosophers & Thinkers
London was influenced by the socialistic theories of Karl Marx.
Connections
London married Elizabeth "Bessie" Maddern on April 7, 1900. Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901 and their second, Bessie (later called Becky), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California. While London had pride in his children, the marriage was strained. During 1904, London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.
After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. They attempted to have children; one child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.
Jack London: An American Life
In Jack London: An American Life, the noted Jack London scholar Earle Labor explores the brilliant and complicated novelist lost behind the myth, at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas, whose passion for seeking new worlds to explore never waned until the day he died.
2013
Jack London's Racial Lives: A Critical Biography
Jack London's Racial Lives offers the first full study of the enormously important issue of race in London's life and diverse works, whether set in the Klondike, Hawaii, or the South Seas or during the Russo-Japanese War, the Jack Johnson world heavyweight bouts, or the Mexican Revolution.
2009
Jack London: A Writer's Fight for a Better America
Tracing the arc of Jack London's work from the late 1800s through the 1910s, Tichi profiles the writer's allies and adversaries in the cities, on the factory floor, inside prison walls, and in the farmlands.
2015
Jack London
Lover, fighter, and onetime hobo, Jack London lived large and died before he was forty. This is a rare biography, from bestselling historian Alex Kershaw, that proves the truth can be more fascinating and a far greater adventure than a fiction.