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Jack London
Jack London is perhaps the only novelist this century of whom it can be said that his own life story is as dramatic as any of the suspensful fiction he wrote. This full-blooded biography evokes the man whose life and work were to inspire such writers as Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kerouac and Mailer, and who, in himself, created the classic image of the macho (and deeply flawed) all-American writer.
Born illegitimate in 1876 on the San Fransisco waterfront, Jack London became a legend before he was out of his teens; as oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer in Alaska, and spectacular drinker. On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he soon became the most highly publicised writer in the world, whose appeal has survived to this day.
His writing life, though relatively short, was hugely prolific. Apart from almost fifty books (including White Fang, Martin Eden, The Iron Heel, John Barleycorn, and The Sea Wolf), he lectured for the Socialist Party of America; gathered first-hand material in the London slums for The People of the Abyss; supported several families; worked as a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing from Hawaii to the West Coast of America; sailed the seven seas in his yacht the Snark; and slowly drank himself to death at the age of forty on his ranch in Callifornia.
Basing himself on the West Coast, Alex Kershaw has dug deep onto the archives to recreate the indomitible life of this Nietzschian Superman of American letters. It is a dramatic work of singular energy, insight and drive, which has already been bought for filming in Hollywood by the director Michael Mann.
Born illegitimate in 1876 on the San Fransisco waterfront, Jack London became a legend before he was out of his teens; as oyster pirate, seal-hunter, hobo, Klondike goldminer in Alaska, and spectacular drinker. On publication of The Call of the Wild in 1903, he soon became the most highly publicised writer in the world, whose appeal has survived to this day.
His writing life, though relatively short, was hugely prolific. Apart from almost fifty books (including White Fang, Martin Eden, The Iron Heel, John Barleycorn, and The Sea Wolf), he lectured for the Socialist Party of America; gathered first-hand material in the London slums for The People of the Abyss; supported several families; worked as a war correspondent in Korea and Mexico; introduced surfing from Hawaii to the West Coast of America; sailed the seven seas in his yacht the Snark; and slowly drank himself to death at the age of forty on his ranch in Callifornia.
Basing himself on the West Coast, Alex Kershaw has dug deep onto the archives to recreate the indomitible life of this Nietzschian Superman of American letters. It is a dramatic work of singular energy, insight and drive, which has already been bought for filming in Hollywood by the director Michael Mann.
335 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
About the author
Alex Kershaw
20 books890 followersAlex Kershaw is the author of the widely acclaimed best sellers Against All Odds, The First Wave, The Bedford Boys, The Longest Winter, The Few, #TheLiberator, the basis for the Netflix drama, and Escape from the Deep, as well as biographies of Jack London, Raoul Wallenberg and Robert Capa. His latest book is Patton's Prayer, published May 2024.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
September 5, 2013
It had been about 30 years since I had read anything by or about Jack London. Back then I was, like many young dreamers enamored of his adventurous life and the tales it spawned. This book left me just as enthralled as I was in my twenties.
Sailor, gold seeker, war correspondent, revolutionary socialist and gentleman farmer. Jack London was a man of contrasts and contradictions; a socialist that strove to accumulate money and espoused the genetic supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon, an alcoholic that wrote of the dangers of drink. But for all his faults, he wrote stories that have stood the test of time and remain fresh and vigorous today.
Even if you don't agree with London's philosophies, you can't help but admire this incandescent man who packed several lifetimes into the mere 40 years that he was on the earth.
Sailor, gold seeker, war correspondent, revolutionary socialist and gentleman farmer. Jack London was a man of contrasts and contradictions; a socialist that strove to accumulate money and espoused the genetic supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon, an alcoholic that wrote of the dangers of drink. But for all his faults, he wrote stories that have stood the test of time and remain fresh and vigorous today.
Even if you don't agree with London's philosophies, you can't help but admire this incandescent man who packed several lifetimes into the mere 40 years that he was on the earth.
June 17, 2012
Living in Oakland, I am well aware of Jack London, who grew up in Oakland in the late 19th century. Jack London Square in four miles away; the saloon that he frequented, Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, still offers beer, wine, and hard liquor; and one of the houses that London lived in is only a few blocks from where I live.
At his literary height at the beginning of the 20th century, London was the most widely read writer in the world. His novels and short stories are still in print today. Not as well known is London’s journalism, including a book that is a study of poverty in London’s East End, called "The People of the Abyss," which influenced George Orwell's first book. Unlike President Obama, London and Orwell were real socialists, although London combined his socialist views – rather incongruously – with social Darwinism.
