The Jacket (The Star-Rover) [Paperback]

Jack London (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2007 | ISBN-10: 1604248181 | ISBN-13: 978-1604248180

Jack London was one of the first writers to earn a living in part from his writings in commercial fiction magazines. London became a socialist and his writings reflect this change in his political views. He is best known for his novels The Call of the Wild and White fang. Star Rover was published in the United Kingdom as The Jacket. It is a series of short stories loosely joined together. This story of reincarnation centers on Darrell Standing who is a university professor serving a life sentence in San Quentin for murder. Prison officials use the jacket (a torture device) a try and break his spirit. Standing uses a trance state in which he wonders around the stats experiencing past lives as a means to withstand the torture. This novel is unlike any other written by Jack London.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Book Jungle (January 11, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1604248181
• ISBN-13: 978-1604248180
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tribute to the Resilience of Human Spirit, May 30, 2011

By 

Dr. Bojan Tunguz (Indiana, USA) - See all my reviews
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Prison life has never been easy, and prisoners have always had to endure physical and mental hardship that goes well beyond the suffering of the loss of freedom. Prisoners have oftentimes had to suffer physical abuse and corporal punishment at the hands of prison authorities. "The Jacket" is Jack London's novel that explores one particularly cruel form of physical punishment - straitjacketing of prisoners into a full-body "jacket" that severely restricts the flow of blood to most parts of their bodies, and in extreme cases induces angina.

The main protagonist of "The Jacket" is Darrell Standing, a former university professor who is serving a life imprisonment for a murder. Due to some low-level intrigue amongst prisoners, he is suspected of hiding dynamite and sent to solitary confinement. There he is put into the jacket, and at first he experiences excruciating pain. However, one other prisoner introduces him to a "trick" that would make his condition in the jacket tolerable. He is introduced to a technique of entering a trance-like state where your conscience is freed from the constraints of your body and is free to roam the universe. Once Standing accomplishes this state of mind, he starts to recall episodes from what he believes are his previous lives. These various episodes form the bulk of the narrative in the book, and each one of them can be read as a separate short story. The stories are very interesting in their own right. This is a very good thing, because otherwise the constant repeated recollection of previous lives could make the plot development tedious. Standing is convinced that these experiences are real, and even though there are some very strong hints throughout the novel that seem to corroborate this view, there is never a strong "smoking gun" proof of any of that.

The theme of reincarnation and past life recollections has today become extremely commonplace, and is usually associated with practitioners of some eastern religions and new-age practices. However, a century ago these things must have still been novel, at least to the general public. Regardless of whether London really believed in reincarnation or not, or whether Darrell Standing really experienced past lives, this novel is a powerful tribute to the endurance and resilience of human spirit even under the harshest imaginable conditions. London is a very good writer, and his prose is fresh and inspiring even a whole century later. This is a book that is well worth reading.

5.0 out of 5 stars A surprising treat, February 19, 2010

By 

Milarepa (CA USA) - See all my reviews
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And all these years I thought that Jack London was only an outdoorsman. This is novelized version the true experiences of Ed Morrell, a man who wrote his own book about his experiences with astral projection during the time he was incarcerated in the federal prison system in the early 1900's.

This is a very interesting book about both astral projection and the rampant abuse of prisoners during that era and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Of course, I wonder if the teachers I had in elementary school would have recommended Jack's The Call of the Wild or White Fang if they knew that he wrote a book like this. I doubt it.

Oh yes, this particular print edition of the book isn't pretty but I liked the price.