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Title: The Sea Wolf by Jack London ISBN: 0553212257 Publisher: Bantam Classic and Loveswept Pub. Date: 1992 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.1
Rating: 5
Summary: Wonderful adventure and character study
Comment: The book is a classic study of two characters - the Luciferian captain Wolf Larson, and the gentleman-turned-neophyte-sailor Humphrey Van Weyden. As Hump learns to survive the brutal conditions aboard Larson's ship, the Ghost, he grows from a soft academic type to a strong and resourceful survivor. Larson, the captain, is presented as a monster with no regard for human life. Larson is intrigued with Hump and engages him in philosophical discussions, but absorbs none of Hump's basic goodness. As Hump develops into a man, Larson degenerates into a blinded, diseased, pitiful creature. Hump overcomes his adverse conditions and even finds love, while Larson self-destructs. The adventure aboard the vessel is described in vivid detail, and the author clearly knows sailing. A wonderful story!
Rating: 4
Summary: Good but not great
Comment: Never has Eliot's famous verse "Not with a bang, but a whimper" come in so handy as when applied to the last few chapters of Jack London's "The Sea Wolf". The book is superbly written, but for a book to be included in a list such as the Easton Press collection of "The 100 greatest books ever written", it should be able to hold its own not only for style, but also for the tale itself, the "myth" behind it. The Sea Wolf does a fantastic job of building such a myth for about two-thirds of the novel. Then Ms Brewster appears, and suddenly the plot peters out. What begins as a gripping, sobering account of life at sea under a ruthless captain and a brutal crew, ends as a bland, unconvincing account of childish romance and "survival". If London had only combined this book's literary richness with the heart-rending plot of The Call of the Wild or White Fang, he would be truly immortal.
Rating: 4
Summary: Uneasy mix of great uebermensch story and bad love story.
Comment: It's a real shame that Jack London coupled one of his most fascinating and full-blooded characters with a stinker of a love story which carries no conviction.
Maud Brewster, like many of London's female characters (from Skeet, Curly and Mercedes in The Call of the Wild to Beth, Alice and Collie in White Fang), is underdeveloped, a mite hysterical, and completely dependent on the male characters. Without much in terms of psychological complexity, Maud provides a poor, poor reason for Humphrey Van Weyden to rebel against Wolf Larsen.
The first half of this book and its final few chapters are superb because London's male characters and their struggles are vividly portrayed. The knife-whetting contest between Mugridge and Hump; the homoerotic segment where Hump tends to a naked and wounded Larsen; Johnson and Leach's struggle against Larsen's iron fist -- London obviously loves these characters and gives them the light of day. Maud is another story.
In any event, the first half of this book is the top-notch tale of a Miltonic hero's slow slide from power, and the ending a moving fulfillment of this character's destiny (life, in the end, *is* yeast...but a savagely active and beautiful yeast, at that). Another one of London's terrible worlds unfolding its brutal majesty before us -- and, of course, another book inexplicably relegated to the children's section of many a book store.
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Title: The Call of the Wild, White Fang and Other Stories (Twentieth-Century Classics) by Jack London, Andrew Sinclair, James Dickey ISBN: 0140186514 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 1993 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: White Fang (Puffin Classics) by Jack London, Annabel Large ISBN: 0140366679 Publisher: Puffin Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: Call of the Wild by Jack London, Dwight Swain ISBN: 0812504321 Publisher: Prentice Hall (K-12) Pub. Date: 1990 List Price(USD): $2.99 |
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Title: To Build a Fire, and Other Stories by Jack London ISBN: 0553213350 Publisher: Bantam Classic and Loveswept Pub. Date: 1990 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
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Title: Martin Eden by Jack London ISBN: 0140187723 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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