Jack London

The Abysmal Brute. Jack London

The Abysmal Brute is a novel by American writer Jack London, first published in book form in 1913. It is a short novel, and could be regarded as a novelette. It first appeared in September 1911 in Popular Magazine. In the story, a successful boxer, who was brought up in a log cabin and knows little of the real world, begins to realize the corrupt practices in the game of boxing. In 1910, when the story was written, London had become a famous writer but he was worried that he had exhausted his ideas. The Abysmal Brute was based on one of several plot outlines he bought from Sinclair Lewis, an admirer of London who was at the beginning of his career. Other stories by Jack London about boxing are his novel The Game, published in 1905, his short story "A Piece of Steak" of 1909, and his short story "The Mexican" of 191. Sam Stubener, a boxing manager in San Francisco, travels to a remote log cabin in northern California on getting a letter from retired boxer Pat Glendon, who lives there with his son, Pat Glendon Jr, a promising young boxer. Pat Jr fights well; otherwise, he knows little of city life; he hunts and fishes in the forest, he reads poetry and avoids women