American outpost;: A book of reminiscences

by Upton Sinclair

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1932

About the author

Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr. was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906). To gather information for the novel, Sinclair spent seven weeks undercover working in the meat packing plants of Chicago. These direct experiences exposed the horrific conditions in the U.S. meat packing 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. The Jungle has remained continuously in print since its initial publication. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking 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 the initial publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence." In 1943, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Sinclair also ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Socialist, and was the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of California in 1934, though his highly progressive campaign was defeated.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thankfully there are still some old-timey used bookstores about. I found a copy of this book on the shelves of one of them, and I enjoy older memoirs.

At the very beginning Sinclair declares this a "light" autobiography, and it is. It was published in 1932, he was born in 1878, and the book goes up to the beginning of WWI. He later wrote an Autobiography, w/ assistance, that was published (1962)towards the end of his long life (1968).

I did not realize he was a Southerner, and his family were the poor relatives of a rich family. In part this was because of his alcoholic father - and because of that he never drank, smoke or drank caffeine in his life! He was a big supporter of Prohibition.

Throughout the book he brings up his health problems (headaches and upset stomach) brought upon by the pressure of writing. So we get lots of time spent on the various cures he had tried - some of them pretty crazy, some of them very current even today (the lack of pure flour and sugar even back then!)

Prolific to a fault throughout his long life, he started out in college writing pulp fiction. He also moved about like crazy, and started and joined numerous artist and Utopian communities. He was a true American Socialist, and had little compassion for the Soviet influenced US Communist Party.

It is also of interest to watch him "name drop" the artists he admired and felt a kinship with. To call them "middle brow" might be an over statement, and included Harry Kemp, the "tramp poet" from the U of KS who had an affair w/ his first wife. As the wife of the author of The Jungle who was also a self-admitted Socialist, this was a huge scandal that was headline news at the time.

Also of interest is to read the short part on he and his young wife discussing having an (illegal) abortion because they were too young and poor to have child. They did have the child anyway, and then practiced abstinence as birth control - to the point of no physical contact what-so-ever.

Not everyone's cup of tea, and the reader must keep in mind that memoirs and autobiographies are very one-sided! But I enjoy older memoirs, and this was a very enjoyable read - and I learned a lot about Sinclair, I look forward to reading Kemp's autobio (if not his poems).