Jack London

by Kenneth K. Brandt

Jack London (1876–1916) by any standards lived a life of excess. London’s exuberant energies propelled him out of the working class to become a world-famous writer by the age of 27, after stints as a child labourer, an oyster pirate, a Pacific seaman and a convict. He wrote extensively about his travels to Japan, the Yukon, the slums of London’s East End, Korea, Hawaii and the South Seas. The author of classics such as The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf emerges in Kenneth K. Brandt’s new biography as a vital and flawed embodiment of conflicting yearnings. London’s writings, bolstered by their wildly clashing philosophical viewpoints derived from thinkers like Nietzsche, Marx, and Darwin, continue to engross readers with their depictions of primal urges, raw sensations and reformist politics.

225 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2021

Reviews

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading this Critical Lives series of biographies and Jack London’s was a fun one to read. London came from a poor family and was self educated, and loved more than traveling the world especially by sea. If he decided to make a trip around the world, he had a boat built and sailed it himself. I had read his dog stories Call of the Wild and White Fang, as well as his more serious novel Martin Eden, but I didn’t realize how prolific a writer he was. London was also a Socialist activist and ran for mayor of Oakland twice unsuccessfully. He seems like he was a fun guy to hang out with, but was married twice and was an absent father a great deal of the time. He died at 40 years of kidney failure probably caused by a toxic treatment for yaws (a bacterial infection common in tropical areas), drinking alcohol of questionable quality, and just being an all around rascal.