Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

BOOK REVIEWS - Donald E. Morse: "A Fighter for Righteous Causes Encounters Political Fashion. "Review of Lehel Vadon, Upton Sinclair in Hungary. Eger: College Press, 1993.125 pp

i DONALD E. MORSE "A FIGHTER FOR RIGHTEOUS CAUSES ENCOUNTERS POLITICAL FASHION." Lehel Vadon, Upton Sinclair in Hungary. Eger: College Press, 1993. 125 pp. In the United States, Upton Sinclair's (1878—1968) reputation was made with the publication of The Jungle (1906), the most powerful of all the muck-raking novels. So consistent and strong was this reputation for exposing evils and demanding reforms, especially of the Chicago stockyards, that sixty years later, in 1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson invited Sinclair to the White House "to witness the signing of the Wholesome Meat Act, which will gradually plug the loopholes left by the first Federal meat inspection law" (New York Times). It was Sinclair's writings, especially The Jungle which helped bring about enactment of the original meat inspection act! This visit was wholly consistent with Sinclair's reputation in America, for throughout his long career he has between viewed not so much as a novelist

—despite winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1942 for Dragon's Teeth one of his Lanny Buddnovels

—as a vigorous, crusading journalist bent on exposing the evils and hypocrisy of social, political, educational, and economic institutions. In Hungary, Sinclair's reception was highly influenced by doctrinaire rather than by aesthetic consideration, as Lehel Vadon has extensively demonstrated in a series of articles (see, for example, "Upton Sinclair 171