Happy birthday, Jack London

Jack London, survivor and author of stories about wilderness and survival, born January 12, 1876. What are some of your favorite stories by him? I like "To Build a Fire."

Loved all of his work.

It's incredible and incredibly sad to think that Jack London died at the young age of 40, in illness and physical pain. One can only wonder what he could have written if he had another 20 or 30 years, for many authors produced their deepest works in maturity, rather than in youth. But he lived a rich life of travel and adventure -- far outpacing most of us 21st century people. He went to the Yukon, Japan, and Australia -- what is our contemporary equivalent in terms of difficulty? Going to the the Antarctica?

I'm only thankful that he left us many stories to enjoy.

Interesting - I didn't know that Jack London died so young. Yes, that is most certainly a tragedy. No doubt his best books were still in his future - stories that were never written. I have only one book by Jack London, the two-story collection: "The Call Of The Wild" and "White Fang".

Tell me, Bingley and Chaosmagnet, what do you admire about his work?

I decided to do a little more research on Jack London's life. These words caught my attention ...

---
His life as a writer essentially began in 1893. That year he had weathered a harrowing sealing voyage, one in which a typhoon had nearly taken out London and his crew. The 17-year-old adventurer had made it home and regaled his mother with his tales of what had happened to him. When she saw an announcement in one of the local papers for a writing contest, she pushed her son to write down and submit his story.
Armed with just an eighth-grade education, London captured the $25 first prize, beating out college students from Berkeley and Stanford.
----

So he was born into a working class family in San Francisco. And since he had no money, he took jobs on sealing boats. And before his 18'th birthday, he almost died when the sealing boat where he was working as an apprentice was hit by a major typhoon and was almost lost at sea.

Now that is a story!

For us ETS folks, Jack London has a definite appeal as an author who can describe the harsh conditions of nature persuasively, almost like he lived it. (Gee, I wonder how that could have happened? Maybe it's because he actually lived it?) This is not to ignore his craft -- his stories, though often relatively simple, are quite well-told and well-organized. Always a pleasure!

I read London’s , “ The Iron Heel” , eons ago , as a college student in the ‘60s, on assignment, for a political science class. It was powerful and frightening, even for a fairly grizzled city kid like me. I suggest all of you read it today. “ Everything old is new again”.

I remember reading To Build a Fire in high school English class. This was a country school and everybody in the class came alive discussing it. The farm kids in the class really liked it and there was a run on jack London books at the school library shortly thereafter.