Audiobook · read by volunteers
Faith of Men
Jack London (1876–1916)
Read by Brian Ackermann, Jessica AC Snyder, Robert Scott, Mary Anderson, Zachary Brewster-Geisz, ML Cohen · 10 chapters · 5 h 06
About the book
Ten stories of grit and hardship from Jack London, one of the most vigorous storytellers of the American frontier. Here are men in cold, remote places, tested by weather, hunger and temptation. London himself went north in the Klondike gold rush, and the tales carry a feeling of having been lived rather than imagined. The tales open with A Relic of the Pliocene and A Hyperborean Brew, and they range from comedy and tall tale to tense drama. London writes in a direct, muscular style, with a sharp eye for character and a gift for the moment when everything is at stake. Six LibriVox volunteers share the ten stories, with more than five hours of listening. A rewarding collection for readers of adventure, American literature and short fiction.
Introduction
Jack London was born in 1876 and died in 1916. He grew up in poverty in California, worked at many jobs, sailed the Pacific and travelled to the Klondike during the gold rush. He turned those experiences into fiction, and he became one of the best-paid and most widely read American writers of his age, famous for The Call of the Wild, White Fang and The Sea-Wolf.
The Faith of Men was published in 1904 as a collection of short stories. The stories gathered here show London in a variety of moods. Some are comic, in the tradition of the tall tale, and some are serious studies of endurance and moral choice. Many draw on the northern settings with which he was so closely identified.
London’s fiction is shaped by his strong belief in the importance of struggle, as well as by the ideas about nature and society that were fashionable in his day. Readers will occasionally meet racial and social assumptions that reflect that time and which many listeners now find troubling. Nevertheless, the narrative drive and the vivid sense of place keep the stories alive, and a number of them have been widely anthologised.
This LibriVox recording contains ten stories, with the first two titled A Relic of the Pliocene and A Hyperborean Brew, and lasts a little over five hours. Six volunteers share the reading. It will appeal to anyone who likes classic short stories, tales of the North and the work of a writer who lived the life he described.
Public domain
Jack London died in 1916: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text