"Jack London: A Life" (1997) by Alex Kershaw, a British-born journalist and author who has lived in the United States since 1994, is one of the latest of many biographies of London. He details London’s life in Oakland and nearby Piedmont, his two marriages, and the final few years of his short life at his ranch at Glen Ellen in the Sonoma Valley.
The event that changed London’s life was the finding of gold in 1897 in the Yukon Territory. The 21-year-old London spent less than a year there and found no gold, but the adventure provided him with material for several of his most famous books ("The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang") and many of his short stories. The damage done to London’s health in the Yukon added to a lifelong alcoholism resulted in London dying at age 40 in 1916.
Kershaw provides snapshots of London’s life in the Bay Area, the Yukon, the Hawaiian Islands, and on his ship that sailed the South Pacific. He examines London’s influences (among them Nietzsche and Jung), his writing and the critical reaction to his writings, and his literary legacy. This biography, although not as comprehensive of other more formal biographies, is reasonably short (300 pages) and a pleasurable introduction to the life and works of this American writer.
At his literary height at the beginning of the 20th century, London was the most widely read writer in the world. His novels and short stories are still in print today. Not as well known is London’s journalism, including a book that is a study of poverty in London’s East End, called "The People of the Abyss," which influenced George Orwell's first book. Unlike President Obama, London and Orwell were real socialists, although London combined his socialist views – rather incongruously – with social Darwinism.
"Jack London: A Life" (1997) by Alex Kershaw, a British-born journalist and author who has lived in the United States since 1994, is one of the latest of many biographies of London. He details London’s life in Oakland and nearby Piedmont, his two marriages, and the final few years of his short life at his ranch at Glen Ellen in the Sonoma Valley.
The event that changed London’s life was the finding of gold in 1897 in the Yukon Territory. The 21-year-old London spent less than a year there and found no gold, but the adventure provided him with material for several of his most famous books ("The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang") and many of his short stories. The damage done to London’s health in the Yukon added to a lifelong alcoholism resulted in London dying at age 40 in 1916.
Kershaw provides snapshots of London’s life in the Bay Area, the Yukon, the Hawaiian Islands, and on his ship that sailed the South Pacific. He examines London’s influences (among them Nietzsche and Jung), his writing and the critical reaction to his writings, and his literary legacy. This biography, although not as comprehensive of other more formal biographies, is reasonably short (300 pages) and a pleasurable introduction to the life and works of this American writer.
September 25, 2013
Alex Kershaw has written an outstanding biography of Jack London, starting with his early life growing up along the Oakland waterfront, through his exploits on San Francisco Bay, his sailing across the Pacific on a seal hunting expedition, his travels to the Klondike and his many trips around the world. The focus of course is on his writing, but even more so on his relationships and his self destructive life style. This is a very good look at a famous author as well as the generation he lived in.
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Kindle e-book
May 4, 2013
Jack London was a brilliant man, brilliant but uneducated. Forced to work grueling jobs to support his mother and family, he had no time for schooling, and when he did return to high school he had sailed the Pacific in a schooner,* tramped across America with Kelly’s Army, masses of the unemployed, converging on Washington, and been thrown in jail for being a bum. At nineteen, he looked on his fifteen-year-old classmates and heard the innocence in their questions about freedom and democracy. At night he worked as an assistant janitor while they studied. He attended a semester at University of California, Berkeley, after cramming for entrance exams under tutelage of his first wife, Bess Maddern, but became bored and left after four months. His classmates were out of touch with reality, he said. *(Sophie Sutherland, inspiration for his novel The Sea Wolf.)
He knew child labor before laws against child labor existed. Life for him was continual battle, and so at sixteen he found nothing against becoming an oyster pirate, sailing his sloop to steal them in San Francisco Bay. During the 1897 Gold Rush he borrowed money from his stepsister Eliza to buy supplies and sailed with her husband, Captain Shepard, to the Klondike to strike it rich. Once there, London and the Captain stood at the bottom of Chilkoot Pass, watching a steady line of men tied together, weighted down with boxes of provisions, trudging wearily up it. Both had been warned against going over it. Shepard turned back. London reached the other side and, bone weary, trudged on the Dead Horse Trail, strewn with animal carcasses, then to the Klondike. His health ruined, he returned just as poor to San Francisco, after rafting in freezing waters down the Yukon and after a desperate winter in a log cabin. He went to get rich and came back with a bad case of skin rot.
