SOUTH SEA TALES [Hardcover]

JACK LONDON (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: HUTCHINSON & CO. (1930)
• ASIN: B000MGPB4C
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is not South Sea Tales, December 30, 2003

By 

TopCat "hal96a" (Minneapolis) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

This review is of South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) by Jack London (Paperback - April 9, 2002). A commenter notes that the review may have been applied to other editions and formats in the Amazon automation maze that actually contain the original collection of stories.

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.

This edit is a clarification. The replacement stories are wonderful. I believe they come mostly from The Voyage of the Snark. But the Snark stories are much more documentary style fiction and may? have been written to finance that ill-fated cruise. The original stories in South Sea Tales are literary and have the period qualities found in Joseph Conrad's novelettes. You won't be sorry you read them, but the replacements are not the quality of the original stories in the collection.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good solid 1900's sea stories, October 17, 2000

By 

David M. Chess (Mohegan Lake, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: South Sea Tales (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific Collection, November 28, 2005

By 

Auriga Distribution2 (Front Royal VA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: South Sea Tales (Modern Library Classics) (Paperback)

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