[.ca] Martin Eden (ISBN 2859407332)

The Struggle for Book Learning:
Read this shortly after reading "White Jacket" by Herman Melville. Certainly came away from reading this with the impression that Melville is the superior writer. I guess that's not really in question. As an Oaklander, I take issue with the Amazon comment above that says this book takes place in San Francisco. Maybe one or two scenes take place in San Francisco, but the rest takes place in Oakland. It is fun to read the action taking place on Telegraph Avenue or at Broadway and fourteenth street, locations that in some places still resemble the way they looked in London's day. Plot of novel is best referred to as "semi-autobiographical", from what I can gather. Martin Eden struggles to teach himself to write, only to find that success leads to emptiness. Story mirrored a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne called "Ethan Brand". In that story, the main character becomes obsessed with finding "an unpardonable sin". After travelling around the world, he realizes that the only unpardonable sin is the uncontrolled thirst for knowledge. Martin Eden is kind of like that... He thirsts to know everything, but when his knowledge is recognized by society, he is disappointed and left feeling empty inside. Eden, the character, has a penchant for Herbert Spencer and Nietzche. I found the philosophizing involving these two hard to take, but I guess that's just par for the course with London. Makes for a quick read, despite it's four hundred page plus length.

Undoubtedly my favorite Jack London's book:
I have read several of Jack London's works and I consider this as my favourite. The struggle of the main charater (Martin) to get an education and become a writer is narrated so well by the author that I really had a hard time putting this book down. The plot is very simple: Martin Eden is a sailor who lives in Oakland California at the end of the ninteenth century. When he meet Ruth through her brother, he falls in love with her at once, eventhough she is a rich university student while he is an uneducated orphan that lives with his step sister and her husband. Martin deciedes to get an education so that he can get closer to Ruth. He starts to study grammar and to read heaps of books. eventually he decides to become a writer. The story of Martin striving to make it as a writer is very similar to that of London himself. The book is superbly written and a must read for struggling artists and also for lovers of good literature.

The most underrated book I've ever read:
If there's such a thing as an American canon, this book should be there. Everytime I recommend this book to a friend, they ask, "Who's it by?" "Jack London." "Jack London! The author of call of the wild?" Well, yes. He's the one, but wait!, this book is like nothing else Jack London has ever written, and bears scant semblance to his Sea Wolf or Call of the Wild. In short, this is serious literature (advance apologies to Call of the Wild and Sea Wolf fans), and it's worth reading. This book reminded me a lot of Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome (another wonderful book). Both begin with hope, engage in change, and end in pathos. Martin Eden is a self-educated, self-made man (see why I say it should be in the American canon?) who attempts to garner the love of a young college student who pushes him out of what she sees to be his stifling chrysalis and become more like her and her fellow intelligentsia. The plot thickens when he does not only this, but surpasses them all in erudition with a passionate, eager mind, a more eager heart, and lots of hard work, all in the name of love. And then in the book's climax, he decides to ... oh, I can't tell you that. You'll hate me, and I'll ruin the book for you. What I can tell you, however, is that if you go to a bookstore, and pay full price for this book, you'll love it and feel that you've gotten a good bang for your buck. If you get it at a discount, you'll walk away feeling as though you've five-finger discounted this little gem. Read it ... you'll be glad you did.

A life altering read!:
Perfection in its every breath! Imagine a mind trapped in a body that was born to unfortunate social circumstance, but strives to rise with the masses for the sake of love, only to rise above and beyond it without being able to contain itself-that is the essence of Martin Eden. Then imagine again a mind obssessed with knowledge, a body hungry for love and a soul agonized from the vice of humanity-that is the plight and tragedy of Martin Eden. Reading this book was a life altering read that I will always cherish, for every artistic mind will inherently and passionately understand every syllable uttered by Jack London's genuis-buy this book and read it and reread it indefinitely!

"Realistic Idealism":
Jack London, a writer, journalist, adventurer; a tough man and a hopeless romantic. Although he is primarily known for his stories of adventure dealing with the Gold Rush, the Wild West and North, and of course for his marvelous novels with animals rather than people at the center of attention - he was also a great writer in many other respects, his "Martin Eden" being the best example. Slightly autobiographical, "Martin Eden" remains the single grand achievement of Jack London, one of the saddest books ever written, which made me notice that although most books end well, it's not always the case. How I wished the ending was different! And then I realized that some stories simply cannot end well, just like in real life events are more apt to destroy us rather than strengthen us, not to mention the fact that happy ends seem as real as fairies. Many people read books to escape from reality, to find that one place in the world where things turn out how we wish them to turn out. While I cannot deny this inherent human need, and I myself am not free from such wishful thinking, I seem to need brutal realism as much as I need consolation, among other things. "Martin Eden" shook me terribly when I was just a young moose, and since then I have read this novel several times, including the original English version, and it firmly remains among my favorites. Realistic this novel is, as are many books dating from that period, where the XIX century trends were still firmly instituted in the imagination of the turn-of-the-century generation, despite numerous efforts to revolutionize literature undertaken at about that time. Published in 1909, "Martin Eden" offers a wide array of topics and themes, all convoluted in a compelling, classical narrative. Firmly set in the aforementioned realism, depicting the society with brutal, unforgiving eye of the commentator, at the same time the novel is an apotheosis of idealism, as romantic, naive and detached as any other idealism out there. A young man serves at the sea, and at one point he meets a young lady from the "upper middle class". In time, their relationship deteriorates from brute force attraction based on instinct, from cheerfulness and spontaneity to a grave series of misunderstandings based on the divergence of expectations one holds with respect to another, the more they know each other, the more so, to finally loathe in their lover what attracted them in the first place. "Martin Eden" is one of the most beautiful and touching love stories ever written, the more so because of its frankness which never borders on postmodern exhibitionism which plagued literature of the XX century. "Martin Eden" served London as a tool of social commentary, and thusly he expressed his disappointment and disapproval for the social class divisions, and as many before and after him, painted the bourgeois black with a fervor worth of any young radical. Nevertheless, as much as this sensitive socialism dated since then, it's a pleasure to read compared to what goes for literature almost a hundred years later, the journalistic socrealism of ideologues who imagine that they are writers. More generally, it's a sad fact that the XIX century essentially ended in 1914 with the outburst of the World War I, in all dimensions, including literature. "Martin Eden" thus may be considered as the last breath of the good old times that are never going to return.