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Old 26-07-2016, 11:29   #31
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

I used to have this on Board. it is a good collection. https://www.amazon.com/Jack-London-S.../dp/0940450054

also amazon has almost all the Jack London stories/novels/collections for free for Kindle.

My next favorite guilty read is louis l'amour.
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Old 26-07-2016, 12:13   #32
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

I too read Jack London as a child growing up in Newfoundland. It is what inspired me to move to Alaska and become my own adventurer. "Call of the Wild", I used to say as a young man. I have so many stories to tell after living in the arctic region that some stories are difficult to believe and I refrain from speaking them for fear of loss of credibility. Luckily I have pictures to prove them. As I slowly age into oblivion I have realized that most life is fraudulent to some degree, but that is all part of the adventure of discovery. I hold no ill will towards the magicians of literature whose stories were less than honest, but by the same token it was them who planted the dreams in my own imagination. For what is that worth? Perhaps priceless.
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Old 26-07-2016, 12:31   #33
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Originally Posted by SaltyMonkey View Post
Come on. Give me a break.

if you believe in Jack London fantasy, I have some swamp land to sell.

The truth? His REAL The Cruise of the Snark is a moral lesson on how to go financially bankrupt sailing. Of course, as a writer, he needed to embellish to make a buck and sell his craft to whomever would publish it. It's as big a lie as TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE.

Welcome to California.
We have given you a break, you live here. If these California icons displease you, return to the other coast and reread Richard Henry Dana. Both London and Steinbeck wrote fiction and non-fiction in stories and books, not diaries, based on... dare I say it... experience and things they heard and learned. Not for a moment did anyone think that London was left on the ice by his family to be eaten by wolves. Neither do most of us think he stuffed rolls in his clothing after being rescued by scientists. Was Charlie as nice and well behaved as all that? Maybe, but I doubt it, just as I doubt the Highway Patrol crew at the weigh station was as pleasant and patient as all that. Appreciate them for what they are, not what you want them to be or what someone else might say, even a publisher. BTW, if Snark was only a financial lesson, it has been valued by many for that reason alone.
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Old 26-07-2016, 12:50   #34
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

Next you will be moving to Alaska to follow and worship some idiot who walks into the wilderness with only a box of rice to die on an abandoned bus. You can ask the locals what they think of that.

Do you really need to read and follow other lies to have your own dream? Not only is that cheating, it's hypocrisy because following someone else's ideals or being inspired by them is nothing but slavery by another name.
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Old 26-07-2016, 13:05   #35
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Come on. Give me a break.

if you believe in Jack London fantasy, I have some swamp land to sell.

The truth? His REAL The Cruise of the Snark is a moral lesson on how to go financially bankrupt sailing. Of course, as a writer, he needed to embellish to make a buck and sell his craft to whomever would publish it. It's as big a lie as TRAVELS WITH CHARLIE.

Welcome to California.

Next up: The Boat Who Wouldn't Float by Farley Mowat — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists
Yup. Right up there to P.T.Barnum. BTW: Mowat is a fantastic writer.
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Old 26-07-2016, 13:15   #36
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

"slavery by another name". That's fresh! I did move to Alaska with just a suitcase and a dream based on somebody else s inspiration. I've done quite well. I am a free thinker and a free spirit. I am also honest with myself. I realize I am just a parrot who repeats what others have said. This is simply the human condition. After all, I use the language that others have created and a numerical system that is not my own. Oh yeah, I bought a boat that I did not design and build either. I applaud your conviction on being able to discern the difference on how to think instead of being told what to think, but your terms are subjective.
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Old 26-07-2016, 14:50   #37
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

Quote: "Then, of course, there's the NSFW version: The Ballad of Eskimo Nell."

Indeed there is! But I didn't dare bring it up, and I knew you'd know it :-)

As it happens, I live less than half a mile from "the driving pistons of the mighty CPR" :-)

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Old 26-07-2016, 14:57   #38
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

Quote: "Mowat is a fantastic writer."

Indeed he was - gone now, alas. Mowat's guiding light was the dictum: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story!"

Mowat was right up there with all the other raconteurs that someone on this thread, IIRC, called "liars". What little perception!

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Old 26-07-2016, 14:59   #39
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Being a Shipwright by trade, it was sad to see London taken advantage of with the building of the Snark, by the time she was built, she was starting to rot and had to be rebuilt, all this taking place on the shores of San Francisco bay.

