Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Kbh., Martins Forlag, 1916.
Description
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." This Modern Library Paperback Classic is set from the text of the first American edition, published in 1915.
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
Jack London's 1915 novel about the paranormal visions of a condemned prisoner is a strange mixture indeed. As editor Fiedler points out, London didn't actually have any personal belief in the metaphysical phenomena that the story portrays. These include both bilocational projection of consciousness
There are some uniformities among the sub-narratives. All of the protagonists are male. Even though London's narrator Standing claims at one point to have experienced prior incarnation as a woman, the lives that he provides with detail are all boys and men. In fact, near the end of the story, he hypostasizes gender into a spiritual principle, claiming his own identity with all men as the One Man, and offering a paean to his love of the One Woman. What's more, his alter-egos are all white. Even when the setting is Korea, the experiences are those of a European explorer. In the (requisite?) episode set in first-century Roman Palestine, the Standing incarnation serving as a soldier under the authority of Pontius Pilate is actually a recruit from the barbarian north. This particular consistency seems to reflect an acceptance of Aryanist racial theory, when Standing later claims to have been "an Aryan master in old Egypt" and "a builder of Aryan monuments under Aryan kings in old Java and old Sumatra." (298-9) And yet the implied notion of "race memory" does not preclude the story of a boy murdered at the age of six.
The frame story offers some round denunciation of modern carceral practices and capital punishment, but there is no call for socialist revolution, such as London might offer elsewhere, and the assessment of efforts at liberal reform is bitterly pessimistic. Standing is an atypical protagonist for London: a college professor, whose murder offense is never fully detailed, and who is abused into profound ill-health. Although it sometimes seems that the more realized of Standing's prior incarnations might have been abortive stories of their own from London's pen, the composite effect is not without some merit, giving the reader added opportunities to reflect on the ultimate nature of freedom and the human capacity for justice.
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(the sort sometimes now characterized as "remote viewing") and magical memory, or recollection of previous incarnations. The latter dominates the tale, with a wide range of para-autobiographies, each allegedly pieced together by the writing prisoner from various random instances of visionary recall. There are some uniformities among the sub-narratives. All of the protagonists are male. Even though London's narrator Standing claims at one point to have experienced prior incarnation as a woman, the lives that he provides with detail are all boys and men. In fact, near the end of the story, he hypostasizes gender into a spiritual principle, claiming his own identity with all men as the One Man, and offering a paean to his love of the One Woman. What's more, his alter-egos are all white. Even when the setting is Korea, the experiences are those of a European explorer. In the (requisite?) episode set in first-century Roman Palestine, the Standing incarnation serving as a soldier under the authority of Pontius Pilate is actually a recruit from the barbarian north. This particular consistency seems to reflect an acceptance of Aryanist racial theory, when Standing later claims to have been "an Aryan master in old Egypt" and "a builder of Aryan monuments under Aryan kings in old Java and old Sumatra." (298-9) And yet the implied notion of "race memory" does not preclude the story of a boy murdered at the age of six.
The frame story offers some round denunciation of modern carceral practices and capital punishment, but there is no call for socialist revolution, such as London might offer elsewhere, and the assessment of efforts at liberal reform is bitterly pessimistic. Standing is an atypical protagonist for London: a college professor, whose murder offense is never fully detailed, and who is abused into profound ill-health. Although it sometimes seems that the more realized of Standing's prior incarnations might have been abortive stories of their own from London's pen, the composite effect is not without some merit, giving the reader added opportunities to reflect on the ultimate nature of freedom and the human capacity for justice.
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LibraryThing member isabelx
Ah, what royal memories are mine, as I flutter through the aeons of the long ago. In single jacket trances I have lived the many lives involved in the thousand-years-long Odysseys of the early drifts of men. Heavens, before I was of the flaxen-haired Aesir, who dwelt in Asgard, and before I was of
I have died of frost and famine, fight and flood. I have picked berries on the bleak backbone of the world, and I have dug roots to eat from the fat-soiled fens and meadows. I have scratched the reindeer’s semblance and the semblance of the hairy mammoth on ivory tusks gotten of the chase and on the rock walls of cave shelters when the winter storms moaned outside. I have cracked marrow-bones on the sites of kingly cities that had perished centuries before my time or that were destined to be builded centuries after my passing. And I have left the bones of my transient carcasses in pond bottoms, and glacial gravels, and asphaltum lakes.
I have lived through the ages known to-day among the scientists as the Paleolithic, the Neolithic, and the Bronze. I remember when with our domesticated wolves we herded our reindeer to pasture on the north shore of the Mediterranean where now are France and Italy and Spain. This was before the ice-sheet melted backward toward the pole. Many processions of the equinoxes have I lived through and died in, my reader . . . only that I remember and that you do not.
