Another tame biographer lamely follows the call of Jack London's
wild life. Kershaw, like many London biographers, suffers from an
anxiety of reference, which started with the subject himself.
London's bestselling versions of his life established him as not
merely the California-bred, Klondike-hardened creator of the
classic boys' adventure stories White Fang and The Call of the
Wild, but also a celebrity - adventurer, drinker, sailor, war
correspondent, socialist, revolutionary, though never wholly any of
these. A self-educated literary Ragged Dick, London found his
authorial calling after enduring miserable poverty, factory jobs,
and rough living as a wharf rat, oyster-bed raider, and seal
hunter. Rising mainly by obsessive determination, he would chum out
reams of short stories, muck-raking articles, socialist tracts, and
general ephemera before his death in 1924 at age 40. Adding to this
voluminous output, his second wife, Charmian, would devote two
volumes to him, The Book of Jack London, and his elder daughter by
his failed first marriage, Joan, tried to work out their difficult
relationship in Jack London and His Daughters, as well as a
full-scale biography. Without making any contribution of his own,
Kershaw, a contributing editor to GQ, patches together his work
from these sources, as well as the two main London biographies,
Irving Stone's romantic Sailor on Horseback(1938) and Richard
O'Connor's stolid Jack London: A Biography (1964). The result mixes
novelistic scenes and reconstructed dialogue with half-digested
research and Cliff Notes summaries of London's works. Nowhere is
there any real analysis of his contradictory character - the
passionate socialist would take yellow journalism assignments from
Hearst, his socialism was overshadowed by his social Darwinism -
nor any significant attempt, aside from local color, to place him
in the context of his wild times. In trying to track down the real
Jack London, Kershaw retraces everyone else's footsteps. (Kirkus
Reviews)
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...
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