Talk:Jack London/Archive 1

Cultural Referance
I just watched the episode of Star trek discribed here. In it, we find out why Jack London went to the Klondike and began writing. Mark Twain told him to to shoo him out of a room so he could examine Data's doo-dad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.42.182 (talk) 03:15, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Comment
I've been adding a lot of stuff to this page lately. I'm a Wikipedia newbie, so please be kind. Any assistance/suggestions welcome. --Dpbsmith

I've moved all the information about the individual novels on to articles of their own because it makes more sense that way. And also I've removed the links to individual pieces of writing avalible online because theres a link at the bottom of the page which makes it unnesassary. You've done some good work but there are many NPOV problems. Saul Taylor 16:35, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your work. Re: NPOV issues: acknowledged, I'll watch what happens. I'm learning...


 * You think the stuff I already wrote has problems, just wait until I (or someone else) tries to tackle the issue of... um... let's see, how's this for NPOV... in Jack London's later novels, particularly the later ones, and notably Adventure, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, Jerry of the Islands, Michael, Brother of Jerry, and Hearts of Three, characters express opinions which today would be characterized as "racist." :-)  I don't think this can or should be overlooked. It is a _conspicuous_ feature of the later writings, and, I believe, partly accounts for their obscurity (although they're also not very good). Made worse by the fact that a few fringe white supremacists have (quite unjustifably) cited Jack London as one of their own. Dpbsmith 18:14, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)


 * I wish I could offer you some advice about how to deal with it but the only London novel I've read is The Sea Wolf, so I hardly qualify as an expert. The only thing I would say is that if you're not sure how to make something NPOV then then the best thing to do is say something like "some people say X but others say Y." Its best if you can cite your sources like "ABC says X while DEF say Y." (although this isn't always possible). Saul Taylor 20:01, 7 Jan 2004 (UTC)

In London's time, a "white supremacist" view was not regarded as incompatible with socialism, which had not yet adopted an anti-imperialist aspect. "Miscegenation" was viewed with distaste by many whom we would regard as otherwise left-wing,eg HG Wells.Exile 21:52, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"From the viewpoint of serious astrologers today, Chaney is a major figure who shifted the practice from quackery to a more rigorous method."
 * You mean to a more rigorous form of quackery? Hayford Peirce 22:18, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Removed
The Call of the Wild appears on many "best" lists, including The Observer's 100 greatest novels of all time (ranking #38) and Radcliffe College's The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century (ranking #33).

Is it really so hard to talk about the merits of a writer without reducing them to some number on a list? And the lists are far from NPOV, as the creators themselves say (or noteworthy, IMO) - The Observer list takes pride in being Anglocentric and proclaims itself personal, prejudiced, etc. The Radcliffe list is merely a rehash of the Modern Library choices - it says so under the header! Please take some time to read and inform yourself on an issue before posting on it. -- Simonides 18:52, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * 1) Are there any such lists you would find acceptable?
 * 2) My impression is that the Radcliffe listing was an independent selection from the same set of 400 books, and was specifically intended to correct perceived bias in the editor's selection. Is that correct or not? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 20:12, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * 1) See Talk:Modern_Library
 * 2) Yes, but it is still basically a rehash. -- Simonides 05:20, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)

"Category: suicides"
On checking, I see that the definition of the category is "Suicides are people who committed suicide."

In the case of Jack London, the evidence has never been clear. Clarice Stasz calls it a "biographical myth." It was cemented firmly into the cultural consciousness by one particular biography, Irving Stone's Sailor on Horseback, which is widely acknowledged to be a good read but a sloppy mixture of fact, surmise, and rumor. There's little doubt that, as Dale Walker wrote "He died of kidney failure complicated by a toxic dose or doses of morphine, most likely taken in the throes of pain resulting from kidney stones. The question has always been whether he premeditated his death—knowingly killed himself." Walker reaches no conclusion. Russ Kingman called it "a controversy that probably will never be settled."

London's death certificate, signed by four doctors, states that his death was due to kidney failure. One of them had ascribed it to accidental morphine overdose but changed his mind.

Because of the stigma of suicide, understandably those who opposed London's political views have been quick to accept the notion of suicide. Conversely, those sympathetic to him have tended to question the idea.

Jack London certainly belongs in the category of "alleged suicides" or even "probable suicides" but there is no way he can be put in the category of "suicides," assuming that means people whose death is generally acknowledged to have been suicide. Dpbsmith (talk) 20:23, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

London's racialism and his reporting of Jackson-Jeffries
Note added later: Oops, my edit remark was misleading. Nobody has suggested that I'm trying to whitewash Jack London. I'm just stressing that that's not what I'm trying to do. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:24, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I snipped


 * Some of the writings of Jack London are disturbing. While he was a reporter, he coined the phrase "the Great White Hope", which was used to describe various white opponents of Jack Johnson (the first black world heavyweight boxing champion) in the 1910s

for these reasons:


 * I'm about 90% sure that Jack London did not coin the expression "the Great White Hope." If he did, it would actually be a notable contribution to the language and I'm sure a biographer would have mentioned it. I've read a number of his press accounts; I'll check later but I do not think he even uses that phrase. If I'm wrong, by all means reinsert, but provide a source citation.


 * "When he was a reporter" is somewhat misleading. He never really had a journalistic career as such. He did try to become a war correspondent, with limited success, but he was already a lionized celebrity author at the time.

