Jack London on Jack London: John Barleycorn and The Road

Jack London's two most acclaimed nonfiction books are together in one volume. During his relatively brief literary career, Jack London published over one hundred works of prose and drama and inspired scores of biographies claiming to know the truth about Jack London, whatever that truth may be. The truth is, there is no better authority on London than Jack London himself. Part of London's popularity is due to our vision of him as that rare man who did what he wanted and lived as he chose. Realistic or not, we see in London a man who lived without fear while searching for Truth. These two books, more than any others, clarify our understanding of who Jack London really was. The Road was first published in 1907, preceding On the Road by half a century and making Kerouac's journeys seem juvenile by comparison. Begun in 1892, The Road chronicles London's years as a penniless vagabond. Already a hardened man-child at sixteen, London set out on his trek with little more than a few coins and a notebook in his pocket. The book shows us London's brief stint in Kelly's "Army" and his month in the Erie County Penitentiary after an arrest for vagrancy. We see the beatific joy of sleeping under a moonlit sky and the unrestrained humiliation of begging for food. John Barleycorn was published three years before London's death and is the closest thing we have to a London autobiography. Here we see London at his best, and his most vulnerable. In contrast to the glut of myopic and self-serving celebrity tell-alls that would become a cottage industry nearly a century later, John Barleycorn gives us an honest and revealing look at the author and his inner demons. The common theme is London's experiences with alcohol and, perhaps luckily for us, alcohol was ever-present in London's life. Alcohol was there when London first got drunk as a five-year-old, it was there during his years on the sea, and it was there in London's later life as a catalyst for his inner philosophical debates with Death. Taken together, John Barleycorn and The Road represent more than an autobiography. They give us not only a look at who Jack London was, but also a first-hand account of the events that shaped who he would become. Complete and unabridged, this is the one book that every true Jack London fan and scholar must have.