| Popis: |
In the history of American literature, no writer has been as riddled with contradictions, as controversial, as prolific and popular in his time, or as fascinating as Jack London. He was a racist adherent of Social Darwinism yet an ardent socialist with a fierce sense of justice and an unflagging identification with the underdog. A self-taught professional deeply committed to his art and a supremely self-disciplined writer who churned out forty books and a thousand articles in less than twenty years, London never tired of declaring that he hated to write and that his motivations were entirely mercenary. Though he was a proletarian by background and was his era’s most class-conscious writer, London was equally a man avid for wealth and fame. A hard-drinking adventurer and hedonist, London struggled to be a devoted father and husband, fighting to balance his burning drives with his social conscience. Perhaps more than any other 20th-century artist, Jack London epitomizes the unbearable contradiction that lies at the heart of the American Dream: the communal, utopian desire to be on the side of justice and social progress that is forever at odds with the individualist imperative to escape poverty and powerlessness. |