He had one ambition—to avoid wage slavery and its soul-deadening demands in textile factories. He looked at the swells on Market Street, with their fancy coats and vests, homburg hats, and high-button patent-leather shoes, and thought they had it made. He didn’t have their chances in life and could see only one way out. Write. Write and make lots of money.
He wrote, and was rejected. He wrote and was again rejected. After countless rejections he became discouraged until he sold one short story, which renewed his ambition. He kept writing and his major success came with Call of The Wild, a novella still regarded as London’s masterpiece.
The story reveals London’s view of life, the world given him by his birth. Struggle to survive. He was familiar with Nietzsche's concept of the super man. He read Darwin on natural selection and Herbert Spencer on social Darwinism with its twisted view of evolution—survival of the fittest—that, for the rich and powerful, justified capitalist misuse of workers through unsafe conditions, long hours, and starvation wages. J.P. Morgan and other robber barons read Spencer and found “scientific” justification for their greed and exploitation of the masses. Spencer told them they deserved what they got because they were the best.
London, though, took a different message from Spencer. He had personally experienced horrible, life-sapping days behind factory machines, his ears ringing with their noise, and he turned away from it to socialism. He awaited the revolution of the working class, when the masses rose up against their chains. He joined the Socialist Party, wrote for its publications.
For all that, Jack had not thought through the disconnect between the one and the other, between Spencer's survival of the fittest and socialism. The first ideology justifies that the elite survive; in the other, the masses overturn the elite.
This disconnect can be found in his personality. In key aspects he was not in touch with himself. On one side was the primal man, believing only the strong survive. On the other was a human being deeply sympathetic to the hungry, weary, and exploited, and also deeply in need of love—a man who supported his family and gave generously to anybody in poverty who wrote him.
In later years he turned from Socialism, resigning the party, and devoted his efforts to Beauty Ranch, at Glen Ellen, near Sonoma, verged on the Napa Valley, above San Francisco. He was an environmentalist before there were environmentalists. He wanted to show what could be done to raise food without exploiting the soil. He had prize cattle, bulls, and horses. An atheist, his first religion had been Spencer and Socialism, and he turned to his new religion, earth itself.
Alex Kershaw has written a good biography and it is well-documented, with keen, but overly brief insights into London’s personality. Based on Jack's formative years, I looked for an explanation of the disconnect between London's worship of strong men and his embrace of socialism, for certainly it is a discordant relationship, but found little in Kershaw's book. There is an intellectual gap in London's thinking and a psychological explanation can be argued. This, Kershaw does not develop. He does trace Jack’s rise into success, showing us a writer with remarkably evocative skills but a writer who bragged he never rewrote a word. London was clear on the matter. He wrote for money, not art—yet out of his imagination came art. Kershaw describes London’s descent into ill health and, finally, death at forty in 1916. An alcoholic who wrote John Barleycorn, Jack ate several very rare ducks—read bloody ducks—daily. He died of uremic poisoning with his beloved second wife Charmian by his side. Next in love was Beauty Ranch.
He had been schooled in the College of Hard Knocks and espoused strength before adversity but something was lacking in the world—he found no comfort in it. Given his stark view of life, no wonder that he thought of suicide many times before he died. Morphine was a standard pain reliever then and some believe that when he reached for it to relieve his pain, he intentionally over-dosed so that he would suffer no longer.
He knew child labor before laws against child labor existed. Life for him was continual battle, and so at sixteen he found nothing against becoming an oyster pirate, sailing his sloop to steal them in San Francisco Bay. During the 1897 Gold Rush he borrowed money from his stepsister Eliza to buy supplies and sailed with her husband, Captain Shepard, to the Klondike to strike it rich. Once there, London and the Captain stood at the bottom of Chilkoot Pass, watching a steady line of men tied together, weighted down with boxes of provisions, trudging wearily up it. Both had been warned against going over it. Shepard turned back. London reached the other side and, bone weary, trudged on the Dead Horse Trail, strewn with animal carcasses, then to the Klondike. His health ruined, he returned just as poor to San Francisco, after rafting in freezing waters down the Yukon and after a desperate winter in a log cabin. He went to get rich and came back with a bad case of skin rot.
