A century ago, one of the worst natural disasters in American history--the San Francisco earthquake and fire--was vividly described by one of the country's finest writers, Jack London. On assignment from Collier's magazine, the young author of The Call of the Wild spent three days and nights recording his observations and interviewing survivors in the devastated city. His "Story of an Eyewitness: The San Francisco Earthquake" (which appears in our collection of Classic Essays) remains a powerful example of what is now called literary journalism or creative nonfiction.
To encourage you to spend some time studying London's report and his crisp narrative style, we've prepared a related quiz and exercise:
The quiz focuses on the substance of London's report. The combining exercise invites you to reconstruct the sentences in two of London's paragraphs. The goal of the exercise isn't to encourage imitation of London's prose, but to give you experience in working with the elements of his style. One hundred years later, Jack London still has a great deal to teach us about effective writing.
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