I too, was disappointed in his account of the Snark. His description of the failure to heave to, the leaks of the hull, bulkheads and tanks, cost over run, all examples of a novice designed and built vessel and a yard more interested in fleecing a sucker than building a sound vessel.

I would be interested in a NA's thoughts on the mainmast placement.

http://www.jacklondonsnark.com//home...narkatargo.jpg
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Old 26-07-2016, 15:48   #40
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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I applaud your conviction on being able to discern the difference on how to think instead of being told what to think, but your terms are subjective.
I can never trust the credibility of someone who uses Bullwinkle for a profile photo. Obviously, un-american.
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Old 26-07-2016, 16:05   #41
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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I can never trust the credibility of someone who uses Bullwinkle for a profile photo. Obviously, un-american.
Bullwinkle is from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.
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Old 26-07-2016, 16:20   #42
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Bullwinkle is from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.
oh YEAH So he says! But do you trust a moose??
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Old 27-07-2016, 08:08   #43
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Ok, here's the thing. I was a sucker once too. Read all that so called great machismo writer crap. The usual barf bag short list. Also appox 500 sailing macho stories while trapped eating beans for three years saving for my first boat. Thought it great prose, great story, great whatever. Then I realised something. After about a week, I didn't give a flyin' F about the characters, their problems, their lives. Hell, I couldn't remember anything about them or what I read that was so interesting or why I read them to begin with. It was like eating a plate of kettle corn. You eat and chomp and clean your teeth with a piece of thread and sing "BOy that was such a damng good Kettle Corn" and fart large sugar clouds with a mix of bananana aftertones, but you are still hungry, and have gained nothing in nutrition. Sure they perform that classic Greek Godlike macho quest thing on and on with the external world blabla. Sure it is literatainment. But, are we ever moved? Do we ever get inside? Does it change our lives? Is there every any REAL sympathy or identification or EMPATHY?

Hell no. Can't. Tough guy prose thing. External world thing. Great for, you know, the child man arm chair sitter who never grew beyond reading Hardy boy redux. Boyo to Mano.

But zip up your flies for a second. I'll tell you a secret that those machismo keeperz of the publishing industry have always known and fear. The greatest writers of adventure and any literature has always been Women. Yup, you heard straight. Women. Sure there are some straggler male types hangin' about, but the greatest writers in history actually have been of the female variety. Don't believe me? Shop around. Be amazed by the incredible, moving lit out there and squeam and drag yourself across the floor to the scotch bottle when you realise you WRITE LIKE ****.

Anyway, to close my point, I'm gonna go swing down some trees to that Jack London Square, zip down my shorts and pee all over that statue.

Well, Salty,
I must admit that your retort above was quite amusing --even though I don't agree with a thing you've said. Readers of great fiction, prose or poetry come to the table with a different set of values than those who have had a steady diet of popular "literature." As a musical comparison, they would be as different as listening to a three chord guitarist and Segovia playing Bach. There is a huge chasm that is insurmountable. Therefore, one man's rice is another's foie gras. However, you seem to have a problem with writers who are decidedly masculine or display machismo qualities in their lives. I don't know why this is but when reading quality fiction, poetry or prose, an educated reader judges the work at hand based upon writing style, description, metaphor/simile, plot construction and that unwritten sense one perceives when they have been "moved" by the writer's words. How the writer chooses to live has no relationship to his work other than as a sensorium for personal experience. For example, when speaking of Balzac in a previous post, if we judged him by his tragic and unfortunate lifestyle and his obsessive penchant for making money at any cost, we might be tempted to dismiss him as a miscreant and not read one of the most prolific writers of European fiction. Or, in the case of the much celebrated Hemingway, if we allowed his machismo lifestyle to interfere with the reading of his works, we would have missed some of the best American fiction dealing with the artist in relation to the world around him. How could one not be moved in Hemingway's "Snows of Kilamanjaro" by Harry--a writer on safari dying of gangrene at the foothills of the great mountain who bespeaks the artist's unique existentialist experience as he goes in and out of consciousness and has to come to terms with a life passed and irretrievable? So, the surface life of a writer has no relationship to the quality of his work. It only tells how the man passes the day, so to speak. Finally, I totally disagree with your last paragraph since I have never read a female writer that has moved me the way that Conrad, Camus, Sartre, Rolland, Mann, Zweig, Hemingway, London, Cervantes and many others have done. And,there is only one female who perhaps has touched the soul of a writer--Anais Nin in her erotic journey into female sexuality "The Delta of Venus." But, that hardly qualifies your blanket statement above concerning female writers. Perhaps you can share some of your favorites? In conclusion, this has been an interesting discussion with, perhaps, some unintended consequences to the positive. These discussions, in my opinion, give great depth to this Forum and allow intelligent discourse perhaps only loosely related to anchors and fiberglass. It is quite apparent from the responses above there are certainly some interesting people who contribute to CF. Good luck, good reading, safe sailing . . . Captain Rognvald--a writer suffering from machismo.
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Old 27-07-2016, 09:10   #44
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

rognvald

You reply was also entertaining, then...we came to a gruff.