He had one ambition—to avoid wage slavery and its soul-deadening demands in textile factories. He looked at the swells on Market Street, with their fancy coats and vests, homburg hats, and high-button patent-leather shoes, and thought they had it made. He didn’t have their chances in life and could see only one way out. Write. Write and make lots of money.
He wrote, and was rejected. He wrote and was again rejected. After countless rejections he became discouraged until he sold one short story, which renewed his ambition. He kept writing and his major success came with Call of The Wild, a novella still regarded as London’s masterpiece.
The story reveals London’s view of life, the world given him by his birth. Struggle to survive. He was familiar with Nietzsche's concept of the super man. He read Darwin on natural selection and Herbert Spencer on social Darwinism with its twisted view of evolution—survival of the fittest—that, for the rich and powerful, justified capitalist misuse of workers through unsafe conditions, long hours, and starvation wages. J.P. Morgan and other robber barons read Spencer and found “scientific” justification for their greed and exploitation of the masses. Spencer told them they deserved what they got because they were the best.
London, though, took a different message from Spencer. He had personally experienced horrible, life-sapping days behind factory machines, his ears ringing with their noise, and he turned away from it to socialism. He awaited the revolution of the working class, when the masses rose up against their chains. He joined the Socialist Party, wrote for its publications.
For all that, Jack had not thought through the disconnect between the one and the other, between Spencer's survival of the fittest and socialism. The first ideology justifies that the elite survive; in the other, the masses overturn the elite.
This disconnect can be found in his personality. In key aspects he was not in touch with himself. On one side was the primal man, believing only the strong survive. On the other was a human being deeply sympathetic to the hungry, weary, and exploited, and also deeply in need of love—a man who supported his family and gave generously to anybody in poverty who wrote him.
In later years he turned from Socialism, resigning the party, and devoted his efforts to Beauty Ranch, at Glen Ellen, near Sonoma, verged on the Napa Valley, above San Francisco. He was an environmentalist before there were environmentalists. He wanted to show what could be done to raise food without exploiting the soil. He had prize cattle, bulls, and horses. An atheist, his first religion had been Spencer and Socialism, and he turned to his new religion, earth itself.
Alex Kershaw has written a good biography and it is well-documented, with keen, but overly brief insights into London’s personality. Based on Jack's formative years, I looked for an explanation of the disconnect between London's worship of strong men and his embrace of socialism, for certainly it is a discordant relationship, but found little in Kershaw's book. There is an intellectual gap in London's thinking and a psychological explanation can be argued. This, Kershaw does not develop. He does trace Jack’s rise into success, showing us a writer with remarkably evocative skills but a writer who bragged he never rewrote a word. London was clear on the matter. He wrote for money, not art—yet out of his imagination came art. Kershaw describes London’s descent into ill health and, finally, death at forty in 1916. An alcoholic who wrote John Barleycorn, Jack ate several very rare ducks—read bloody ducks—daily. He died of uremic poisoning with his beloved second wife Charmian by his side. Next in love was Beauty Ranch.
He had been schooled in the College of Hard Knocks and espoused strength before adversity but something was lacking in the world—he found no comfort in it. Given his stark view of life, no wonder that he thought of suicide many times before he died. Morphine was a standard pain reliever then and some believe that when he reached for it to relieve his pain, he intentionally over-dosed so that he would suffer no longer.
June 23, 2019
It's hard not to be impressed with Jack London's rags-to-riches story. He lived like the characters he wrote into American literary consciousness. He really was a die-hard alcoholic and criminal, grew up desperately poor, nearly died in the Yukon during the gold rush and sailed around the world. Somehow he managed to convert the material of his adventuring life into becoming one of the most famous and successful American authors of all time. While inspiring, his story is ultimately tragic as his substance abuse and health problems put him into the grave at 40, leaving behind an enormous amount of personal wreckage. I'm not a Jack London superfan by any means but he did turn out a few books worth a read (as well as a mountain of pulp garbage) and his life turns out to be just as entertaining and fantastical as his better works.
February 4, 2015
Feb 3, 2015
Jack London - A life by Alex Kershaw
I first read The Call of the Wild when I was probably 13. Of course I loved it and then went on to read The Sea Wolf. That was pretty much my exposure to Jack London, until I read Alex Kershaw’s biography.
