Jack London

Nothing in Jack London's life was unequivocal. He was a self-taught man whose lack of formal education gave him no coherent structure for his views. His convictions as a socialist were constantly at war with his frontier individualism; his proclivities as a carouser belied his lofty principles. He empathized with underdogs ranging from Mexicans and lepers to the African-American boxer Jack Johnson, but he uncritically accepted California prejudices about Asian immigration and "the yellow peril." Here, in this essay by award-winning journalist Robert Wernick, the story of America's first working-class writer.