Oakland, Jack London, And Me

By Eric Miles Williamson

Acclaimed novelist, editor, and critic Eric Miles Williamson, with the publication of his first book of nonfiction, establishes himself as one of the premier critics of his generation. There is no other book that resembles Oakland, Jack London, and Me.

The parallels between the lives of Jack London and Eric Miles Williamson are startling: Both grew up in the same waterfront ghetto of Oakland, California; neither knew who his father was; both had insane mothers; both did menial jobs as youths and young men; both spent time homeless; both made their treks to the Northlands; both became authors; and both cannot reconcile their attitudes toward the poor, what Jack London calls the people of the abyss.

With this as a premise, Williamson examines not only the life and work of Jack London, but his own life and attitudes toward the poor, toward London, Oakland, culture and literature. A blend of autobiography, criticism, scholarship, and polemic, Oakland, Jack London, and Me is a book written not just for academics and students. Jack London remains one of the best-selling American authors in the world, and Williamson's Oakland, Jack London, and Me is as accessible as any of the works of London, his direct literary forbear and mentor.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933896116
• ISBN13: 9781933896113
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Texas Review Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Williamson's London

A fine book of essays by a great fiction writer. Williamson shows you his London, and their Oakland. He writes, "And this is why Steinbeck and London are our two greatest writers: they don't write like Harold Brodkey, about some ninny New Yorker who cut his thumb and got sad when his wife didn't sympathize. They don't do the sappy Updike dance of suburban sentimentality. No they write about people at work, together with other people working, alone in the cosmos of their physical and spiritual labors," and if you've ever read any of Williamson's fiction, you'd know he writes for the worker too, which is much more interesting than rich slobs making up problems out of sheer ennui. If the trend were to read about the honest perception of the American working class, Williamson would be at the top of everyones reading list. Instead, he doesn't even make the cut. If you want honesty, and if you don't want to be jerked-off and pampered, read Williamson; he'll deliver it straight. He has a license to write about London that no one else has, and he uses that license to prove London's literary value. Williamson's London, rightfully so, deserves to be in the canon as much as or more than his contemporaries. If you havn't read London, or Williamson's fiction, you will after you read 'Oakland, Jack London, and Me.' 5/1/10