Jack London

>>10025709
i read his dog books when I was a kid. I haven't since.

I've read:

Call of the Wild
Wild Fang
[French titled story about a dog]
The Iron Heel
Martin Eden
Collection of Short Stories
Martin Breadcorn (?) [about an alcoholic dude]
Some political writing
The Shadow and the Flash


I like his dog books as they introduced me to the notion that nature was merciless and hostile. I enjoyed The Iron Heel as it presented to me, in my years as a pseudo-socialist, with the notion that human society too is an arena in which brutality and so on tend to dominate if people allow it. I'll perhaps read his biography one day, though Martin Eden provides one in part, and I enjoyed that story and related to the protagonist due to his stubborn auto-didacticism, his falling in love with a woman of the upper class, his struggle to publish his works and so forth.

>>10025709
The Sea Wolf is his best book.

>>10025709
I read some of "People of the Abyss" and it made me respect him more, I put it down but I'll get back to it. Eager to read Iron Heel.

>>10025814
>>10025819
OP.

Are you writers by chance? I want to be one and I really take inspiration from the works of Martin Eden and The Sea-Wolf. I'm quit obsessed with Jack London. There is something raw and unrefined about most of his writing that somehow barrs him from being consider a great prose writer, but the bits where he shines through feels like touching a live wire. I wish he had the conditions where he could focus writing like that consistently; he could've genuinely been one of the greats if that ever happened. What do you think about his philosophical influences? Never thought of him as a pure socialist.

File: 1305bMO1320-4C52_lit.jpg (53KB, 287x349px) Image search: [Google]

53KB, 287x349px

Might dump some London's I have saved up.

>>10025861
>I want to be one.

Just by this post I can tell that you are under the age of 20 and that you are very naive as to what it means to be a "writer" in 2017, either as a career or as some sort of pseudo existential category. Career writing is dead for all but a relative minority of shills who cater to mainstream SJW faggot-tier leftwing audience. And that's a fact by the way. London made a lot of money etc from his writing primarily because he wrote a story a today for pulp magazines who published anything about >muh adventure because there was a large and curious reading public at the time who bought pulp mags en masse. Today's equivalent is probably writing tons of listicles for Buzzfeed or some lame shit like that. The greatest horror writers of our time, for example, are probably just writing FOR FREE on creepypasta.com. Whether Jack London could have been "one of the greats" is irrelevant. He had tons of free time and published what he did, if he's a great to you then fine. Such things aren't really worth paying attention to considering the fact that Jews largely decide who makes it as a "great" in the current day. Philosophy has little to do with socialism so I'm not sure why you conflate the two, but some of his philosophical influences are mentioned in Martin Eden. I recommend reading a biography otherwise. I want you to read the following sentence and drop any instinct to dismiss or giggle at it like a teenager epic troller: You are not going to make very much money from your writing, you are going to have to suffer intensely before any worthwhile writing is produced, you are going to have to experience loneliness, regret and bitterness so extreme that you will want to die before anything worthwhile is written, you will cringe and doubt yourself a million times before a single sentence of what you write is valuable to anybody but yourself. I also want you, as a younger brother and disciple of sorts, to read this carefully: https://www.houellebecq.info/popdivers.php?id=13

>>10025880
Get over yourself

>>10025880
>I want you to read the following sentence and drop any instinct to dismiss or giggle at it like a teenager epic troller:
No, I actually found your post insightful. I'm aware you can't make it the way he did in modern age, but I still hold great deal of reverence towards the idea of working hard and consistently to achieve your goals, no matter how played out and cliche it is to say that. And thanks for the link, I will read through it.

And suffering doesn't scare me, I've genuinely had a rough life, not to say it as a bragging right to show off how experienced I am or whatever, but I'm pretty used to disillusionment and failure; struggle does the best job at seperating what is good and strong and what is weak and irrelevant. At least I think so.

I'm pretty sleepy, so I'm aware I am writing much without saying anything, but thanks again, I'm hungry for any sort of advice. I'm 20 so you know. At least all of this is anonymous, so I can embarass myself in hopes of getting something useful out of this.

>>10025884
*unsheathes beyblade*

Ho, ho, ho, Looks like we have a challenger boys. Let 'er rip!

*yanks ripcord*

>>10025888
>No, I actually found your post insightful. I'm aware you can't make it the way he did in modern age, but I still hold great deal of reverence towards the idea of working hard and consistently to achieve your goals, no matter how played out and cliche it is to say that. And thanks for the link, I will read through it.
To make it clearer, I find Jack London's life as more of an example of an ideal that is hard work, rather than an individual case of what I ought to do and follow it to boot to achieve success. Writing in itself can't win bread and I am focused on different areas of life to improve my situation for that, but I am rather poor and life currently is throwing me in many hurdles and problems, which is the main reason why I started reading him again and made this thread in first place.

>>10025888
Embarrassing yourself is good, especially if you do it anonymously where nothing can be traced to you. When I was 22 I was still expecting to become a publisher author within a year or two and used to feel convinced that I'd be receiving an email from a publisher wanting to rim my ass after I'd sent them a manuscript. But the internet and social media really has turned over a stone to reveal the worms that fester in our society. Seriousness is now treated as boring unless it is peppered with cliches and truisms designed to flatter the reader. The ideal reader is no longer a stoic middle-aged white male but a "fun-loving bubbly gal who loves books & chocolate!". An established existential brand, via facebook, twitter or instagram etc, is now as popular if not moreso than talent and a distinctive style. Read the early works of people like Emmanuel Bove, John Edward Williams etc, they aren't great but they allowed them the confidence to keep writing and improve. Now those books would be dismissed outright as non-marketable and their authors disparaged as self-pitying White males living long past their expiry date.

I recommend the following as a practical means of reaching the same plateau of profundity and self-consciousness that I am currently occupying (before I travel to yet-higher plains of thoughts):

1. Read books from a variety of genres and observe your impulses afterwards to see if your preferred style of writing has survived exposure to other types and styles.

2. Read some contemporary books or at least become acquainted with what's out there to see if you fit in (you won't hopefully) and if not why not (what is bad about these books)

3. Keep writing and above all else remain true to yourself, don't fucking shill your work because while it may earn you brief fame or attention the true greats made it because come poverty or obscurity they stuck to their internal voice and articulated the truth in whatever form it appeared TO THEM as a distinct individual

>>10025898
Read his biography before you go sucking his dick Anon. The truth is that London only spent one winter IIRC in the Yukon before returning to California. The guy was a drunk who preached working class solidarity whilst treating his workers like shit, if reports are to be trusted. Never romanticizie anybody, least of all intelligent men whose sensitivity and preaching of virtue is usually balanced out in some way by spousal abuse, poor parenting, etc. And that goes for all of us.

Isn't he some kind of humanitarian pussy? I thought that his portrayal of masculine heroes, ideals, dominion and such was intended to be highly critical

File: gommunidm.png (250KB, 1024x773px) Image search: [Google]

250KB, 1024x773px

>>10026103

London was a humanist, a socialist, an anti-fascist, and an adventurer. But there's nothing inherently 'pussy' about those things, and there is no tradition of worshipping weakness.

On the contrary, the real socialist (not the 'left' college liberal) understands that to build revolution needs hard men, to fight a revolution requires soldiers, and to build a new world in the ashes of the old needs men with brains and muscle and guts.