1,992 words
Jack London
The People of the Abyss
New York: Macmillan, 1903
Some phrases stay with you for life, and one such for me has been attributed to Carl Jung, but seems rather to be a Latin motto favored by the European alchemists of the 15th century: Liber librum aperit, or, “one book opens another.” (more…)
467 words
Spanish version here
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
467 words
Spanish version here
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”) (more…)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”) (more…)
1,653 words
When we envision the future — and I am sure we do that a lot — we imagine what a white-only ethnostate will actually be like. Since many of us are already conservative in our views, so conservative that we really don’t yet have much of a place in mainstream American politics, (more…)
1,540 words
It is quite fair to say that I became a Socialist in a fashion somewhat similar to the way in which the Teutonic pagans became Christians — it was hammered into me. Not only was I not looking for Socialism at the time of my conversion, but I was fighting it. I was very young and callow, did not know much of anything, and though I had never even heard of a school called “Individualism,” I sang the paean of the strong with all my heart.
Evgenii Vuchetich, We Shall Beat Our Swords Into Plowshares, 1957
3,775 words
Editor’s Note:
The following text is Jack London’s essay “Wanted: A New Law of Development,” from his book The War of the Classes (1905). The subject of this essay is eugenics and dysgenics, although London does not use those words. So one can better follow his argument, I have edited out passages where he adduces example after example from the news of the day.
Evolution is no longer a mere tentative hypothesis. (more…)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”) (more…)
Jack London
1,160 words
English original here
Pred pár rokmi sa istá mladá žena vydala na cestu z Alabamy až do Kalifornie, kde ju čakalo štúdium na univerzite. V tom čase jej strýko povedal príbeh o tom, ako vlastne vznikla Kalifornia. Ako iste viete, Amerika bola osídlená ľuďmi, ktorí sa rozhodli nevrátiť do Európy. Boli medzi nimi náboženskí fanatici, zlodeji koní, utečenci pred spravodlivosťou, hľadači zlata, či ničím neviazaní dobrodruhovia. Postupne títo ľudia osídlili východné pobrežie, ale nie všetci našli to, čo hľadali a preto sa rozhodli ísť ďalej smerom na západ a usadiť sa tam. (more…)
442 words
Jack London nació John Griffit Chaney en San Fransisco el 12 de enero de 1876. Un aventurero y hombre orquesta en su juventud, London logró fama y fortuna como un escritor de ficción y periodista. Pero nunca había olvidado sus raíces de clase trabajadora, y se mantuvo de por vida un defensor de los derechos del trabajador, sindicalismo y socialismo revolucionario. (more…)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
Jack London
1,311 words
English original here
Il y a des années, lorsqu’une jeune femme quittait l’Alabama pour aller à l’université en Californie, son oncle lui racontait l’histoire de la naissance de la Californie. L’Amérique, voyez-vous, était peuplée par des gens qui ne pouvaient simplement pas s‘adapter en Europe : fanatiques religieux, voleurs de chevaux, criminels en fuite, chercheurs de fortune, et autres gens libres de toute attache. (more…)
442 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
769 words
Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” stands out as one of his very best works.
An early, children’s version of the story appeared in Youth’s Companion on May 29, 1902. (more…)
Jack London near the end of his life
3,060 words
Part 4 of 4
Jack London was a fervent and active member of the American socialist movement for many years. He, however, possessed a radically different interpretation of socialist doctrine from that of the mainstream of the movement. (more…)
4,140 words
Part 3 of 4
We saw in the first part[s] of this study that virtually all of Jack London’s writing, even his earliest work, gave explicit expression to his strong racial consciousness. Despite his otherwise very healthy racial and philosophical views, however, London’s understanding of the Jews required a long time to mature. (more…)
Johann Heinrich Fuseli, "Thor, in the boat of Hymir, battering the Midgard Serpent," 1790
3,422 words
Part 2 of 4
Race was of utmost importance to London. His unshakable views on the subject were expressed ardently even in some of his works of socialist propaganda. A good sampling of London’s racial perspective at the turn of the century may be found in his letters to Cloudesley Johns. Johns, a young post-office employee from southern California, wrote London a fan letter in 1899, praising one of the latter’s magazine articles. The result was a strong friendship that lasted until London’s death. (more…)
Jack London, 1876–1916
2,835 words
Part 1 of 4
The life of Jack London, the extraordinarily popular turn-of-the-century American author, was every bit as fascinating as those of the fictional characters depicted in his stories. He was a man of action as well as of thought. (more…)
1,996 words
Translated by Bruno Cariou
The facility with which ideas lacking any real consistency sometimes acquire an evocative force, to the point of becoming a sort of alibi for the passions, is amazing: those who have held them to be true, experience them as such so vividly that they end up believing they have found confirmations of them in their own deepest experiences.
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“There never was a good biography of a good novelist,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed. “He is too many people, if he’s any good.” This dictum holds particularly true in the case of Jack London (1876–1916). For biographers and critics as well, he is the most elusive of subjects. As a person, as a writer, and most of all as a man of ideas, he continually takes on different and sharply contrasting forms.
372 words
Jack London was born John Griffith Chaney in San Francisco on January 12, 1876. An adventurer and Jack of all trades in his youth, London achieved fame and fortune as a fiction writer and journalist. But he never forgot his working class roots and remained a life-long advocate of workers’ rights, unionism, and revolutionary socialism. (See his essay “What Life Means to Me.”)
3,429 words
I was born in the working-class. Early I discovered enthusiasm, ambition, and ideals; and to satisfy these became the problem of my child-life. My environment was crude and rough and raw. I had no outlook, but an uplook rather. My place in society was at the bottom. Here life offered nothing but sordidness and wretchedness, both of the flesh and the spirit; for here flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented.
Jack London
1,113 words
Slovak translation here
Years ago, when a young woman set out from Alabama to go to college in California, her uncle told her the story of how California was born. America, you see, was populated by people who just did not fit in back in Europe: religious fanatics, horse thieves, bail jumpers, fortune seekers, and other footloose folk. When they settled on the East Coast, the ones who didn’t fit in there moved a little further West and settled. Those who didn’t fit in there, moved still further West. (more…)
