[Marxism] Upton Sinclair

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times Book Review, July 2, 2006
Upton Sinclair Books by Anthony Arthur and Kevin Mattson
The Mighty 'Jungle'
Review by DAVID THOMSON

A hundred years ago, an American writer hurled these words at the world: " 
'Bubbly Creek' is an arm of the Chicago River, and forms the southern 
boundary of the yards; all the drainage of the square mile of packing house 
empties into it, so that it is really a great open sewer a hundred or two 
feet wide. One long arm of it is blind, and the filth stays there forever 
and a day. The grease and chemicals that are poured into it undergo all 
sorts of strange transformations, which are the cause of its name; it is 
constantly in motion, as if huge fish were feeding in it, or great 
leviathans were disporting themselves in its depths. Bubbles of carbonic 
acid gas will rise to the surface and burst, and make rings two or three 
feet wide. Here and there the grease and filth have caked solid, and the 
creek looks like a bed of lava; chickens walk about on it, feeding, and 
many times an unwary stranger has started to stroll across, and vanished 
temporarily. The packers used to leave the creek that way, till every now 
and then the surface would catch on fire and burn furiously, and the fire 
department would have to come and put it out. Once, however, an ingenious 
stranger came and started to gather this filth in scows, to make lard out 
of; then the packers took the cue, and got out an injunction to stop him, 
and afterwards gathered it themselves."

It might be Dickens in "Our Mutual Friend" (1865), tracing the vile kinship 
between the black Thames and the great city of Dust. The chickens walking 
on the gruesome paste are to die for ? Hollywood would sign a deal at that 
point, over a Chateaubriand dinner ? though that "temporarily" is awkward 
and innocent in the writing. In Dickens, the vanishing would have been 
utter. So, no, this author is not quite Dickens, even if he wrote with a 
similar fluency and need. Instead ? and Chicago has given it away ? this is 
Upton Sinclair, who lived longer than Dickens by far, and wrote so many 
more novels. Sinclair died in 1968, at 90. Dickens would have been 90 in 
1902. Yet Dickens is the more awesome for dying in his 50's, taken by the 
dread that had made him so lively. Dickens didn't have to face being a 
living monument. Upton Sinclair lived on until such times as his "Jungle" 
had been cleared, and America ? it told itself ? was strong, healthy and 
wise from the bright red meat laid out in the chilled tombs of 10,000 
supermarkets.

Still, in this centenary year for his most famous book ? the readability of 
which is, I hope, established ? what are we to make of Sinclair? We have 
two new biographies on the table, beggingly lean and artfully digested, as 
if the publishers had told their authors: "Show some moderation. Pick out 
the high points. If we get a hundred kids to look at 'The Jungle,' we'll 
have done honor by the old boy. How's your burger?" Both Anthony Arthur's 
and Kevin Mattson's books are reasonable in length and tempered in passion. 
Pushed to choose, I prefer Arthur's. But to feel the wonderful nut and 
enthusiast in Sinclair, the intrigued newcomer should read "The Jungle" or 
"King Coal." Then realize that this author was a very good and ardent 
tennis player! Eight thousand words a day and three sets ? with no tie 
breakers.

Upton Beall Sinclair wrote habitually, at the drop of a hat, and at the 
death of every sparrow. He produced more than 80 books, as well as 
countless speeches, letters, notes and proposals. I suspect that he talked 
almost as he wrote on paper, as if preparing for a public lecture, and that 
may account for his dismay over the way he and women didn't quite 
understand each other. He wrote about so many things that when his greatest 
test came ? in the California gubernatorial election of 1934 ? his 
opponents had only to hire researchers to go through his stuff to retrieve 
all the contradictory, crazy things "Uppie" had written. Not that they 
stopped at that tactic.

As 1934 made clear, Sinclair was a man of action, a writer who longed to 
act out his own dogma. Born into a comfortable Baltimore family, he entered 
City College of New York when he was 15. He began writing sketches for 
magazines to pay his expenses, and after graduation became a full-time 
writer. He was assisted by clean living, restrained socializing and an 
indefatigable eye for wrongs in the world as well as the confidence that 
good sense would surely see them corrected. His friend Charlie Chaplin 
never knew him without a smile, and one wonders if even the writing of 
"Bubbly Creek" was accompanied by a smile of wonder and satisfaction. He 
would be called a muckraker, but he loved muck in the way farmers love soil.

