"I have drifted all my life, curiosity, that burning desire to know." In the intensely curious drifter who penned these words, Haley recognizes one of the most unlikely yet compelling novelists of the twentieth century. Lacing his biographical narrative with acute insights, Haley recounts how the flame of curiosity was first kindled in the son of an impoverished spiritualist medium, particularly chronicling the young Jack London's voracious boyhood reading of Melville, Kipling, and Flaubert. But only after his restless curiosity has schooled him in the harsh world outside of books: the world of panhandling, oyster-pirating, and prospecting, does London find his vocation in distilling the brutalities of life into the epiphanies of art. Careful research illuminates the creative process through which London forged such powerful works as Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Game. But alongside London's curiosity-driven imaginative artistry, Haley traces a parallel strain of conviction-fired social activism, evident in works such as War of the Classes. Not all readers will share Haley's admiration for an idealist intent on revolutionizing society, while himself keeping a valet and habitually mistreating his wife. But any reader who shares even a spark of London's incandescent curiosity will relish this vivid portrait.
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