Talk:Jack London

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--Place in literature--

The Call of the Wild appears on many "best" lists, including The Observer's 100 greatest novels of all time[1] (ranking #38) and Radcliffe College's The 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century[2] (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#Further_comments

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

[edit] "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 [3] 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)

[edit] 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."[4]--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)

[edit] 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 [5] , 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.

[edit] Zecotrend links

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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...

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] "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—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)

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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."

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

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)

[edit] 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)

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