Jack London杰克伦敦及其作品介绍

Central character
• Buck
• A domesticated dog living at a ranch in California as the story opens
• The War of the Classes (1905) • Revolution, and other Essays (1906)
Works
• Short story collections (21) • Novels (23) • Autobiographical memoirs (2) • Non-fiction and essays (23) • Plays (3) • Poetry (45)
Literary position
• American author, journalist, and social activist
• One of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone
• To Build a Fire (1902), best known • Love of life
• Science fiction
• The Unparalleled Invasion describes germ warfare
against China
Novels
• Human beings in nature
• Klondike Gold Rush (21)
• the setting for some of his first successful stories
• A social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism
• A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction
• Influence on later writers, such as, Hemingway, George Orwell
Views
• Atheism
• “I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated(彻底毁灭的) as the last mosquito you and I squashed.”
• Genre: Adventure novel,
Animal fiction
• The story is set in the Yukon during the 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush—a period when strong sled dogs were in high de(13)
• Had a mistress aged 16 (15)
• Sailor (17)
• Worker
• Tramp
• Admitted to the University of California, Berkeley (20, forced to leave due to financial circumstances the next year)
Jack London
Life experience
• Born : January 12, 1876 • San Francisco, California, US • Died : November 22, 1916 • Aged 40 • Old name John Griffith Chaney
• Socialism
• wrote from a socialist viewpoint
• (The Iron Heel 1984)
• London's socialism grew out of his life experience
• (How I Became a Socialist)
• Joined the Socialist Labor Party in 1896 • Joined the Socialist Party of America in 1901
Short stories
• Western writer and historian Dale L. Walker writes: “London's true métier was the short story ... London's true genius lay in the short form, 7,500 words and under, where the flood of images in his teeming brain and the innate power of his narrative gift were at once constrained and freed.”
• He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains".
• He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game.
• The Call of the Wild (1903) • The Sea-Wolf (1904) • White Fang (1906)
• Human beings in the city
• The Iron Heel (1908) • Martin Eden (1909)
The Call of the Wild