Jack London's racial views need to be discussed with great caution; they always seem to be good for an argument, because he was all over the map and you can easily cherry-pick statements supporting or refuting the notion that he was "a racist." I need to look again at his columns reporting the right, but my recollection is that he made it clear that his sympathies were with the white side and that he wanted the white man to win, but that nevertheless he made it clear that he respect and admired Johnson as a boxer, and I believe there is more than a suggestion that he admired Johnson's personal style as well. Certainly he makes a point of saying that Johnson did not "show the yellow streak" which apparently people really expected him to do.

I am not trying to whitewash Jack London's racial views, by the way. However I do feel that the last years of his life were at a time when racism in the United States actually reached a sort of pinnacle. Wilson and other prominent officials opening praised the movie "The Birth of a Nation" and so forth. I personally wish that Jack London had taken a stand against and repudiated the appallingly racist views of the times; I personally believed that he obviously did not do that, but accepted them. Still, he was an acquaintance of Luther Burbank, and seemed to agree with Burbank's views that "hybrid vigor" obtained in human as well as plant breeding.

It is very important not to oversimplify his very complex and at times seemingly self-contradictory views on this matter. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:46, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm surprised, and slightly confused, why his widely alleged Anti-Asian views receive little or no mention in the racialist segment. In "The Unparalleled Invasion" he has a utopia arise after the genocide of Chinese people. Other insensitive or troublesome views of Asians are in his work. The "no one alleges him of racism" statement I think would only be true regarding blacks or Hispanics. Several sources I know of allege he was racist against Asians and to some extent Native Americans. Is this dealt with and I just missed it?--T. Anthony 09:33, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Alleged? By whom? Where? And why discuss "allegations" when the man has a huge quantity of written output that speaks for itself? Dpbsmith (talk) 10:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * By whom, many sources. The Encyclopedia of Science fiction,SFSU article, and others.--T. Anthony 10:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I see there is a brief mention of him being against Chinese immigration. I might read up on this and see if I can add a bit more. That's probably not wanted, but from what I can tell this article is laudatory enough it needs a bit of criticism for balance.--T. Anthony 09:38, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I just ask that you be careful and neutral and cite sources. London was all over the map on this topic and his views were not simple, or even consistent. There is a strong tendency for people to read their own point of view into London. (There is also a very unpleasant phenomenon in which some fringe white supremacy groups have inaccurately tried to enlist his memory in their cause).


 * Are you familiar with his short story "The Chinago?" If not, read it and tell me what London's attitude toward Asians appears to be in that story. It's online at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/London/Writings/GodLaughs/chinago.html


 * If there is a discussion of his attitudes toward Asians specifically, it should include a mention of the letter he wrote to the editor of the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly in August 25, 1913 (The Letters of Jack London: Volume Three: 1913-1916, edited by Earle Labor, Robert C. Leitz, III, and I. Milo Shepard, Stanford University Press 1988, p.1219:


 * Dear sir:-
 * In reply to yours of August 16,1913. First of all, I should say by stopping the stupid newspaper from always fomenting race prejudice.
 * This of course, being impossible, I would say, next, by educating the people of Japan so that they will be too intelligently tolerant to respond to any call to race prejudice.
 * And, finally, by realizing, in industry and government, of socialism--which last word is merely a word that stands for the actual application of in the affairs off men of the theory of the Brotherhood of Man.
 * In the meantime the nations and races are only unruly boys who have not yet grown to the stature of men. So we must expect them to do unruly and boisterous things at times. And, just as boys grow up, so the races of mankind will grow up and laugh when they look back upon their childish quarrels.
 * Sincerely yours,
 * Jack London


 * Of course, "The Chinago" and the letter I just cited have been chosen specifically to show that on occasion he expressed an empathetic attitude toward Asians, i.e. they are selective.


 * My own belief is that Jack London obviously did not reject the ordinary racism prevalent in American society at the time, but just as obviously he did not promote it. Dpbsmith (talk) 09:58, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I did not say I would edit it. I was just saying I'd read he had anti-Asian views so widely, in sources I considered credible, I was surprised it was just one sentence. I'd thought it was one of the main criticism. Although perhaps people were being unfair to him. On the Chinese thing though, as odd as this is, it was even then possible for a person to be positive on the Japanese and hostile to the Chinese. Several Westerners in that period marveled at the advances of Meiji Japan and decided China's comparative backwardness was due to them being stupid, filthy, drug addicted, dog eating losers. Likewise the people of Japan itself in London's era would indicate it is possible to be anti-Chinese, but very pro-Japanese.--T. Anthony 10:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Agree, this is quite possible. BTW, Jack London, once he could afford them, employed Japanese valets... as did many other Californians... for whatever that is worth. He was on friendly/paternalistic terms with them, and their memoirs of him are affectionate.


