Revolution and Other Essays

by Jack London

John Griffith London (1876 - 1916), commonly known as Jack London, was an American journalist, social activist, and novelist. He was an early pioneer of commercial magazine fiction, becoming one of the first globally-famous celebrity writers who were able to earn a large amount of money from their writing. First published in 1910, this volume contains a collection of essays written by London, including his famous "Revolution". The essays include: "Revolution", "The Somnabulists", "The Dignity of Dollars", "Goliah", "The Golden Poppy", "The Shrink Age of the Planet", "The House Beautiful", "The Gold Hunters of the North", "These Bones Shall Rise Again", etc. Other notable works by this author include: "The Cruise of the Dazzler" (1902), "The Kempton-Wace Letters" (1903), and "The Call of the Wild" (1903). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Genres: Classics, Essays, Philosophy, American, Nonfiction

170 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1909

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

[Ed Erwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of mostly unrelated short pieces, mostly non-fiction. The most enjoyable are the two pieces of fiction, "Goliah" and "The Golden Poppy". The essay "The Other Animals", about whether animals are purely instinctual or can also do a little bit of thinking, would be unremarkable except in seeing how much public and scientific opinion have changed over 100 years.

I enjoyed his style, so I'll try some of his other fiction later. But I'll stay away from his political writings.

- Revolution: an essay on the evils of capitalism and how things will be just perfect after a Socialist revolution.
- The Somnambulists: an essay about how we are disconnected from our true nature and lie to ourselves about our motives and morals. Contrasts the honest work of prize-fighters against the dishonest exploitation of child labor.
- The Dignity of Dollars: an essay on how having money in your pocket makes you feel more dignified.
- Goliah: fiction about a man who becomes so powerful he can force the world to become a Utopia, which to him means socialism, a centrally-planned economy, governmental restrictions on who can reproduce, and re-education camps for those don't like it. Horrible ideas, which London seems to have believed, but a well-written story.
- The Golden Poppy: Funny short story about a man who moves to the sub-burbs and takes down the old "No Trespassing" signs. He thinks everyone should be able to enjoy the land. But when people start stealing his wildflowers, he changes his tune. Eventually the fences and "No Tresspassing" sings are back, and enforced by rifle.
- The Shrinkage of the Planet: an essay on how much smaller the world seems now due to faster travel and communication.
- The House Beautiful: he dreams of the beautiful house-boat he will build. Yawn.
- The Gold Hunters of the North: essay on Alaskan gold hunters.
- Foma Gordyeeff: praise for the novel by Gorky.
- These Bones Shall Rise Again: an appreciation of the works of Rudyard Kipling.
- The Other Animals: an essay on the question of whether animals have some ability to reason. He thinks so, but this gets him labeled a "nature faker" by such people as Theodore Roosevelt.
- The Yellow Peril: a revolting essay on the racial differences between the "yellow" Chinese, the "brown" Japanese, and the Koreans (whom he considers the least worthy of any consideration).
- What Life Means to Me: a mini-memoir of how he tried various employments, was ground down by the evils of Capitalism and so became a socialist.

[James Rozoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revolution and Other Essays By Jack London

Collectively, this is not the greatest work of Jack London. But being that Jack London is a mind unlike any other you've probably ever been acquainted with, this is worthy of a 5-star ranking.

First let me deal with what I consider an unfair assertion that Jack London was a racist. While unavoidably being a product of an era that was only just beginning to emerge from a racist and imperialist paradigm, his perception is amazingly beyond his times. Let me throw a few quotes and you and see if you find the racism in them:

It passes over geographical lines, transcends race prejudice, and has even proved itself mightier than the Fourth of July, spread-eagle Americanism of our forefathers. The French socialist working-men and the German socialist working-men forget Alsace and Lorraine, and, when war threatens, pass resolutions declaring that as working-men and comrades they have no quarrel with each other. Only the other day, when Japan and Russia sprang at each other’s throats, the revolutionists of Japan addressed the following message to the revolutionists of Russia: “Dear Comrades—Your government and ours have recently plunged into war to carry out their imperialistic tendencies, but for us socialists there are no boundaries, race, country, or nationality. We are comrades, brothers, and sisters, and have no reason to fight. Your enemies are not the Japanese people, but our militarism and so-called patriotism. Patriotism and militarism are our mutual enemies.”

Tell a plains Indian that he has failed to steal horses from the neighbouring tribe, or tell a man living in bourgeois society that he has failed to pay his bills at the neighbouring grocer’s, and the results are the same. Each, plains Indian and bourgeois, is smeared with a slightly different veneer, that is all. It requires a slightly different stick to scrape it off. The raw animals beneath are identical.

Even in the essay I have so often heard used as evidence of London's racism, The Yellow Peril, he has this to say about the Chinese: "Nor is the Chinese the type of permanence which he has been so often designated. He is not so ill-disposed toward new ideas and new methods as his history would seem to indicate. True, his forms, customs, and methods have been permanent these many centuries, but this has been due to the fact that his government was in the hands of the learned classes, and that these governing scholars found their salvation lay in suppressing all progressive ideas." See, while Jack London notes certain tendencies in the Chinese people, he does not ascribe it to something inherent in their race but due to the system of government they live under.

For every swipe London takes at a race other than his own, he ends up comparing them back to the Anglo-Saxons and saying that they are essentially no different.

So why has London acquired the reputation of being a racist? I suspect because anyone who states the truth as plainly as he does is bound to have the establishment besmirch his name in a variety of ways. Here are just a couple of comments that demonstrate why Jack London will never be the darling of the established classes:

"When a man attacks your ability as a foot-racer, promptly prove to him that he was drunk the week before last, and the average man in the crowd of gaping listeners will believe that you have convincingly refuted the slander on your fleetness of foot. On my honour, it will work. Try it some time. It is done every day."

