Jack London, prolific writer
I often wonder how writers such as Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Colette, Bertrand Russell, Georges Simenon and many others managed to produce so much, most of them writing in long hand and in ink. All that dipping! I fancy that they must have written during most of their lifetime, every day, all day. Jack London was a morning writer, 1000 words a day without fail for most of his short adult life, 22 years from when he started until he committed suicide at the age of 40. Add that up: almost eight million words. Let’s say a novel is 100,000 words, that comes to about 70 books, but of course not everything gets published. Jack London wrote 40 books in his short life, and he wrote a great deal about that.
One of his first true stories was called “Story of a Typhoon off the Coast of Japan”, something I often recalled living in Tokyo when a typhoon would blow through; also there were his experiences as a teenage oyster pirate on San Francisco Bay at the end of the 19th century; then his adventures as a hobo on the trains across America and his time joining the gold rush to the Klondike. His great dog stories came from that: “White Fang” and “The Call of the Wild”. Then he lived rough on the streets of London to produce another book in 1903, “The People of the Abyss”. He wrote stories of the sea in the novel “The Sea Wolf” and tales of the South Pacific from his sailing experiences. He wrote about his socialist beliefs in “The Iron Heel”, a novel predating Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four”.
He started young doing a man’s work at 14, labouring in factories, joining oyster pirates and drinking in Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon, still standing today at Oakland Harbour, the Jack London Square nearby. The old drinking place was certainly there in 1967 when I visited, having crossed America by Greyhound bus, but unfortunately it was closed, so no imagining for me that I was standing propping up the same bar as Jack London had done 75 years before. I had to content myself with looking in the window and picturing the underage Jack going drink for drink with men. 
I can see that it is still in business now, with the aid of Google and Heinold’s website, the photos showing a style and decor, and even furniture that could well have existed in Jack London’s day.
One of the photos showed a picture of him on board his boat, the Snark on which he sailed the South Pacific. He had intended a seven-year round-the-world voyage but sickness meant he had to return home after only two years. Heinold’s has a neon sign high above the roof proudly stating 
it was “Jack London’s Rendezvous”. There is a photo of a ten-year-old Jack reading a book at one of the tables. The owner, John Heinold loned the 17-year-old the money to go to university.
I wonder what Jack London would have made of the present US president. London was a socialist and social activist, and surely a supporter of President Cleveland, a Democrat, the only president to make a comeback and serve a second term after there had been the Republican President Harrison. London would have admired President Theodore Roosevelt, an outdoors man, hunter, writer and adventurer. Roosevelt was one of the four great presidents’ heads carved out of Mount Rushmore.
I had to go home to Scotland after six weeks bussing both ways across the States, often thinking of Jack London doing the same on trains but in very different circumstances.
The first two photos here were taken in July, 1967 on my visit to Oakland, San Francisco
Below: Heinold’s First and Last Chance Saloon; Photos behind the bar (Jack London’s photo aboard his boat is top left).
Behind the bar
