Jack London on Jack London: John Barleycorn and the Road

by Jack London

Jack London's two most acclaimed nonfiction books are together in one volume. During his relatively brief literary career, Jack London published over one hundred works of prose and drama and inspired scores of biographies claiming to know the truth about Jack London, whatever that truth may be. The truth is, there is no better authority on London than Jack London himself. Part of London's popularity is due to our vision of him as that rare man who did what he wanted and lived as he chose. Realistic or not, we see in London a man who lived without fear while searching for Truth. These two books, more than any others, clarify our understanding of who Jack London really was. The Road was first published in 1907, preceding On the Road by half a century and making Kerouac's journeys seem juvenile by comparison. Begun in 1892, The Road chronicles London's years as a penniless vagabond. Already a hardened man-child at sixteen, London set out on his trek with little more than a few coins and a notebook in his pocket. The book shows us London's brief stint in Kelly's "Army" and his month in the Erie County Penitentiary after an arrest for vagrancy. We see the beatific joy of sleeping under a moonlit sky and the unrestrained humiliation of begging for food. John Barleycorn was published three years before London's death and is the closest thing we have to a London autobiography. Here we see London at his best, and his most vulnerable. In contrast to the glut of myopic and self-serving celebrity tell-alls that would become a cottage industry nearly a century later, John Barleycorn gives us an honest and revealing look at the author and his inner demons. The common theme is London's experiences with alcohol and, perhaps luckily for us, alcohol was ever-present in London's life. Alcohol was there when London first got drunk as a five-year-old, it was there during his years on the sea, and it was there in London's later life as a catalyst for his inner philosophical debates with Death. Taken together, John Barleycorn and The Road represent more than an autobiography. They give us not only a look at who Jack London was, but also a first-hand account of the events that shaped who he would become. Complete and unabridged, this is the one book that every true Jack London fan and scholar must have.

Genres: Literature

316 pages, Paperback

Published August 10, 2012

About the author

John Griffith Chaney, better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.

London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of animal rights, workers’ rights and socialism. London wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.

His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in Alaska and the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen".

Reviews

[Neil Mill · Rating 3 out of 5]

jack london is a my favorite writer in America with steinbeck..

[Charles Aulds · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written three years before his death, this is a good biography of Jack London (better than the one by his wife Charmian) ... but if you read no more, at least read Chapter XXXVI (36), which I believe contains the whole essence of the book.

Jack London realizes that the real price that John Barleycorn exacts is that he reveals the naked truth about life ... and most men cannot handle the truth. Most men live for lies, and John Barleycorn exposes those lies, vital lies that lead men to strive for things they cannot achieve, to find nobility in a world that doesn't possess it ... to hope for an afterlife, when this one ends. 

London questioned whether anything he had left was worth living for ... other men who had achieve as much or more than he did were completely forgotten, their works turning to rubbish. 

"Vital lies" gave London the life he lived and did not regret ... John Barleycorn reveals truths that London wished he didn't possess the intellect or the honesty to accept.