A radical in everything he did, and everything he thought, Jack London pushed himself to extremes, and, in The Radical Jack London, Jonah Raskin explores London’s fiery personality and his explosive creativity.
In a seminal essay entitled “The Orphan at the Abyss,” Raskin rediscovers the authentic Jack London, and returns him to his rightful place in American letters as the Norman Mailer and the Ernest Hemingway of his day.
In the selections he has made from his massive body of work, Raskin shows London’s abiding preoccupations with war and revolution, terrorism and dictatorship, and illustrates how contemporary he could be.
The biographer of some of the wilder men of the 20th century, including Abbie Hoffman and Allen Ginsberg, Raskin depicts, here, the American writer who was, perhaps, the wildest action hero in all our literature.
The Radical Jack London may not radicalize you, or turn you into a wild man or wild woman, but it will certainly challenge your most radical ideas, and stir up your wildest passions. It’s a book that will provoke, outrage, and perhaps even shock, in the tradition of London’s own outrageous writings.