¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Jack London!

AKA John Griffin Chaney* and John Griffin London.

Born January 12, 1876. Died November 22, 1916.

He was an American writer, most famous for such novels as The Call of the Wild and such short stories as "Building a Fire." He was one of the first fiction writers to earn worldwide fame and riches from his fiction alone. He was also a dedicated Socialist who ironically became a rich man before he died.

I could spend all day detailing the many paradoxes of his life. For example, though London has been accused of being a racist due to his obsession with the "yellow peril," he has also been praised for his sympathetic portrayal of Mexican, Hawaiian and Japanese characters. Though his novel Martin Eden contains one of the harshest anti-Semitic tirades I ever encountered in a novel, it also contains one of the most sympathetic -- and realistic -- portrayals of the traditional starving artist/writer that I have ever read. London has even gone on record as having praised black boxer Jack Johnson over his white opponent Jim Jeffries at a time when white American writers rarely had anything good to say about black athletes.

I have no interest in defending London's prejudices. But I also have little interest in pretending that London's work is not worth reading despite them. As always, I leave it to my readers to read London's work for themselves and then decide. After all, if a writer's own words can't convince you all that he or she has merit, there is little that even the most eloquent critic can do to convince you all otherwise.

* Birth name.