Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780375759291
ISBN: 0375759298
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2002-04-09
Publisher: Modern Library
Release Date: 2002-04-09
Studio: Modern Library

Like the celebrated Klondike Tales, the stories that comprise South Sea Tales derive their intensity from the author’s own far-flung adventures, conveying an impassioned, unsparing vision borne only of experience. The powerful tales gathered here vividly evoke the turn-of-the-century colonial Pacific and its capricious tropical landscape, while also trenchantly observing the delicate interplay between imperialism and the exotic. And as Tony Horwitz asserts in his Introduction, “When London’s stories click, we are utterly there, at the edge of the world and the limit of human endurance.”

Customer Rating:
Summary: Terrific Collection
Comment: London does not disappoint in this collection. His observations are as sound today as they were in his time. It was fascinating to see that London even experimented with science fiction in his story the Red One.

Sean O'Reilly
Editor-at-large
Travelers' Tales
Editor of 30 Days in the South Pacific

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Fine Collection!
Comment: It's a shame Jack London's "South Sea Tales" (sometimes referred to as "Hawai'ian Stories") are not more respected, both by the masses and by literary circles. London's stories here are equally as engaging as his better-known Yukon tales ("White Fang," etc.). And the fact that the setting is so drastically different from the snowy Northern Hemisphere of his other tales represents how versatile of a writer he was. It is true, there is not a lot of character differentiation from story to story, which may annoy readers looking for a veritable "collection" of stories and yet please those other readers looking for stories that are connected and read more like chapters of a novel. Nonetheless, Hawai'i is a United State and yet, fiction from this region that is taught on an academic, American Literature collegiate level is rare. That is a shame, because this collection shows that the region is intriguing, dangerous, and beautiful, all at the same time (and what more can you want out of a short story collection)!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: This is not South Sea Tales
Comment: One star is not because the Jack London stories in this book are not wonderful. It is because this book is not South Sea Tales by Jack London, which I first got from my grandfather's bookshelf and was one of the most memorable reads from my youth. It is a collection of sea stories, including four from South Sea Tales, but I have found a copy of the original stories at Barnes and Noble. One might guess that some of the stories were dropped because, like Huck Finn, they use dialogue and espouse attitudes that we now know better than to live. The stories are still great and do not deserve to become un-stories. This collection is misnamed and misleading.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good solid 1900's sea stories
Comment: Eight good stories by Jack London, about the people and places of the south Pacific in 1908. Also a good long introduction by A. Grove Day which should (like all too many "introductions") only be read *after* reading the stories.

Most of the people in these stories are, of course, either victims or perpetrators (or both) of one of those long painful Western exploitations of a less civilized ("less civilized") part of the world. London knows that that's what's going on, and he writes with sympathy for all concerned, and without the more self-conscious bemoaning that would be expected of a XXIst century writer. To the modern reader, then, he can sometimes seem cold-blooded, but seldom disturbingly so.

The prose is fine and spare most of the time, and never gets in the way of the tale. The places and the tales are memorable. There is not a great variety of character and setting; the eight stories together could almost be a single novel. His voyage on the Snark (which inspired these stories) clearly left him with a strong and single impression of this place and these people, and he conveys that impression skillfully along to us.

Definitely worth reading.

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