Novels and social writings / Jack London.
Material type:
TextSeries: Library of AmericaPublication details: New York, N.Y. : Literary Classics of the United States : Distributed to the trade by the Viking Press, ©1982.Description: 1192 pages ; 21cm Carrier type: - volume
- 0940450062
- 9780940450066
- Jack London : novels and social writings : The people of the abyss ; The road ; The iron heel ; Martin Eden ; John Barleycorn ; essays
- Works. Selections
- PS3523.O46 A6 1982c
| Item type | Home library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
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Books
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Edsel Ford Memorial Library Frantz Reading Room | 813.52 L84 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | 35120001916647 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
By turns an impoverished laborer, a renegade adventurer, a war correspondent in Mexico, a declared socialist, and a writer of enormous popularity the world over, Jack London was the author of brilliant works that reflect his ideas about twentieth-century capitalist societies while dramatizing them through incidents of adventure, romance, and brutal violence. His prose, always brisk and vigorous, rises in The People of the Abyss to italicized horror over the human degradations he saw in the slums of East London. It also accommodates the dazzling oratory of the hero of The Iron Heel , an American revolutionary named Ernest Everhard, whose speeches have the accents of some of London's own political essays, like the piece (reprinted in this volume) entitled "Revolution." London's prophetic political vision was recalled by Leon Trotsky, who observed that when The Iron Heel first appeared, in 1907, not one of the revolutionary Marxists had yet fully imagined "the ominous perspective of the alliance between finance capitalism and labor aristocracy."
Whether he is recollecting, in The Road , the exhilarating camaraderie of hobo gangs, or dramatizing, in Martin Eden , a life like his own, even to the foreshadowing of his own death at age forty, or confessing his struggles with alcoholism in the memoir John Barleycorn , London displays a genius for giving marginal life the aura of romance. Violence and brutality flash into life everywhere in his work, both as a condition of modern urban existence and as the inevitable reaction to it.
Though he is outraged in The People of the Abyss by the condition of the poor in capitalist societies, London is even more appalled by their submission, and in the novel he wrote immediately afterward, The Call of the Wild (in the companion volume, Novels and Stories ), he constructed an animal fable about the necessary reversion to savagery. The Iron Heel , with its panoramic scenes of urban warfare in Chicago, envisions the United States taken over by fascists who perpetuate their regime for three hundred years. It constitutes London's warning to his fellow socialists that mere persuasion is insufficient to combat a system that ultimately relies on force.
LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Reprint of works originally published 1903-1913.
Includes bibliographical references.
The people of the abyss. The descent ; Johnny Upright ; My lodging and some others ; A man and the abyss ; Those on the edge ; Frying-pan Alley and a glimpse of inferno ; A winner of the Victoria Cross ; The carter and the carpenter ; The spike ; Carrying the banner ; The peg ; Coronation Day ; Dan Cullen, Docker ; Hops and hoppers ; The sea wife ; Property versus person ; Inefficiency ; Wages ; The ghetto ; Coffee-houses and doss-houses ; The precariousness of life ; Suicide ; The children ; A vision of the night ; The hunger wail ; Drink, temperance, and thrift ; The management -- The road. Confession ; Holding her down ; Pictures ; "Pinched" ; The pen ; Hoboes that pass in the night ; Road-kids and gay-cats ; Two thousand stiffs ; Bulls -- The iron heel. My eagle ; Challenges ; Johnson's arm ; Slaves of the machine ; The philomaths ; Adumbrations ; The bishop's vision ; The machine breakers ; The mathematics of a dream ; The vortex ; The great adventure ; The bishop ; The general strike ; The beginning of the end ; Last days ; The end ; The scarlet livery ; In the shadow of Sonoma ; Transformation ; A lost oligarch ; The roaring abysmal beast ; The Chicago commune ; The people of the abyss ; Nightmare ; The terrorists -- Martin Eden -- John Barleycorn -- Essays. How I became a socialist ; The scab ; "The jungle" ; Revolution.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
One of the pioneers of 20th century American literature, Jack London specialized in tales of adventure inspired by his own experiences.London was born in San Francisco in 1876. At 14, he quit school and became an "oyster pirate," robbing oyster beds to sell his booty to the bars and restaurants in Oakland. Later, he turned on his pirate associates and joined the local Fish Patrol, resulting in some hair-raising waterfront battles. Other youthful activities included sailing on a seal-hunting ship, traveling the United States as a railroad tramp, a jail term for vagrancy and a hazardous winter in the Klondike during the 1897 gold rush. Those experiences converted him to socialism, as he educated himself through prolific reading and began to write fiction.
After a struggling apprenticeship, London hit literary paydirt by combining memories of his adventures with Darwinian and Spencerian evolutionary theory, the Nietzchean concept of the "superman" and a Kipling-influenced narrative style. "The Son of the Wolf"(1900) was his first popular success, followed by 'The Call of the Wild" (1903), "The Sea-Wolf" (1904) and "White Fang" (1906). He also wrote nonfiction, including reportage of the Russo-Japanese War and Mexican revolution, as well as "The Cruise of the Snark" (1911), an account of an eventful South Pacific sea voyage with his wife, Charmian, and a rather motley crew.
London's body broke down prematurely from his rugged lifestyle and hard drinking, and he died of uremic poisoning - possibly helped along by a morphine overdose - at his California ranch in 1916. Though his massive output is uneven, his best works - particularly "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" - have endured because of their rich subject matter and vigorous prose.
(Bowker Author Biography)