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A revelatory look at the life of the great American author―and how it shaped his most beloved works
Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast―an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.
The bare outlines of his story suggest a classic rags-to-riches tale, but London the man was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage, but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favorite animals. At his peak the highest paid writer in the United States, he was nevertheless forced to work under constant pressure for money. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice and a lover of humanity, he was also subject to spells of bitter invective, especially as his health declined. Branded by shortsighted critics as little more than a hack who produced a couple of memorable dog stories, he left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery.
In Jack London: An American Life, the noted Jack London scholar Earle Labor explores the brilliant and complicated novelist lost behind the myth―at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas, whose passion for seeking new worlds to explore never waned until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Labor resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.
- Sales Rank: #376445 in Books
- Published on: 2013-10-01
- Released on: 2013-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.17" h x 1.51" w x 6.43" l, 1.61 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 480 pages
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Jack London (1876–1916) improvised a fast-burning life of reckless adventure that served as the wellspring for his magnificently dramatic writings, from The Call of the Wild to Martin Eden. A good student and insatiable reader ever-grateful for the public library in Oakland, California, young London, poor and fatherless, worked demeaning jobs, then took to sea as an oyster pirate. He learned to fight and drink and became a socialist and constant wanderer. His Klondike escapades yielded a gold mine of stories and inspired his lifelong practice of writing 1,000 words a day, no matter what. London scholar Labor extracts every drop of excitement, folly, romance, creative ecstasy, grueling effort, and despair from the vast London archives, including the relentless press coverageof his exploits. What writer today could ignite the front-page frenzy that surrounded London and the love of his life, Charmian? His fearless second wife, literary accomplice, and stalwart companion on perilous South Sea journeys, Charmian kept a diary from which Labor extracts riveting disclosures leading up to her robust, sexy, carousing husband’s precipitously failing health and early death. Labor’s unceasingly vivid, often outright astonishing biography vibrantly chronicles London’s exceptionally daring and wildly contradictory life and recovers and reassesses his complete oeuvre, including many powerful, long-neglected works of compassionate, eyewitness nonfiction. Let the Jack London revival begin. --Donna Seaman
Review
“A lively and authoritative biography.” ―Caleb Crain, The New Yorker
“Labor is the world's foremost Jack London scholar. His working-class background and deep erudition make him the right man to chronicle the life of this most popular American author. Now curator of the Jack London Museum and Research Center and emeritus professor at Centenary College in Louisiana, Labor has produced what will most likely remain the authoritative biography for generations to come . . . If you want to acquaint yourself with the writer whom much of the rest of the world equates with Melville, Hemingway and Faulkner, then begin with Labor's elegantly written, thoroughly researched and steel-eyed biography. He fills in the gaps between London's impoverished youth, rise to fame and untimely death at the age of 40--in brilliant and plain prose that does honor to London himself.” ―Eric Miles Williamson, The Washington Post
“Mr. Labor--an excellent writer, who knows the London canon backward and forward, brings this most American of authors to vivid life. Jack London: An American Life is almost as much fun to read as its subject's best work . . . Mr. Labor, a professor of American literature at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., is the country's foremost London scholar. He wisely lets London's life and art unfold without judgment. Despite his continuing popularity, London has often been dismissed as a mere writer of boys' tales. But at his best he is among the greatest writers that this country has produced. If you want proof, just read his short story ‘To Build a Fire' and then read this terrific book.” ―John Steele Gordon, The Wall Street Journal
“[A] first-rate literary biography . . . [an] authoritative new life of Jack London (1876-1916) . . . Earle Labor's Jack London: An American Life doesn't take away any of its subject's glamour or fascination. To the contrary. The book is not just definitive, as one would expect from the major London scholar of the past fifty years, it is also exceptionally entertaining . . . As Earle Labor makes clear in his fine biography, Jack London was a remarkable man and a writer of impressive variety, richness, and accomplishment.” ―Michael Dirda, Virginia Quarterly Review
