Sunday, January 22, 2017
Saturday, May 9, 2015
He called him Hal.
In Sinclair Lewis Remembered, Upton Sinclair is quoted as referring to Sinclair Lewis as Hal at Helicon Hall, the utopian community in New Jersey that was destroyed by fire.
Sweet Socialist Home Alabama
Rarely is Alabama thought of as a home for a socialist colony, where redistribution of the wealth was encouraged. But a beautiful bay will attract all schools of political thought and Alabama's Mobile Bay at Fairhope, Alabama, is no exception. The single tax colony in Fairhope got the attention of Upton Sinclair and other intellectuals. Sinclair moved there.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Upton Mentors Sinclair
"You seem to me one of the most curiously uneven writers I have ever known. You will write pages and pages of interesting stuff, and then you will write a lot of conversation which is just absolute waste, without any point or worth-whileness at all; and you don’t seem to know the difference. Everything of yours that I have read is about half and half…wherever you are writing about the underworld, you are at your best, and when you come up to your own social level or higher, you are no good."
An interesting quote but nowhere near as interesting as Gore Vidal's take on Sinclair. Vidal's article in the New York Review of Books is a great read.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1992/oct/08/the-romance-of-sinclair-lewis/?pagination=false
An interesting quote but nowhere near as interesting as Gore Vidal's take on Sinclair. Vidal's article in the New York Review of Books is a great read.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1992/oct/08/the-romance-of-sinclair-lewis/?pagination=false
Upton Sinclair's The Wet Parade is finally on dvd labelled as a "pre-code" classic in the Forbidden Hollywood Collection from Warner Brothers. (Volume 6)
Myrna Loy is one of the stars of this film. She was in a Sinclair Lewis film too, Arrowsmith. So she was Sinclair Squared too!
The Wet Parade has a nice review in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. http://blogs.commercialappeal.com/the_bloodshot_eye/2013/05/forbidedn.html
Sunday, July 28, 2013
As Relevant And As Topical As Ever
Yet another new and fresh Upton Sinclair biography from the University of Nebraska Press. More information on the new book here.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Friday, April 22, 2011
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Call Of The Sinclairs
Both Sinclairs paid homage to Jack London and as a result both became friends with London. The details of those initial calls to "Wolf" are in James L. Haley's biography of London.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Well, Yes It Can
Lewis' fictional account of facism in America is still getting attention even in 2010. Click here for a current review.
The Birth Of The Attack Ad
Greg Mitchell's fascinating read about the connection between Upton Sinclair and modern "dirty" politics. Huffington Post discusses the book here.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Babbitt Bubble
Only a few literary characters are entries in dictionaries. George Babbitt is one of those. And with the current real estate ruin, babbittry bubbles. Local communities relive the novel in plays like this one.
Socialist Sinclair
We have the recent presidential campaign for yet another spike in interest in Upton Sinclair who proudly wore the socialist label and even ran for governor as a socialist.
He probably would have won the election if a capitalist newspaper owner and the hollywood money interests had not viciously opposed his campaign with rabid dog rhetoric. As our country adopts many of Sinclair's ideals and popularizes his novels (Oil!), a wry smile forms on my lips as I watch the newspaper whose vitriol destroyed Sinclair's campaign slowly swirl down the financial sinkhole. Upton up as capitalism collapses. Upton lives as this article here shows.
He probably would have won the election if a capitalist newspaper owner and the hollywood money interests had not viciously opposed his campaign with rabid dog rhetoric. As our country adopts many of Sinclair's ideals and popularizes his novels (Oil!), a wry smile forms on my lips as I watch the newspaper whose vitriol destroyed Sinclair's campaign slowly swirl down the financial sinkhole. Upton up as capitalism collapses. Upton lives as this article here shows.
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