The Star Rover is the story of San Quentin death-row inmate Darrell Standing, who escapes the horror of prison life—and long stretches in a straitjacket—by withdrawing into vivid dreams of past lives, including incarnations as a French nobleman and an Englishman in medieval Korea. Based on the life and imprisonment of Jack London’s friend Ed Morrell, this is one of the author’s most complex and original works. As Lorenzo Carcaterra argues in his Introduction, The Star Rover is “written with energy and force, brilliantly marching between the netherworlds of brutality and beauty.”
By Dr. Bojan Tunguz HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER on May 30, 2011
Format: Paperback
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.
By Dr. Bojan Tunguz HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER on May 30, 2011
Format: Paperback
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.
