Jack London's Racial Lives

Jack London's Racial Lives PDF Author: Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820339709
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Jack London (1876-1916), known for his naturalistic and mythic tales, remains among the most popular and influential American writers in the world. Jack London's Racial Lives offers the first full study of the enormously important issue of race in London's life and diverse works, whether set in the Klondike, Hawaii, or the South Seas or during the Russo-Japanese War, the Jack Johnson world heavyweight bouts, or the Mexican Revolution. Jeanne Campbell Reesman explores his choices of genre by analyzing racial content and purpose and judges his literary artistry against a standard of racial tolerance. Although he promoted white superiority in novels and nonfiction, London sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others--most often as protagonists--in his short fiction. Why the disparity? For London, racial and class identity were intertwined: his formation as an artist began with the mixed "heritage" of his family. His mother taught him racism, but he learned something different from his African American foster mother, Virginia Prentiss. Childhood poverty, shifting racial allegiances, and a "psychology of want" helped construct the many "houses" of race and identity he imagined. Reesman also examines London's socialism, his study of Darwin and Jung, and the illnesses he suffered in the South Seas. With new readings of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and many other works, such as the explosive Pacific stories, Reesman reveals that London employed many of the same literary tropes of race used by African American writers of his period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic mulatto, and ethnic diaspora. Hawaii seemed to inspire his most memorable visions of a common humanity.

Jack London's Racial Lives

Jack London's Racial Lives PDF Author: Jeanne Campbell Reesman
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820339709
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jack London (1876-1916), known for his naturalistic and mythic tales, remains among the most popular and influential American writers in the world. Jack London's Racial Lives offers the first full study of the enormously important issue of race in London's life and diverse works, whether set in the Klondike, Hawaii, or the South Seas or during the Russo-Japanese War, the Jack Johnson world heavyweight bouts, or the Mexican Revolution. Jeanne Campbell Reesman explores his choices of genre by analyzing racial content and purpose and judges his literary artistry against a standard of racial tolerance. Although he promoted white superiority in novels and nonfiction, London sharply satirized racism and meaningfully portrayed racial others--most often as protagonists--in his short fiction. Why the disparity? For London, racial and class identity were intertwined: his formation as an artist began with the mixed "heritage" of his family. His mother taught him racism, but he learned something different from his African American foster mother, Virginia Prentiss. Childhood poverty, shifting racial allegiances, and a "psychology of want" helped construct the many "houses" of race and identity he imagined. Reesman also examines London's socialism, his study of Darwin and Jung, and the illnesses he suffered in the South Seas. With new readings of The Call of the Wild, Martin Eden, and many other works, such as the explosive Pacific stories, Reesman reveals that London employed many of the same literary tropes of race used by African American writers of his period: the slave narrative, double-consciousness, the tragic mulatto, and ethnic diaspora. Hawaii seemed to inspire his most memorable visions of a common humanity.

Rereading Jack London

Rereading Jack London PDF Author: Leonard Cassuto
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804735162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Jack London has long been recognized as one of the most colorful figures in American literature. He is America’s most widely translated author (into more than eighty languages), and although his works have been neglected until recently by academic critics in the United States, he is finally winning recognition as a major figure in American literary history. The breadth and depth of new critical study of London’s work in recent decades attest to his newfound respectability. London criticism has moved beyond a traditional concerns of realism and naturalism as well as beyond the timeworn biographical focus to engage such theoretical approaches as race, gender, class, post-structuralism, and new historicism. The range and intellectual energy of the essays collected here give the reader a new sense of London’s richness and variety, especially his treatment of diverse cultures. Having in the past focused more on London’s personal "world,” we are now afforded an opportunity to look more closely at his art and the numerous worlds it uncovers.

Wolf

Wolf PDF Author: James L Haley
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465021670
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Born a working-class, fatherless Californian in 1876, Jack London spent his youth as a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast; by adulthood he had matured into the iconic American author of such still universally loved books as The Call of the Wild and White Fang. In Wolf, award-winning biographer James L. Haley explores the forgotten Jack London: a hard-living globetrotter bristling with ideas whose passion for social justice roared until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Haley resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.

Jack London--an American Radical?

Jack London--an American Radical? PDF Author: Carolyn Johnston
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


Northland Stories

Northland Stories PDF Author: Jack London
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780140189964
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Like the characters in the popular dime novels of the time, London's heroes display such manly virtues as courage, loyalty, and steadfastness as they conftont the merciless frozen expanses of the north. Yet London breaks free of stereotypical figures and one-dimensional plots to explore deeper psychological and social questions of self-mastery, masculinity, and racial domination. The uneasy relationship between the Native Americans and whites lies at the heart of many of the stories, while others reflect London's growing awareness of the destruction wrought by the white incursion on Indian culture. Northland Stories comprises nineteen of Jack London's greatest short works, including "An Odyssy of the North" (London's major breakthrough as a young author), "The White Silence," "The Law of Life," "The League of the Old Men," and the world classic "To Build a Fire." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Stories of Hawaii

Stories of Hawaii PDF Author: Jack London
Publisher: Mutual Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
13 short stories and other writings of Hawaii.

The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild PDF Author: Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin
Publisher: Macmillan Reference USA
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
"Published in 1903 to immense popular acclaim, and since translated into more than eighty languages, Jack London's The Call of the Wild today remains one of the best animal stories ever written. London's masterpiece blends high adventure, natural lore, frontier drama, emotion, and heroism in the tale of Buck, a tame dog who perseveres through brutal captivity in dogsledding teams crossing the frozen Yukon, and who ultimately becomes the leader of a wolf pack. As Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin discovers in this unprecedented full-length study of London's most famous novel, Buck is a classic Romantic hero, rising above harsh reality by virtue of his own true nature - his beauty, his power, his passion, and his instinct for justice."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Law of Life

The Law of Life PDF Author: Jack London
Publisher: Lindhardt og Ringhof
ISBN: 8726644916
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 12

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Book Description
The short story "The Law of Life" by Jack London is a study on the human psyche, as one faces the familiar cycle of life and death. Old Koskoosh, who is the father of his Native American tribe's chief, is dying. As his people leave him and he lays on the ground in his final hours to wait for his end, he looks back on his life. Memorable events fill his thoughts until the very end - even until the wolves arrive. The short story is one of London's stories inspired by the period the writer spent at the Klondike Gold Rush in the late 19th century and was published in the early 20th century. Jack London (1876–1916) was an American writer and social activist. He grew up in the working class, but became a worldwide celebrity and one of the highest paid authors of his time. He wrote several novels, which are considered classics today, among these 'Call of the Wild', 'Sea Wolf' and 'White Fang'.

Jack London's Tales of Cannibals and Headhunters

Jack London's Tales of Cannibals and Headhunters PDF Author: Jack London
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826337917
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
"Jack London's Tales of Cannibals and Headhunters" is set in the romantic and dangerous South Seas and illustrated with the original artwork and several maps.

Jack London

Jack London PDF Author: Earle Labor
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466863161
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
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 theWild, 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.