Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair

About this book

Few American writers have revealed their private as well as their public selves so fully as Upton Sinclair and virtually none over such a long lifetime (18781968). Sinclairs writing even at its most poignant or electrifying blurred the line between politics and artand indeed his life followed a similar arc. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair Anthony Arthur weaves the strands of Sinclairs contentious public career and his often-troubled private life into a compelling personal narrative. An unassuming teetotaler with a fiery streak called a propagandist by some the most conservative of revolutionaries by others Sinclair was such a driving force of history that one could easily mistake his life story for historical fiction. He counted dozens of epochal figures as friends or confidants including Mark Twain Jack London Henry Ford Thomas Mann H. G. Wells Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Albert Einstein Charlie Chaplin Albert Camus and Carl Jung. Starting with The Jungle in 1906 Sinclairs fiction and nonfiction helped to inform and mold American opinions about socialism labor and industry religion and philosophy the excesses of the media American political isolation and pacifism civil liberties and mental and physical health. In his later years Sinclair twice reinvented himself first as the Democratic candidate for governor of California in 1934 and later in his sixties and seventies as a historical novelist. In 1943 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Dragons Teeth one of eleven novels featuring super-spy Lanny Budd. Outside the literary realm the ever-restless Sinclair was seemingly everywhere: forming Utopian artists colonies funding and producing Sergei Eisensteins film documentaries and waging consciousness-raising political campaigns. Even when he wasnt involved in progressive causes or counterculture movements his name often was invoked by theman arrangement that frequently embroiled Sinclair in controversy. Sinclairs passion and optimistic zeal inspired America but privately he could be a frustrated petty man who connected better with his readers than with members of his own family. His life with his first wife Meta his son David and various friends and professional acquaintances was a web of conflict and strain. Personally and professionally ambitious Sinclair engaged in financial speculation although his wealth-generating schemes often benefited his pet causesand he lobbied as tirelessly for professional recognition and awards as he did for government reform. As the tenor of his work would suggest Sinclair was supremely human. In Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair Anthony Arthur offers an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclairs life and the country he helped to transform. Taking readers from the Reconstruction South to the rise of American power to the pinnacle of Hollywood culture to the Civil Rights era this is historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest. Praise "Lively unsparing look at the turn-of-the-century muckraker social critic and novelist who changed the way America did business....Arthur organizes his biography into chapters reflecting Sinclairs various crusading "selves"e.g. The Warrior The Pilgrim of Love etc.and uses a deft light touch...An immensely readable biography." Kirkus Reviews ..excellent new biography. USA Today a model of good biography. Los Angeles Magazine Absorbing. The Wall Street Journal "intimate and intellectually astute."- The New Yorker enlightening frequently stinging biography . . . Arthur organizes a vast amount of information into a fast-flowing witty and incisive narrative. - Booklist starred review a well-researched balanced and fascinating portrait. - Publishers Weekly "Neither hagiographic nor condescending Arthur is an exemplary biographer interested in human beings for their own sake in all their unvarnished oddity." - The Nation Few authors have led as full and fascinating a career and rare is the biographer capable of packing the fascinating fullness as compactlyand apparently completely as Arthur has done. Chicago Sun Times an engrossing and enlightening account of Sinclairs life and the country he helped to transform. . . historical biography at its entertaining and thought-provoking finest. Forbes Book Club The chapters in Radical Innocent that describe the research and writing of The Jungle the most famous and still the most powerful of all the muckraking novels are thrilling. . . .Arthur captures nicely Sinclairs almost absurd innocence his boundless enthusiasm as he met journalists welfare workers labor organizers and the men and women who worked in the slaughterhouses." Los Angeles Times an outstanding biography. I recommend it without reservation. David M. Kinchen Huntington News Network Book Critic: a bracing biography. Boston Globe admirable . . . compelling look at an intellectua