 * Now, that Kyle Livie article you cite:


 * Anti-Asian rhetoric was an integral part of California's dominant white culture, both inside and outside the world of labor, as an expression of power in civil space through modes of popular culture like literature. Perhaps the best example of this can be seen in the work of Jack London, who, along with other authors, 8 provides us with a view of Anglo-popular culture in California that was profoundly anti-Asian. Jack London's futurist story "The Unparalleled Invasion" warns of an invasion of Chinese soldiers in the year 1976 if their population was not put into check. The tale was a de-facto call to eugenic war in order to monitor "China's advancing hordes," which are depicted as running over all of Asia and Europe until stopped at the edge of America.9 London's xenophobic portrayal of Chinese as a menacing "horde" establishes both the idea that Asian laborers entering the United States are possibly the first wave of invaders as well as the notion that the Chinese are culturally different than white Americans, having nothing in common with the struggles of white laborers. London's writings reached a broad, diverse audience of readers through his publication in "pulp fiction" and serialized formats, his views filtering throughout California like "an unparalleled invasion" that cemented overt racism in the public consciousness.


 * I think that's fine as far as it goes. The point I'd make here is that Jack London is cited as evidence that "Anti-Asian rhetoric was an integral part of California's dominant white culture,'' not as evidence that Jack London himself was particularly racist or particularly a promoter of racism. He just soaked it up along with the California sun.


 * And I don't want to see the racialism thing overemphased. It's present in his writing just the way comic depictions of Negros are present in Disney cartoons and movies up through about 1950. But one must draw a distinction between, say, Jack London's socialism, which he cared deeply about, was an important part of his identity as a man and as a writer, and which he deliberately promoted (on lecture tours, etc.), and his racialism, which was just the casual acceptance of the norms of the society he lived in. You could fairly call him a "socialist writer." It would not be fair to call him a "racist writer."


 * If you think something more should be said, you can edit the article if you like, or you and I can try to hash out something reasonable here before it goes into the article. You want more than a sentence. Would you care to compose a paragraph? A good way to do it would be to let the sources speak for themselves by gluing together a quote from the Kyle Livie article and a quote from his 1913 letter. I don't know if there's something short, pithy, and clearly racist in "The Incredible Invasion." There likely is.


 * Have you got anything more on the "Japanese OK, Chinese bad" distinction? Dpbsmith (talk) 13:27, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow I'm way late on this. However the priest who gave me that book on Japan died recently so I got it out as a memorial kind of thing. (A priest gave it to me, but it's not a Catholic or Christian book. It's just a book on Japan by PBS or something) Okay it quotes "the Times" from 1876. It abbreviates it a bit and I'll abbreviate their abbreviation a bit more.

Japanese cleanliness as opposed to Chinese filth; Japanese roads as opposed to Chinese mud tracks; Japanese neatness and order as opposed to Chinese decay and confusion.


 * This isn't as direct as I'd hoped, but the comparison is clearly that China is worse. Although admittedly both are stereotyped. It goes on to say what Chinese and Japanese people do and ends that with Chinese people as lazier. As for London himself The Unparalleled Invasion is often seen as anti-Chinese, but admittedly it's not as clear as I thought. It says the Chinese are peaceful and industrious, only dangerous because of a high birthrate. Still it contains: "China rejuvenescent! It was but a step to China rampant", "All survivors were put to death wherever found. And then began the great task, the sanitation of China. Five years and hundreds of millions of treasure were consumed, and then the world moved in - not in zones, as was the idea of Baron Albrecht, but heterogeneously, according to the democratic American programme. It was a vast and happy intermingling of nationalities that settled down in China in 1982 and the years that followed - a tremendous and successful experiment in cross-fertilization. We know to-day the splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output that followed."--T. Anthony 14:34, 20 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Just some quotes I have in a book about Japan. I'm almost sorry I brought it up because I don't think I know enough about London to feel competent editing the article.--T. Anthony 15:26, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Be bold. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

According to my grandmother who knew London when he lived in Glenn Ellen, London was a Man's man whom women adored because of his physical beauty, he was a strikingly handsome man,(see his photographs) and his intelligence. Men loved him as well because they could drink with him and he loved the companionship of other men. He was also a fall down drunk, alcoholic who loved to get drunk and did so frequently. Probabably one of the greatest writers of the Califonia school of authors, the other being Steinbeck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.110.196.156 (talk) 17:54, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Jack London's Welsh ancestry
I added London to the "Welsh-Americans" category before logging in. Nevertheless, it is part of the public record. I first saw it in a (hard-copy) library reference on American ethnicities, name escapes me now. But I can produce online documentation, so I hope the categorization will stand.


 * "Welsh farm girl" just doesn't sound right to me. That online reference seems to be originally from the Columbia Encyclopedia,  but it still seems wrong. I have a query in at a Jack London mailing list and I'll see if I get any replies.


 * Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman, was born in Massillon, Ohio. See Flora Wellman. Her family had been in the U. S. for several generations and before that, according to Stasz's biography, Jack London's Women, her family could "be traced back to the 1500s in England."


 * As far as that goes, I don't think she fits the description of "farm girl," because I believe her family lived in the town of Massillon and she moved to San Francisco as soon as she could and was living there when she met Chaney.


 * According to Joan London, William Chaney, generally assumed to have been Jack London's biological father, was the "Offspring of old New England families, the Chaneys and the Linscutts" and "was born in a log cabin in a Maine forest on January 13, 1821."


 * I don't think Jack London self-identified as "Welsh."


 * His fictional writings are usually assumed to have autobiographical overtones, and for what it's worth the word "Welsh" appears only four times in an online search that includes probably 80% of his fiction, none in the context of the identity of any of his protagonists. On the other hand, "Anglo-Saxon" appears frequently and one of his heroines, in Valley of the Moon, is actually named "Saxon." Dpbsmith (talk) 01:52, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Well, I believe "Griffith" was his middle name, which is sort of ambiguous evidence on the "pro" side. I'll abide your decision, however. His bio is shadowy enough so that I'm sure there could be argument on a lot of things.