Although he only lived to 40, what an amazing life Jack London lived. A man of many contradictions, he witnessed first hand the depths of depravity that man could sink to - in prison when he was 18; working thankless, dangerous jobs for pennies an hour - ruthlessly exploited by the industrialists who were in sway in1880s America.
Through those life experiences, and after extensive reading, London became one of the foremost proponents of socialism - a belief he held through his whole life. Yet while he was an advocate of the working class, he was also a maniacal acquirer of wealth - especially when Call of the Wild became a hit. Like so many proponents of causes, his life did not match his rhetoric, or expressed beliefs.
Yet even more interesting than that was his firm belief in the ascendancy of Anglo-Saxon whites. He believed that white males were the predominant species on the earth - a racist, Social Darwinism which is (sort of reflected) in some of Hitler’s philosophy (if you can call it that.) And first among the white people were the Anglo-Saxons. He was greatly influenced in this belief by Nietzche’s “superman” concept. And Jack lived life like a “superman.”
As a rebellious youth he travelled the high seas, the Klondike (Alaska) and lived life in the depths of America for the first 1/2 of his life. Unloved by his mother, he sought pleasure in alcohol, wild women, truly a hedonistic existence. All of these life experiences proved the “stuff” for his many novels and short stories.
London’s writing was reflective of the “real life” that people lived around the turn of the century. His stories are brutal, and even shocking by the Victorian standards of that time. But they were just what the reading public wanted. And as his fame and fortune spread, he clearly became the cause celebrate of his generation. Interestingly London wrote not for the literary ages, but to make money.
Searching for love, he finally finds it in his second marriage to Charmian - who embraced his “go for broke” life style. She even engaged in boxing matches with him - a perfect match.
Kershaw’s book brilliantly describes London’s life in a way that is succinct, yet engrossing. Specializing in military subjects - especially World War II, Kershaw has done us all a great favor by introducing one of literature’s most fascinating figures to us in a way that is compelling, and very touching. I have not cried at the end of book since Seabiscuit, but I cried when Jack died.
I strongly recommend this biography to anyone who wants to see a lived lived to the fullest - reminiscent of a time when anything was possible and everything was thought to be within man’s reach.
I have since purchased the kindle version of the complete works of Jack London - so I will extend my residing of his works well beyond the most polar classics.
Jack London - A life by Alex Kershaw
I first read The Call of the Wild when I was probably 13. Of course I loved it and then went on to read The Sea Wolf. That was pretty much my exposure to Jack London, until I read Alex Kershaw’s biography.
Although he only lived to 40, what an amazing life Jack London lived. A man of many contradictions, he witnessed first hand the depths of depravity that man could sink to - in prison when he was 18; working thankless, dangerous jobs for pennies an hour - ruthlessly exploited by the industrialists who were in sway in1880s America.
Through those life experiences, and after extensive reading, London became one of the foremost proponents of socialism - a belief he held through his whole life. Yet while he was an advocate of the working class, he was also a maniacal acquirer of wealth - especially when Call of the Wild became a hit. Like so many proponents of causes, his life did not match his rhetoric, or expressed beliefs.
Yet even more interesting than that was his firm belief in the ascendancy of Anglo-Saxon whites. He believed that white males were the predominant species on the earth - a racist, Social Darwinism which is (sort of reflected) in some of Hitler’s philosophy (if you can call it that.) And first among the white people were the Anglo-Saxons. He was greatly influenced in this belief by Nietzche’s “superman” concept. And Jack lived life like a “superman.”
As a rebellious youth he travelled the high seas, the Klondike (Alaska) and lived life in the depths of America for the first 1/2 of his life. Unloved by his mother, he sought pleasure in alcohol, wild women, truly a hedonistic existence. All of these life experiences proved the “stuff” for his many novels and short stories.
London’s writing was reflective of the “real life” that people lived around the turn of the century. His stories are brutal, and even shocking by the Victorian standards of that time. But they were just what the reading public wanted. And as his fame and fortune spread, he clearly became the cause celebrate of his generation. Interestingly London wrote not for the literary ages, but to make money.
Searching for love, he finally finds it in his second marriage to Charmian - who embraced his “go for broke” life style. She even engaged in boxing matches with him - a perfect match.
Kershaw’s book brilliantly describes London’s life in a way that is succinct, yet engrossing. Specializing in military subjects - especially World War II, Kershaw has done us all a great favor by introducing one of literature’s most fascinating figures to us in a way that is compelling, and very touching. I have not cried at the end of book since Seabiscuit, but I cried when Jack died.