“What a life. What a man. What a book. Only superlatives can describe this definitive biography of the nation's most popular and successful novelist of the early 20th century . . . Earle Labor has devoted much of a lifetime to the study of London and his works and has given us a book so meticulous in its fast-moving detail that the reader feels he is almost at London's side . . . Biographer Earle Labor summarizes Jack London succinctly: ‘… few writers mirror so clearly the American Dream of success and the corollary idea of the Self-Made Man.'” ―Pete Hannaford, The Washington Times
“Earle Labor's new book about London, subtitled ‘An American Life,' is an obvious labor of love (no pun intended). As curator of the Jack London Museum and Research Center in Shreveport, La., and professor emeritus of American literature at Centenary College of Louisiana, Labor is the acknowledged national authority on the life and work of London. Labor's work was graced by personal friendships with London's two daughters, Joan and Becky, as well as his own discovery of Charmian London's personal diaries in a safe at the ‘Cottage' in Sonoma, Ariz.--diaries that London's wife herself called ‘disloyal' because of their intimate frankness. To these new sources were added a number of previously undiscovered London letters and discussions with the descendants of London's bohemian friends in the Bay Area . . . Labor sets out to ‘neither maximize nor minimize' [London's faults] but only to accept London on his own terms as a natural-born seeker; a gifted artist of exceptional intelligence, sensitivity and personal charisma; a man driven by a Nietzschean outlook on life at a time when literature was stuck between Victorian romanticism and the modernism that wouldn't be born until after the First World War . . . Labor's book recalls the man himself with great charm of manner.” ―Gaylord Dold, The Wichita Eagle
“[Jack] London scholar Labor extracts every drop of excitement, folly, romance, ‘creative ecstasy,' grueling effort, and despair from the vast London archives, including the relentless press coverage of him . . . Labor's unceasingly vivid, often outright astonishing biography vibrantly chronicles London's exceptionally daring and wildly contradictory life and recovers and reassesses his complete oeuvre, including many powerful, long-neglected works of compassionate, eyewitness nonfiction. Let the Jack London revival begin.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist
“[Labor's book is a detailed, almost page-turning biography of London's life . . . But Labor . . . offers much more than straight biography: he depicts London's writing habits, which jibe with the autobiographical fiction . . . Labor's details--London in elementary school, London drinking alcohol, London at sea, and so on--reveal the writer in life asserting his life as a writer. Labor verifies what happened, blow by blow, and what happened in London's life because the fiction that only he could write . . . Highly recommended.” ―A. Hirsh, American Library Association
“At long last, Jack London gets the authoritative biography he so richly deserves. Earle Labor is the true-blue dean of London studies. This portrait is brilliantly researched, elegantly written, and brimming with new facts about the brave author of The Call of the Wild. Highly recommended!” ―Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Rice University, fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and author of Cronkite
“There was a time―before the Great War and the frontier’s closing drove the creative spark inward―when American novelists launched the reader off into unfettered narratives as raw, brawny, explosive, and drenched in gritty personal experience as the nation that inspired them. Jack London was among the last of the great ones. Now comes London’s London, the biographer
Earle Labor, to turn the light of truth-telling back upon this magnificent half-forgotten outlaw of our literature.” ―Ron Powers, author of Mark Twain: A Life
“Not so long ago, Jack London was considered a literary titan and a great American hero akin to Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway--as famous for his wild adventures as for his bestselling books. Earle Labor's eloquent, deeply researched biography has brought London and his fascinating world back to life in all its vivid, colorful detail. This will stand as the definitive biography of London for many years to come.” ―Debby Applegate, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
“In Jack London: An American Life, Earle Labor sifts through the myths of London's self-invented ‘American Kipling' persona to reveal a remarkable and at times remarkably frustrating man. London was famously charismatic, but to those closest to him, he could be vindictively cruel. He was ambitious and productive--he published 50 books before he was forty, Call of the Wild when he was only 27, and wrote 1,000 words every day without fail--but was also a depressed and self-destructive alcoholic. He may have even been bipolar. Despite being the best-selling author of his day, London was constantly broke, often writing to pay his debts. He was an adventurer and thrill seeker, but also an ardent radical socialist. Labor captures all these facets of his, as his wife Charmian put it, ‘kaledoscopic personality,' while still conveying his remarkable talent and obsessive self-improvement. The London in An American Life is as fascinating for his turmoil and dysfunction as he was in his time for his globetrotting and adventuring.” ―Thomas Flynn, The Daily Beast