This story is supposedly a biographical tale written by Darrell Standing, a prisoner on death row who will shortly be hanged. It tells the story of his time in prison and what happened in many of his previous lives, which he has experienced via a type of astral projection during his time in solitary confinement where he was punished for his intransigence by spending long periods of time in a strait-jacket. To start with I was finding it quite hard-going as prison stories aren't really my cup of tea, but one it got past his description of a past life that ended in him fighting three duels in one night in Mediaeval France, and on to more interesting lives, I started to enjoy it much more.
The British title for this book is "The Jacket" and that title makes sense as it is the story of a prisoner in solitary confinement who is punished by longer and longer times spent in a strait-jacket, but I for most of the book I was wondering why the American title is "The Star Rover", since Darryl Standing's journeys are back into his previous lives rather than into the stars, and it is only near the end, while discussing man's eternal need of woman that it becomes clear: Always has woman crouched close to earth like a partridge hen mothering her young; always has my wantonness of roving led me out on the shining ways; and always have my star-paths returned me to her, the figure everlasting, the woman, the one woman, for whose arms I had such need that clasped in them I have forgotten the stars.
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the red-haired Vanir, who dwelt in Vanaheim, long before those times I have memories (living memories) of earlier drifts, when, like thistledown before the breeze, we drifted south before the face of the descending polar ice-cap.I have died of frost and famine, fight and flood. I have picked berries on the bleak backbone of the world, and I have dug roots to eat from the fat-soiled fens and meadows. I have scratched the reindeer’s semblance and the semblance of the hairy mammoth on ivory tusks gotten of the chase and on the rock walls of cave shelters when the winter storms moaned outside. I have cracked marrow-bones on the sites of kingly cities that had perished centuries before my time or that were destined to be builded centuries after my passing. And I have left the bones of my transient carcasses in pond bottoms, and glacial gravels, and asphaltum lakes.
I have lived through the ages known to-day among the scientists as the Paleolithic, the Neolithic, and the Bronze. I remember when with our domesticated wolves we herded our reindeer to pasture on the north shore of the Mediterranean where now are France and Italy and Spain. This was before the ice-sheet melted backward toward the pole. Many processions of the equinoxes have I lived through and died in, my reader . . . only that I remember and that you do not.
This story is supposedly a biographical tale written by Darrell Standing, a prisoner on death row who will shortly be hanged. It tells the story of his time in prison and what happened in many of his previous lives, which he has experienced via a type of astral projection during his time in solitary confinement where he was punished for his intransigence by spending long periods of time in a strait-jacket. To start with I was finding it quite hard-going as prison stories aren't really my cup of tea, but one it got past his description of a past life that ended in him fighting three duels in one night in Mediaeval France, and on to more interesting lives, I started to enjoy it much more.
The British title for this book is "The Jacket" and that title makes sense as it is the story of a prisoner in solitary confinement who is punished by longer and longer times spent in a strait-jacket, but I for most of the book I was wondering why the American title is "The Star Rover", since Darryl Standing's journeys are back into his previous lives rather than into the stars, and it is only near the end, while discussing man's eternal need of woman that it becomes clear: Always has woman crouched close to earth like a partridge hen mothering her young; always has my wantonness of roving led me out on the shining ways; and always have my star-paths returned me to her, the figure everlasting, the woman, the one woman, for whose arms I had such need that clasped in them I have forgotten the stars.
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LibraryThing member Polaris-
An unusual book, and not like London's other work. The 'stories within the story' setup is both great fun and the whole thing is quite a memorable read.
LibraryThing member knownever
Jack London is a master of creating homosocial worlds. The book's got all the inevitable drawbacks of something bathed in Western, patriarchal, hetero centrism, but it's also real weird. Clearly, the book's strange narrative conceit (a prisoner in solitary regressing back through past lives and
*as all men in a world where only men are people must be
**as everyone who glories in rugged, masochistic masculinities is likely to be
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then making sweeping religious, scientific, and philosophical claims) and uneven pacing explain why it's fallen out of favor. Still, if you like Jack London here's further proof that he's a little gay* and a little kinky**.*as all men in a world where only men are people must be
**as everyone who glories in rugged, masochistic masculinities is likely to be
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LibraryThing member BayardUS
The main character Darrell Standing either A) hallucinates a whole lot while awaiting his execution, or B) actually experiences a series of his past lives. Either way, London presents the idea in the most boring way possible.
