jack london

Born within months of one another in 1876, Jack London in January and Tilden Daken in June, the painter and the writer, both 25 at the time, hit it off straight away. The westbound train was scheduled to arrive the following morning. That night, in the Reno railyard, London taught Tilden his rules of the road, the precarious practice of clinging to the brake beams inches above the track, or in the hobo vernacular, “riding the rods.”

Given that he turned out so much in so little time, the quality of London’s work is uneven. He spread himself too thin and he knew it. One reason that he kept relentlessly grinding out one book after another was that because after the deprivations of his youth, he enjoyed living well. So he wrote to maintain his flashy lifestyle. His attempt to escape the treadmill he had constructed for himself only chained him to it the more securely.