“Earle Labor, a scholar whose academic career focused on the life and works of Jack London, has written an exceptionally well-documented, and, if there is such a thing, authoritative biography of one of America's great writers . . . Labor, a professor emeritus of American literature at Centenary College of Louisiana and curator of a Jack London research center there, draws heavily from letters and diaries to tell London's life story in rich detail, with much attention to his declining health even as London pursued his final adventures. This biography is well-written, though not a breezy narrative, and should be satisfying to anyone who loved reading London's books.” ―David Shaffer, The Star-Tribune (Minneapolis)
“[A] loving biography of the writer . . . Recognized as the dean of Jack London studies, Labor has been an active London scholar for 60 years, has edited volumes of his stories and letters, and curates the Jack London Museum in Shreveport, Louisiana . . . Labor's effort is likely to be as definitive a treatment as anyone needs . . . Earle Labor leads us skillfully through the many ‘stories' that constituted London's life: working as an adolescent in a cannery and as an ‘oyster pirate' on Oakland's waterfront; going on a seal hunt in the Bering Sea; riding the rails across America, with an interlude of 30 days spent in the Erie County Penitentiary for vagrancy; finding out how the poor live in London's East End; joining the gold rush to the Klondike; running for mayor of Oakland on the Socialist ticket; sailing to the South Pacific and visiting Robert Louis Stevenson's grave in Samoa; observing cannibals in the Solomon Islands.” ―William H. Pritchard, The Weekly Standard
“In this comprehensive account, more richly detailed than any prior biography of Jack London, Earle Labor debunks common myths. This is a London revealed by his personal writings, along with accounts from those who knew him best. Labor's crisp prose quotes extensively, allowing the reader to interpret the full character of this noted writer, rancher, and traveler. In placing London within the context of the tumultuous Progressive Era, Labor further explains the contradictory choices and beliefs of this complex individual. The result limns a portrait of a brilliant, creative, sensitive yet self-assured man who died prematurely, on the cusp of still greater offerings.” ―Clarice Stasz, author of Jack London's Women
“This engrossing biography paints a sympathetic (though not uncritical) portrait of London's dynamic ambition and energy. Born in San Francisco in 1876 to an impoverished single mother, London (White Fang) took up factory work to support his household while still a child, and by age 18 had worked as an oyster pirate, sailor, and rail-riding hobo. Omnivorous reading and sporadic education fueled his desire to write, and a year spent surviving the Yukon Gold Rush (1897–1898) provided him with inspiration for his earliest nonfiction and fiction. As rendered by Labor (The Portable Jack London), London's official biographer and curator of the Jack London Museum in Shreveport, La., London was a complex and often contradictory individual--a writer who turned every experience into literary fodder; who disciplined himself to produce 1,000 words per day; and whose by-his-bootstraps lifestyle fueled his devotion to socialism and social justice. But London's enthusiasms also had their dark side: he was a reckless spendthrift who had to churn out mountains of copy for pay to stay ahead of his creditors; he was an incautious celebrity whose public exploits often made him tabloid fodder; and he was a free spirit who could be self-destructive at times. Here, London emerges as a rugged adventurer with a soft heart, and a larger-than-life character who might have figured as the hero in one of his own brawny bestsellers.” ―Publishers Weekly
“[Jack London] may prove the definitive biography of the sailor-adventurer-prospector turned rancher-author . . . The biography delivers a riveting portrait of his subject, drawing on letters and reminiscences of brawls and drinking incidents from London's youth . . . The incidents in London's life are delivered in a literate, colorful and compelling manner . . . The new work further cements Labor's place, and Shreveport's, in the world of Jack London studies. A fixture at the local college more than 50 years, Labor's efforts and scholarship and the largesse of the late alumnus-trustee Samuel Peters brought to Centenary the Jack London Research Center, drawing students, scholars and Londonistas from around the globe.” ―John Andrew Prime, The Shreveport Times
“I rarely read biographies such as this--accurate, gripping, written like an adventure book but always with an understated sense of reality that reminds the reader this really happened.” ―Davide Sapienza, Italian translator of Feltrinelli's edition of Call of the Wild
“Quite a few books have been published recently about Jack London's fabulous life, but Earle Labor's Jack London: An American Life is undoubtedly the definitive biography. Written by the internationally acknowledged maestro of Jack London studies, the book demonstrates both the detailed scholarly documentation and the intelligent empathy with London's complex mindset that one has missed in previous biographies (which, incidentally, have also been vitiated by sensationalist canards about London's alleged drug addiction, homosexuality, and suicide).” ―Per Serritslev Petersen, University of Aarhus, Denmark