I have noticed in a few short stories his spelling of "whisky" in the British/Scottish way, taking the E out from the K and Y.

Zecotrend links

 * John Griffith Chaney (Jack London)
 * Jack London (1876-1916)
 * Biography of Jack London
 * Jack London
 * Info aboutJack London

look odd to me. I don't think they're worth five separate entries, but the site does not appear to have any usual home page or starting page. What's odd is that these are all general biographies of Jack London, each overlapping but different in content, and the three that I've checked are all identical in text to other web pages. Furthermore, the hit counters with similar low counts (26, 24, etc) on each page and the fact that as I write this these pages are not indexed by Google gives me the impression this is a very new site.

I think that five other Web pages have simply been copied to produce this website.

Some of them are worthwhile, but we should use the original link, not the copy. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:25, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

If you search the guy's history he has contributed hundreds of spammish links. He keeps making sites with a little bit of information about somebody and linking to them. The sites sometimes seem to contribute to some kind of advertising attempt for hosting, although I didn't see that on Zecotrend. I went through Friday and killed every one of the guy's spam links on Wikipedia. I also warned him not to do it again. He has now been warned a second time. If this keeps up, I will block him. Jdavidb (talk) 03:26, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Atlantic Monthly?
It says that the first issue of the Atlantic Monthly contained a Jack London story, but our article claims the magazine began in 1857. What gives? Meelar (talk) 13:32, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Huh. Gotta check. To tell the truth, I don't think Jack London ever published any stories in the Atlantic Monthly. If I'm the one that put that into the article, I screwed up. Will look it up tonight. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:34, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Sexuality
An anon recently added the phrase "He was bisexual."

Assuming this was not just casual vandalism... this issue is way, way too complicated to be summed up in a simple phrase. If the article is to say anything at all, it needs to do so very carefully and citing sources. Offhand, here's what I think is true:


 * He enjoyed straight sex. That's very well documented; Charmian made frequent references to sex with Jack in her diaries (using the word "lolly.")
 * He was an enthusiastic womanizer/philanderer/whatever who found monogamy constraining.
 * An elliptical reference in "The Road" suggests he may have been the victim of a prison rape during his month in the Erie Pen.
 * He was a sailor for a number of years in his youth, so same-sex experience would not have been unlikely, but as far as I know that would be purest speculation.
 * He had a very close emotional friendship with George Sterling and Joan London (who did not know Jack London very well) was willing to refer to their relationship as involving "latent" homosexual feelings. I don't think any biographer has suggested a physical relationship between him and Sterling.

To me, that does not add up to bisexuality. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:02, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

I am writing my Master's thesis about him, and nowhere in my readings have I come across this. Maybe it's because he looks the way he does in the picture they have on the page, but I don't think this entry is meant as anything other than vandalism. jdl32579


 * Of course, but by putting this here I think I have a good justifcation for removing any such further entries on sight unless someone wants to come to the talk page and discuss the issue first.


 * What would you say about my own bullet-point summary above?


 * "The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People, 1981 by Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, Sylvia Wallace, and David Wallechinsky), the "book of lists" people, unfortunately gives no sources, but claims that Charmian's well-known insomnia was caused by her worries over Jack's (repeated) infidelity, and mentioned her saying that after he died she had no problems sleeping. Do you have any idea at all whether there's any truth to that, or where the Wallaces got that information? Dpbsmith (talk) 11:04, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Buck
There's an entry on Buck, the dog from Call of the Wild. Does anyone here know if J.L. had a dog by that name? Another question, did he ever witness dogfights the way they are described in the book?


 * In Daniel Dyer's The Call of the WIld, Annotated and Illustrated, Dyer writes:


 * Jack acknowledged in a letter to Klondike acquaintance Marshall Bond that he had based Buck on Bond's dog Jack, an animal that had much impressed London in the North. The dog was a mixed breed--St. Bernard and some kind of collie or shepherd. London said he seleced the name Buck because it was "stronger" than Bright, another name he had considered.


 * Although Jack London probably saw a lot, he also listened a lot to stories told by others, and he read a great deal. When he worked up his material, one should assume that he may have enhanced it and strengthened it for dramatic effect. So you should not assume that what he wrote was necessarily up to the standards of an encyclopedia, or even a newspaper, in terms of literal accuracy. He may have exaggerated and mixed in every dramatic incident he'd ever seen or heard of. However, he certain was there in the Klondyke and writing of things he knew directly. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:47, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll add the part about bright, still would like to find out about dogfights, though...

Proposed merger of Oyster pirate article
Please put comments regarding the proposed merger at the Oyster pirate article, not here.
 * RickReinckens 03:11, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Death
London also includes a drowning suicide in his novel "The Sea-Wolf" as a deliberate self-sacrific to save three others faced with a water shortage while adrift at sea. Rklawton 18:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

can we put in a spoiler warning for this section? I'm in the middle of martin eden and while reading up on London found the end of the novel. Enduser8101 16:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I deleted that part because it was a huge spoiler. Shame on the person who put that there.

"Book with the unremembered title"
I snipped this:
 * The book with the unremembered title where London stated that the dogs could tell that the white 'gods'were superior to the brown or Eskimo'gods' indicates at least a racialist view.