"I was scared into thinking. I saw the naked simplicities of the complicated civilization in which I lived. Life was a matter of food and shelter. In order to get food and shelter men sold things. The merchant sold shoes, the politician sold his manhood, and the representative of the people, with exceptions, of course, sold his trust; while nearly all sold their honour. Women, too, whether on the street or in the holy bond of wedlock, were prone to sell their flesh. All things were commodities, all people bought and sold."

"They assisted in all kinds of sweet little charities, and informed one of the fact, while all the time the food they ate and the beautiful clothes they wore were bought out of dividends stained with the blood of child labour, and sweated labour, and of prostitution itself. When I mentioned such facts, expecting in my innocence that these sisters of Judy O’Grady would at once strip off their blood-dyed silks and jewels, they became excited and angry, and read me preachments about the lack of thrift, the drink, and the innate depravity that caused all the misery in society’s cellar. When I mentioned that I couldn’t quite see that it was the lack of thrift, the intemperance, and the depravity of a half-starved child of six that made it work twelve hours every night in a Southern cotton mill, these sisters of Judy O’Grady attacked my private life and called me an “agitator”—as though that, forsooth, settled the argument."

See, this kind of writing is brilliance, it is genius, it is what the human is crying out for. There are better books to be read in the world, but in your attempts to find them you will likely be led down a lot of wrong paths by people who have never experienced genius. Let this be the book that opens up your mind, that allows you to see the world not only as it is, but as it can be,

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to start with these essays.
I suppose in writing a review I would categorise them into three categories. The first being concerned with social justice. The second being writings about everyday life, The third being, for lack of a better word, racist. It was in fact quite jarring to go from an essay about respecting animal intelligence, to an essay about anglo saxon superiority, to an essay about people stealing flowers from his yard (I have to say I loved this essay more than I can describe here. The progression of Jack London initially wanting to have an open garden people could walk through, to being dismayed that all the flowers were being picked, to signs and cajoling people to stop, to taking his gun into the garden to stop people, to finally letting people take flowers then confiscating them on their way out was both sweet and slightly unhinged) was disconcerting.
I love the Jack London who writes beautiful passages like:

“From then on I was mercilessly exploited by other capitalists. I had the muscle, and they made money out of it while I made but a very indifferent living out of it. I was a sailor before the mast, a longshoreman, a roustabout; I worked in canneries, and factories, and laundries; mowed lawns, and cleaned carpets, and washed windows. And I never got the full product of my toil. I looked at the daughter of the cannery owner, in her carriage, and knew that it was my muscle, in part, that helped drag along that carriage on its rubber tyres. I looked at the son of the factory owner, going to college, and knew that it was my muscle that helped, in part, to pay for the wine and good fellowship he enjoyed. But I did not resent this. It was all in the game. They were the strong. Very well, I was strong. I would carve my way to a place amongst them and make money out of the muscles of other men. I was not afraid of work. I loved hard work. I would pitch in and work harder than ever and eventually become a pillar of society.”

Or this hilarious piece (perhaps hilarious isn’t the right word) about his garden trespassers:

“When one has turned the same person away twice and thrice an emotion arises somewhat akin to homicide. And when one has once become conscious of this sanguinary feeling his whole destiny seems to grip hold of him and drag him into the abyss. More than once I found myself unconsciously pulling the rifle into position to get a sight on the miserable trespassers. In my sleep I slew them in manifold ways and threw their carcasses into the reservoir. Each day the temptation to shoot them in the legs became more luring, and every day I felt my fate calling to me imperiously. Visions of the gallows rose up before me, and with the hemp about my neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of my children, dark with disgrace and shame”

But then he also writes about anglo saxons:

“Back of our own great race adventure, back of our robberies by sea and land, our lusts and violences and all the evil things we have done, there is a certain integrity, a sternness of conscience, a melancholy responsibility of life, a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel, which is ours, indubitably ours, and which we cannot teach to the Oriental as we would teach logarithms or the trajectory of projectiles. That we have groped for the way of right conduct and agonized over the soul betokens our spiritual endowment.”

Or:

“No matter how dark in error and deed, ours has been a history of spiritual struggle and endeavour. We are pre-eminently a religious race, which is another way of saying that we are a right-seeking race.”

I’m not one to give people a pass by saying they were simply a product of their time. There were more than a few people at the turn of the 20th century who believed in equality and were not afraid to speak out about it. Sadly, as much as I love some of these essays, it’s difficult for me to excise from he back of my mind the person whose pen they flowed from.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories and essays both quirky and entertaining. A fun time wading through the meandering thoughts of an American legend.

[Lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

E’ un libro composto da racconti che parlano di rivoluzione, di persone e del senso della vita. E’ un libro di antropologia.

[Canard Frère]

Pour (re)découvrir une facette engagée de cet écrivain, longtemps sympathisant du parti socialiste US (il finit par rompre avec eux peu avant sa mort, les trouvant trop modérés). Certains essais sont intéressants, il y a aussi quelques petites choses plus légères sur sa vie personnelle, par contre la fiction utopique (Goliath) est presque embarrassante pour son auteur tellement elle dégouline de naïveté.

[Antonis Petropoulos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Συλλογή διηγημάτων και δοκιμίων, σίγουρα όχι το καλύτερο αντιπροσωπευτικό έργο του Τζακ Λόντον.
Ο συγγραφέας εκφράζει τα κοινωνικά προβλήματα δίνοντας και νότες ρομαντισμού στα κείμενά του. Τα διηγήματα προέρχονται από τις προσωπικές του εμπειρίες και διαβάζονται εύκολα.

[Casiano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is the unveiling, the re-discovering the whole complexity of a man who's confined to the so called adventures literature. A marvelous man.