Upton Sinclair

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Upton Sinclair
Born	September 20, 1878(1878-09-20) Baltimore, Maryland
Died	November 25, 1968 (aged 90) Bound Brook, New Jersey
Occupation	Novelist, writer, journalist, political activist
Nationality	American

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning prolific American author who wrote over 90 books in many genres and was widely considered to be one of the best investigators advocating socialist views. He achieved considerable popularity in the first half of the 20th century. He gained particular fame for his 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle, which dealt with conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry and caused a public uproar that partly contributed to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906.^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 2 Popular Novels 3 Political Activism 4 Social Activism 5 The Lanny Budd Series 6 Sinclair in Culture 7 Films 8 Works 9 Footnotes 10 External links

[edit] Biography

Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland to Upton Beall Sinclair and Priscilla Harden. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Sinclair had wealthy grandparents whom he would often stay with. This gave him insight on how both the rich and poor lived during the early twentieth century. Experiencing the differences of the two worlds of wealth and poverty affected him greatly and highly influenced his novels. In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to The Bronx. Sinclair went to the City College of New York, writing novels and magazine articles to pay for his tuition.

Sinclair married his first wife, Meta Fuller, in 1900. Around 1911, Sinclair's wife ran off with the poet Harry Kemp (later known as the Dunes Poet of Provincetown, Massachusetts). After Sinclair's first wife left him for another man, he married Mary Craig Kimbrough (1883 - 1961), a woman who was later tested for psychic abilities. After her death, Sinclair married a third time, to Mary Elizabeth Willis (1882 - 1967). Late in life, he moved from California to Buckeye, Arizona, and then to Bound Brook, New Jersey. Sinclair died in 1968, and is buried in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC, next to his third wife, who died a year before him.

[edit] Popular Novels

One of Sinclair's earliest successful novels was the Civil War novel Manassas, written in 1903 and published a year later, about Reconstruction and interracial relations. It was originally projected as the opening book of a trilogy, but the success of The Jungle caused him to drop his plans, although he did revise Manassas decades later by "moderating some of the exuberance of the earlier version".Template:Te=February 2007

In 1906, Sinclair created a socialist commune, named Helicon Home Colony, in Englewood, New Jersey with proceeds from his novel The Jungle. One of those who joined was the novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis, who worked there as a janitor.^[2] Sinclair made the first of his several bids for office in 1906. The Socialist Party of America sponsored his candidacy for the United States Congress in New Jersey. He lost with just 3% of the vote.^[3][4] Helicon Hall burned down in 1907, potentially due to arson and proved to be a significant point in the political career of Upton Sinclair. Many workers, residents and colonists who were in the buildings during the fire were badly injured from burns as well as jumping from the upper levels. A carpenter by the name of Lester Briggs lost his life in the fire even though he was warned shortly after the fire started. Sinclair told a writer from the New York Times that he believed that the people from the Steel Trusts were responsible for this act of destruction because he was in the works of writing a novel that revealed a connection between harmful conditions and railroad wrecks with the Steel Trusts, hence, the socialist compound may have been destroyed, said Sinclair, to prevent the type of fall out that hindered the Meat Packing plants of Chicago after The Jungle was published. Fortunately, Sinclair escaped the flames with his life.^[5] Afterwards, Sinclair moved to Arden, Delaware, where many Georgist, Socialist, and Communist "Freethinkers" lived, including Mother Bloor's son Hamilton "Buzz" Ware. Some say that he worked in a tree house behind his home during these years.

In 1922 Sinclair published They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming. The short novel depicted The Second Coming of Jesus in the 1920s, not in a triumphant descent from the clouds, but as a humble man who feels a deep connection with oppressed laborers, alienating him from the rich and powerful in society. Sinclair follows an American tradition in rehashing the story of Jesus Christ to comment on the current social, political and cultural happenings of the time. In the Victorian America a post agricultural world was emerging that brought with it a separation of work and family and therefore a new separate emphasis was revitalized on each. This separation also created illustrated gender based stereotypes: the masculine business world and the domestication of women at home. The Jesus most portrayed throughout Victorian America is one devoted to children and the purity of women. Throughout the nineteen-teens Jesus took on a more masculine ideal in order to bring men back to the faith. Bruce Barton's novel "The Man Nobody Knows" depicted Jesus as the greatest marketer, business man that ever lived. The masculine gendering of Jesus during this time pulled religious responsibility from women. In the early twentieth century a link between Jesus and lynch victims is made when Jesus starts becoming portrayed as a dark skinned man and the connection between his persecution and death are related to the oftentimes unfair lynching’s of black men. Sinclair’s Jesus seems to be a rather ignorant all knowing deity, asking questions that seem obvious to the reader and to people set in the novel. However this seems to be a tactic Sinclair uses to point out the problems he views in society during the 1920s. The main problem Sinclair wishes to point out is the class distinction and big business control of almost everything. However there are other themes that can be found throughout the novel, such as the emerging obsession with vanity among women, as well as the mob violence that can spiral out of control. The novel ends with the Carpenter giving up on modern-day America, thinking it even worse than Rome.

