My list of the century's best novels was all but set when I recently picked up a book I'd never heard of, by an author I'd ignored. What a pleasure it was to find I had overlooked a classic: Jack London's Martin Eden. First published in 1909, London's story of a young sailor striving to win love and fame as a writer is a touching portrayal of youthful idealism and its demise. A blistering critique of the magazine trade, it's also one of the best how-to books in American literature.

Since then I've been reading London's works and what others have had to say about them. I had dismissed him in the past as the dog guy, the author of the popular action tales The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf. In fact, his work has always had a huge audience, especially overseas, where today he remains the most widely read American author. Many critics still belittle his literary achievements, but a growing number find his writings a source of fascination, if for different reasons. London has been called a self-taught primitive, a "mythopoeic genius" who, in the words of critic Earle Labor, "often wrote better than he knew." Others say he's been underrated as a serious thinker. They note that few popular writers have been so concerned with the big ideas, both social and scientific, that lie beneath the surface of their entertainments.

Is London another Melville or an early Stephen King? To read his work today is to encounter a literary reputation that's still a work in progress. His status as an American icon, however, has never been challenged. He was one of the first global celebrities and thus a key to understanding the mechanics of modern star making. An early champion of surfing, progressive farming methods, radical politics, the ideas of Carl Jung--and writing for the movies--he's a herald of the California consciousness that over a century has come to dominate American pop culture.

The ties between London's life and his work are complex, as suggested in Jack London: A Life (St. Martin's, 1998), Alex Kershaw's enjoyable biography. Born in San Francisco in 1876, London grew up across the bay in Oakland. His mother was a moody, self-absorbed spiritualist. His biological father, an astrologer, bailed on the family early on and refused to acknowledge London as his son when the young writer later tracked him down. After dropping out of school at 14, London worked a string of jobs, then sailed on a seal-hunting ship across the Pacific. Later, living as a hobo, he ended up in jail for vagrancy--a trauma that figured in his lifelong outrage over the injustices of capitalism. In 1897, he headed to the Klondike in search of gold, only to stagger back to the Bay Area a year later, utterly broke but hell-bent on writing.