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
set to work as a writer with a singlemindedness that was only matched by his subsequent devotion to socialism. Sinclair did permit himself a few diversions along the way to immortality. In his early twenties he discovered that gambling was his "vice." Throughout his life tennis provided him an occasional respite from work. And between twenty-two and his octogenarian years he did manage to acquire three wives, a son, and a comfortable income. Nonetheless, Upton Sinclair was never the stereotypical poor boy who wanted to become rich. In the first place, time spent with his affluent cousins taught him that life for the rich was not necessarily trouble free. Secondly, he discovered socialism sometime in his midtwenties. Improbable as it seems, Sinclair claimed that he had had no awareness of socialism —and only a vague understanding of populism — until the early years of the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, who adamantly opposed socialism, had little reason to fear Sinclair's brand of it. Never did Upton Sinclair so much as flirt with the idea that socialism was to be achieved at the point of a gun. In fact, he never wavered from his belief that the ballot box was the only way to bring socialism to any country. Finally, his socialist utopia was essentially a middle class utopia where intelligent people, gifted people, rational people set the tone for a society of order, virtue, and equality. As a socialist, Sinclair's central tenet was that economic inequality was at the root of every evil that beset society. His guiding assumption was that the elimination of that brand of inequality would automatically usher in a society without conflict. But in the meantime there was plenty of conflict in Sinclair's private life, not to mention plenty of social conflict available for him to excoriate in book after book. A professionally driven Upton Sinclair generally tried to avoid personal conflict by essentially ignoring his first wife and only son. He was also so inadequate at playing the role of provider that his father-in-law removed his daughter and grandson from the writer's home. When the family was reunited it was in a leaky cabin near Princeton, New Jersey, a cabin from which the nominal head of the household escaped to write hour after solitary hour in a nearby tent 169