When someone can find the book and the passage it might be worth considering reinserting it if it really makes an important point. Certainly one can find numerous passages, particularly in Adventure, that strike me as appallingly racist. But the problem is usually that these sentiments are placed in the mouths of the story's characters, and although I, for one, believe the characters to be expressing London's own beliefs (or, possibly, Charmian's&mdash;that's just my speculation), there's no way to be sure.

The closest thing I can find to this passage is in "Jerry of the Islands:"
 * Just as Jerry had learned from Mister Haggin that he must be more tolerant of the house-boys than of the field-boys if they trespassed on the compound, so, from Captain Van Horn, he learned that he must be more tolerant of the boat's crew than of the return boys. He had less license with them, more license with the others. As long as Captain Van Horn did not want his boat's crew chased, it was Jerry's duty not to chase. On the other hand he never forgot that he was a white-god's dog. While he might not chase these particular blacks, he declined familiarity with them. He kept his eye on them. He had seen blacks as tolerated as these, lined up and whipped by Mister Haggin. They occupied an intermediate place in the scheme of things, and they were to be watched in case they did not keep their place. He accorded them room, but he did not accord them equality. At the best, he could be stand-offishly considerate of them.

In this book, Jerry sees men as "gods." The problem here is that, as is clear from the above passage, all that London is saying is that dogs are capable of perceiving human social structure and hierarchies. Certainly Jerry is a racist dog; Van Horn describes him admiringly as a "nigger-chaser." Jerry learned his racism from racist humans. Neither of these necessarily makes London himself a racist. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Hi all. I found a more succinct quote and added it back along with title and page reference.  Is Jerry's dog really racist, or is he simply mirroring the reality of the time - that black men have power (over dogs) but less so than white men?  This would be considered a statement of fact at the time and not a racist attitude.  Jerry is a dog and perceives power in terms of a dog pack’s ranking order (a common London theme).  If London made the observation through Jerry that black men deserved to have a subordinate place, then that would be racist.  While I don't think the article’s quotations illustrate actual racism on London's part, I do think they serve as an excellent example regarding what the London-racism controversy is all about.  Rklawton 01:28, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough,dpb.I'll look around and see if I can find it.Saltforkgunman 04:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, actually, I think Rklawton did. He inserted this:


 * A passage from Jerry of the Islands references white man's superiority:
 * He was that inferior man-creature, a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly trained all his brief days to the law that the white men were the superior two-legged gods. (pg 98).


 * But I just tweaked the wording to read "A passage from Jerry of the Islands depicts a dog as perceiving white man's superiority," because in context it is clear that he is reporting the dog's point of view.


 * I certainly agree that "Jerry of the Islands" and "Michael, Brother of Jerry" are good places to look to find appallingly racist sentiments. Another good one is "Adventure" for statements about the inherent primitiveness of blacks, statements so racist as to verge on the inflammatory or the comic, but all these statements are placed in the mouths of characters, plantation owners in the Solomon islands. "The Mutiny of the Elsinore" has some choice manifest-destiny-of-the-Anglo-Saxon stuff in it (but that's already covered). Dpbsmith (talk) 11:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Problem with OR - Original Research - Editors searching London's writings for racist remarks are doing original research, which they are prohibited from publishing on Wikipedia. They are supposed to be reading valid, third-party sources (preferably peer-reviewed), such as academic texts, and using those sources as the basis for statements in the article. Please stop trying to support your own points of view by researching his writings.Parkwells (talk) 04:02, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Merging Oyster Pirate
I think that merging the "oyster Pirate" section of Jack London's boy hood would be a good idea. Jac London Based many of his stories on his experiences and adding this would make it clear that he had a natural source of adventure. He partially based book and essays on his sailing like his book The SEA WOlF.

Fixing dates
There are a lot of dates that are totally wrong and most are NOT in chronologycal order on the article... Needs a *BIT* of fixing.

Welsh, again
Category "Welsh-Americans" was recently added with the note "see http://london.usembassy.gov/wales/stdvd2006.html ". However, so far I have not found any biographers who characterize Jack London as "Welsh" nor (and I think this is important) have I found any place where he self-identifies as "Welsh-American."

The cited source is a proclamation by, I think, President George W. Bush generally celebrating the contributions of Welsh-Americans. The reference to Jack London is a throwaway remark: "Welsh Americans have added to the richness of America's cultural fabric, whether through Jack London's literature or D.W. Griffith's pioneering the development of film." Unfortunately it cites no sources and does not give the President's reasons for considering Jack London to be a "Welsh American."

The obvious mistake is that Jack London is being called a Welshman because his name was John Griffith London after his stepfather. In fact while his middle name was Welsh it would be neccessary to examine his real ancestry to see if either his Mother or hs biological father were of Welsh descent. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.240.206.205 (talk) 08:24, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

In fact, to the extent that he celebrates any ethnic origin, his "racialist" passages always laud the Anglo-Saxons; one of the characters in The Valley of the Moon is even named "Saxon." Dpbsmith (talk) 23:57, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

http://www.jacklondons.net/writings/BookJackLondon/Volume1/chapter1.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.249.44.146 (talk) 21:25, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Category: People treated for alcoholism
I'm removing this because I don't believe he was ever "treated for alcoholism." That he was an alcoholic is undisputed, as witness his self-described "alcoholic memoir," John Barleycorn.

