The Jacket (Star-Rover), The Kempton-Wace Letters & The Mutiny of the Elsinore - Couverture souple

London, Jack

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 9390262089 ISBN 13 : 9789390262083

Editeur : Prince Classics, 2020

Synopsis

The Star Rover is a novel by American writer Jack London published in 1915 (published in the United Kingdom as The Jacket). It is science fiction, and involves both mysticism and reincarnation.


A framing story is told in the first person by Darrell Standing, a university professor serving life imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison for murder. Prison officials try to break his spirit by means of a device called "the jacket," a canvas jacket which can be tightly laced so as to compress the whole body, inducing angina. Standing discovers how to withstand the by entering a kind of trance state, in which he walks among the stars and experiences portions of past lives.


I trod interstellar space, exalted by the knowledge that I was bound on vast adventure, where, at the end, I would find all the cosmic formulae and have made clear to me the ultimate secret of the universe. In my hand I carried a long glass wand. It was borne in upon me that with the tip of this wand I must touch each star in passing. And I knew, in all absoluteness, that did I but miss one star I should be precipitated into some unplummeted abyss of unthinkable and eternal punishment and guilt.


The novel presents a discussion of the philosophy of love and sex, written in the form of a series of letters between two men, "Herbert Wace," a young scientist, and "Dane Kempton," an elderly poet. Writer Jack London wrote "Wace's" letters, and Anna Strunsky wrote "Kempton's." In the late 19th century, the authors were part of a San Francisco radical literary group known as "The Crowd."


Kempton makes the case for feeling and emotion, while Wace proceeds "scientifically" and yzes love in Darwinian terms:


"I purpose to order my affairs in a rational manner....Wherefore I marry Hester Stebbins. I am not impelled by the archaic sex madness of the beast, nor by the obsolescent romance madness of later-day man.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Prince Classics
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 9390262089
• ISBN 13: 9789390262083
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 788
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Allemagne