Jack London: San Francisco Stories

Front Cover
Samizdat Press, Oct 11, 2010 - Fiction - 380 pages
From one of America's great writers, this delightful collection - the first of its kind - contains twenty-three adventurous tales set in the San Francisco Bay Area. If San Francisco has captured the world's imagination through the hardboiled stories of Dashiell Hammett, the prose and poetry of Jack Kerouac and his fellow Beats, through Orson Welles' Lady From Shanghai and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, it is as a romantic city of vast suspension bridges and foggy back alleys, not as the wild west of Jack London's day. Pre-quake San Francisco was a tough town, and Jack London - hobo, sailor, oyster pirate, hard drinker - was pretty tough, too. Although famous for his stories of the Klondike and the Pacific, London wrote extensively about his home base. This collection contains such classic stories as 'The Apostate' and 'South of the Slot' as well as extracts from John Barleycorn and The Sea-Wolf. The overlooked 1905 story cycle Tales of the Fish Patrol is included in its entirety. London's vivid eyewitness report of the Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire - which destroyed forever the old city - stands as a fitting epilogue. Discover a vanished San Francisco in these wonderful stories of Jack London. Selected as one of the 16 BOOKS TO READ IF YOU LOVE SAN FRANCISCO: "Most of us know San Francisco as a soft foggy charmfest of a city. But it wasn't always so tame. Jack London's San Francisco Stories chronicles the tougher annals of SF's pre-earthquake days, and includes Jack London's firsthand account of the city burning in the wake of the 1906 quake. Either a must-read or must-avoid for anyone waiting for the next shaker. In this collection, you can find the San Francisco that is no longer, but still haunts the back allies. Recommended for: True lovers of San Francisco [and] neighborhood dive bar drinkers." -ANISSE GROSS, BuzzFeed.com "A meaty, compactly packaged book. If you don't have these stories, a great intro to a city that was lost in the 1906 quake and fire, by the most famous author born in town." -DON HERRON, the San Francisco Dashiell Hammett Tour "This collection by scholar and writer Matthew Asprey finally brings together London's best writing about the coastal communities of Northern California that he loved so well." -RODGER JACOBS, Journalist, Author, Jack London Scholar

About the author (2010)

One of the pioneers of 20th century American literature, Jack London specialized in tales of adventure inspired by his own experiences. London was born in San Francisco in 1876. At 14, he quit school and became an "oyster pirate," robbing oyster beds to sell his booty to the bars and restaurants in Oakland. Later, he turned on his pirate associates and joined the local Fish Patrol, resulting in some hair-raising waterfront battles. Other youthful activities included sailing on a seal-hunting ship, traveling the United States as a railroad tramp, a jail term for vagrancy and a hazardous winter in the Klondike during the 1897 gold rush. Those experiences converted him to socialism, as he educated himself through prolific reading and began to write fiction. After a struggling apprenticeship, London hit literary paydirt by combining memories of his adventures with Darwinian and Spencerian evolutionary theory, the Nietzchean concept of the "superman" and a Kipling-influenced narrative style. "The Son of the Wolf"(1900) was his first popular success, followed by 'The Call of the Wild" (1903), "The Sea-Wolf" (1904) and "White Fang" (1906). He also wrote nonfiction, including reportage of the Russo-Japanese War and Mexican revolution, as well as "The Cruise of the Snark" (1911), an account of an eventful South Pacific sea voyage with his wife, Charmian, and a rather motley crew. London's body broke down prematurely from his rugged lifestyle and hard drinking, and he died of uremic poisoning - possibly helped along by a morphine overdose - at his California ranch in 1916. Though his massive output is uneven, his best works - particularly "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" - have endured because of their rich subject matter and vigorous prose.

Bibliographic information

TitleJack London: San Francisco Stories
AuthorJack London
EditorMatthew Asprey
ContributorsMatthew Asprey, Roger Jacobs
Edition2, reprint, revised
PublisherSamizdat Press, 2010
ISBN1453840508, 9781453840504
Length380 pages
Subjects › 

Fiction / Classics
  
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