There doesn't seem to be a category, "Alcoholics." He would fit that category. If "People treated for alcoholism" is supposed to be a euphemistic substitute, too bad, I don't think he fits. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:04, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Snipping an uncited item

 * In May 1910 he met Ambrose Bierce for a legendary drinking bout at the Bohemian Club's summer camp on the Russian River.

Very plausible, but has gone without any citation for a long time. Dpbsmith (talk) 12:57, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Richard Bond's comment on The Scab
User:140.247.225.139 recently added this very interesting material to the article:


 * Richard Bond140.247.225.139 00:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC), Marshall Bond's grandson recognizes the dialectic in "The Scab" from "War of the Classes" as similar to the debates between London and his grandfather. Bond says t"he most likely source of the quote was a handbill circulated at a speech by Jack London with the attribution arising from the faulty presumption that as it was circulated at a Jack London speech it must have been by him".

Unfortunately, we need to have a published source for anything in a Wikipedia article. Dpbsmith (talk) 00:48, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two different pieces of writing which are being called London's "The Scab". I was referring to the speech "The Scab" from the published London anthology "War of the Classes". The more widely known shorter demotic piece "The Scab" is what I said is considered suspect and there is a consensus among the Londons I have spoken with and myself that it probably is attributed to him because it may have been circulated as a handbill at a Jack London speech. By reputation, comparison and our family recollection London was a more sophisticated nuanced writer and speaker. My grandfather Marshall Bond a Republican actually took place in at least one strike breaking action. This was before meeting Jack London and so it probably came up in their conversation. Richard Bond —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.240.206.205 (talk) 00:59, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Russ Kingman
I changed
 * Russ Kingman, who was for years until his death the world's preeminent London scholar, undertook much research into the various possibilities and concluded

to
 * Biographer Russ Kingman concluded.

I believe Russ Kingman was not a scholar in the usual sense of the word, and certainly not a "preeminent" one. He had no academic affiliation or relevant background (he obtained a master's degree in religion and became a Baptist minister). He was an enthusiastic and energetic amateur, and possibly a "preeminent" collector of Jack London books and artifacts. See http://www.jacklondons.net/kingman_bio1.html

His involvement with Jack London commenced in connection with promotion of the commercial interests of the merchants in Jack London Square, Oakland, CA. He certainly was an enthusiast, he certainly "did research," and I believe Jack London scholars respect his work and trust the statements of fact he makes in "A Pictorial Biography of Jack London."

However, he had some axes to grind. He was in close contact with some family members and tended to champion some points of view over others. In general, he seems to have tended to support points of view that elevate Jack London's personal reputation and to attack those that lower it. For example, he disparaged suggestions that Jack London was unfaithful to Charmian, downplayed his alcoholism, questioned Joan London's account of a drunken Jack London throwing her through a window, etc.

The article linked above quotes Howard Lachtman's review Russ’s biography for the Stockton (Calif.) Record, Sun., April 26, 1981 as saying "Though A Pictorial Life is colored by Kingman’s affectionate respect for his subject, its lack of guile and special pleading allow the reader to see past the accretions of myth and get back in contact with the man as he was. This is elementary biography, biography without any of the exhaustive critical explications and psychoanalytical pretensions which have been known to drive even stouthearted readers to fiction or television. A good starting point for the beginning student of London, it may even be of value to the erstwhile biographer."

So, whatever Kingman says about London's death should be taken very seriously, but not necessarily considered the last word. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Unsourced material about Jack London's death

 * Some also speculate that his apparent uremic poisoning was the result of a conspiracy. Some incongruities in Jack London's last will and testament and its alterations suggest that it may have been tampered with by his second wife, Charmian in order to ensure that Jack's two daughters, Joan and Becky, did not receive their inheritances. It is unknown why the daughters were cut from the will so suddenly before Jack's unexpected death.

This really needs a source citation. It can go in the article if a good source is cited, but it can't go in just on the basis of "some also speculated." Who makes such a speculation, and where has this appeared in a published source? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:10, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Protection for page?
Maybe J. London's page needs some degree of protection? It's being vandalized quite often. --Armatura 00:09, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I've only been editing here for a couple of months and this is one the most vandalized page I have on my watchlist, along with a couple of others, both bio pages. Don't know what level of vandalism ends up prompting protections, or how that protection works, but I would not like to be locked out of this page. I do know that one of the very first pages I wanted to edit was protected because of vandalism (again, a bio page, this one for a politician). It was unprotected based on my prompting and has been relatively quite since then. I guess it was an election time issue.--Fizbin 00:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

--It's still being vandalized. The phrase "Jack London" is replaced by odd names like Jesus Tapia, Charlie Alsobrook, and Ray Landa at the start of some paragraphs. Kinda weird... --Ray Etheridge —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.228.32.248 (talk) 13:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

References Section
I reorganised the references section by adding bullet points to the upper section, and by reformatting the lower section into a column format. This is prob at best the first of two steps, as I doubt the artical could attain a better rating level with the section in such a messy state. But I hope its a help. Ferdia O'Brien The Archiver And The Vandal Watchman (Talk) 23:17, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

$$ -- ?
$2,500 equals $75,000 today? ... that's a ratio of 30 to 1. However, it is widely accessible to investigation that average carpenters earned a dollar a day (for example after the earthquake), thus the ratio would be at least a 100 to 1. Perhaps 200 to 1. A house in California costs an average of $500,000 in better areas today, and I doubt in 1902 you would have had to spend even 5,000 for a reasonable house in the Bay Area. More likely $1,000. Although a pineapple in 1920 cost $2.50, probably around $50.00 today.

