Upton Sinclair was born September 20, 1878, and got famous first for his 1906 novel The Jungle. It was an expose that uncovered shockingly bad conditions in the meat packing industry of the US. That was over a century ago, and not everything has changed; a major US meat packing company is currently closed because the filthy conditions in its factories were making people sick and killing them. But you can’t blame the natural tendency of businessmen to cut corners on Sinclair. He got his start as a journalist, and even later published an exposé of journalism itself. He raged for decades about corruption, and his most famous quote is “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland to a prosperous family. The prosperity, though, didn’t completely extend to his immediate family. His maternal grandparents were extremely wealthy, but his father’s family were middle class, or possibly poorer. And his father, a liquor salesman, was not successful and the family moved frequently. Sinclair didn’t start school until he was ten years old, at which time he was adept at reading but knew little about math. He managed to catch up, though, and enrolled in the City College of New York when he was just 13. He paid his own tuition out of his earnings from selling articles, jokes, and short books. His income from writing eclipsed his father’s salary, which by then came from selling shoes rather than liquor.
Sinclair graduated from college when he was 21 and enrolled in Columbia University to study law, but was more interested in writing. He typically signed up for a class but later dropped it, although he did study the material. Using that (odd) approach he managed to learn Spanish, German, and French — but didn’t actually study law much, if at all. He continued to support himself by writing, and sold adventure stories to magazines. He said later that when he was at Columbia he was writing 8,000 words per day.
He finally left Columbia without a degree, and promptly wrote four books in the next four years: King Midas, Prince Hagen, The Journal of Arthur Stirling, and Manassas, which was a Civil War novel. His books were pretty well reviewed, but didn’t make as much money as he’d hoped.
Around 1904 Sinclair decided that he was, at heart, a poet rather than a novelist, and started writing poetry — which hasn’t been much remembered. About the same time, though, he began his career in “muckraking” by working undercover in meat packing plants. He kept notes about what he saw, and published The Jungle two years later. Also about the same time, he became a socialist, and even ran for the US Congress as the Socialist Party’s candidate (he lost).
In 1913 Sinclair investigated the coal industry and wrote King Coal, another exposé. He followed that up with the historical book The Coal War, and organized demonstrations in New York against Standard Oil. By then he was married, and in 1920 he moved with his family to California.
In California, Sinclair changed direction again and became a screen writer and film producer. He was even recruited by Charlie Chaplin to write and produce some of Chaplin’s movies. California agreed with the Sinclairs, and they stayed for 40 years. He returned to politics and ran again for Congress, again as a member of the Socialist Party, and again losing. He also ran for Governor of California in 1926 and 1930, and although he garnered quite a few votes both times, he didn’t win office. Then in 1934 he switched parties and ran for Governor as a Democrat. He was opposed by business interests, including the owners of the movie studios he’d been working with for years. His campaign was notable for the negative tactics used against him — they were so extreme that a film was made about it in 2020 (Mank).
After 1934 Sinclair’s political career effectively ended when the Socialist Party expelled him, considering him a capitalist, the Democratic party kicked him out because they thought he was a socialist, and the general public withdrew because he’d been depicted as a communist. So he returned to writing, publishing I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked.
Sinclair published at least 100 books throughout his career, including journalistic exposés, novels, and adventures. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1943 for his novel Dragon’s Teeth, which was one of a series of 11 books featuring “Lanny Budd,” a sort of Forrest Gump character who ended up as an inside witness to all sorts of historic events. The Lanny Budd books were reissued as ebooks in 2016.
Upton Sinclair was one of the most famous American writers of the 20th Century, even though he was often confused with another famous writer of the same era, Sinclair Lewis. He appeared as a character in one of Sinclair Lewis’ novels, as well as being a character in a number of other books. He also appeared, usually briefly, in a number of movies. And some movies that he wrote and produced have been remade — the most famous one is There Will Be Blood from 2007, which was a remake of Sinclair’s 1927 movie Oil!
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