American Historical Fiction discussion
This topic is about
The Jungle
Book Discussions
>
"The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair
date
newest »
newest »
Thanks for this v interesting post. Where did your family emigrate from?
One set, Kranz, came from Germany in the mid 1890's. He was an engineer & worked for the Long Island water works. I have quite a few different things that he made including a high chair made for my great uncle & grandmother back in 1897. My grandson used it this summer! They were here for the wedding of my youngest, but seeing Colin in the high chair was close to the high point for me. (Yes, I'm weird.);)
Her future husband was born in Canada & immigrated here in 1925. He came down to work for a paper in Oyster Bay, one of several owned by the same man. My grandfather eventually worked his way up to become publisher & editor of one of the papers, The Long Islander, which was started by Walt Whitman.
Another grandfather was born just after his parents came over here in 1904 (I think) from Sweden. He was a union man, pipe fitters, I think. He grew up in Brooklyn. He used to tell a lot of stories about the unions & how they helped everyone. He was also a staunch Mason, but wouldn't say much about growing up in a cold water walk-up in Brooklyn except occasional comments.
He married a woman with a similar history, but she was German-Dutch. Even though I met my Dutch great-grandmother a few times, I never found out much about the family. Closed mouth bunch. My aunt was 60 before she found out she had an uncle that lived just a few miles away. That grandmother was a tough old bird. She shot her last deer when she was 84 years old after a 3 mile hike into the blueberry fields near her camp in Maine. She let her grandsons drag it home & dress it for her, though.
:)
I finished the book & was quite disappointed in the last half. Sinclair went off the deep end politically & pretty much ruined the book. I still gave it 4 stars, but suggest that anyone reading it for the first time be prepared to abandon it once that becomes clear. The ending doesn't justify the time spent getting to it. My review is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Jim wrote: "One set, Kranz, came from Germany in the mid 1890's. He was an engineer & worked for the Long Island water works. I have quite a few different things that he made including a high chair made for ..."Thanks for this! Sounds like material for an American Historical to me.
The father of the Canadian immigrant wrote a genealogy of that side of the family in the 1930's in pencil in a school composition book that I inherited. I transcribed that into a Word document & then put it up on a web site. For several years, I was very into genealogy. It's a lot of work & time, though.A cousin has the family bible for the German engineer. I'm a woodworker, so I got all the remaining pieces of his save for one desk. There's a goat cart (too big for my goats), a bird carving, cane chair, book case, the high chair plus a stool he made for his son-in-law. I also have his claw hammer, pocket knife, & their old anniversary clock - a Sears clock they bought for an early wedding anniversary circa 1900, according to family legend. Nothing famous or worth a lick to anyone but me. I treasure it, though.
I told you I had a soft spot. It's also very cool figuring out how great grandpa designed & laid out his projects. Something about the stool kept me looking at it. Finally, I figured it out. It uses proportional geometric shapes. The top curves are ogees that are based on the circle sizes for the bottoms of the legs. I made a reconstruction & sold the article to a woodworking magazine. He was a smart old geezer.
:)
I'm editing The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism, also by Sinclair, on WikiSource right now. Before reading "The Jungle", I thought it would be interesting, but it's even worse than the last half of "The Jungle". He whines a lot & calls it nonfiction.
Jim wrote: "I finished the book & was quite disappointed in the last half. Sinclair went off the deep end politically & pretty much ruined the book. I still gave it 4 stars, but suggest that anyone reading i..."Agree completely about the last half I say in my review: The end of this book turns into a huge political ad for the socialist party so by then I just wanted it to be over!
For me this book was more of an immigrant story and there is tragedy after tragedy yet I feel everyone should read this book at least up till Sinclair goes into the politics and ruins the book. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
here is my review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Wow. You took the words right out of my mouth. I think we're on the same page completely. Did you read my review? There's a link in #4.
Jim wrote: "Wow. You took the words right out of my mouth. I think we're on the same page completely. Did you read my review? There's a link in #4."Yes we had very similar views on this one!
I read this book for the first time about twenty years ago, and the plight of the immigrants is still with me today. I was horrified by the conditions they lived in, and that part of the story is what I remember. It's funny, but I don't even remember the political diatribe. I must have blocked that part out of my memories!
You might have skimmed over the diatribe, Suzanne. I certainly would have, but I was listening to it. Audio books are a great way for me to get a lot of reading done while doing chores, but they don't do every book favors. An author has to write very well & tight or the story drags. In this case, there was no skimming through Sinclair's proselytizing.
You're probably right, Jim. I tend to skim when the writing isn't top notch. Sorry you weren't able to do the same. :-)
So far, I've found the ills of the meat packing industry to be very much a secondary issue for Sinclair. They're awful, but it's obvious that his first & foremost thought is the plight of honest, hard working immigrants. They arrive with stars in their eyes & are soon living in hell. He certainly found a proper setting.
I've always had a soft spot for immigrants. All of my ancestors, a grandfather & the rest of my great grandparents, immigrated to the US in the late 1800's & early 1900's, within decades of this novel's setting 1906. They all landed in NYC & eventually made their fortunes. Some managed to own their own homes out on Long Island, nothing grand, but solidly middle class. They had hard times in Brooklyn, but nothing like what Sinclair describes. The morass that his characters landed in is enough to make anyone with a heart weep.
The naivete & ignorance of the immigrants is compounded by the language barrier. Life was pretty brutal back then, but their lives were crushed by greed, a surplus of workers, lack of unions, decent medicine, & more. IOW, the sheer number of hardships that lines up against them is too long to list. The grinding weight of them is practically unbearable to read about.