It sounds as if Jack earned substantially more than 75K in his first year of professional writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.196.72.207 (talk) 06:40, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

South Sea Tales
I'm not a London expert by any means, but I was checking out this page to confirm the publication history of a book I own by London, and I noticed it was not listed. The collection of stories is South Sea Tales, and the story I was specifically looking for was "The Heathen."

The information on the copyright page of my book is: Copyright 1909, S.S. McClure Co., 1910 Columbian-Sterling Publishing Co., Copyright 1911, The Macmillan Company. Stories included are:

The House of Mapuhi

The Whale Tooth

Mauki

"Yah!Yah!Yah!"

The Heathen

The Terrible Solomons

The Inevitable White Man

The Seed of McCoy

Only "The Seed of McCoy" is listed among his works. As I said, I'm not an expert, but if these things were indeed London's works, they should probably be added. Can someone who is an expect confirm and add them?

--Sam Donovan (talk) 23:13, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

what does this mean?
In the Early Life section, paragraph ending with...


 * "what is often called his best short story, To Build a Fire (v.i.)."

Why is the "(v.i.)" there? Thank you,  Berean Hunter (talk) 13:16, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * It means "see below," i.e. there is more information about "To Build a Fire" later in the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:08, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Citation Needed
The last paragraph of the Scab section begins with...


 * "One online source, no longer accessible..."

Assuming this source can be determined, is it acceptable to link to the Wayback Machine to substantiate this reference?

Until it is straightened out, I'm going to mark it as needing a citation. Berean Hunter (talk) 14:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Poor grammar, hence unclear meaning
"His socialist views began as viewed people at the bottom of the social pit............He writes his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn." Perhaps it should read: "His socialist views began as HE viewed people at the bottom of the social pit............He writes THAT his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn." 80.2.193.158 (talk) 23:24, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Be bold is an official Wikipedia policy. Go ahead and reword that passage. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:31, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

A significant note about Jack London is London was one of the first authors to secure a exclusivity contract with a publisher on his own terms
London was one of the highest paid authors (by far) of his time, he also received advises on books before he even wrote them. Back then, this was amazing. I can pull source information on this if people find this interesting. I will have to go through his letters.

Would people find this information very useful? And is this information noteworthy of mention? It is me i think (talk) 05:59, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Was Jack London B Traven?
This article states as a fact that London could not have been the novelist B Traven because Traven had been identified as Ret Marut; however the Wikipedia article on Traven makes it clear that Traven's identity is still uncertain. While it's certainly very unlikely that London was Traven, there's still a significant question over the identity of Traven. I don't want to edit the page since I don't have any good external sources to reference, but the claim that Traven was definitely Marut is misleading. Some people hypothesise that Traven was multiple people, so theoretically London could have been one of them. However, it might be considered unnecessary to mention in the article that London was NOT Traven. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.172.19.20 (talk) 11:42, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I've edited the article merely to report what Traven's widow said.


 * But, honestly, doesn't Jack London's death in 1916 virtually exclude the possibility that the authored of The Death Ship (1926) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927)? None of the sources that suggest London was Traven do more but mention it in passing, and none of them give even an hypothesis as to how it would have been possible. (London faked his own death? He wrote them before 1916 and they were published posthumously?) Dpbsmith (talk) 14:39, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Actully, Jack was a very astute business man, Don't let the handsome face fool you! It was set up in his Will a roalty subsidy would be paid to his ugratefull daughters. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.110.196.156 (talk) 18:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation needed - still
One online source, no longer accessible, gave a chain of citations which credits the diatribe as having been published in The Bridgeman, official organ of the Structural Iron Workers, which in turn credited the Elevator Constructor, official journal of the International Union of Elevator Constructors, which credited the Oregon Labor Press as publishing it in 1926.

Introduced in this edit, it's been sitting uncited for years. Time to cite or bin. Gordonofcartoon (talk) 10:26, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

South Sea Tales
There was some guy who asked if "South Sea Tales" was a Jack London's book, but as far as I can see nobody responded or changed the page. I own the same book, although I don't know when it's published —Preceding unsigned comment added by Diogenes 84 (talk • contribs) 15:51, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It is a Jack London book. See, for instance, The Jack London Online Collection, Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center, Sonoma State University and Project Gutenberg . Gordonofcartoon (talk) 17:16, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Save children from earthquake?
With regard to the great San Francisco earthquake, this was inserted by a user without an account, with no edit comment, in this diff. I don't think it's correct. If it is, a source should be cited. {{cquote|It is said that Jack saved over 1000 lives by dragging children from their houses as they burned.{{Fact|date=August 2008}} Dpbsmith (talk) 00:49, 25 October 2008 (UTC) Jack was there. One thousand I think is a bit much, but he did go into burning buildings to save not only children but their parents as well. He was a hero but historically it is not noted. All able bodied men did the same at that time.

Bot report : Found duplicate references !
In the last revision I edited, I found duplicate named references, i.e. references sharing the same name, but not having the same content. Please check them, as I am not able to fix them automatically :) DumZiBoT (talk) 09:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * "thescab" :
 * The court decision cites the passage in full. A Google search on "corkscrew soul" turns up scores of others.
 * op. cit.