“A highly sympathetic, knowledgeable portrayal strives to correct the ‘caricature' of this dynamic, brief life. Having tracked his subject's career since his scholarly research on London in the 1960s, Jack London Museum curator Labor . . . is an ideal biographer to capture the dazzling spirit and adventures of the acclaimed American author . . . As Labor fondly delineates, London did live large, seeming to be in a terrible hurry, starting with his childhood digestion of stories by Washington Irving, Poe, Stevenson and Kipling. He crammed his higher education into a few months and then restlessly took off again for the high seas, writing and speaking widely on socialist issues involving exploitation of the workers and social justice, diving into passionate love affairs and embarking on South Pacific adventures in his custom-made boat. All the while, London wrote like a fevered soul--1,000 words per day without fail--following what he called ‘the spirit that moves to action individuals and peoples, which gives birth and momentum to great ideas.' Labor grasps the fire and fight of this most American of authors. A vibrant biography that will surely entice readers back to the original source.” ―Kirkus
“[Labor's] affectionate, meticulous and beautifully written Jack London: An American Life . . . [is] the definitive biography of the iconic ‘American Kipling.'” ―Tom Lavoie, Shelf Awareness
“If any biography [of Jack London] is definitive, it is probably Labor's . . . Jack London lived to the fullest, saying, ‘We only live once, and we'll be dead a long time.' People will be reading him, and about him, for a long time.” ―Bruce Ramsey, The Seattle Times
“In Earle Labor's biography of the literary icon, Jack London: An American Life, London comes across as a complex, larger-than-life man. Dozens of biographies have covered London's life and work, but Labor's is an especially well-balanced, thoughtful and definitive account.” ―Leslie Ashmore, Los Altos Town Crier
About the Author
Earle Labor is the acknowledged major authority on the novelist Jack London and the curator of the Jack London Museum and Research Center in Shreveport. He is also Emeritus Professor of American Literature at Centenary College of Louisiana.
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 36 people found the following review helpful.
The truth about Jack London by world reknown scholar
By ookkees
Over 40 years in the making, this biography is built solidly upon original research into the life of Jack London. Well-known myths and fallacies are left behind leaving only the truth to shine through. Dr. Labor has striven for the utmost accuracy, revealing both the bright and dark sides of his subject. Did Charlie Chaplain once impersonate a waiter to serve Jack London and Wyatt Earp at a Los Angeles Restaurant as one report states? He very well may have, but the episode is NOT in this book because it could not be independently verified. That is the accuracy for which he has striven.
London's life was as much of an adventure as any of his best books...and was the basis for much material in his books. If there is one shortcoming to this biography, it is the limitation of space. Much interesting material had to be jettisoned in order to fit the work into the space allowed by the publishers. Still, if you only read one biography of Jack London, this is the one it should be. You cannot choose a better one.
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
An Unexpected Disappointment
By Simple Jack
Any number of biographers have tackled Jack London's extraordinary life, and there are plenty of choices out there for those who wish to find out about his origins and life's work. The most widely-read of these include "Sailor on Horseback" by Irving Stone; "Jack" by Andrew Sinclair; and more recently "Wolf" by James Haley.
Of these, the iconic tome remains Irving Stone's, written just two decades after London's death and published in 1938. Irving Stone himself is one of the great authors of the mid-twentieth century, and his "Sailor on Horseback the Biograhy of Jack London" is an excellent piece of work. Stone had the full cooperation of Charmian London (Jack's second wife) as well as many other people who knew London well and were still available for interviews and as sources of raw material. "Sailor on Horseback" reads right along, and accords Jack London a gracious and truthful respect, lauding his hard work, vision, imagination, and most importantly, London's humanity, which was his most outstanding trait.
"Jack London,: A biography" by Richard O'Connor was published in 1964, and is a good read, with a number of interesting details not found in most biographical work on London, even today. O'Connor still, however, makes occasional attempts to hit below the belt, like most of London's biographers. It was followed by Andrew Sinclair's "Jack: A Biography of Jack London" (1977), which adopted a mildly snide tone (chalk it up to an old grudge over "The People of the Abyss") and a new perspective of judging London by polite, upper-middle class mores. There were some fresh details about some of London's experiences, but Sinclair's book -- which remains a worthwhile read -- provided nothing truly revelatory.
In 1997 Alex Kershaw's "Jack London: A Life" made its appearance. Very much like Richard O'Connor's book, Kershaw's biography ranges from magnanimous to vituperative, but its closing chapter (which should have been its opening premise) redeems Kershaw to a great degree. However, Kershaw actually takes the step of suggesting Jack London's views on race were similar to Adolf Hitler's, an outrage in utter contradiction to London's socialist views and well-known humanism.
