What do You think about The Cruise Of The Snark (2000)?
I loved Jack London's life when I was much younger, and well, I still do. I dreamed of sailing the seas as he had. I loved his stone house in Glen Ellen and wished to live there, and I loved and wanted all of his souvenirs from the different islands that he visited as well. I also loved that his wife went on the ocean voyage with him. And last of all, I even like some of this politics. Back in my younger days I had a VW bug with a license plate that read, "The Snark." That is how much I loved London. I remember when I was driving to Glen Ellen to see his home one day, as I often had, a man stopped me to comment on my license plate, and I told him that I wanted to paint my car pale yellow, and he replied that boats that color sink. I never painted my car yellow, maybe for that reason; I painted it an alpine white, and it sank a few weeks later when I ran off the road into a wooden corral that meant to keep the horses inside. A neighbor stopped to help me keep the horses inside and my husband rebuilt the neighbor's corral. I should have painted my car yellow. Anyway, I spent many a day traveling from Berkeley to Glen Ellen, either alone or with friends, and we would spend the day at Jack London's home, going into the museum, walking the grounds, picnicking, and sitting by the lake. At that time I had only read "The Call of the Wild," and I was not impressed by it, not because of the way it was written but because of its rawness, its graphic details. For this same reason I don't read much of Ernest Hemingway but love the places he lived, although not his life. I wanted London's life. So while I read about the Snark at the Jack London museum, I never read another book by him. I did read his biography a few years ago and loved it. But this year I had decided to read "The Cruise of the Snark" and then onto some of his other works. I will also read more of Hemingway but plan to skim over the graphic details of bull fighting, etc. But this book was somewhat boring most of the time, which made it hard to want to pick it back up. I really had hoped to have learned much more about the natives, and I had also hoped that it would have been more adventuresome. It certainly was not "Kon-Tiki" or even "Paddle to the Amazon"--books that I recommend to all who love adventure. This book read like a ship's log, so it felt like to me that he had been keeping this log and then that is what he handed in to his publisher. Sure some of the stories were interesting, but that is all, just interesting, not exciting. I especially liked the story of Nature Man and then the story of their bouts with disease since they were both more interesting and ies were more developed as stories. The other stories seemed to go nowhere.
—josey
Looking over people's reviews and my own experience of recommending this book, I have found that people are on or off with it. I found it delightfully entertaining from London's adventures in the realm of ship building to nautical navigation it was THE adventure to do. You must consider, would you as a writer take on the open waters of the ocean? And with such curiosity and open discussion of the encounters with natives and experiences London does an excellent job of dictating his wonder. Also, it may have been the trip that led him toward his youthful demise as he contracts tropical diseases. Who knows, but it is certainly an interesting page in an outspoken writer's life.
—Jordan
I really loved this book, the trip was amazing, being it was so long ago andjust a unique thing to do at the time. It would be unique now as well. The onlyreason I did not give it 5 stars is because Jack London got sick, well, everyoneaboard his boat did, and had to abort the world cruise in Australia so wemissed out on all the interesting observations Jack would have made on the restof the trip. I also wish he had commented on his wife's feelings about making thetrip more than he did. Still, loved it!
—Linda