Daddy-Daughter Relations
His daughter Joan appears to have portrayed her father in a negative light. The article doesn't really expand upon their relationship, however. Any further info on Joan and her feelings towards her father? 98.221.133.96 (talk) 11:31, 3 December 2008 (UTC) Joan was not a good daughter, She tried to get money from his estate even though he provided for her in his will. In the 1930s she tried to have all his roalities subjugated to her because she was essentily a common woman. Thank God the bitch is dead! Jack loved her dearly and she did all this legal crap to sulley the great man's memory!

the cruise of the dazzler
Where in the Bibliography ? Smartbyte (talk) 19:23, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Lead section
The lead section should follow WP:LEAD and summarize the main points of the article. Viriditas (talk) 03:55, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Samuel Clemmens
Did Jack London and Samuel Clemmens actually meet or was that just something they put in that Star Trek Episode "Time's Arrow"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.2.1 (talk) 19:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Red flag
Most if not all of the article is copied verbatim from White Fang's bio section. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 07:34, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Flip that upside-down... It appears eBooks.Eden.com is plagiarizing this article. I know that the very few unusual word choices I selected while adding to this article are represented verbatim in that electronic book intro, so it appears to me they are copying me, and all the other writers who have built this article. That introduction cannot be from 1973, the year of publication of their copy of White Fang. Binksternet (talk) 14:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * The same text is used in their ebook, Call of the Wild. However, there is no authorship attribution, but they are charging $1. Since this may happen more in the future, I wonder what the rules are. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 17:35, 11 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Tracing back, it appears that the electronic book bio takes their version from this version of the article dated July 11, 2009. If not that exact version, something prior. Later that month I made changes to the Bohemian Club and Bohemian Grove section, changes which are not in the plagiarized online version. As well, my edits changes phrases such as "Jack left Oakland" to the more formal "London left Oakland"—the plagiarized text uses "Jack" fairly often. Bracketing the plagiarization in time, I found that User:RichardBond added the Bohemian Club section in March 2009 with these two edits, so we know one of two things: RichardBond copied the eBooks or the eBooks.Eden.com people did not archive a previous version of the article—they grabbed an image of the article some time between March and July 2009. I expect the latter.
 * As for what to do about this kind of crap in the future, I have no good defense in mind. Binksternet (talk) 18:20, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

The Wikipedia segment on the Bohemian Club in the Jack London article looks more elaborate than what I wrote but I was told that both my grandfather and London were members by Charles Hollister. I see also that there is a page on the Jack London Bohemian Club connection on jacklondons.net RichardBond (talk) 06:00, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Two things would be simple: sending the commercial users an email, with a copy posted on the Discussion page, informing them of the problem and requesting they respond there. They could at least be required to cite Wikipedia.  Most of the serious scholars of London might read the material disussed and also contact the republisher. It also seems that using Wikipedia might be part of their publishing system as they also used the Wikipedia article for Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, even in their online promotion section .  This could become a test-case of what to do when a commercial (for profit) enterprise is using Wikipedia. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 18:58, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

It looks like an increasing problem. See this Slashdot article, Print-On-Demand Publisher VDM Infects Amazon. A European publisher has listed over 57,000 titles on Amazon that "are simply collections of linked Wikipedia articles put into paperback form, at a cost of 40 cents a page or more." I think one has to assume that there are now amoral fast-buck artists who see the Wikipedia license as a weakness that they can exploit with impunity, and that they are knowingly defying the license terms because they think they can get away with it. I don't think these are cases of innocent carelessness that can be addressed with polite reminders. But of course I have no idea what to do about it. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It's interesting that it was also in Germany that Gutenberg gave us printing technology, Alois Senefelder invented lithography, where Heidelberg's printing press (one of the world's finest,) which also became one of the first Print on demand presses, would now take Wikipedia into the realm of print on demand as a commercial enterprise. Maybe the Wikipedia should start printing its own material, using the same model, as a source of revenue. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 18:14, 12 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Update: "Wikipedia offers customized print-on-demand books of Wikipedia entries", May 13, 2010. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 20:57, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Identifying B. Traven
I'm restoring the identification of B. Traven as
 * best known in the U. S. as the author of The Death Ship (1926) and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927)

An editor removed "The Death Ship" without explanation.

Of course, the movie starring Humphrey Bogart has made the latter title much more familiar, but probably few movie viewers have ever read the novel. As a novelist he is at least as well known for The Death Ship as for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I haven't got time to dig out an actual citation to show this right now, but I'm confident I can find one and will add it when I do. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:09, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Racial Views Section
The racial views section seems more like a pre-emptive defense of London's racial views than describing his racial views (that either he have or he is accused of), for those people who have no knowledge of London (which includes me). The only paragraph that definitely accused him of being racist is the first one, and every paragraph that follows defends him or argues that he have an empathetic view of minorities. I don't have any knowledge of this subject, but it seems from the length and size of that section and the amount of effort went into finding examples of his non-racist views and the passage about the protest, that London's racial views was very serious or well known, so I was wondering if there is a NPOV problem in that section, where people related to him is editing this article (I only say this, because I saw a few anonymous editors saying very POV stuff on the discussion pages).192.17.105.220 (talk) 21:24, 5 September 2010 (UTC)