New Biography of Jack London

Works on Jack London continue to appear. Here’s a review of one of the latest, James Haley’s
Wolf: The Lives of Jack London.

Johann Hare notes how “Haley calls London ‘the most misunderstood figure in the American literary canon’—but that might be because he is ultimately impossible to understand.”

Understood or not, Hare is certain of London’s literary influence:

If you read his work today, you can see literary semen spraying across the American century as he makes possible some of the most important writers in the United States and beyond. Ernest Hemingway and John Steinbeck rushed to his rawness and imitated it. The Beats followed him onto the road and into a jazzy, improvised style. George Orwell followed him to live among tramps and was inspired to write 1984 by London's own dystopia, The Iron Heel. Everyone from Upton Sinclair to Philip Roth claims him as an influence, and he seems to have left an imprint well beyond that. Look at the pictures of his handsome bulk insolently confronting you from a leather jacket, and you see Marlon Brando and James Dean decades before their time.

from "Jack London's Dark Side"
-- A new biography confronts the good, bad, and repellent.
By Johann Hari
Slate