Arbieroo reviewed John Barleycorn by Jack London
Review of 'John Barleycorn' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This isn't an autobiography in the conventional sense. It's clearly and openly a Prohibitionist tract, published seven years before Prohibition came to pass. It just so happens that London chose his own drinking career to illustrate his argument. Hence, those looking for the story of Jack's life may be very frustrated as he ignores the details of his many adventures in favour of describing his many bouts of binge drinking and his slow descent into alcoholism (though he never admits to being an alcoholic - a mixture of macho pride and the era's poor understanding of addiction preventing).
Macho pride is a prominent, almost defining aspect of London's character, in fact. Despite writing of the evils of alcohol, he can't help repeatedly emphasising how his "superior constitution" allowed him to out drink nigh everybody he ever met and recover faster, too. Or do two men's work in the coal house …
This isn't an autobiography in the conventional sense. It's clearly and openly a Prohibitionist tract, published seven years before Prohibition came to pass. It just so happens that London chose his own drinking career to illustrate his argument. Hence, those looking for the story of Jack's life may be very frustrated as he ignores the details of his many adventures in favour of describing his many bouts of binge drinking and his slow descent into alcoholism (though he never admits to being an alcoholic - a mixture of macho pride and the era's poor understanding of addiction preventing).
Macho pride is a prominent, almost defining aspect of London's character, in fact. Despite writing of the evils of alcohol, he can't help repeatedly emphasising how his "superior constitution" allowed him to out drink nigh everybody he ever met and recover faster, too. Or do two men's work in the coal house of the electrical station, or carry more than the indigenous porters in the Yukon, or...the examples are numerous. Exactly how much exageration is going on here is hard to say, essentially unprovable. Nor did his pride limit itself to his physical prowess. He doesn't mind boasting about how he crammed two years' worth of high school in 6 months and passed the entry exams for the University of California, or how prodigiusly he read. Here the facts can be established because of the paper record: Not only did he make it to the Uni, his one semester there was an academic success, recording no grades below "B". His library was extant at his death and he used to scribble marginal notes, so it's easy to tell which books were used. Additionally, the references in his own books provide further evidence.
So whilst the reader won't learn more than the bare outline of London's life, there are character insights aplenty and if you want to see the social reasons for many a binge and many an insidious descent into addiction, from personal experience, here is as well-writed example as I can imagine.
It's a lively read, as compelling as any London fiction story or novel I've read (which is most of the major works, by now). Indeed, his second wife, Charmain, claimed it was fiction, alcoholism being extremely scandalous at the time - but the evidence doesn't back anything more than possible exageration of some of the binging episodes.
Clever as he was, though, London got the psychology of booze wrong in this regard: He thought Prohibition would work, that a generation would grow up without alcohol and never miss what they never had. Instead it was 13 years of the worst alcohol driven excesses in American history, driven by organised crime and the allure of the forbidden. He died before he saw himsekf proved wrong, though.