Let's get option A out of the way first, because there's definitely a
The other option more favored by the text (albeit this comes from the text being narrated by the character) is that the visions he has are of real past lives. If this is the case, London's error was in giving the narrator some terribly boring past lives. Standing basically has been a Western European male for the majority of his past lives, even when his past self makes his way to Asia it's in the form of a shipwrecked white guy. There's one throwaway line where Standing mentions one of his past lives being a woman, but otherwise the past lives of Standing are strikingly similar to him. The result is that, instead of these visions forcing Standing to have a deeper understanding of the existence of all people and the roles in society we have Standing use the visions as basically a really immersive television that he can use to entertain himself in prison. In the end he doesn't fear execution since he'll just get another life after this one, but that's such a basic and boring realization to get- he could have figured that out from the very first time he experienced a past life, so having lived dozens of lives seemingly caused absolutely no growth as a human being.
It's a potentially interesting concept that Jack London does absolutely nothing of interest with, and Jack's writing ability is far too weak to save it. The Star Rover is decidedly below average.
Let's get option A out of the way first, because there's definitely a
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dismissive tone toward this possibility in the book. Could this be a case of unreliable narrator? Sure, but London does nothing to emphasize this point or explore it in any interesting way, so I'd say the tired "unreliable narrator" angle, while not falsifiable, is definitely less favored by the text. If it is supposed to be what was happening in this book then London fails because Standing's hallucinations tell us nothing about him. Hallucinations are necessarily representative of the character who has them, but yet after reading a book of Standing's hallucinations he's just as much of an uninteresting standard male narrator as ever. If London wanted to give us an interesting story of hallucinations brought on by extended confinement he should have written a less bland protagonist.The other option more favored by the text (albeit this comes from the text being narrated by the character) is that the visions he has are of real past lives. If this is the case, London's error was in giving the narrator some terribly boring past lives. Standing basically has been a Western European male for the majority of his past lives, even when his past self makes his way to Asia it's in the form of a shipwrecked white guy. There's one throwaway line where Standing mentions one of his past lives being a woman, but otherwise the past lives of Standing are strikingly similar to him. The result is that, instead of these visions forcing Standing to have a deeper understanding of the existence of all people and the roles in society we have Standing use the visions as basically a really immersive television that he can use to entertain himself in prison. In the end he doesn't fear execution since he'll just get another life after this one, but that's such a basic and boring realization to get- he could have figured that out from the very first time he experienced a past life, so having lived dozens of lives seemingly caused absolutely no growth as a human being.
It's a potentially interesting concept that Jack London does absolutely nothing of interest with, and Jack's writing ability is far too weak to save it. The Star Rover is decidedly below average.
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LibraryThing member bzedan
Friggin' trip. The guy examines his previous lives via meditation/hypnosis during horrifically long periods in a sort of straight jacket. Kind of a bunch of short stories put together, which I guess was London's thing? Interesting tie-together at the end, which I don't know how I feel about. I get
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the feeling that London didn't like making endings, or couldn't do it well, so did what he could. There is a way that short fiction ends that can be less—secure? Something like that. His endings have that flavour. Show Less
LibraryThing member hbergander
A university professor is sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering. As the director dislikes him, he tries to break the captive’s strong spirit by tightly lacing him into a canvas straitjacket, a device, at the beginning of the last century frequently and legally used. Today, it is still
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applied in special departments of the US Army, being considered as « soft torture ». However, the captive resists to the bondage jacket with mental power, finding out, how to get in a sort of trance, walking under the stars of imagination through his past life. Show Less
LibraryThing member ToddSherman
Warden Atherton, after a hard struggle, managed to insert his forefinger between the lacing and my back. He brought his foot to bear upon me, with the weight of his body added to his foot, and pulled, but failed to get any fraction of an inch of slack.
“I take my hat off to you, Hutchins,” he
They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them with bulging eyes. This I know: Had they laced me in such fashion the first time I went into the jacket, I should surely have died in the first ten minutes. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.
“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the warden to me. “Start that smile you’ve been bragging about.”
So, while my lungs panted for a little air, while my heart threatened to burst, while my mind reeled, nevertheless I was able to smile up into the warden’s face.
—The Star Rover by Jack London
After over three weeks I was able to run for thirty-five minutes on that oh-so-freshly healed (heeled—Ha!) left calf muscle; if run it could be called. A new coat of paint applied to the shady side of a garage midwinter dries quicker. However, since mind and body are so inextricably tied to my human persona (oh, you know alien flesh wriggles beneath such thin skin, to be sure), that bloated half hour felt like a major victory. Honestly, I can’t believe the paint dried in that blizzard.
