Katana VentraIP

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943.

Not to be confused with his contemporary, Sinclair Lewis, novelist and social critic.

Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr.

(1878-09-20)September 20, 1878

November 25, 1968(1968-11-25) (aged 90)

  • Novelist
  • writer
  • journalist
  • political activist
  • politician

  • Meta Fuller
    (m. 1900; div. 1911)
  • Mary Craig Kimbrough
    (m. 1913; died 1961)
  • Mary Elizabeth Willis
    (m. 1961; died 1967)

Arthur Sinclair (great-grandfather)
Wallis Simpson (cousin)
Corinne Mustin (cousin)

In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his classic muck-raking novel, The Jungle, which exposed labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.[1] In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muck-raking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of yellow journalism and the limitations of the "free press" in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created.[2] Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence".[3] He is also well remembered for the quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."[4] He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms.[4] Many of his novels can be read as historical works. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.


The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado.


Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 election.

Early life and education[edit]

Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Priscilla Harden Sinclair was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Both of Upton Sinclair's parents were of British ancestry. His paternal grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain during the late 1600s and early 1700s.[5] As a child, Sinclair slept either on sofas or cross-ways on his parents' bed. When his father was out for the night, he would sleep in the bed with his mother.[6] His mother's family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore, and her sister married a millionaire. Sinclair had wealthy maternal grandparents with whom he often stayed. This gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived during the late 19th century. Living in two social settings affected him and greatly influenced his books. Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. was from a highly respected family in the South, but the family was financially ruined by the Civil War, the end of slavery causing disruptions of the labor system during the Reconstruction era, and an extended agricultural depression.


As he was growing up, Upton's family moved frequently, as his father was not successful in his career. He developed a love for reading when he was five years old. He read every book his mother owned for a deeper understanding of the world. He did not start school until he was 10 years old. He was deficient in math and worked hard to catch up quickly because of his embarrassment.[6] In 1888, the Sinclair family moved to Queens, New York City, New York, where his father sold shoes. Upton entered the City College of New York five days before his 14th birthday,[7] on September 15, 1892.[6] He wrote jokes, dime novels, and magazine articles in boys' weekly and pulp magazines to pay for his tuition.[8] With that income, he was able to move his parents to an apartment when he was seventeen years old.[6]


He graduated from City College in June 1897. He subsequently studied law at Columbia University,[9] but he was more interested in writing. He learned several languages, including Spanish, German, and French. He paid the one-time enrollment fee to be able to learn a variety of subjects. He would sign up for a class and then later drop it.[10] He again supported himself through college by writing boys' adventure stories and jokes. He also sold ideas to cartoonists.[6] Using stenographers, he wrote up to 8,000 words of pulp fiction per day. His only complaint about his educational experience was that it failed to educate him about socialism.[10] After leaving Columbia without a degree, he wrote four books in the next four years; they were commercially unsuccessful though critically well-received: King Midas (1901), Prince Hagen (1902), The Journal of Arthur Stirling (1903), and a Civil War novel, Manassas (1904).[9]


Sinclair did not get on with his mother when he became older because of her strict rules and refusal to allow him independence. Sinclair later told his son, David, that around Sinclair's 16th year, he decided not to have anything to do with his mother, staying away from her for 35 years because an argument would start if they met.[11]


Upton became close with Reverend William Wilmerding Moir. Moir specialized in sexual abstinence and taught his beliefs to Sinclair. He was taught to "avoid the subject of sex." Sinclair was to report to Moir monthly regarding his abstinence. Despite their close relationship, Sinclair identified as agnostic.[6]

Other interests[edit]

Aside from his political and social writings, Sinclair took an interest in occult phenomena and experimented with telepathy. His book Mental Radio (1930) included accounts of his wife Mary's telepathic experiences and ability.[19][20] William McDougall read the book and wrote an introduction to it, which led him to establish the parapsychology department at Duke University.[21]

