Dick Arnold:
Now it’s hard to know whether to introduce Upton Sinclair as a political figure or as a
writer. And rather than make the difficult choice, I’d like to say something about him in
both capacities. As for Upton Sinclair, the political figure, you all know that he was the
democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934 on the epic “end poverty in
California platform” and he came mighty close to being elected getting nearly a million
votes, I think 900,000 of them.
What would have happened to him had he been elected is an exciting story and he may
tell you about it.
Upton Sinclair:
I will.
Dick Arnold:
Okay. Not – there probably would be another exciting story about what would have
happened to California had he been elected. Not so many of you know that perhaps that
before he ran for governor as a democrat, he was a socialist candidate for Congress for
New Jersey as far back as 1906. And then he ran on a socialist ticket for Congress from
California, still later for the United States Senate, and then twice for governor. This was
all before he was a democratic candidate.
A record approaching that of Norman Thomas, and proving that if you want to do a lot of
running for office without getting there there’s no ticket like the Socialist ticket. Unless
it’s the prohibitionists. Nonetheless, win or lose, Upton Sinclair has written his name
large in the history of American politics and social reform in our century. Always a
crusader, had he lived eight or nine hundred years earlier, he would’ve been called
“Upton the Lionhearted.” And mellower though he may have become since his earliest
Socialist days, he is still a crusader, still a fighter for causes, still magnificently
lionhearted.
Now let me turn from the political to the literary. Upton Sinclair as a writer. By the age of
18 he was publishing more than a million words a year and what he called his half-dime
novel. And meanwhile, working his way through CCNY and Columbia. His first novel
was in 1901, 60 years ago. Not only before most of you were born but before the fathers
of most of you were born. Like Byron, with Childe Harold, he became famous overnight
with The Jungle, his expose of the Chicago stock yards, which was taken up by
Theodore Roosevelt and led to the enactment of the Pure Food – and I always want to
say Poor Food – Pure Food and Drug Act.
Now in such famous novels as Oil and The Brass Check, Upton Sinclair became known
as a muckraker. The muck he raked up was prodigious. What this country needs today
is not a good five cent cigar, but a good five dollar muckrake. With a man as vigorous
and devoted as Upton Sinclair wielding it.
I’ll not run through all of Upton Sinclair’s books, which now number something over 80,
he’s lost track. I one time talked to him he thought it was about 90, but it’s somewhere
over 80, I believe. Except I’d like to remind you of the 11 volumes of the Lanny Budd
books, one of which, Dragon’s Teeth, won the Pulitzer Prize. And to tell you that the
Lanny Budd series was recently sold to television and may soon by vying with Perry
Mason and “Have Gun Will Travel.”
Upton Sinclair’s books include novels, plays, and non-fiction. They have been translated
into more than 60 languages, making him one of the two or three most read American
authors abroad. And he’s still writing very actively. His most recent book is a novel in
letter form, epistolary form, Affectionately Eve, rather spicy novel in spots, which
received an excellent completely favorable whole column review a few weeks ago in the
New York Times. And his autobiography is in press, will be published shortly by
Harcourt and Brace.
If you think Upton Sinclair is always serious, always a propagandist for his causes, you
should read It Happened To Didymus or I prefer the English title of the book, the copy I
have is the English edition, it’s called What Didymus Did. A book which shows its
delightful sense of humor. If you want to see the range of people Sinclair has known,
from Jack London and Theodore Dreiser to Mahatma Ghandi and Albert Einstein, read
his My Lifetime in Letters, including a few barely printable letters from Ezra Pound.
Sinclair has known everybody important from Arnold Bennett and Conan Doyle to, well,
me. Some years ago Upton Sinclair thought that I wasn’t going to get anywhere as a
writer, so he would see to it that I be known by posterity. So he made me a character in
one of his novels, the tenth of the Lanny Budd books, O, Shepherd, Speak! Now I’m in
there by name actually with Adolf Hitler and a lot of other people.
Probably Sinclair’s favorite book is not one of his own, but one by his late wife, a book
entitled Southern Belle, which he’s been sending out to libraries all over the world free
of cost to these libraries. A book which was, had a wide sale when it came out and was
excellently reviewed. And I would guess that his favorite quotation is this from George
Bernard Shaw: “When people ask me what has happened in my long lifetime I do not
refer them to the newspaper files, but to Upton Sinclair’s novels.” And I now refer you to
the man himself, a man for whom I feel admiration and affection, Upton Sinclair.