The exposé of the meat industry in "The Jungle" seems like the tirade of a 
lifetime, yet Sinclair needed just seven weeks of research. The book was a 
huge success. It prompted real reforms, including the Pure Food Act of 1906 
But a pattern was set for his books, and it was strengthened by the spine 
of theoretical socialism ? public ownership, women's rights and taxes as a 
privilege reserved for the rich. "The Jungle" had its impact on Dreiser, 
Sinclair Lewis and Steinbeck, but Upton Sinclair is not in their class as a 
novelist because he does not see or inhabit character and emotional plot in 
the way that he editorializes over situation, grievance and muck. "Oil!" 
(1927) has more of a story than "The Jungle," and it reflects Sinclair's 
crucial shift to Southern California, where he had moved in 1916. He loved 
the sun, the air and the political possibilities ? why not put an exiled 
czar on Catalina Island?

In the early 30's, when Sergei Eisenstein came to Hollywood, Sinclair 
became one of his best friends and co-workers. A plan to film Dreiser's 
"American Tragedy" collapsed, but Sinclair joined in the partnership that 
would send Eisenstein to Mexico to shoot the footage ? poetic, repetitious, 
marvelous, mysterious ? that became "Que Viva México!" In many ways, the 
innocent Uppie was trapped ? by the very slippery Eisenstein, who was 
looking for gay romance and pornography (as well as high art), and by the 
Soviet authorities whose plan it was that Eisenstein was doomed. So the 
picture was unfinished. Uppie cut his own version, and was accused of 
trampling on Eisenstein's art. The radical innocent had a way of getting 
himself into intellectual slapstick.

Then came the 1934 election. Sinclair saw America in a crisis, and he was 
hardly alone. So he gave up his socialist ties, became a Democrat and 
announced a plan called EPIC (End Poverty in California), which called for 
turning all idle agricultural land over to unemployed farmworkers and 
combining factories and businesses into a giant state-run cooperative. He 
won the Democratic primary and opposed Gov. Frank Merriam, a nonentity. 
Sinclair was a terrific campaigner, and his early energy united every 
reactionary force against him ? including The Los Angeles Times and the 
picture business, both of which were terrified by his plans. Louis B. Mayer 
arranged "newsreels" in which every "decent" person said they were for 
Merriam while every wild-eyed, unwashed vagrant to be picked up for a 
quarter ranted into the camera about Uppie's plans. Late in the race, 
unable to get President Roosevelt to do a single thing in his support, 
Sinclair let slip the possibility that if he was elected "half the 
unemployed" might travel to California. On election day, he went down, 
losing 879,537 votes to 1,138,620.

To this day, a great book or movie about Los Angeles could be set against 
the backdrop of the election. It looks increasingly like the last great 
outcry of the left in America, and it shows the ugly alliance of every rich 
and insecure entity that could make curse words out of "socialist" or 
"liberal."

Sinclair was not really set back personally. But he began to behave more 
like a middle-aged or semi-retired workaholic. The year 1940 saw the 
publication of "World's End," the first in what became known as the Lanny 
Budd novels, in which a well-raised young man confronts the problems of the 
world. They are as resolutely 19th-century as nearly everything Sinclair 
wrote, though they have a Dos Passos-like interest in reproducing famous 
figures. "World's End" sold half a million copies: Uppie's gravest warnings 
usually left him richer. The sequels spilled out, and one of them picked up 
a Pulitzer Prize to go along with the Nobel he had won in 1930.

Arthur and Mattson admire Sinclair, yet it's hard not to feel the strain in 
the enterprises. Can such an author be revived as someone to be read today? 
Haven't times changed out of sight? Does anyone eat beef today and think of 
the stockyards? Well, yes, I think beef is still under suspicion, along 
with just about everyone who feeds the enormous public. Eric Schlosser and 
others are still questioning the food culture. But the real thing about 
"The Jungle" is the way Sinclair saw the vicious link between "them" and 
"us," a dramatic paranoia straight from Dickens. If Sinclair were here 
today, I'd send him to the San Joaquin Valley, where vegetables fit for 
Hockney and every farmers' market are produced through dire exploitation. 
I'd urge him to go to Salinas, John Steinbeck's hometown, where the public 
libraries nearly closed recently for lack of funding and where the 
prospects for Hispanics who work the valley are expatriation, gang warfare, 
a broken back in the sun and the chemicals or . . . the American dream.

There was a period in this country, from the 30's through the 70's, in 
which government caring seemed to ease away some of the muck. We think of 
it as the Great Society, and we recall people and politicians who voiced 
hope for it without irony. It's clearer now that the middle class ? the 
great force that made Dickens's England more benevolent ? is in retreat. We 
are getting back to them and us, in a country that has earned little but 
shame in its foreign affairs. We are not liked, we are not trusted, we are 
not respected ? and all those shortcomings are eroding our domestic souls. 
Katrina, that gust of nature, was the rehearsal for the revelation that 
"they" now have neither the means nor the intent of looking after us. We 
are on our own, and we may need to find our own Sinclairs.

David Thomson is the author of "The New Biographical Dictionary of Film" 
and "The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood." His book "Nicole Kidman" 
will be published in the fall.


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