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London was the illegitimate child of an “unbalanced free-loving spiritualist mother” who devastated him, man and boy, with her broadsides. His more kindly stepfather was a disabled civil-war veteran. His early years were a series of moves between tenements in San Francisco and Oakland, child labour, but also schooling, public libraries, and self-improvement. One formative experience, when London was 17, was serving on the sealer Sophia Sutherland. He fended off the ship’s bully and swam a mile from the Yokohama shore back to his ship while drunk. The typhoons and the butchering of seals on the Sophia Sutherland resembled Herman Melville’s Pequod. London memorialised the decks in “The Sea-Wolf”, which was published in 1904, as “slippery with fat and blood, the scuppers running red, masts, ropes, and rails spattered”.
London’s other great youthful adventure, the Yukon gold rush, gave him the material for his first famous novel, “The Call of the Wild”, which came out in 1903, and the later “White Fang”. He was better prepared than most of the prospectors who made the appalling journey up from the sea to the gold fields, but after trudging up the steep passes and building a boat to carry their supplies into the wild, he grew sick from scurvy. He scrawled next to his bunk some prophetic graffiti: “Jack London Miner Author Jan 27, 1898.” His labouring days done, London returned to San Francisco and began submitting adventure stories to magazines and newspapers that were beginning to flourish. Commercially, he was anything but minor.
Mr Haley’s account winds down like a clock tidily enough. What is missing, perhaps, is a greater feeling for the vertiginous first years of the 20th century, the advances in flight and electricity, the bare knuckles, the calls for the overturning of order, and Jack London the adventurer careening through the middle of it all.

A. 어휘
illegitimate 불법의. illegitimate child 私生兒(사생아).
unbalanced free-loving spiritualist mother 불안정하고 자유분방한 정신주의자 어머니.
devastate 황폐시키다, 蹂躪(유린)하다. broadsides 퍼붓는 욕설.
stepfather 계부. disabled civil-war veteran 남북전쟁 상이군인.
tenements 셋방, 주택. formative experience 성장경험.
sealer 바다표범 잡이 배. fended off 벗어나다.
bully 학대, 약자를 괴롭히는 자. typhoon 태풍. butchering 학살.
the Sophia Sutherland 소피아 서덜랜드 號(호).
Herman Melville 미국소설가, “백경”이 유명. the Pequod “백경”에 나오는 포경선.
scuppers 갑판의 排水口(배수구). rails 난간. spatter 튀기다, 끼얹다, 퍼붓다.
masts, ropes, and rails spattered 마스트와 로프와 배의 난간이 피로 덮어썼다.
the Yukon 캐나다와 알라스카를 지나서 흐르는 江(강).
prospectors 探鑛者(탐광자). appalling 섬뜩한, 소름끼치는.
trudge 터벅터벅 걷다. steep passes 가파른 고갯길.
supplies 보급품. scurvy 괴혈병, 상스러운. scrawl 휘갈겨 쓰다.
prophetic 예언적인. graffiti 洛書(낙서).
submit 제출하다, 복종하다. flourish 번창하다.
anything but ...외에는 무엇이든=only
wind-wound-wound 꼬불꼬불 구부러지다, 감다. tidily 적절하게, 말쑥하게.
vertiginous 빙빙 도는, 어지러운.
bare knuckles 亂動(난동), 소란. overturning of order 체제전복.
careen 질주하다, 기울이다.