I strongly recommend this biography to anyone who wants to see a lived lived to the fullest - reminiscent of a time when anything was possible and everything was thought to be within man’s reach.
I have since purchased the kindle version of the complete works of Jack London - so I will extend my residing of his works well beyond the most polar classics.
October 16, 2013
Jack London is most famous for his book “Call of the Wild”, but the reason I chose him is because of my favorite book by him “White Fang”. I loved his description in his book and the clarity was amazing. I could read the book and actually see what was going on.
Jack London was a very poor throughout his life. Jack London’s mom was born into a wealthy family, but when it was time to marry she choose an old Civil War veteran named John London. He had a daughter of his own and they were very poor. In the biography, the author writes about Jack thinking about how poorly his mother treated him. His mother never showed him love throughout his entire life and Jack resented her for that. When Jack was born, his stepsister was the one who stepped up and took care of him. His mother never wanted him in the first place. John London had suffered a tremendous fate in the war that made the doctors take out one of his lungs. John London and his family lived in San Francisco for a short period of time, but then Jack got sick because of diseases so the family doctor told them to move out of San Francisco. So Flora, his mother, forced John to move the family to Oakland. John London was a farmer, and for a short period of time he had the best crops and vegetables of anybody in Oakland, California.
When Jack was a teenager, John London dies leaving Jack as the only one to provide money for the family. Throughout Jack London’s’ life he was either an outlaw or working for the law. Even when Jack wrote his works were not profitable or popular. He never had enough money to publish his writings. Jack London had many sorts of jobs. Some of them were stealing craw fish, working for the government for fishing violations, and working in a terrible factory with poor wage.
The influence that Jack had to write “The Call of The Wild” was the Judge in the story was a good friend of his in real life. Jack let his mind and his experiences as a child run wild to help him write his books. He was a deeply troubled man who lived a very hard life, had strong ideas and beliefs, and escaped this world through his writings.
Jack London was a very poor throughout his life. Jack London’s mom was born into a wealthy family, but when it was time to marry she choose an old Civil War veteran named John London. He had a daughter of his own and they were very poor. In the biography, the author writes about Jack thinking about how poorly his mother treated him. His mother never showed him love throughout his entire life and Jack resented her for that. When Jack was born, his stepsister was the one who stepped up and took care of him. His mother never wanted him in the first place. John London had suffered a tremendous fate in the war that made the doctors take out one of his lungs. John London and his family lived in San Francisco for a short period of time, but then Jack got sick because of diseases so the family doctor told them to move out of San Francisco. So Flora, his mother, forced John to move the family to Oakland. John London was a farmer, and for a short period of time he had the best crops and vegetables of anybody in Oakland, California.
When Jack was a teenager, John London dies leaving Jack as the only one to provide money for the family. Throughout Jack London’s’ life he was either an outlaw or working for the law. Even when Jack wrote his works were not profitable or popular. He never had enough money to publish his writings. Jack London had many sorts of jobs. Some of them were stealing craw fish, working for the government for fishing violations, and working in a terrible factory with poor wage.
The influence that Jack had to write “The Call of The Wild” was the Judge in the story was a good friend of his in real life. Jack let his mind and his experiences as a child run wild to help him write his books. He was a deeply troubled man who lived a very hard life, had strong ideas and beliefs, and escaped this world through his writings.
October 22, 2008
Not a bad bio, but not a great one, either. I had a real sense that this was sort of dashed together from cutting, pasting and rewriting already published London bios. Kershaw cvers London's involvement with the movie business in a paragraph--and considering that London's last great adventure was in trying to get his stories on screen, this seems to be a major oversight. Most other London biographies don't do any better, however; but perhaps I'm just annoyed because I managed to get a 58 page article out of the making and distribution of "The Sea Wolf" (Bosworth, Inc., 1913), and I hoped for a bit more than a measley paragraph on the part of this author.
September 1, 2011
Informative and fairly fair, but overall blatantly boosterismy and apologetic. Skims over London's drinking and womanizing in an attempt, maybe, to neutralize what had been written before and make him seem more saintly? Again, fair (and again informative), but in the end too lionizing for me to really trust it.
January 31, 2014
I wasn't sure I was up to reading this but as the pages turned my fasination grew and I couldn't wait to be part of the next adventure. This very complicated man led an exciging life and yet he never really obtained any peace from all his efforts. How sad.