Next in the upper tier of London biographies was James Haley's "Wolf: The Lives of Jack London." While Haley accords Mr. London quite a bit more respect than does Mr. Sinclair -- as one author of limited talents attempting to render an understanding of another of towering and enduring skill -- it is laced with what seems envious innuendo regarding London's sanity and sex life, and retains the haughty, bourgeoisie indictment of London for failing to properly raise his daughters, among other social missteps. It also continues the misunderstanding of London's racial perspectives, an unveracious canard floated by academics such as Professor Kevin Starr in his lengthy, but rather unstrengthy, series of books on California history.
At about the same time as Mr. Haley's work arrived, Jeanne Campbell Reesman published a paean to the academic elite, Jack London's Racial Lives: A Critical Biography, explaining the reasons for Mr. London's inclusion of race relations in his work. (The backstory here is that London used some terms and described some situations -- as did Mark Twain and many other authors of his time -- that are now considered politically incorrect or offensive by today's standards. For some reason, London has been keel-hauled for this, while Twain and others were given a free pass). Reesman attempts to explain London's inclusion of racial issues in his work as a result of an incredibly complex early life, where the young author-to-be was surrounded by peoples of all colors and ethnicities, but was apparently influenced by some very bad authority figures, including his mother. Reesman's book is practically indecipherable, loaded with academic jargon and all manner of racial and social equations intended to elevate its author to the status of literary clinician. The book, mostly incoherent, does Jack London far more harm than good. Reesman's lack of credentials as a psychologist, philosopher, or anthropologist don't do her much good here in supporting her thesis, in any event.
Now we come to Mr. Earle Labor's "Jack London: An American Life". Mr. Labor has been studying Jack London for many decades, and, according to the dust jacket notes, is the "major authority" on Jack London. (Labor has been associated with Jack London "scholarship" for many decades, but I would take exception to notion that he is the "major" authority on London; many other fine men and women have contributed to the body of work concerning Jack London, and some have added material of great significance.)
This is a book I wanted to like and worked hard at doing so. However, I found it impossible. The notes on the dust jacket suggest the book is rife with new details regarding London's 40 years on this Earth, but they were really few and far between, and not especially significant.
What is far more important with respect to Mr. Labor's book are the details he left out, and the now all-too-familiar pronunciation of polite society's judgment on Mr. London. Jack London was a self-educated man, or "auto-didact" as such folks are called by the academic community. Without question, London's astonishing and rapid rise as an author did not sit well with many of that ilk, and that point of fact has irked a fair number of them over the decades. George Orwell -- who could be said to have derived much of the plot for "1984" from London's socialist classic "The Iron Heel," nonetheless called London's work "crude". The noted literary critic H. L. Mencken disparaged London for his lack of formal education, all the while freely admitting of his genius. Labor, an Emeritus Professor of Literature, strives to be humane, compassionate, and objective, but the strictures of his position, and associations with various organizations purporting to be authorities on Jack London, are clearly evident in this newest biography.
The most important event at issue here is the possibility that Jack London committed suicide. Irving Stone's book strongly suggests this quite probable, but stops short of stating it as fact. It seems that suicide is a shameful act and there has been quite a movement for some few decades now to squash Irving Stone's suggestions, perhaps beginning with Professor Labor's "Open Letter to Irving Stone." Labor is certainly the man for the job, for he completely omits many of the evidentiary details included in Stone's work and dismisses Stone as a liar. I suspect the possibility London may have in fact killed himself, or unintentionally overdosed on drugs, is not particularly palatable to a certain segment of his followers in the academic community; it's certainly not something done by a gentleman. But for Professor Labor to simply skewer Irving Stone as a bald-faced liar when Stone presents strong evidence in support of a possible suicide or drug overdose is a problem in a world where ample evidence for such a possibility has been long-established. In fact, biographer Andrew Sinclair commented in late 2014 regarding the cause of Mr. London's death that "London's inheritor, Milo Shephard, on the Wolf House ranch showed me the syringes and ampoules that killed him: an unpremeditated overdose of morphine and atropine sulphate, wrongly diagnosed as uraemia." Moreover, Mr. London's own daughter has twice supported the idea her father took his own life, in both "Jack London & His Times" and in her later book, "Jack London and His Daughters". In the latter volume, Ms. London states, "He died on November 22; mercifully, for some time we did not know that he had taken his own life." If ever there was a prime source for material regarding Jack London, his daughter would have to be at least nominally included.
