Rating: 
Summary: Not his best, but close enough
Review: "Martin Eden" is my fifth foray into the works of Jack London. Although I don't find the excitement within that was apparent in "Sea Wolf," the passion is certainly evident. I have read that "Martin Eden" inspired more bad writers to sequester themselves with paper and pencil in unheated attics than any other book, and it is easy to determinewhy. Eden's obsession with learning and then creating the immortal printed word -- after falling for a woman above his class in society/socialist-conscious San Francisco -- is a powerful force that London expounds convincingly. Then, without warning, the sage advice "be careful what you wish for, it may come true," rears its ugly head. London also includes a line about ghosts that should be a classic, but isn't, and his description of a suicide ranks as the best of its kind. A WORD OF WARNING: Do not read the foreward until after. It tells too much of the story and robs some of the author's intended suprises. This is unforgivable. May the publisher rot in hell.
Rating:
Summary: Not his best, but close enough
Review: "Martin Eden" is my fifth foray into the works of Jack London. Although I don't find the excitement within that was apparent in "Sea Wolf," the passion is certainly evident. I have read that "Martin Eden" inspired more bad writers to sequester themselves with paper and pencil in unheated attics than any other book, and it is easy to determinewhy. Eden's obsession with learning and then creating the immortal printed word -- after falling for a woman above his class in society/socialist-conscious San Francisco -- is a powerful force that London expounds convincingly. Then, without warning, the sage advice "be careful what you wish for, it may come true," rears its ugly head. London also includes a line about ghosts that should be a classic, but isn't, and his description of a suicide ranks as the best of its kind. A WORD OF WARNING: Do not read the foreward until after. It tells too much of the story and robs some of the author's intended suprises. This is unforgivable. May the publisher rot in hell.
Rating: 
Summary: This novel will make you an angry young man again...
Review: And being an angry young man is not a completely bad thing. I guess its better than selling out. This novel is about class in America, ambition and the inevitability of selling out when success is achieved. It is also a classic study of the adage, "be careful what you wish for because you just might get it". The main character's discovery that upper class values are not what he imagined is chilling. As a Gen-Xer this book appealed to me on many levels proving that it is truly a timeless classic. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A ageless story of literary triumph and tragedy.
Review: As an individual ages from adolesence to retirement age, Martin Eden and other works of Jack London, though unchanged from the original printing, bring different meaning and worth to the individual. Jack London and other great authors of the period such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, share unparalleled triumph in their individual genre and a shared tragic consequence of death. As a teenager, Martin Eden served as that triumphant underdog that nestles in many teenagers of some 50 years ago. Yet those teenagers, many of who grew up before, during and after World War II, have come to know personal tragedy. The tragedy of Martin Eden (autobiographically speaking)takes on more of reality to those past generations than perhaps the present generation. Nevertheless, the story is timeless albeit bittersweet. Martin Eden could well serve as a primer for those individuals who have yet to read his more classical tales of Sea Witch and Call of the Wild. Those were raw boned and sometimes brutal times he described. A reader may be surprised at the reality in the novels but should accept there is more fact than fiction as Jack London did indeed experience or witness much of these tales
Rating:
Summary: Undoubtedly my favorite Jack London's book
Review: I have read several of Jack London's works and I consider this as my favourite. The struggle of the main charater (Martin) to get an education and become a writer is narrated so well by the author that I really had a hard time putting this book down. The plot is very simple: Martin Eden is a sailor who lives in Oakland California at the end of the ninteenth century. When he meet Ruth through her brother, he falls in love with her at once, eventhough she is a rich university student while he is an uneducated orphan that lives with his step sister and her husband. Martin deciedes to get an education so that he can get closer to Ruth. He starts to study grammar and to read heaps of books. eventually he decides to become a writer. The story of Martin striving to make it as a writer is very similar to that of London himself. The book is superbly written and a must read for struggling artists and also for lovers of good literature.
Rating:
Summary: My passion!
Review: I like it very very much!
Rating:
Summary: illumination for sea wolf
Review: I loved "sea wolf" but didn't really understand why until I read Martin Eden a few weeks later; then instantly, at the unwanted ending of Martin Eden, I saw the dying of Wolf Larsen as the necessary end of a life of transformation. I can't think of this book without seeing the enforced slavery and punitive changes in the "second critic of America" on the sealing ship as an allegory for Jack London's own painful and wilful revolution into an author, and so as a variant of Martin Eden.As Larsen and his first mate struggle for life on the deck of the derelict Ghost, it is a foregone conclusion that the writer and critic will triumph, since Wolf is really trying to kill himself and cannot, even after passing the best of himself and his knowledge and experience into these alien hands.
In "sea wolf" Jack London triumphs as a writer only by destroying his primitive self and uniting with a female alter ego. In Martin Eden, Jack shows that he really is only Wolf Larsen at heart, and cannot under any circumstances break away from his past without destroying himself.
Ah, some things are not worth their price.
Read these two books together, in any order, and preferrably in several orders to discover America and yourself, if you had to give up anything to grow up ...
Rating:
Summary: A-typical London
Review: I picked this up out of curiosity after a male co-worker raved about it being one of his favorite books in high school. The love story is extremely moving, as is Martin's determination to succeed, however at times London seems a little self-absorbed (the image of Cher slapping Nicolas Cage in "Moonstruck" comes to mind: SNAP OUT OF IT!!!); this did get a bit tiresome toward the end. It is definitely NOT the same Jack London I remember from school (Call of the Wild, etc), and that in itself makes it well worth the read.
Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: I read something where Susan Sontag was asked which books
influenced her when she was young and she said, "of course Martin Eden." I think she also said something
about it having a dreary ending. I had never heard of the book so I found it at the library and discovered that
it is a semi-autobiographical novel. It's about a sailor from the working class in San Francisco at the turn
of the century who becomes exposed to the way of life of wealthy, educated, upper class people and decides
he wants to be like them. He falls in love with the daughter of a
wealthy man and decides he wants to become a famous writer, partly to impress her.
Martin Eden suffers a lot in the book. All of his literary efforts are rejected by publishers and fail to impress
the woman he loves. He becomes very disillusioned and very poor. The account of how difficult it is to become
a great writer as opposed to a popular, published author rings true. I enjoyed London's writing style. There's a lot in the book
about individualism versus socialism that didn't interest me. Overall, I would say it is a very worthwhile book with a lot of depth. Martin Eden does achieve success as a writer finally. Many readers will find the ending disappointing. I didn't really care what happened to the character at that point. I was mainly interested in the journey to becoming a great author. I was disappointed that
his literary success occurs so late in the book
Rating:
Summary: The Book that Convinced me to strive...
Review: I read this book while living in Montreal back in '88. By sheer coincidence, I was a struggling writer, working to earn my daily bread in a dry cleaning shop. The book had been given to me as a gift by the father of a friend before I headed off for Montreal to pursue my dreams. So, maybe it was the fact that I had steam blowing in my face at the cleaner's (much like Eden in the book), maybe it was the fact that I wasn't eating very much those days (much like Eden in the book), or maybe it was because of the fact that this book got right under my skin - but it's the book that convinced me that writing is hard work. As a work of fiction, I admit that it has its flaws, but I'm still giving it five stars for London's absolute courage in shifting gears in his career as a writer and putting out a book he believed in and that is absolutely believable. The reader could have done without the political aspsects of London's philosophy, but then again - maybe not.
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