Author Description

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.