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Features the haunting title novella, well worth comparing to Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."THE REDONE (Excerpt)
There it was! The abrupt liberation of sound! Ashe timed it with his watch, Bassett likened it to the trump of anarchangel. Walls of cities, he meditated, might well fall down beforeso vast and compelling a summons. For the thousandth time vainly hetried to analyse the tone-quality of that enormous peal thatdominated the land far into the strong-holds of the surroundingtribes. The mountain gorge which was its source rang to the risingtide of it until it brimmed over and flooded earth and sky and air.With the wantonness of a sick man's fancy, he likened it to themighty cry of some Titan of the Elder World vexed with misery orwrath. Higher and higher it arose, challenging and demanding in suchprofounds of volume that it seemed intended for ears beyond thenarrow confines of the solar system. There was in it, too, theclamour of protest in that there were no ears to hear and comprehendits utterance.
Such the sick man's fancy. Still he strove toanalyse the sound. Sonorous as thunder was it, mellow as a goldenbell, thin and sweet as a thrummed taut cord of silver—no; it wasnone of these, nor a blend of these. There were no words norsemblances in his vocabulary and experience with which to describethe totality of that sound.
Time passed. Minutes merged into quarters ofhours, and quarters of hours into half-hours, and still the soundpersisted, ever changing from its initial vocal impulse yet neverreceiving fresh impulse—fading, dimming, dying as enormously as ithad sprung into being. It became a confusion of troubled mutteringsand babblings and colossal whisperings. Slowly it withdrew, sob bysob, into whatever great bosom had birthed it, until it whimpereddeadly whispers of wrath and as equally seductive whispers ofdelight, striving still to be heard, to convey some cosmic secret,some understanding of infinite import and value. It dwindled to aghost of sound that had lost its menace and promise, and became athing that pulsed on in the sick man's consciousness for minutesafter it had ceased. When he could hear it no longer, Bassett glancedat his watch. An hour had elapsed ere that archangel's trump hadsubsided into tonal nothingness...
About Jack London:
Jack London (1876-1916), was an American author and a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction. He was one of the first Americans to make a lucrative career exclusively from writing. London was self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books. In 1898, he began struggling seriously to break into print, a struggle memorably described in his novel, Martin Eden (1909). Jack London was fortunate in the timing of his writing career. He started just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public, and a strong market for short fiction. In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, the equivalent of about $75,000 today. His career was well under way. Among his famous works are: Children of the Frost (1902), The Call of the Wild (1903), The Sea Wolf (1904), The Game (1905), White Fang (1906), The Road (1907), Before Adam (1907), Adventure (1911), and The Scarlet Plague (1912).