Although Jack London (1876-1916) wrote on a great variety of subjects, he gained his first and most lasting fame as the author of tales of the Klondike gold rush.At the age of twenty-one London himself had trekked to the Yukon in hope of easy riches. What he found instead was a wealth of extraordinary experience, which he turned to account in his first collection of stories, The Son of the Wolf: Tales of the Far North (1900).The book centres on the exploits of Malemute Kid, who dispenses crude but unerring justice through his canny understanding of the minds and hearts of the people of this raw frontier territory. They act out their dramas of life and death in mining camps and on the Long Trail, against the backdrop ofthe frozen Northland. The stories tell of gambles won and lost, of endurance and sacrifice, and often turn on the unsuspected qualities of exceptional women and the complex relations between the white adventurers and the native tribes.This new edition, which includes the whole of London's first book and many of the best Northland tales from his later collections, makes available fresh perspectives on the work of this enduringly rewarding writer.
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I've been meaning to read a biography about Jack London. And then I remembered that it's probably been over twenty years since I read anything by him. I remember reading the universally required “To Build a Fire” in high school, and then, on my own, reading The Call of the Wild and White Fang.
So I grabbed this collection of short stories in order to get started and they are fabulous.
Trigger warnings about animal cruelty and what extreme elements can do to the human body.
I didn't find him to be racist, in fact many of his non-white characters are fully developed and are more often the hero of the story vs the “white man”, but these were written around 1900, so keep that in mind while reading.
Also, I found one story to be pretty dismissive about women. Then, the next TWO featured extremely strong female characters that were just awesome. I read somewhere this might be because London's second wife was quite awesome. There is a balance here I don't normally run into with classics.
Now onto more his “socialist” writings.
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