June 23, 2011
Great book, much detail about his life and works.
December 9, 2013
A tradução não é das melhores mas a vida de Jack London é intensa e cheia de aventuras. Vale a leitura!
September 16, 2020
TITLE: Jack London: A Life
AUTHOR: Alex Kershaw
GENRE: Biography
PAGES: 357
FORMAT: E-book
I was a kid when I started reading Jack London’s books. Call of the Wild and White Fang still rank among my favorite books. If I knew then what I learned now, the books might have hit me just a bit harder.
With the book Jack London: A Life, Alex Kershaw introduces us to a man who lived large, truly large. As I read, I discovered that London’s books are mostly semi-autobiographical in nature. His books were not mere whims of fancy, but stories of what he lived. At the time that he wrote, he was considered to be an adventure writer and not really given the credit he was due.
But this book not only gave me the story of his life, it introduced me to London’s most tragic character, himself. His mother was more concerned with her station in life, than she was in being a mother, the truth of who his father was hit him hard, yet these facts also gave him the drive to succeed no matter what. I got a feel for his political views (socialism) and his beliefs in Nietzsche’s “superman” philosophy. London was also an oyster pirate, seal hunter, a hobo on the railways, and a gold miner in the Klondike, all before he was 20! One of the facts was that he introduced surfing to the west coast of America.
If I had to find a fault with this book, it is that at times it read like more hero worship than it did biography. Yes, it gave the good, the bad and the ugly facets of Jack London’s life, but when I read the bad and the ugly parts I felt like it was “but hey, it is Jack and what are you going to do?”
All in all, I give this book 4 bookmarks out of 5
AUTHOR: Alex Kershaw
GENRE: Biography
PAGES: 357
FORMAT: E-book
I was a kid when I started reading Jack London’s books. Call of the Wild and White Fang still rank among my favorite books. If I knew then what I learned now, the books might have hit me just a bit harder.
With the book Jack London: A Life, Alex Kershaw introduces us to a man who lived large, truly large. As I read, I discovered that London’s books are mostly semi-autobiographical in nature. His books were not mere whims of fancy, but stories of what he lived. At the time that he wrote, he was considered to be an adventure writer and not really given the credit he was due.
But this book not only gave me the story of his life, it introduced me to London’s most tragic character, himself. His mother was more concerned with her station in life, than she was in being a mother, the truth of who his father was hit him hard, yet these facts also gave him the drive to succeed no matter what. I got a feel for his political views (socialism) and his beliefs in Nietzsche’s “superman” philosophy. London was also an oyster pirate, seal hunter, a hobo on the railways, and a gold miner in the Klondike, all before he was 20! One of the facts was that he introduced surfing to the west coast of America.
If I had to find a fault with this book, it is that at times it read like more hero worship than it did biography. Yes, it gave the good, the bad and the ugly facets of Jack London’s life, but when I read the bad and the ugly parts I felt like it was “but hey, it is Jack and what are you going to do?”
All in all, I give this book 4 bookmarks out of 5
September 7, 2019
I have loved the writings of Jack London for many years, but knew precious little about his life. It turns out, London started off on a difficult path, committed crimes, ended up in jail, and hustled to survive... until the day he decided to become a writer. To London, writing was work and little more. He churned out pages and pages routinely. To be honest, I had a hard time continuing to respect his books and stories, which I had esteemed to highly, because it seemed he cared little about them as more than just a source of income.
Outside his writing, London was an advocate for socialism, and made public speeches and wrote articles to that end. He had a strained relationship with his first wife and their children, not to mention that he had, shall we say, "open-minded" ideas about romantic or sexual relationships. He struggled with alcoholism, even as he denied he was an alcoholic for years, sought out adventures that rivaled any fiction he ever wrote, spent his money unwisely, and maintained both a cynical view of humanity as well as an idealist's outlook on life. He was a dreamer who succeeded or failed at times, he was a low-life who climbed the social ladder and constantly felt he had to prove himself, he was a writer who respected the writing of others as true art even as he saw his own writing as merely vocation. As Kershaw shows, his life was a complicated one.