You speak in terms of singularities, oddities from fools of the unimaginative. Your list of "moving" writers scared the s88 out of me, a frightening diseconomy against real literature. Conrad move you? Satre???? You must be heartless, or at least an octopus with three hearts -- one to pump cold blood into your veins, the other two to move limbs across an icy ocean floor of darkness, scuttling for fragmented and fermented rotten corpses of writer demons.

I have a simple method for categorizing books which may also serve you:

Books I love go into the bookcase.

So-so books go in the box to take to the library used bookstore which will sell them. I usually pick up a few new reads from that store -- 1-2$ per book. Call it my pious practice of charity.

I also have a special wall. It's over there by my banana tree. It used to be a handball wall. I've left the graffiti intact as a sort of extra punishment. Every so often, after I've either finished a rotten putrid book, or tried to finish it, I throw that tome against the wall as hard as I can. F**King HARD! Then I toss them in the trash, or if I am REALLY mean, I place them on a seat on the Subway so others can be infected too, especially stinky people with hats or homeless people with bags of trash whom remind me of Soylent Green.

No, not all are male writers. For instance, Geraldine Brooks got an extra whack against a Gang tag. March was a total POS.

But I judge books these days with a simple question:

"Is a book wall worthy?"

It works.

Conrad, Sartre, Rolland, Mann, Zweig, Hemingway, London are ALL wall worthy. I mean EVERYTHING they wrote.

Camus, Cervantes are box worthy.

Cormac McCarthy was at one time bookcase worthy. He is now box worthy. I once gave him nods for his Border Series and for his Blood Meridian. Then I discovered over time, as I have of others prementioned, he's nothing but an illusionist. A good one, but there is no there there. Read the rhythms, study his technique of teh prose, but as a reader I cannot find a good wall to describe him, so back he goes into the abyss.

Don deLillo - another box worthy move from the bookcase. His prose is good, perhaps the best. You can learn but are never moved.

Philip Roth - wall worthy. Throw him hard, but not after dark on Friday nights or on Saturdays.

John Banville - wall worthy. You might have a toast of whisky afterwords. I don't drink.

What do I think is worthy in female writers? Do you think I would be easily baited by your childish inquiry? I am no idiot monkey. Do not make a mockery of an intelligent super monkey who also, like you, writes. We can step outside for that different kind of conversation. We can see too if your writing is wall worthy as I pin you to the ground with my hairy arms singing something atonal instead of that Bach crap you mentioned.

But, I am surprised to agree with this list as a start:

BBC - Culture - The 100 greatest British novels

and I would add a few others, for example I disagree that Jane Eyre is her best novel. and no yakiees are listed, but its better than that trash of a list from the androcentral Modern Library.

SaltyMonkey--a writer suffering from truth.
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Old 27-07-2016, 09:53   #45
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Re: Jack London - An Inspiring Example for Adventure

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Next you will be moving to Alaska to follow and worship some idiot who walks into the wilderness with only a box of rice to die on an abandoned bus. You can ask the locals what they think of that.
The locals have quite the narrow minded view on Chris McCandless. Normal small town stuff. Also today many that know the story travel to Alaska just to visit where MCCandless ventured off into the wild and actually hike the 20 miles to "the Bus."

He almost made it out btw like he did several times before in his travels which he began shortly after he graduated from Emory University and gave $25,000 to help those that were starving

The author of Into The Wild (the story of Chris McCandless) John Krakauer wasn't big on Jack London either though pointing out that McCandless was a bit naive to believe many of his writings since London wasn't much of an outdoorsman according to some

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...z759c4sG8l0II=

Also, I just noticed this wall worthty thing.

The Road by Cormac McCarty was a really good book and movie as was No Country. The old stuff is good also as you said.

Conrad's Victory was awesome. Very nice descriptions of the way they lived in that area. Another was Typhoon and Heart Of Darkness had a clever ending and was made into a movie with a bit different setting many years later
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