James L. Haley: Wolf: The Lives of Jack London

In "Jack London's Dark Side" on the Slate.com, Johann Hari recently wrote this about the book:

If Jack London is chased forever from our historical memory by the dog he invented, then we will lose one of the most intriguing, bizarre figures in American history, at once inspiring and repulsive. In his 40 years of life, he was a "bastard" child of a slum-dwelling suicidal spiritualist, a child laborer, a pirate, a tramp, a revolutionary Socialist, a racist pining for genocide, a gold-digger, a war correspondent, a millionaire, a suicidal depressive, and for a time the most popular writer in America. In Wolf: The Lives of Jack London, his latest biographer, James L. Haley, calls London "the most misunderstood figure in the American literary canon"—but that might be because he is ultimately impossible to understand. London nearly died by suicide before he was even born. His mother, Flora Chaney, was a ragged, hateful hysteric who reacted to anyone disagreeing with her by screaming that she was having a heart attack and collapsing to the floor. She had grown up in a 17-bedroom mansion, but she ran away as a teenager and ended up joining a religious cult that believed it could communicate with the dead. She had an affair with its leader, William Henry Chaney, who beat her when she got pregnant and demanded she have an abortion. She took an overdose of laudanum and shot herself in the head with a—fortunately—malfunctioning pistol. When the story was reported in the press, a mob threatened to hang Chaney, and he vanished from California forever.

You can find that Slate article here. Also, NPR affiliate KQED recently aired a Forum (with Michael Krasny), about the book's main subject, Jack London, with the author. Find that podcast below.



And in July of 2010, The Washington Post said this about the book: Texas historian James L. Haley's sharply focused biography recaptures the breadth of London's achievements and the intricacies of his personality. Haley reminds us that, in addition to fiction and polemics, London produced influential journalism, covering the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst syndicate, two of Jack Johnson's boxing bouts for the New York Herald and the Mexican Revolution for Collier's. (Haley's analysis of all three persuasively argues that London's racial attitudes, though hardly enlightened, were more nuanced than some critics have claimed.) Conscientious summaries of London's prolific output will probably not inspire anyone to seek out books other than the ones already mentioned; Haley's primary interest is the author's rich, complicated life, and his intelligently measured assessment of that life is the biography's greatest strength. Find that article here.