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In a Boat of His Own Making James Camp Jack London: An American Life  by  Earle Labor Farrar, Straus, 439 pp, £21.99, November 2013, ISBN 978 0 374 17848 2 The Sea-Wolf  by  Jack London Hesperus, 287 pp, £9.99, August 2013, ISBN 978 1 78094 200 1 Jack London’s  writing routine was the single unchanging element of his relatively brief adult life. From the age of 22 until his death at 40, he wrote a thousand words every day, a quota he filled as a rule between 9 and 11 a.m. He slept for five hours a night, which left him with 17 hours of free time. But in his writing hours he was prolific: he produced short stories, poetry, plays, reportage, ‘hackwork’ and novels, many of them bestsellers. In 18 years, he published more than fifty books. ‘I’d rather win a water fight in the swimming pool,’ he said, ‘than write the great American novel.’ Jack London in 1916 In his off hours, L...

Heidegger in Black Peter E. Gordon OCTOBER 9, 2014 ISSUE Überlegungen II–VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931–1938) [Reflections II–VI (Black Notebooks 1931–1938)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 536 pp., €68.00 Überlegungen VII–XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39) [Reflections VII–XI (Black Notebooks 1938/39)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 456 pp., €58.00 Überlegungen XII–XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1941) [Reflections XII–XV (Black Notebooks 1939–1941)] by Martin Heidegger, edited by Peter Trawny Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 286 pp., €44.00 Rue des Archives/Granger Collection Martin Heidegger, circa 1920 In the autumn of 1931, the philosopher Martin Heidegger began to record his thoughts in small diaries that he called the  schwarze Hefte , or “black notebooks.” By the early 1970s he had filled no fewer than thirty-four volumes with his handwritten reflections. Several of these not...