Sinclair's 1928 book, Boston, created controversy by proclaiming the innocence of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, anarchists who were accused of a murder/robbery in that city. Sinclair faced what he would later call "the most difficult ethical problem of my life," when he was told in confidence by Sacco and Vanzetti's former attorney, Fred Moore, that they were guilty and how their alibis were supposedly arranged.^[6] However, in the letter revealing that discussion with Moore, Sinclair also wrote, "I had heard that Moore was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels. ... Moore admitted to me that the men themselves, had never admitted their guilt to him." ^[7] Although the two men were ultimately executed, this episode has been used by some to claim that Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty and that Sinclair knew that when he wrote his novel. However, this account has been disputed by Sinclair biographer Greg Mitchell.^[8]

[edit] Political Activism

In the 1920s Sinclair moved to Monrovia, California, where he founded the state's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He moved to Southern California with an interest in politics. Sinclair went on to run unsuccessfully for Congress twice on the Socialist ticket: in 1920, for the United States House of Representatives, and in 1922, for the Senate. After a brief retirement from politics, Sinclair ran for in the 1934 Californian gubernatorial election, winning 879,000 votes.^[9]

An onset of depression was the key factor in changing a lot of people's opinions on social issues. In 1934, Sinclair made his most successful run for office, this time as a Democrat. Sinclair's platform for the California gubernatorial race of 1934, known as EPIC Movement EPIC (End Poverty in California), galvanized the support of the Democratic Party, and Sinclair gained its nomination. The Democratic Party became known as the party of change, of reformers. Due to the Dust Bowl hitting southern and Midwestern hard, the Okies and Arkies migrated west in the hope of finding work and a new life. Upton Sinclair's plan to end poverty quickly became a controversial issue. Conservatives in California were themselves galvanized by this, as they saw it as an attempted communist takeover of their state. They used massive political propaganda portraying Sinclair as a Communist, even as he was being portrayed by American and Soviet communists as a capitalist. Robert A. Heinlein, the science fiction author, was deeply involved in Sinclair's campaign, a point which Heinlein tried to obscure from later biographies, as Heinlein tried to keep his personal politics separate from his public image as an author.^[10]

Sinclair was defeated by Frank F. Merriam in the election, and largely abandoned EPIC and politics to return to writing. However, the race of 1934 would become known as the first race to use modern campaign techniques like motion pictures. In 1935 Sinclair published I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, in which he expounded upon various techniques employed by Merriam's supporters, such as the tactics ofAimee Semple McPherson. McPherson was vehemently against Socialism and what she perceived as Sinclair's modernism, in spite of the fact that they had both supported Prohibition.

Of his gubernatorial bids, Sinclair remarked in 1951: "The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."^[11]

Aside from his political and social writings, Sinclair took an interest in psychic phenomena and experimented with telepathy, writing a book titled "Mental Radio", published in 1930. According to Sinclair, a 34-pound table levitated eight feet over his head by a young psychic's powers during a seance.^[12][13]

The Upton Sinclair House in Monrovia, California, is now a National Historic Landmark. The papers, photographs, and first editions of most of his books are found at the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.^[14]

[edit] Social Activism

The popularity of Sinclair's novels roots from the social and economic conditions of the early twentieth century. The ability to expose the injustices of capitalism resulted from the overwhelming impact and existence of poverty and the onset of the depression. Sinclair's ability to form a Socialist Party in New Jersey is an example of such an ability.

Sinclair's ideologies can be most easily found throughout his highly accredited novels. In They call me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming, Sinclair used the book to bring awareness to the corrupt society of his time. His purpose in using Jesus as the main figure in his story was to bring a realistic emotion to people in society. In a time where religion was still widely valued, he hoped to appeal to those who believed in forgiveness. Sinclair wanted to help such followers unveil the corruptions of society, while also learning the importance the individual plays in a functioning society. His vision was to put Jesus in the modern day Hollywood culture, and see how Jesus would react to what was going on. A direct blow against the Christians of the time, supposedly walking in their Lord's footsteps, it put in perspective how far the culture had gone from traditional morals. Upton Sinclair argued that people with better jobs and higher class in society look down on people and take advantage of them. For example, his book They Call Me Carpenter, shows that 2 wealthy people were driving through a slummed neighborhood, when a child ran across the street, and the driver ran the child over without any concern of the child's being or his family.They Call Me Carpenter: a Tale of a Second Coming'' can be seen as a dystopia novel in which Jesus has fallen asleep and awakened in the 1920s. The 1920s is labeled as the Progressive Era, which is a time of change and reform , but the novel sheds light on what society was like during that period. Sinclair shows that the 1920s society is profoundly chaotic and unorganized when he describes the mob scenes, especially the scene in front of the movie theater showing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Sinclair also portrays the people of society as very self-absorbed. In the novel, the character Billy and Carpenter go to a beauty salon where screams of women can be heard in the back showing women would go through pain for beauty. Sinclair uses the example of T-S, a rich director, who repeatedly asks Carpenter to star in his films, to show how society is celebrity driven and hungry for money-making fame. This novel exposes the cruelties of society and the materialistic injustices of society's capitalist world. Sinclair shows what he thinks of the 1920s society through this novel, while introducing Socialist ideals.. Through the examples in the book one can see 1920s society still exhibits signs of the Gilded Age, where wealth and excess was rampant in the United States.

