Jack London: An American Life - Couverture souple

Labor, Earle

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0374534918 ISBN 13 : 9780374534912

Editeur : FSG Adult, 2014

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

Praise for Jack London: An American Life A lively and authoritative biography. --Caleb Crain, The New Yorker Labor is the world's foremost Jack London scholar. His working-class background and deep erudition make him the right man to chronicle the life of this most popular American author. Now curator of the Jack London Museum and Research Center and emeritus professor at Centenary College in Louisiana, Labor has produced what will most likely remain the authoritative biography for generations to come . . . If you want to acquaint yourself with the writer whom much of the rest of the world equates with Melville, Hemingway and Faulkner, then begin with Labor's elegantly written, thoroughly researched and steel-eyed biography. He fills in the gaps between London's impoverished youth, rise to fame and untimely death at the age of 40--in brilliant and plain prose that does honor to London himself. --Eric Miles Williamson, The Washington Post Mr. Labor--an excellent writer, who knows the London canon backward and forward, brings this most American of authors to vivid life. Jack London: An American Life" is almost as much fun to read as its subject's best work . . . Mr. Labor, a professor of American literature at Centenary College in Shreveport, La., is the country's foremost London scholar. He wisely lets London's life and art unfold without judgment. Despite his continuing popularity, London has often been dismissed as a mere writer of boys' tales. But at his best he is among the greatest writers that this country has produced. If you want proof, just read his short story 'To Build a Fire' and then read this terrific book. --John Steele Gordon, The Wall Street Journal[A] first-rate literary biography . . . [an] authoritative new life of Jack London (1876-1916) . . . Earle Labor's Jack London: An American Life doesn't take away any of its subject's glamour or fascination. To the contrary. The book is not just definitive, as one would expect from the major London scholar of the past fifty years, it is also exceptionally entertaining . . . As Earle Labor makes clear in his fine biography, Jack London was a remarkable man and a writer of impressive variety, richness, and accomplishment. --Michael Dirda, Virginia Quarterly Review What a life. What a man. What a book. Only superlatives can describe this definitive biography of the nation's most popular and successful novelist of the early 20th century . . . Earle Labor has devoted much of a lifetime to the study of London and his works and has given us a book so meticulous in its fast-moving detail that the reader feels he is almost at London's side . . . Biographer Earle Labor summarizes Jack London succinctly: '... few writers mirror so clearly the American Dream of success and the corollary idea of the Self-Made Man. --Pete Hannaford, The Washington Times --Various

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Jack London was born a working-class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast - by turns playing the role of hobo, sailor, prospector, and oyster pirate. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed, bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea Wolf. London was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favourite animals. At his peak as the highest-paid writer in America, he was nevertheless constantly broke. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice, he burned himself out at forty: sick, angry, and disillusioned, but left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery. In Jack London, the noted scholar Earle Labor explores the forgotten London - at once a hard-living globe-trotter and a man alive with ideas, whose passion for social justice roared until the day he died. Returning London to his proper place in the American pantheon, Labor resurrects a major American novelist in his full fire and glory.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: FSG Adult
• Date d'édition: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0374534918
• ISBN 13: 9780374534912
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 480