Sylvia (1913) was a novel about a girl. In her autobiography, Mary Craig Sinclair said she had written the book based on her own experiences as a girl, and Upton collaborated with her. According to Craig, at her insistence, Sinclair published Sylvia (1913) under his name. In her 1957 memoir, she described how her husband and she had collaborated on the work: "Upton and I struggled through several chapters of Sylvia together, disagreeing about something on every page. But now and then each of us admitted that the other had improved something."[60][61] When it appeared in 1913, The New York Times called it "the best novel Mr. Sinclair has yet written–so much the best that it stands in a class by itself."[62]

Southern

Sylvia's Marriage (1914), Craig and Sinclair collaborated on a sequel, also published by John C. Winston Company under Upton Sinclair's name. In his 1962 autobiography, Upton Sinclair wrote: "[Mary] Craig had written some tales of her Southern girlhood; and I had stolen them from her for a novel to be called Sylvia."[64]

[63]

Sinclair is featured as one of the main characters in 's satirical novel, U.S.! (2005). Repeatedly, Sinclair is resurrected after his death and assassinated again, a "personification of the contemporary failings of the American left". He is portrayed as a quixotic reformer attempting to stir an apathetic American public to implement socialism in America.[76]

Chris Bachelder

refers to Sinclair and his EPIC plan in Lewis' novel, It Can't Happen Here (1935).

Sinclair Lewis

refers to Sinclair and his first wife, Meta, in her novel The Accursed (2013).

Joyce Carol Oates

Sinclair appears in the trilogy (2001–2003), part of the wider Southern Victory series of alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove. In the series, Sinclair becomes president of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1929, as the first president from the Socialist Party. During his administration, he builds up social welfare programs at home and tries to foster peace abroad. Sinclair takes a more lenient stance towards the Confederacy than his predecessor Theodore Roosevelt did, cancelling Great War reparations following the assassination of Confederate President Wade Hampton V in 1922.

American Empire

Sinclair appears in 's novel The Road to Wellville (1993), which is built around a historical fictionalization of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of Corn Flakes and the founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In the book, Sinclair and his first wife, Meta, appear as patients at the Sanitarium. Later, Kellogg is outraged when he discovers that another of his patients has been fasting after reading a typescript of Sinclair's The Fasting Cure.

T. C. Boyle

He was portrayed by in David Fincher's 2020 biopic Mank.

Bill Nye

(1914) is a silent film adaptation of the 1906 novel, with George Nash playing Jurgis Rudkus and Gail Kane playing Ona Lukozsaite. The film is considered lost.[77] Sinclair appears at the beginning and end of the film as a form of endorsement.[78]

The Jungle

(1932) is a film adaptation of Sinclair's eponymous 1931 novel, directed by Victor Fleming and starring Lewis Stone, Walter Huston, Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Robert Young, and Jimmy Durante. Myrna Loy appears very briefly as an actress who runs an elegant speakeasy.[79]

The Wet Parade

adapted The Gnomobile (1937) into the 1967 musical motion picture The Gnome-Mobile.[80]

Walt Disney Productions

(1927) was adapted as the film There Will Be Blood (2007), starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. The film received eight Oscar nominations and won two.[81]

Oil!

In 's film drama Mank (2020), Bill Nye has a small role as Sinclair running for 1934 California governor race as the Democratic nominee.

David Fincher

Sinclair, Upton. Upton sinclair anthology (1947)

online

Engs, Ruth Clifford, ed. Unseen Upton Sinclair: Nine Unpublished Stories, Essays and Other Works. (McFarland & Co. 2009).

Fiction


Autobiographical


Non-fiction


Drama


As editor

—in Monrovia, California

Upton Sinclair House

a supporter on the Los Angeles City Council

Will H. Kindig

"" [finding aid]. Upton Sinclair Collection, ID: Manuscript Collection MS-3848. Austin, TX: Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas.

Upton Sinclair: An Inventory of His Collection

at the Harry Ransom Center

Upton Sinclair Collection

Phelps, Christopher (June 26, 2006), , History News network.

The Fictitious Suppression of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle

Sinclair Lewis & Upton Sinclair

"A Tribute To Two Sinclairs"

from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History

"Writings of Upton Sinclair"

Upton Sinclair – Induction into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame

Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive (Collection 1429). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Image of Upton Sinclair and wife Mary Craig, Santa Barbara, California, 1935.