Jack London
A Life
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A full-blooded, pacy biography of one of the most charismatic writers of the century, whose life and work were to inspire Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac and Mailer. ‘We cannot help but read on’: TLS. ‘The energy, dynamism and sheer bursting life-force of Jack London bowls you over’: Scotsman.
Jack London’s life story (1876–1916) is as dramatic as any of the fiction he wrote. Born illegitimate in San Francisco, he was (in his teens) an oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer – and spectacular drinker.On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he became the most highly publicised writer in the world. Subsequent books, including Martin Eden, White Fang, The Iron Heel, The People of the Abyss, John Barleycorn, The Sea Wolf, continue in print as world classics in many languages.Apart from writing 50 books, he lectured for the Socialist Party in America; was a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing to the West Coast; sailed the seven seas in his yacht, the Snark.
About the author
After graduating from Oxford University, Alex Kershaw worked as an advertising copywriter and then as a television researcher for Channel 4’s ‘Despatches’ before joining City Limits as a features writer. He has been a contributing editor of GQ Magazine and feature-writer for the Weekend Guardian and the Sunday Times. This is his first book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kershaw, a Los Angeles-based English journalist, writes that by the time London was 39, in early 1915, "the muses had indeed deserted Jack." Actually, London seems to have deserted his muses, producing what many considered alcohol-inspired claptrap about violent men and their women intended for quick sale. Even under the influence of John Barleycorn, he usually managed his thousand words a day, writing hundreds of fact pieces, short stories and 20 novels. A few--Call of the Wild, Sea Wolf and Martin Eden--were memorable enough to turn the one-time sailor and laborer into a literary celebrity. Ultimately, he was reduced to purchasing plots to exploit from an aspiring young writer named Sinclair Lewis. London has inspired numerous biographies, though with this work, Kershaw adds little to London's life but cliches ("Jack had... fallen from dizzying heights to rock bottom"). Although writing for an American audience, he uses British spellings ("tyres," "cheque") and lapses into language that would have embarrassed his mostly self-taught subject ("a boy who weighed less than him"; "intellectual ideas"). London, who died at 40, very likely of self-administered morphine while in the agonies of terminal uremia, suffers again in this latest life. Photos.
