Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)
BOOK REVIEWS - John C. Chalberg: Lehel Vadon: Upton Sinclair in Hungary. Eger, Hungary: College Press, 1993. 125 pp
JOHN C. CHALBERG LEHEL VADON: UPTON SINCLAIR IN HUNGARY Eger, Hungary: College Press, 1993. 125 pp. Can it be said that writers are immortal? Upton Sinclair thought so. But has the muckraking novelist and crusading socialist actually attained such status himself? Lehel Vadon has helped to answer that question affirmatively —at least according to one of Sinclair's standards. It was long the contention of the author of The Jungle and countless other books that one of the surest signs of an author's immortality was his popularity outside his native land. And Professor Vadon has amply demonstrated that Sinclair has long had a more than ample audience in a country far removed from the grimy Baltimore and gritty New York of his youth and young manhood —and even farther removed from his adopted and much beloved southern California. Just as The Jungle established a twenty-eight year old Upton Sinclair as a major writer in the United States, so the introduction of the novel to European audiences was the initial reason that Sinclair had a significant following in pre-World War I Hungary. More specifically, Sinclair's fictional expose of exploitation in the American meatpacking industry both made him a hero of sorts among Hungarian social democrats and led the Hungarian government to "tighten up on" its own meat industry. But at the same time Sinclair was not highly regarded in Hungarian literary and intellectual circles. In Vadon's words, the "writer's painstakingly accurate documentary style" virtually assured 167