Beyond this, Labor continues the tradition of dismissing London's first novel, "A Daughter of the Snows" as "a clumsy Klondike romance". In fact, it's a very readable book, and an important part of the chronicling of American history, with vivid, stunning descriptions of life during the Alaskan gold rush; and perhaps more importantly, it features a very strong, capable, well-rendered female protagonist (Frona Welse) who (unlike Maud Brewster) is free of the usual tropes and quite credible. He also dismisses many of London's more obscure short stories as hack work, calling "The Passing of Marcus O'Brien", "The Unparalleled Invasion", "The Enemy of All the World", "A Curious Fragment" and "The Dream of Debs" "second-rate". While a couple of these might not keep one up at night turning pages, "The Unparalleled Invasion" is truly visionary, describing the use of WMD's and aerial bombardment long before it become a reality, and interspersing then-current political realities with prognostications that have proven eerily accurate. (Interestingly enough, Alex Kershaw cites "The Dream of Debs" as being one of London's better short stories and is far more magnanimous with respect to Jack London's later and lesser-known work, showing there is clear disagreement in the journalistic and academic communities on these points.)
Labor also utterly trashes the novel "Jerry of the Islands", suggesting the dog "Jerry" does little more than round up native labor for the copra plantations. This, in my view, is the most egregious of mischaracterizations. Professor Labor truly appears not to have even read "Jerry of the Islands". The book is one of London's best, not simply for its descriptions of the brutal conditions of life in the Solomon Islands, but for its obvious rebuttal of President Theodore Roosevelt's famous and controversial "Nature Faker" accusation. One of Jerry's adventures is a stint with a blind, elderly islander who is attacked by a group of young native thugs. The blind man has trained Jerry to not only communicate and count using a series of soft barks, but to point out the location of the enemy combatants, enabling him to ultimately defeat them with well-placed arrows. Because of its intense and thorough treatment of animal psychology, this book is one of London's most important, but like "Martin Eden", it is not well-known and certainly deserves better than this summary dismissal.
The remainder of the book is, in my view, somewhat plodding, if generally accurate and competent. Where "Jack London: An American Life" really fails is in generating a new, vibrant interest in Jack London's lesser-known work, which is a rich treasure trove of not only writing of the first quality, but of the times in which London lived. By so easily overlooking and even denigrating London's "other" work, Labor fails in precisely what one ought to expect from a Professor of Literature: to instill a new wonder and curiosity in readers about one of America's -- and the world's -- greatest authors.
For this reason alone, I will continue to recommend "Sailor on Horseback" as the best of the London biographies; Stone treats London with the respect, compassion, and yes, at times, even the awe that he's earned as a writer and adventurer, without attempting to hide his flaws in some kind of misguided whitewash. Where Labor's book may yet play an important role is in introducing new readers to Jack London; I just hope those readers can find a copy of "Sailor on Horseback" to get the rest of the story.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
In-depth review: the life of a "self-made man"
By John L Murphy
As an early pal saw Jack, he strove "to be the conqueror". This, Earle Labor argues, was London's greatest asset and his greatest liability. After a second lowly paid and repetitive, dangerous job feeding a machine, he refused to bow to the "work-beast" again.
Instead, he relied on his strength, his determination, and his wits. He finally sold a couple of "yarns" at the age of twenty-one. Most writers at this stage would have little to go on from their experience. Jack had plenty.
Labor takes us through the early years, already crammed with possibilities for the later London to draw upon. As a teenager, Oakland cannery worker, oyster pirate, fish patrolman, hobo, able-bodied seaman, he did all this before returning to high school and, briefly, the U. of Cal. Although he had to drop out to work again, after his menial labor, he vowed to find a better way to make a living.
Then, the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush spurred him and his uncle north to the Yukon. Labor memorably captures the excitement and dread of this hyped event. While we never learn how London eked out his five dollars worth of gold, this is not Labor's concern. He wants us instead to learn how Jack began to listen, watch, and ponder what he saw all around him. Out of this, soon after, nearly eighty stories would emerge when, finally, he left hard labor behind for a career as a paid writer.