Outside his writing, London was an advocate for socialism, and made public speeches and wrote articles to that end. He had a strained relationship with his first wife and their children, not to mention that he had, shall we say, "open-minded" ideas about romantic or sexual relationships. He struggled with alcoholism, even as he denied he was an alcoholic for years, sought out adventures that rivaled any fiction he ever wrote, spent his money unwisely, and maintained both a cynical view of humanity as well as an idealist's outlook on life. He was a dreamer who succeeded or failed at times, he was a low-life who climbed the social ladder and constantly felt he had to prove himself, he was a writer who respected the writing of others as true art even as he saw his own writing as merely vocation. As Kershaw shows, his life was a complicated one.
January 29, 2021
What a life! What a man! By sheer energy and intent Jack London elevates himself to literary stardom and success and fame in a life packed with adventure!
Teenage pirate of the Bay of San Francisco, seal hunter, Klondike goldminer, writer and author, legendary drinker and proto surfer and agricultural innovator! Nietzschean superman!!
Alex Kershaw does a great job of trying to keep up with Jack London and cannot fail to capture the energy and sheer toughness of his life and spirit. One is constantly left dizzy with energy of the man!
Nor does Alex shy away from the bleaker and more self-destructive aspects of Jack’s nature, the whoring, the unhappy wife, his own unyielding nature. But all endeavoured with the same furious energy!
As well as being left impressed by Jack’s achievements you are encouraged to revisit his writings, and realise not just his classics, but his reportage, his social consciousness, his defence of the poor and helpless, the sheer width of his engagement.
An impressive biograph of a truly impressive man.
Teenage pirate of the Bay of San Francisco, seal hunter, Klondike goldminer, writer and author, legendary drinker and proto surfer and agricultural innovator! Nietzschean superman!!
Alex Kershaw does a great job of trying to keep up with Jack London and cannot fail to capture the energy and sheer toughness of his life and spirit. One is constantly left dizzy with energy of the man!
Nor does Alex shy away from the bleaker and more self-destructive aspects of Jack’s nature, the whoring, the unhappy wife, his own unyielding nature. But all endeavoured with the same furious energy!
As well as being left impressed by Jack’s achievements you are encouraged to revisit his writings, and realise not just his classics, but his reportage, his social consciousness, his defence of the poor and helpless, the sheer width of his engagement.
An impressive biograph of a truly impressive man.
April 10, 2020
Like most people I presume my first introduction to Jack London was in a 6th grade language arts class After reading Jack London: A Life by Alex Kershaw,I am shocked and amazed that London is so revered as a great American author. In my estimation while he is a good writer he was an unabashed Socialist /Communist.More importantly however is the fact that London was mentally abusive to those around him if not physically and addition, he is a drug addict and alcoholic However both of these situations can be explained by his terrible childhood. But again this is why I am surprised that he is so revered and still taught in schools today
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 17, 2017
This was a positively lousy book! I wanted to read this book in order to learn more about London's time in the Yukon, but there was almost nothing more than a mention of his time in Alaska. If you want to read about his philandering and infidelities, then this is indeed the book for you. If you want a primer on Socialism about someone who became extraordinarily wealthy from Capitalism, then this for you.
January 6, 2020
Interesting to learn more about this dead writer and failure of a human being. I certainly respect him whole lot less!
January 29, 2022
Morose biography about a man who was constantly searching for his meaning of life.
February 1, 2023
Excellent. The energetic writing carries through to the end. I had no idea his family life was so tragic.
January 3, 2024
A fascinating account of London's life and times.
December 18, 2024
Does anyone read Jack London now? This is a terrific biography of a barely believable life. Of course he's tainted by his 'of it's time' racism, etc. But at his best he's a great storyteller and (for some reason) I read Call of The Wild every Christmas as the snowy setting gets me festive.
July 2, 2021
Full review here: www.thanktheuniverse.org
A suberb biography of a man of great courage. Not just for his physical accomplishments, but for his mental fortitude to keep climbing the mountains even after knock backs and failures. He squeezed about 10 lifetimes of activity and achievement into 40 years. What a fascinating human.
A suberb biography of a man of great courage. Not just for his physical accomplishments, but for his mental fortitude to keep climbing the mountains even after knock backs and failures. He squeezed about 10 lifetimes of activity and achievement into 40 years. What a fascinating human.
January 23, 2016
Read so I could lead discussion on Martin Eden but also selected for nonfiction club
April 30, 2017
I picked up this book because I have always loved The Call of the Wild and White Fang. In a way I wish I hadn't! It was an interesting story but had me horrified with London's support for eugenics and belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority. Of course that is hindsight, 100 years after the time he lived. At least he changed his mind partially before he died.
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