John barleycorn alcohol5/27/2023 ![]() ![]() Jack London is known today as the author of dozens of novels and adventure books set primarily in the Klondike North and the Wild West, but few actually realize just how prolific he was. As his 1918 memoir-novel John Barleycorn reveals, a huge part of his upbringing consisted of brushes with death caused by a violent dependence on alcohol. In fact, London’s taste for danger was not limited to the Arctic, The Rockies nor the Pacific. While his stories would eventually be associated with the romantic allure of trodding upon uncharted territory, his adventures were not strictly geographical. The brash Californian thrilled a wide all-ages audience with his own brand of the adventure novel, one that had been dominated by the British masters of the genre, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. While some celebrate the author as one of America’s pre-eminent novelists and travel writers, some of his lesser-known work helped him exorcise the demons unseen in his more popular fiction.Īt the beginning of the 20th century, Jack London would invigorate a sense of adventure in the tens of thousands seeking fortune and glory at the frontier of a largely-unexplored part of the world. ![]() ![]() Jack London has remained a divisive figure in American literature. ![]()
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