*1903*
*age 27*
.
(american writer)
(1876 – 1916)
(January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)
(died at age 40)
(like edgar allan poe)
(under similiar booze-addled murky circumstances)
(like john lennon)
(“man you should’ve seen them kicking edgar allan poe…”)
(in 1905, london purchased a 1,000 acre (4 km²) ranch in glen ellen, sonoma county, california, on the eastern slope of sonoma mountain, for $26,450)
he wrote that “next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me”
he desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise.
(writing, always a commercial enterprise with london, now became even more a means to an end: “I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate”)
(like the beatles writing their swimming pools)
(after 1910, his literary works were mostly potboilers, written out of the need to provide operating income for the ranch)
(joan london writes “few reviewers bothered any more to criticize his work seriously, for it was obvious that jack was no longer exerting himself”)
clarice stasz writes:
(“london had taken fully to heart the vision, expressed in his agrarian fiction, of the land as the closest earthly version of Eden … he educated himself through the study of agricultural manuals and scientific tomes. He conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom” he was proud of the first concrete silo in california, of a circular piggery he designed himself. he hoped to adapt the wisdom of asian sustainable agriculture to the United States. he hired both italian and chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles can be seen today”)
the ranch was, by most measures, a colossal failure.
Sympathetic observers such as Stasz treat his projects as potentially feasible, and ascribe their failure to bad luck or to being ahead of their time.
Unsympathetic historians such as Kevin Starr suggest that he was a bad manager, distracted by other concerns and impaired by his alcoholism.
(starr notes that London was absent from his ranch about six months a year between 1910 and 1916, and says, “He liked the show of managerial power, but not grinding attention to detail …. London’s workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man’s hobby”)
London spent $80,000 to build a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) stone mansion (“Wolf House”) on the property.
Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, the mansion was destroyed by fire.
(london’s last visit to Hawaii, from December 1915, lasted eight months during which he met with Duke Kahanamoku, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana’ole, Queen Lili‘uokalani and many others, before returning to his ranch in July 1916. he was suffering from kidney failure, but he continued to work)
(the ranch (abutting stone remnants of Wolf House) is now a National Historic Landmark and is protected in ‘Jack London State Historic Park’)
Many older sources describe his death as a suicide, and some still do.
however, this appears to be at best a rumor, or speculation based on incidents in his fiction writings.
His death certificate gives the cause as uremia, following acute renal colic, a type of pain often described as “the worst pain […] ever experienced”, commonly caused by kidney stones.
Uremia is also known as uremic poisoning.
(he died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. he was in extreme pain and taking morphine, and it is possible that a morphine overdose, accidental or deliberate, may have contributed)
(clarice stasz, in a capsule biography, writes “following london’s death, for a number of reasons a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide)
(recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature)
(“John Griffith “Jack” London’ (born John Griffith Chaney,was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist)
A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone, including science fiction.
Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories “To Build a Fire”, “An Odyssey of the North”, and “Love of Life”.
(he also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as “The Pearls of Parlay” and “The Heathen”, and of the San Francisco Bay area in The Sea Wolf)
London was part of the radical literary group “The Crowd” in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers.
.
(he wrote several powerful works dealing with these topics, such as…)
his dystopian novel The Iron Heel
his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss
the war of the classes
.
.
.
.
👈👈👈☜*“DEAD AMERICAN MALE WRITERS”* ☞ 👉👉👉
.
.
💕💝💖💓🖤💙🖤💙🖤💙🖤❤️💚💛🧡❣️💞💔💘❣️🧡💛💚❤️🖤💜🖤💙🖤💙🖤💗💖💝💘
.
.
*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
.
.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