This miniature masterpiece by Jack London helped me get through. My job, too, since sometimes I feel straight-jacketed to the VPN and constant need upon need upon need. I’d lost ultimate faith in humanity back when I’d read Orwell’s “1984” (as if there’s another). “The Star Rover” has given me back my belief in the indomitability of the human spirit. And written over one-hundred years ago. Quite a feat. Kind of like astral projecting, beating on globes of gas with sticks, zipping through past lives like most people churn through whatever steaming plate of pabulum prime time is currently serving. And I’ll keep limping behind that whizzing soul until I catch up with him.
“I take my hat off to you, Hutchins,” he
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said. “You know your job. Now roll him over and let’s look at him.”They rolled me over on my back. I stared up at them with bulging eyes. This I know: Had they laced me in such fashion the first time I went into the jacket, I should surely have died in the first ten minutes. But I was well trained. I had behind me the thousands of hours in the jacket and, plus that, I had faith in what Morrell had told me.
“Now, laugh, damn you, laugh,” said the warden to me. “Start that smile you’ve been bragging about.”
So, while my lungs panted for a little air, while my heart threatened to burst, while my mind reeled, nevertheless I was able to smile up into the warden’s face.
—The Star Rover by Jack London
After over three weeks I was able to run for thirty-five minutes on that oh-so-freshly healed (heeled—Ha!) left calf muscle; if run it could be called. A new coat of paint applied to the shady side of a garage midwinter dries quicker. However, since mind and body are so inextricably tied to my human persona (oh, you know alien flesh wriggles beneath such thin skin, to be sure), that bloated half hour felt like a major victory. Honestly, I can’t believe the paint dried in that blizzard.
This miniature masterpiece by Jack London helped me get through. My job, too, since sometimes I feel straight-jacketed to the VPN and constant need upon need upon need. I’d lost ultimate faith in humanity back when I’d read Orwell’s “1984” (as if there’s another). “The Star Rover” has given me back my belief in the indomitability of the human spirit. And written over one-hundred years ago. Quite a feat. Kind of like astral projecting, beating on globes of gas with sticks, zipping through past lives like most people churn through whatever steaming plate of pabulum prime time is currently serving. And I’ll keep limping behind that whizzing soul until I catch up with him.
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LibraryThing member drardavis
I read this as an alternate reality, sci-fi novel. Not many non-sci-fi novels would mention squaring the circle and other mathematical concepts. The main character is a prisoner in solitary about to be hanged. He escapes. Well, he escapes into past lives, because, “the spirit is the reality that
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endures.” And these alternate realities are perhaps the best parts of the book. They are great adventure stories with lots of action, as one would expect of London. Back in solitary, inside a straight jacket, you can’t expect much action. This is where London provides plausible philosophical and scientific explanations for how the hero manages to separate his consciousness from his body. It is also where he makes his case against society and the brutality of the prisons of the day. Show Less
LibraryThing member LoriFox
Jack London’s last book written before he died, it’s well written and easy to get absorbed into the story. Based on interviews with an actual San Quentin inmate, it wavers in between reality and imagination. Each character is very believable, and London’s descriptions are perfect: not too
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detailed, but detailed enough to make every part seem more real than fantasy. I loved it. Show Less
LibraryThing member TheCrow2
Jack London`s book is a so called reincarnation story which was a popular genre at the beginning of the 20th century. The main character in the prison `fleeing` from the torture of the sadistic director, in a deep catatonic state relives his previous lives. A wouldn`t call it fantasy in a modern
And not like lots of others really enjoyed that the main character is an antipathic and arrogant man.
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way but a very interesting read if one wants to discover the origins of the genre.And not like lots of others really enjoyed that the main character is an antipathic and arrogant man.
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LibraryThing member kslade
OK stories about time travel and history. The part about the Mountain Meadows Massacre surprised me since it was the first I heard of it and I am LDS. I had to ask around about it. That led me to Juanita Brooks' book on the massacre.
LibraryThing member thisisstephenbetts
Finished this a while ago actually... Very good - not really read any other Jack London, but he writes beautifully and with absolute conviction. I remember Chris in the Morning on Northern Exposure reading from Call of the Wild - he could have picked a lot of passages from this one. Unfortunately
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he ended up on Sex and the City, where he didn't get the opportunity. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1915
Physical description
413 p.; 18.8 cm
Local notes
Omslag: Indbundet
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "The Star Rover" af Louis von Kohl
Oversat fra engelsk "The Star Rover" af Jesper Ewald
Oprindeligt var den engelske titel "The jacket"
Indskannet omslag - N650U - 150 dpi
Oversat fra engelsk "The Star Rover" af Louis von Kohl
Oversat fra engelsk "The Star Rover" af Jesper Ewald
Oprindeligt var den engelske titel "The jacket"
Similar in this library
Pages
413
DDC/MDS
| 813.52 |