The Sea Wolf

I literally just finished yet another wonderful Jack London creation, The Sea Wolf, on Sunday.  My personal copy of the book is a softened and yellowed-with-age paperback printed in 1965, though it was originally written in 1904.  It was a valued find at Books & Melodies, a local used/vintage bookstore (that also sells used records).  It's a great used bookstore that is filled to the brim with great books for excellent prices (by excellent I mean cheap).  I don't hold a strong preference to paperback books, but I do enjoy the malleable feeling a book acquires from age as well as the softening of its pages.  

There's something intimate in becoming completely enthralled in an exciting read.  Bending the pages around the spine and curving the paper.  Consuming the text to satiate one's mind.  It's such a different feeling from the new laser-printed books you can easily find at your local Barnes & Nobles.  Blah!  Give me aged pages and lost spelling (dated).  Intricate vocabulary and gripping mental imagery.

The book follows a young gentleman in his mid-thirties, Humphrey Van Weyden, the scholarly protagonist and his voyage from a sinking passenger ship to being rescued and then imprisoned on a sealing schooner by the name of Ghost.  Captain Wolf Larsen, a cook, six to eight mates, and six seal hunters make up the sealing schooner that are all 100% testerone and 100% souls of the sea.  The theme of life and death is always prevalent and is also classified as the cheapest currency in existence.  Wolf certainly calls the shots on board the Ghost, and exercises his philosophies of human life, existentialism, and the views of 19th century theorists (for he's not only super-strong and sea-experienced, he's also well read).   

This is a book filled to the last page with nautical terms and life confined to a small buoyant vessel in the Pacific Ocean.  I was also happily surprised to find out the physical story in the book was printed to the very last page!  That may seem like piddly-posh to most people (or everyone)-I was honestly really astonished; one usually sees advertisements for other books, printing information, or even just four or five blank pages at the very end of a bound book after the story has ended.  I also really enjoy the small bits of 19th century romance from a man's perspective through Jack London's books.  Three I've read so far (Adventure, The Sea Wolf, and Valley of the Moon) have small examples of innocent appreciation and curiosity of the opposite sex. 

I was captured by it to the very last page and like the rest of Jack London's books, I loved this one dearly.  If you have yet to read any of Jack's books, please give it a second chance.  His work is a milestone in American Literature (in my personal opinion) and I believe every American should at least know who he was and a little of his writing.

As you've probably guessed I'm quite passionate about Jack London and have been completely absorbing myself in his writing.  I love the feeling of falling in love with how an author writes and how he/she makes you feel when you read his/her work.  Sometimes, you just find that one particular author that knocks your socks off-and you're addicted!  I hope you share the same sentiments about a favorite author(s).  

Happy reading!
-Caroline