The Abysmal Brute
By Jack London
4/5
()
About this ebook
Jack London
Jack London (1876-1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. London was a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush.
Read more from Jack London
50 Great Love Letters You Have To Read (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Classic American Short Story MEGAPACK ® (Volume 1): 34 of the Greatest Stories Ever Written Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deadline Artists—Scandals, Tragedies & Triumphs: More of America's Greatest Newspaper Columns Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5To Build a Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Classic Tales of Science Fiction & Fantasy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jack London: The Greatest Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhite Fang: Level 2 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK ®: 18 Tales of Doom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5American Classics (Omnibus Edition) (Diversion Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Abysmal Brute
Related ebooks
The Abysmal Brute: A Boxing Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Abysmal Brute Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Abysmal Brute (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRotten in Denmark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpiking the Sucker Punch Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Friends in High Places Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fireman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Belting Inheritance Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stringer on the Assassins’ Trail Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thirty-Nine Steps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnd Still I Cheat the Gallows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAshes of the Phoenix Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath in North Beach Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Death of a Cuckold Knight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dinner Club Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Prince of the Captivity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Finger Of Fate Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Island Of Terror Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Angel and the Author and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnd Then There Were None Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crazy Like Us: Sands Through the Hourglass Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Thirty Nine Steps (Illustrated) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essential Novelists - John Buchan: swift-paced adventure stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClear and Present Danger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTexas John Slaughter Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ipcress File: A Harry Palmer Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arab Fall: James Acton Thrillers, #6 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Suspense For You
Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lagos Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girl Who Was Taken: A Gripping Psychological Thriller Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5None of This Is True: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pretty Girls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Housemaid Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Then She Was Gone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fairy Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brother Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Perfect Marriage: A Completely Gripping Psychological Suspense Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Maidens: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Misery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If We Were Villains: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Mercedes: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Luckiest Girl Alive: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Flight: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Flicker in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hollow Places: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lying Game: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The It Girl Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Long Walk Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zero Days Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Abysmal Brute
1 rating1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pat Glendon is a natural man caught up in the corrupt world of boxing. A young reporter (female) enters his life and opens his eyes to the corruption he has missed. Pat fights one last bout, tells the world of the flaws of boxing, and then moves back into the wilds to live with his lady love. Tarzan/Jane a bit; a precursor to the Natural by Malamud, a return to Eden. Mostly great boxing fight scenes. Not really a book, far closer to a short story or maybe a novella. Set in SF. Pleasant enough(I didn't read the Swedish version, but it was the only version with a picture on the cover.)
Book preview
The Abysmal Brute - Jack London
THE
ABYSMAL BRUTE
By
JACK LONDON
AUTHOR OF
The Call of the Wild.
First published in 1911
This edition published by Read Books Ltd.
Copyright © 2019 Read Books Ltd.
This book is copyright and may not be
reproduced or copied in any way without
the express permission of the publisher in writing
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Contents
Jack London
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
Jack London
Jack London was born in San Francisco, USA in 1876. In order to support his working class family, he left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a string of unskilled jobs, before returning briefly to graduate. Around this time, London discovered the public library in Oakland, and immersed himself in the literature of the day. In 1894, after a spell working on merchant ships, he set out to experience the life of the tramp, with a view to gaining an insight into the national class system and the raw essence of the human condition. At the age of nineteen, upon returning, London was admitted to the University of California in Berkeley, but left before graduating after just six months due to financial pressures.
London published his first short story, ‘Typhoon off the Coast of Japan’, in 1893. At this point, he turned seriously to writing, producing work at a prolific rate. Over the next decade, he began to be published in major magazines of the day, producing some of his best-remembered stories, such as ‘To Build a Fire’. Starting in 1902, London turned to novels, producing almost twenty in fifteen years. Of these, his best-known are Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set during the Klondike Gold Rush. He also produced a number of popular and still widely-anthologized stories, such as ‘An Odyssey of the North’ and ‘Love of Life’. London even proved himself as an excellent journalist, reporting on the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
London was an impassioned advocate of socialism and workers’ rights, and these themes inform a number of his works – most notably his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, published in 1907. He even ran unsuccessfully as the Socialist nominee for mayor of Oakland on two occasions. London died in 1916, aged 40.
