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American
Literature Sites
Foley Library Catalog
A short description
of London from The Book of Jack London
Jack London at work
Jack
London's Ranch: Photographs is a set of pictures from his home in
Glen Ellen, California
The
Jack London Story and the Beauty Ranch is a fascinating oral history
project that includes interviews with Milo Shepard, Sara S. Hodson,
Jeanne Reesman, Waring Jones, and Jacqueline Tavernier-Courbin. (New
URL)(Note: Page will take a few seconds to load.)
The Huntington
Library is the major repository for Jack London's papers and is
an essential stop for researchers working on London.
The Jack
London site at UC Berkeley is one of the best author sites anywhere
on the web. Containing HTML
versions of London's works, photographs,
biographical
information
by noted London biographer Clarice Stasz, a list of Jack
London's works by date of composition by Jack London Journal
editor James Williams, image files of documents,
and bibliographies,
it is an essential stop for students and researchers working on London.
"Digital
Jack" at Centenary College of Louisiana includes bibliographies, links,
and information about London artifacts in the Peters Research Center.
Utah
State University Jack London Collection includes pictures of first
edition book covers. (New URL)
The Jack
London International Site offers an international perspective on Jack
London, with essays by the editor, Reinhard Wissdorf, and such notable
London scholars as Dr. Vil M. Bykov. It features materials in English
and German, including a timeline, interviews with Jack London, a biographical
sketch, pictures (including a slideshow with music), and a discussion list.
The Jack London Ranch Album.
This interesting biographical site is well designed and rich in materials
not available elsewhere; in addition to many pictures, it includes memories
of London by his daughter
Becky and by Anna
Strunsky, a picture of his typewriter, and an
account of London's last hours by London scholar Russ Kingman.
(New URL)
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List of Works Online (Others are available at the Jack
London site)
The
God of His Fathers and Other Stories (1901;
stories)
Children
of the Frost (1902; stories)
The
Call of the Wild (1903)
The
People of the Abyss (1903)
The
Sea-Wolf (1904)
White
Fang (1906)
Moon-Face
& Other Stories (1906; stories,
including "All
Gold Canyon")
Before
Adam (1907)
The
Iron Heel (1908)
Lost
Face (1910; stories, including
"To
Build a Fire")
Burning
Daylight (1910)
Adventure(1911)
Martin
Eden (1913)
John
Barleycorn (1913)
The
Valley of the Moon (1913)
The
Star Rover (1915)
The
Red One (1918; stories)
from
The
Book of Jack London, vol. 2, by Charmian London (New York: Century,
1921), 219-221.
Our main meal was at 12:30. This hour better
suited our work and Ranch plans generally. At twelve the mail-sack--a
substantial leather one bought before we sailed on the Snark--arrived
at the back porch, and Nakata brought it to me to sort the contents.
In the half-hour before dinner, Jack had glanced over the daily paper,
read his letters, indicated replies on some of them for my guidance, and
[219] laid the more important ones in their wire tray, one of many such
nested on a small table beside the Oregon myrtle rolltop desk where he
transacted business. I always endeavored to have his ten pages of
hand-written manuscript transcribed--an average of two and a half typewritten
letter-size sheets--before the second gong (an ancient concave disk of
Korean brass) belled the fifteen-minute call to table. Jack implored
me to be on time to the minute's tick, and attend to seating the guests,
so that he might work to the last moment.
In many minds,
I am sure, still lives the vision of the hale, big-hearted man of God's
out-of-doors, the beardless patriarch, his curls rumpled, like as not
the green visor unremoved, pattering with that quick, light step along
the narrow vine-shaded porch, through the screened doorway and the length
of the tapa-brown room to his seat in the solid red koa chair at the head
of the table. "Here comes a real man!" was the prevailing sentiment.
How he doted upon that
board with its long double-row of friendly faces turned in greeting, ever
ready with another plate and portion! It was his ideal--carried
from old days with the Strunskys'. "In Jack's house," one writes me, "I
met the most interesting people of my life and of the world." And
perhaps, while we fell to our portions, before his own was tasted he would
read aloud newspaper items or newly received letters; or he might launch
out in a fine rage of his eternal enthusiasm, upon some theme that claimed
him, or strike into argument, whipped hot out of his seething brain and
heart. Always there was in him the potent urge to gather all about
him into knowledge of whatever claimed his attention. Years only
added to his capacity to function in every potentiality. There were
no numb or inactive surfaces in his make-up, mentally, physically.
He reached in all directions, to play, to work, to thought, to sensation.
His face, smiling, cracked with thought-wrinkles, weather-wrinkles, laughter
wrinkles. [220] At no time did he have more than a few gray hairs; and
his hands, to his pride, were very firm, showing no dilated arteries.
"One is as young as one's arteries," he was fond of saying. . . .
Many were more impressed
by his eyes than any other feature or characteristic. . . . They were
eyes that look into one, and through and beyond--as if what they saw on
the surface, in one's own, led his into the deeps behind, into the brain,
conscious and unconscious and far behind again into the intelligence of
the race down through all the drift of the human. Gray, or iris-blue,
they were when mild, the large pupils giving them a splendid, brilliant
darkness; but let him be angry, instantly they went cold, metallic, the
enormous pupils narrowing to bitter points. [221]
"A Hero to His Valet" by Yoshimatsu Nakata, transcribed
by Barry Stevens (Jack London Journal 2001): 26-103.
After he dressed, Mr. London would start to work. He had a certain way
of writing, and it was the same every day. He has a cigarette in his left
hand and a blunt fountain pen with a wire tube at the end--a stylograph.
He always used this instead of a fountain pen. The idea is that he doesn't
have to watch the nib to see if it is turning to one side. When he is
writing he is always humming something or singing. It is called "Redwing."
He played that all the time on the phonograph on the Snark, and
at home he still hums and sings it. Then he puffs a cigarette and writes
some more and he does that for twenty minutes and then he gets up and
takes a drink of Scotch whiskey. Then he eats a Japanese fish, the small
white dried fish called creme iriko that they use for bait. He eats that
once in a while and then writes. Every twenty minutes he counts the pages.
he writes so big, I suppose there are a thousand words to about twenty
pages. After he writes about an hour, he begins to count and then writes
about twenty minutes again. About four or five times he does this, and
then he figures he is finished with his work. (36-37)
Comments
to D. Campbell.
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