Jack London Biography

Prolific American novelist and short story writer, whose works deal romantically the overwhelming power of nature and the struggle for survival. London's identification with the wilderness makes him the antecedent of the Green movement. His left-wing philosophy is seen in the class struggle novel THE IRON HEEL (1908). JOHN BARLEYCORN, which describes the London's drinking bouts, connects him with such authors as Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. On the other hand, London's views about the superiority of white people and that only the strongest deserve to survive have placed him among the ultra-right conservatives.

"Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it." - (From 'Getting into Print', first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine)
Jack London was born in San Francisco. He was deserted by his father, William Henry Chaney, an itinerant astrologer, and raised in Oakland by his mother Flora Wellman, a music teacher and spiritualist, and stepfather John London, whose surname he took. London's youth was marked by poverty. At the age of ten he became an avid reader, and borrowed books from the Oakland Public Library, where Ina Coolbirth recommended him the works of Flaubert, Tolstoy and other major novelist.

After leaving school at the age of 14, London worked as a seaman, rode in freight trains as a hobo and adopted socialistic views as a member of the protest armies of unemployed. In 1894 he was arrested in Niagara Falls and jailed for vagrancy. These years made him determined to better himself but they also gave later material for such works as THE SEA-WOLF (1904), which was partly based on his horrific experiences as a sailor in Pacific Ocean. THE ROAD (1907), a collection of short stories, inspired later writers like John Steinbeck and Jack Kerouac.

Without having much formal education, London educated himself in public libraries, and gained at the age of 19 admittance to the University of California at Berkeley. He had already started to write. London left the school before year was over and went to seek a fortune in the Klondike gold rush of 1897. His attempt to find gold was unsuccessful. London spent the winter near Dawson City suffering from scurvy, and returned in the spring to San Francisco.

For the remainder of 1898 London again tried to earn his living by writing. His early stories appeared in the Overland Monthly and Atlantic Monthly. In 1900 he married Elisabeth (Bess) Maddern, but left her and their two daughters three years afterwards, eventually to marry Charmian Kittredge.

In 1901 London ran unsuccessfully on the Socialist party ticket for mayor of Oakland. He started to produce steadily novels, nonfiction and short stories, becoming in his lifetime one of the most popular authors. London had early built his system of producing a daily quota of thousand words, which he did not give up during his travels and drinking periods. London's first novel, THE SON OF THE WOLF, appeared in 1900. It gained a wide audience as his Alaska stories, THE CALL OF THE WILD (1903), in which a giant pet dog Buck finds his survival instincts in Yukon, WHITE FANG (1906), and BURNING DAYLIGHT (1910).

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame; it comes to the soldier, war-mad on a stricken field and refusing quarter; and it came to Buck leading the pack, sounding the old wolf-cry, straining after the food that was alive and that fled swiftly before him through the moonlight."
(from The Call of the Wild)
In 1902 London went to England, where he studied the backside of the British imperium: the living conditions in East End and working class areas of the capital city. His report about the economic degradation of the poor, THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS (1903), was a surprise success in the U.S. but criticized in England. In the middle of bitter separation in 1904, London traveled to Korea as a correspondent for Hearst's newspapers to cover the war between Russia and Japan (1904-05). Next year he published his first collection of non-fiction pieces, THE WAR OF THE CLASSES, which included his lectures on socialism. In 1907 London and Charmian started aboard the Snark a sailing trip around the world. After hardships they abrupted the journey in Australia. London's financial affairs were in chaos, and he began to buy plots from a struggling writer, Sinclair Lewis, to produce more articles and stories for sale.

London had purchased in 1910 a large tract of land near Glen Ellen in Sonoma County, and devoted his energy and money improving and enlarging his Beauty Ranch. He also traveled widely and reported on the Mexican revolution. In 1913 London's Beauty Ranch burned to the ground, and he was told by his doctor that his kidneys were failing.

Among London's major works are The Sea-Wolf (1904), remembered from its Nietzschean hero, visionary fantasy The Iron Heel (1908), which became very popular in the Soviet Union, THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK (1911), a travel book from his journeys in South Pacific, and semi-autobiographical MARTIN EDEN (1909), London's most ambitious novel. The protagonist, Eden, is uneducated, rough outsider, who aspires to money and status through writing. He is drawn to Ruth Morse, a woman who has everything he thinks he wants a wife to have - beauty, charm, wealth. Eden gains success, but becomes disillusioned over his good fortune, and commits suicide.

A few months before his death, London resigned from the Socialist Party. Debts, alcoholism, illness, and fear of losing his creativity darkened the author's last years. He died on November 22, 1916, officially of gastro-intestinal uremia. However, there has been speculations that London committed suicide with morphine, but the two vials which were found did not contained the dosis acquired for a suicide - especially for someone who was trained to take morphine against suffering.

London's literary models: Kipling, Stevenson. He was also influenced by the theories of Darwin, Spencer, Marx and Nietzsche. Several of London's works depict the attempts of the capitalist class, trying to establish a fascist oligarchy, and the proletariat fighting for socialism. In his later years London was interested in the work of Carl Jung. - Literary "successor": Upton Sinclair. His influence has been considerable on such writers as Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and Robert Ruark.