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Rating: 
Summary: It held my attention, but...
Review: If you're reading this, either you're a died-in-the-wool Jack London fan or you know little about his work. To those who liked "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" and want to know what to read next: the short stories! And of the novels, "Martin Eden," "The Sea-Wolf." Among his LESS well-known works, I and others have a high regard for "John Barleycorn," "The Road," and "The Iron Heel," and many love "The Star-Rover" (although I don't care for it). Now, as for those who just can't get enough Jack London and want to know what this book is like: it's not bad. It's readable. It is a Jack London account of a passage around Cape Horn in the last days of the sailing ship. It is based on a trip Jack and Charmian (and of course his valet Nakata) made in 1912. Three-quarters of the way through this book I was almost ready to classify it as a hidden Jack London treasure but it really falls apart. The problems? Well, loose construction and loose ends, common Jack London faults. He establishes an intriguing cast of grotesque characters and curious plot twists and then never resolves any of them. It builds up wonderfully, then it lets down miserably. For example: the mutineers have a mysterious source of food which makes it hard for the officers to starve them into submission. Jack London elevates this to the status of a major riddle and refers to it again and again, until I reached the point of being really curious about what happened. And he never tells us! Worse: what became of Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire? For two-thirds of the book he builds toward a confrontation between them. During the mutiny, Pike leaves the deck intending to find Mellaire--and, basically, both of them simply vanish! Like many of his later tooks, this book contains the usual amount of racialist crappola, but not enough to ruin the book for me. The good guys win because "we, the fair-pigmented ones, by the seed of our ancestry rule in the high places and shall remain top dog over the rest of the dogs," etc. And there's the usual amount of what I can only call mushy stuff "The Sea-Wolf," the protagonist earns his strength and self-reliance. In "Elsinore," he simply comes into it as his Aryan birthright.
Rating:
Summary: It held my attention, but...
Review: If you're reading this, either you're a died-in-the-wool Jack London fan or you know little about his work. To those who liked "The Call of the Wild" and "White Fang" and want to know what to read next: the short stories! And of the novels, "Martin Eden," "The Sea-Wolf." Among his LESS well-known works, I and others have a high regard for "John Barleycorn," "The Road," and "The Iron Heel," and many love "The Star-Rover" (although I don't care for it). Now, as for those who just can't get enough Jack London and want to know what this book is like: it's not bad. It's readable. It is a Jack London account of a passage around Cape Horn in the last days of the sailing ship. It is based on a trip Jack and Charmian (and of course his valet Nakata) made in 1912. Three-quarters of the way through this book I was almost ready to classify it as a hidden Jack London treasure but it really falls apart. The problems? Well, loose construction and loose ends, common Jack London faults. He establishes an intriguing cast of grotesque characters and curious plot twists and then never resolves any of them. It builds up wonderfully, then it lets down miserably. For example: the mutineers have a mysterious source of food which makes it hard for the officers to starve them into submission. Jack London elevates this to the status of a major riddle and refers to it again and again, until I reached the point of being really curious about what happened. And he never tells us! Worse: what became of Mr. Pike and Mr. Mellaire? For two-thirds of the book he builds toward a confrontation between them. During the mutiny, Pike leaves the deck intending to find Mellaire--and, basically, both of them simply vanish! Like many of his later tooks, this book contains the usual amount of racialist crappola, but not enough to ruin the book for me. The good guys win because "we, the fair-pigmented ones, by the seed of our ancestry rule in the high places and shall remain top dog over the rest of the dogs," etc. And there's the usual amount of what I can only call mushy stuff "The Sea-Wolf," the protagonist earns his strength and self-reliance. In "Elsinore," he simply comes into it as his Aryan birthright.
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