Also in his book, The Jungle, Sinclair demonstrates the inhumane conditions the wage earner experiences under capitalism. He began writing this novel on Christmas day, an ironic symbolism to be found here. His purpose was to expose the truth behind the industry, including the poor treatment of immigrant workers. The poverty they lived in, the unsafe working conditions, job insecurity, on top of low and unfair wages. By these two books he aimed to let the audience know that capitalism and the higher class people are in control, and something needs to be done about it. Even though he doesn't say anything about discrimination and integration of equality, by his standings and belief, you can tell indeed, Upton Sinclair is making it known and trying to fight rights for the lower working class people, and preventing the upper businessmen from taking advantage of them, or run the political and economical system of the country. Sinclair is known for his principle: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." He was the founder of the End Poverty in California (EPIC) movement.^[15]

[edit] The Lanny Budd Series

Between 1940 and 1953, Sinclair wrote the World's End series of 11 novels about Lanny Budd, the "red" son of an American arms manufacturer who was a socialite, an art expert and an acquaintance of Hermann Göring and Adolf Hitler.

They cover in sequence much of the political history of the Western world (particularly Europe and America), in the first half of the twentieth century. Almost totally forgotten today, they were all bestsellers upon publication and were published in 21 countries. The third book in the series, Dragon's Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1943.

Long out of print, the World's End or Lanny Budd series, have recently been re-issued by Simon Publications. For technical reasons, each original volume is issued in two parts, forming a 22-volume set. The series was originally published by Viking Press in New York and T. Werner Laurie in London.

v • d • e Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd novels World's End (1940) · Between Two Worlds (1941) · Dragon's Teeth (1942) · Wide Is the Gate (1943) · The Presidential Agent (1944) · Dragon Harvest (1945) · A World to Win (1946) · A Presidential Mission (1947) · One Clear Call (1948) · O Shepherd, Speak! (1949) · The Return of Lanny Budd (1953)

[edit] Sinclair in Culture

Sinclair is extensively featured in Harry Turtledove's American Empire trilogy, in which the American Socialist Party succeeds in becoming a major force in US politics following two humiliating defeats to the Confederate States and the post-1882 collapse of the Republican Party, with Abraham Lincoln leading a large number of Republicans into the Socialist Party. He wins the 1920 and 1924 presidential elections and becomes the first Socialist President of the United States, his inauguration attended by crowds of jubilant militants waving Red Flags. However, the actual policies which Turtledove attributes to him, once in power, are not particularly radical.^{[citation needed]}

In the late 1990s, the television program "Working" used as its setting a company named Upton Weber. With the shows implicit critiques of contemporary working conditions (however watered down for popular audiences), the name suggests a reference both to Upton Sinclair and Max Weber (for his work on bureaucracy and capitalism).

Sinclair is featured as one of the main characters in Chris Bachelder's satirical fictional book, U.S.!: a Novel. Repeatedly, Sinclair is resurrected as a personification of the contemporary failings of the American-left and portrayed as a Quixotic reformer attempting to stir an apathetic American public to implement Socialism in America.

[edit] Films

His 1906 novel The Jungle received a film adaptation in 1914.

Upton Sinclair was the writer or producer of several films, including his involvement, in 1930-32, with Sergei Eisenstein, for ¡Qué viva México!, Charlie Chaplin got him involved in the project.[1]

Sinclair's 1931 novel The Wet Parade was filmed the following year by Victor Fleming, starring Robert Young, Myrna Loy, Walter Huston and Jimmy Durante.

His 1937 novel, The Gnomobile, was the basis of a 1967 Disney musical motion picture, The Gnome-Mobile. [2].

His 1927 novel Oil! was the basis of There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano. It was written, produced, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film received eight nominations for an Oscar, and won two.^[16]

[edit] Works

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Upton Sinclair

• Works by Upton Sinclair at Internet Archive
• Works by Upton Sinclair at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Upton Sinclair in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• "Uppie Redux", by David Denby, in The New Yorker, August 28, 2006.
• Biography on Schoolnet
• Guide to the Upton Sinclair Collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University
• "The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle" by Christopher Phelps in History News network, 6-26-2006
• An article by Sinclair on EPIC at the Museum of the City of San Francisco

Persondata
NAME	Sinclair, Upton Beall, Sr.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Sinclair, Upton
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American novelist, writer, journalist, political activist
DATE OF BIRTH	20 September 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH	Baltimore, Maryland
DATE OF DEATH	25 November 1968
PLACE OF DEATH	Bound Brook, New Jersey