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A small street
named for Jack London can be found on either side of South Park,
a couple of blocks from the author's birthplace on Third Street near
Brannan. The short life of Jack London, who died
of uremic poisoning suicide at the age of 40 in 1916, was rich with
adventure. The unwanted son of a spiritualist medium was raised in Oakland
by his mother and a financially hapless stepfather. As a teenager, London
lived on the edge along the Oakland waterfront, raiding the bay's oyster
beds and laboring in a cannery and jute mill. Later, he sailed with a sealing
crew off Japan and Siberia then went on a vagabond's tour across America.
He joined the gold rush to the Klondike at 21. A veracious reader and writer
whose stories were inspired by his travels, prolific London was writing
two books a year and scores of articles in the late 1890s. America's first
working class writer, London was an avowed Socialist who reveled in his
financial success, which he saw as a victory over the Capitalists at a time
when the U.S. entered into a tumultuous transition from laissez-faire to
corporate capitalism. |