THE ABYSMAL BRUTE
I
Sam Stubener ran through his mail carelessly and rapidly. As became a manager of prize-fighters, he was accustomed to a various and bizarre correspondence. Every crank, sport, near sport, and reformer seemed to have ideas to impart to him. From dire threats against his life to milder threats, such as pushing in the front of his face, from rabbit-foot fetishes to lucky horse-shoes, from dinky jerkwater bids to the quarter-of-a-million-dollar offers of irresponsible nobodies, he knew the whole run of the surprise portion of his mail. In his time having received a razor-strop made from the skin of a lynched negro, and a finger, withered and sun-dried, cut from the body of a white man found in Death Valley, he was of the opinion that never again would the postman bring him anything that could startle him. But this morning he opened a letter that he read a second time, put away in his pocket, and took out for a third reading. It was postmarked from some unheard-of post-office in Siskiyou County, and it ran:
Dear Sam:
You don’t know me, except my reputation. You come after my time, and I’ve been out of the game a long time. But take it from me I ain’t been asleep. I’ve followed the whole game, and I’ve followed you, from the time Kal Aufman knocked you out to your last handling of Nat Belson, and I take it you’re the niftiest thing in the line of managers that ever came down the pike.
I got a proposition for you. I got the greatest unknown that ever happened. This ain’t con. It’s the straight goods. What do you think of a husky that tips the scales at two hundred and twenty pounds fighting weight, is twenty-two years old, and can hit a kick twice as hard as my best ever? That’s him, my boy, Young Pat Glendon, that’s the name he’ll fight under. I’ve planned it all out. Now the best thing you can do is hit the first train and come up here.
I bred him and I trained him. All that I ever had in my head I’ve hammered into his. And maybe you won’t believe it, but he’s added to it. He’s a born fighter. He’s a wonder at time and distance. He just knows to the second and the inch, and he don’t have to think about it at all. His six-inch jolt is more the real sleep medicine than the full-arm swing of most geezers.
Talk about the hope of the white race. This is him. Come and take a peep. When you was managing Jeffries you was crazy about hunting. Come along and I’ll give you some real hunting and fishing that will make your moving picture winnings look like thirty cents. I’ll send Young Pat out with you. I ain’t able to get around. That’s why I’m sending for you. I was going to manage him myself. But it ain’t no use. I’m all in and likely to pass out any time. So get a move on. I want you to manage him. There’s a fortune in it for both of you, but I want to draw up the contract.
Yours truly,
PAT GLENDON.
Stubener was puzzled. It seemed, on the face of it, a joke—the men in the fighting game were notorious jokers—and he tried to discern the fine hand of Corbett or the big friendly paw of Fitzsimmons in the screed before him. But if it were genuine, he knew it was worth looking into. Pat Glendon was before his time, though, as a cub, he had once seen Old Pat spar at the benefit for Jack Dempsey. Even then he was called Old
Pat, and had been out of the ring for years. He had antedated Sullivan, in the old London Prize Ring Rules, though his last fading battles had been put up under the incoming Marquis of Queensbury Rules.
What ring-follower did not know of Pat Glendon?—though few were alive who had seen him in his prime, and there were not many more who had seen him at all. Yet his name had come down in the history of the ring, and no sporting writer’s lexicon was complete without it. His fame was paradoxical. No man was honored higher, and yet he had never attained championship honors. He had been unfortunate, and had been known as the unlucky fighter.
Four times he all but won the heavyweight championship, and each time he had deserved to win it. There was the time on the barge, in San Francisco Bay, when,