What distinguished London from his contemporaries who had beaten him back to cash in on writing about the Klondike and the Northland, Labor finds, was Jack's "human interest, romantic imagination, and sympathetic understanding". He gets the silence in, the primitive pull of the landscape, where its woods and animals lurked, and where foolish men fell to the harsh climate. Although late to the rush to get the Yukon down on paper, London's fiction remains in print today.
A popular writer, one whom before Labor chose him for his dissertation in 1961 lacked respect among the professorial establishment, London for Labor represents not only a dynamic, clever hustler, but a man in thrall to his own vitality, however dampened by his weakness for alcohol--as a teenager, already he had a near-fatal poisoning one night. He scrapped, he connived, and he conned. He watched other men give in to weakness, and among tough guys, he soon got the hang of survival.
London wisely slowed down--somewhat--once he found a publisher. At a thousand words a day, six days a week, by 1900 this "Self-Made Man" was acclaimed as "the American Kipling" with a similar knack for conveying high-minded ambitions in vernacular, jocular terms, and with a commitment to convey on paper the voice and temperament of an observer vowing to remain "original". Both were inspired by Western efforts to colonize and civilize the wild reaches. Yet, Jack resisted imperialism.
Drawing on his own radical tendencies and encounters on the road of hobo and tramp sailor, London balanced his hard-headed nature to cash in as a professional, stable writer (he was the first to combine his reportage with photography) with his political and social concerns. His private life, with affairs with Anna Strunsky and Charmian Kittredge, rivals the scandals of his fictional characters or any of this era, surely; Labor tells the real stories adroitly.
Meanwhile, the Russo-Japanese War created more notoriety, and his divorce from Bessie still more. Restless, he wandered on the waters where once he stole oysters, and he toured the lecture circuit, preaching revolution. In 1905, he moved to the Valley of the Moon, his rural haven, fifty miles north of the Golden Gate: "I found my paradise.
In Hawai'i, he learned to surf, and in the Solomon Islands, as Labor interprets it, he and his partner saw misery to rival the colonial horrors evoked by Conrad's "Heart of Darkness." The physical ailments he acquired there worsened, and that and his carousing and drinking shortened his life.
More publicity followed. By thirty-five, London was "firmly established as headline copy for every newspaper in the country" and as Labor reminds us, before radio, the press possessed massive influence. Jack welcomed attention, but he also needed a rest, as his health suffered from the tropics. Inspired by the ranch and his love for Charmian, he wrote his longest novel, "The Valley of the Moon."
The unlucky year of 1913 signaled a decline. Although the highest-paid author in America, with a million books sold by Macmillan, he found himself pitching "crackerjack" serials as "a dog writer" to grab "the biggest public I have".
Late in 1916, despite or because of a daily diet of duck, he gave in to uremia. He was buried "beneath a giant lava boulder rejected by the builders of Wolf House". Labor concludes with a nod to the pilgrims who continue to visit the grave, nearly a century after London's death.
Those visitors continue to read London's fiction and journalism. Outside of this circle, for whom Earle compiles this intimately told account, fewer may recall much about this media-savvy author's impact. Labor amasses the details, drawn from reliable sources.
The subtitle has been applied by many previous chroniclers of other people's lives, but in Jack London's case, it fits well. Earle Labor has made London's life and work his lifework during the past half-century. Labor introduces a man who roamed not only the Americas but Asia. He set off when only a teenager. Labor corrects Jack's boasts by corroborating his claims against testimony of his friends and family-- and the historical record. Sympathetic to London's compassion, energy, and ambition, Labor compiles a sober, smoothly told, careful study which will prove a definitive, comprehensive biography. Labor emphasizes the life far more than any work, so this is not a critical examination of the writing, but a retelling of London's career.
While his results may cause the curious to marvel more at London's frenetic pace rather than the more than fifty books he found time to produce (and I closed this wishing for far more on the books and the stories, which by contrast or intent barely gain notice), his life remains engrossing. I am not a London specialist, so I came to this admittedly hoping for a critical biography. But, Professor Labor cannot be faulted for his thorough, well-documented, presentation of the life of an author he has followed since his own boyhood reading his "yarns".
Perhaps Jack London pioneered the style of the bestselling adventurer and rogue; his lecture tours anticipated the talk shows and book signings accorded his equivalents today. Separating the claims of many previous biographers from the facts, Labor's report of Jack's vital if too vigorous (given his premature demise) gadabouts tells his own brawny epic.
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