Jack London, When God Laughs

Alexandre Fachard (University of Geneva)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1911

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

Jack London lived beyond his income for much of his writing career. To pay his bills, he was often forced to produce what he called “immediately remunerative short fiction for the magazines” (Letters, 612–13). In 1911, age thirty-five, he gathered twelve of these short stories into When God Laughs, an uneven collection where forgettable hack work rubs shoulders with such masterpieces as the anti-imperialist “The Chinago” or London’s “most provocative story of social injustice” and child labour, “The Apostate” (Reesman, 87).

The protagonist of “The Chinago”, Ah Cho, is a twenty-two-year-old expatriate Chinese coolie – a Chinago – …

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2804 words

Citation: Fachard, Alexandre. "When God Laughs". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 June 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35829, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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