The best book ever written

Is the 'Sea Wolf', by Jack London, best book ever written?

I hope not!

Why not?

Because I have not read it. It is fiction.

You have to admit, Alice. Jack London wrote very realistic fiction. I haven't read The Sea Wolf, but if Call of the Wild and To Build a Fire are good examples, I'm betting it is quite good, especially if one is a sailor.

Harry, I don't know if you are interested in learning about the American West. Much of our way of thinking is expressed in that philosophy. Owen Wister's The Virginian, from 1902, does a good job of expressing that viewpoint. It is public domain now, and can easily be found online, in several languages. You might try Project Gutenberg. From my perspective, it is one of the best novels ever written.

Ann

Thanks Ann. i will seek up the book you recommend.

Once some year ago I had talk with a person who had studied literature in Universality, she had a degree of literature - and when we
talked I asked whether she have read Moby Dick- no she has't read it, and knew anything about that book - and what else - she didn't know ' the Grapes of Wrath by J. Steinbeck either. Two literature giants , and how anybody spending time with literature could be ignorant of them especial when the last one tells story well fit in our time. the present.

According to Robert Weisbuch in his book: Atlantic Double- Cross,(American literature and Britis Infuluence) The Moby Dick was the first american novel, free of the influence of British literature.
The well known american authors, like John Steinbeck and Hemingway have got very strong influence
from Jack London who still hold the record widely read author in world.

The "best book ever written" probably wasn't published because the author couldn't find an agent or editor with the vision and foresight of a lima bean.

Al -lol. They're not risk takers, that's for sure.

I submitted some queries for a creative nonfiction book awhile back. No one answered. I submitted one query for my standard dry but popular nonfiction fare, and got a taker right away. Folks are afraid to go out on a limb, I think.

Al Stevens wrote:

The "best book ever written" probably wasn't published because the author couldn't find an agent or editor with the vision and foresight of a lima bean.

What Ahad said.

Ann,

I am not a Jack London fan. To Build a Fire was a downer for me.

Dear Harry,
Jack London was a master of bringing the reader into the story. You feel the cold and the fear as if you were there in that space in the story. You feel the panic that the character feels. He was an intense story teller.

Steinbeck and Hemingway did the same thing, but they held your hand and comforted you a little with their dialog and diversions.

There are so very many, many best books. It depends on whims and notions of readers.

But, when a person reads a really great book, no one has to tell them that they have been graced with the words of a great writer.

The reader knows they have been blessed with excellence. No question.

Love,
Betty

I guess I was not done.

There are authors like Alan Paton who write with such poetic words that the words themselves sing in your soul like a song. The story is almost a chant that connects you to the place you have never been and winds your heart around the characters that he has put on the page.

Books have taken me places and transported my mind up and out of my world.
I suppose that is true for everyone.

I love stories. I wish I could express it better.

Love,
Betty

Over the years I have read most all of Jack London's work, published, and un-published. I have owned a few of his books printed at the time. I have read everything I could find on the man himself.If he were alive today, I would not like him...he was an S.O.B.The Yacht Snark was Jack's boat...he designed it himself...it was not a good sailing boat. His adventures aboard her were 90% fiction. Jack was not a good writer, he was a great story teller. Hemingway was both.
I think I write better, and am a better story teller than Jack London...I certainly feel I'm a bigger S.O.B. than he was.

Good hit the beehive. I say this with respect all the joined this conversation. As everyone know there are some natural limits to say all what I am going to say, however I try my best to get this writing understand.

I think no one could deny J.London's achievement, even his style and text is out of time and could sound little too romantic, - but the idea is still there, all his writing convey some sort of idea of human, and - even Hemingway is good writer and well earning his Nobel - sad to say - the dialogues and talk in his book, yet lively, sound very empty, Instead London put his people speak for some reason and meaning.

Hemingway was a tragic man. I don't envy him. Sad when one kills oneself.

We all like what we write --that is why we write it.

My first Jack London novel was The Call of the Wild. He was a great author.
Some may not like him because he was a socialist.

Here is a quote: "London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience."

It is suspected that his death was suicide. Regardless of his political views, one cannot deny that he was a great writer. His work lives on.

Do writers often kill themselves?

I'm suicidal Alice. Perhaps I should move to Pakistan. They may want me to drive a truck.

alice wrote:

Do writers often kill themselves?

No. Only once.

Abe F. March wrote:

I'm suicidal Alice. Perhaps I should move to Pakistan. They may want me to drive a truck.

Hope you are joking!

Al Stevens wrote:

alice wrote:

Do writers often kill themselves?

No. Only once.

Great answer!

Interesting fact: Doctors have the highest suicide rate.

Is'n there any message in this? This is quote from the sea wolf

I was amused, a couple of evenings back, by seeing Wolf Larsen reading the Bible, a copy of which, after the futile search for one at the beginning of the voyage, had been found in the dead mate's sea-chest. I wondered what Wolf Larsen could get from it, and he read aloud to me from Ecclesiastes. I could imagine he was speaking the thoughts of his own mind as he read to me, and his voice, reverberating deeply and mournfully in the confined cabin, charmed and held me. He may be uneducated, but he certainly knows how to express the significance of the written word. I can hear him now, as I shall always hear him, the primal melancholy vibrant in his voice as he read:

"I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.

"So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom returned with me.

"Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought and on the labour that I had laboured to do; and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

"All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not; as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.

"This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all; yea, also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil, and madness is in their heart while they live, and after that they go to the dead.

"For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

"For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.

"Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun."

"There you have it, Hump," he said, closing the book upon his finger and looking up at me. "The Preacher who was king over Israel in Jerusalem thought as I think. You call me a pessimist. Is not this pessimism of the blackest? - 'All is vanity and vexation of spirit,' 'There is no profit under the sun,' 'There is one event unto all,' to the fool and the wise, the clean and the unclean, the sinner and the saint, and that event is death, and an evil thing, he says. For the Preacher loved life, and did not want to die, saying, 'For a living dog is better than a dead lion.' He preferred the vanity and vexation to the silence and unmovableness of the grave. And so I. To crawl is piggish; but to not crawl, to be as the clod and rock, is loathsome to contemplate. It is loathsome to the life that is in me, the very essence of which is movement, the power of movement, and the consciousness of the power of movement. Life itself is unsatisfaction, but to look ahead to death is greater unsatisfaction."

"You are worse off than Omar," I said. "He, at least, after the customary agonizing of youth, found content and made of his materialism a joyous thing."

"Who was Omar?" Wolf Larsen asked, and I did no more work that day, nor the next, nor the next.

In his random reading he had never chanced upon the Rubeiyet, and it was to him like a great find of treasure. Much I remembered, possibly two-thirds of the quatrains, and I managed to piece out the remainder without difficulty. We talked for hours over single stanzas, and I found him reading into them a wail of regret and a rebellion which, for the life of me, I could not discover myself. Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own, for - his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own - he recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate revolt that was well- nigh convincing.

I was interested as to which quatrain he would like best, and was not surprised when he hit upon the one born of an instant's irritability, and quite at variance with the Persian's complacent philosophy and genial code of life:

"What, without asking, hither hurried WHENCE? And, without asking, WHITHER hurried hence! Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine Must drown the memory of that insolence!"

"Great!" Wolf Larsen cried. "Great! That's the keynote. Insolence! He could not have used a better word."

In vain I objected and denied. He deluged me, overwhelmed me with argument.

"It's not the nature of life to be otherwise. Life, when it knows that it must cease living, will always rebel. It cannot help itself. The Preacher found life and the works of life all a vanity and vexation, an evil thing; but death, the ceasing to be able to be vain and vexed, he found an eviler thing. Through chapter after chapter he is worried by the one event that cometh to all alike. So Omar, so I, so you, even you, for you rebelled against dying when Cooky sharpened a knife for you. You were afraid to die; the life that was in you, that composes you, that is greater than you, did not want to die. You have talked of the instinct of immortality. I talk of the instinct of life, which is to live, and which, when death looms near and large, masters the instinct, so called, of immortality. It mastered it in you (you cannot deny it), because a crazy Cockney cook sharpened a knife.

"You are afraid of him now. You are afraid of me. You cannot deny it. If I should catch you by the throat, thus," - his hand was about my throat and my breath was shut off, - "and began to press the life out of you thus, and thus, your instinct of immortality will go glimmering, and your instinct of life, which is longing for life, will flutter up, and you will struggle to save yourself. Eh? I see the fear of death in your eyes. You beat the air with your arms. You exert all your puny strength to struggle to live. Your hand is clutching my arm, lightly it feels as a butterfly resting there. Your chest is heaving, your tongue protruding, your skin turning dark, your eyes swimming. 'To live! To live! To live!' you are crying; and you are crying to live here and now, not hereafter. You doubt your immortality, eh? Ha! ha! You are not sure of it. You won't chance it. This life only you are certain is real. Ah, it is growing dark and darker. It is the darkness of death, the ceasing to be, the ceasing to feel, the ceasing to move, that is gathering about you, descending upon you, rising around you. Your eyes are becoming set. They are glazing. My voice sounds faint and far. You cannot see my face. And still you struggle in my grip. You kick with your legs. Your body draws itself up in knots like a snake's. Your chest heaves and strains. To live! To live! To live - "

I heard no more. Consciousness was blotted out by the darkness he had so graphically described, and when I came to myself I was lying on the floor and he was smoking a cigar and regarding me thoughtfully with that old familiar light of curiosity in his eyes.

"Well, have I convinced you?" he demanded. "Here take a drink of this. I want to ask you some questions."

I rolled my head negatively on the floor. "Your arguments are too - er - forcible," I managed to articulate, at cost of great pain to my aching throat.

"You'll be all right in half-an-hour," he assured me. "And I promise I won't use any more physical demonstrations. Get up now. You can sit on a chair."

And, toy that I was of this monster, the discussion of Omar and the Preacher was resumed. And half the night we sat up over it.

Deep. Much meaning in this story.

The best book ever written ever written ... would be a matter of preference. People have different tastes in what they read. Not everyone enjoys the same kind of literature.

I was surprised that no one brought up the Bible.
But I've read it, quite a few times and a few different versions of it. I wouldn't even call it the best book I've read. It is perhaps one of the the most influential books around ... but not the best.

I read a lot of the "classics": Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, Call of the Wild, Gone with the Wind, Lord of the Rings trilogy, Treasure Island, Pride & Prejudice, Heidi, etc back when I as a kid.

They were all good. But I can't say any of them were the 'best' book I've read.