Jack London: Novelist, Short Story and Nonfiction Writer
“You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. ”
Jack London 1876 - 1916. The bust was sculpted by Finn Frolich in 1915.
We are certain you’ll enjoy this informative interview, and we encourage you to make the Jack London State Park a destination whenever you visit the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s a visit you won’t forget.
|
Location: |
Glen Ellen, California |
|
|
Run time: |
30.00 |
|
|
Genre: |
Fiction |
|
|
Website: |
||
|
Raised: |
San Francisco Bay Area |
|
|
Youthful influence: |
A librarian at the Oakland Library, Ina Donna Coolbrith, who later became Poet Laureate of California (1915) . . . and being broke. |
|
|
Influential books: |
Books and adventures. |
|
|
Literary Habit: |
5,000 words a day when new to writing, 1,000 words once established. On paper, with an ink pencil, constantly. |
Oyster pirate, once called 'The Boy Socialist', self-educated, adventurer, gold prospector, seal hunter, novelist and prolific writer, and the world’s first millionaire artist, Jack London’s brief but brilliant and tumultuous life is remarkable. Although he was one of the world’s most successful writers, he never received any literary awards during his lifetime. And yet, he helped support and nurture a future Nobel winner, and inspired countless other American writers for a century after his death.
So let us introduce you to a studious lover of a dynamic writer, an author listed by Writers Digest as one of the 20th century’s 100 Most Influential Writers.
Louis Leal, Volunteer Docent and
Jack London Expert
Just up the hill from the picturesque village of Glen Ellen sprawls the 1400 acres of Jack London State Historic Park. Dotted around this gentle land are the remains of this legendary writer’s life: the rock walls of his ill-fated Wolf House, the museum located in The House of Happy Walls, the giant oak tree where London wrote every day, and the cottage where he died in 1916 at the age 40.
It was in the gardens of this cottage where we interviewed Louis Leal, a volunteer docent for the park and an avid and enthusiastic student of all that is London.
Interview Movie
(Embedded version below)
MP3 Audio File
(Note: To download the podcast,
right click on the link if you are on a PC,
or control click if you are on a Mac. )
Awards & Honors
Named one of the "Top 100 Writers of the 20th Century" by Writers Digest magazine (2000)
Books
23 novels, 21 short story collections, three plays and innumerable short stories, essays and memoirs. Some familiar titles include:
The Call of the Wild
White Fang
The Valley of the Moon
The Star Rover
The Cruise of the Snark
John Barleycorn
The Sea Wolf
