Az Egri Ho Si Minh Tanárképző Főiskola Tud. Közleményei. 1984. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 17)

I. TANULMÁNYOK A TÁRSADALOMTUDOMÁNYOK KÖRÉBŐL - Lehel Vadon: The Reception of Upton Sinclair's Works in Hungary

Attention paid to the new publications of this book by the reviews in Hungarian periodicals, consisted mainly of a synopsis of the plot plus a few lines of critical appreciation. A Jövő Társadalma considered it "a fantastic, unbelievable, wild, naturalistic American novel".

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0 To the mind of László Gereblyés the book is the story of the "one-hundred-per-cent American chauvinistic bourgeois", "the Jimmie Higgins of the whites".

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1 In the opinion of Literatura, "this exciting and staggering book shows the reality of American life in its entirety, projected into the mirror of the judicial system".

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2 In his essay on Sinclair, György Szántó rigthly ascertained that not one of the other books by the author carries so much terrible reality. Sinclair created his hero with superior objectivity, brilliant humour, masterful reportage, and simple means of expression, "who is not the revolutionary type of truth-seeker, but not a blackhearted adventurer either. He is only an egocentric, average man, who drifting within the cyclone of life, has not even a second to deal with anything but himself and his base instinct for comfort, low-minded pleasures".

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3 In his essay following the 1964 edition of 100%, Miklós Vásárhelyi thought the cause of the popularity of the novel in Hungary to be that there was similarity between the historic situations in America an Hungary. Sinclair raked over the ashes of the past, one of the darkest, most reactionary ages of American history, the events and atmosphere of the post-war years. In the beginning of the thirties, at the time of spreading fascism, the methods of the Horthy police were not unlike those of the Californian police force. The Hungarian workers came to learn at first hand the meaning of police terror. They suffered brutality and torment, they met with provocation, infiltration and false evidence. They knew from experience all the meaning of what they read in 100%. Similarity merged into parity; they only had to alter the names of people and places, and the events may well have taken place in Budapest. "100% is the most symptomatic work of the ever-contentious Sinclair. The novel's documentation is durable, which is why it is always interesting, exciting and illuminating reading".

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4 12. The novel They Call Me Carpenter (1922) was published twice in Hungary, in the translation of Kornél V. Nagy, first under the editorship of Népszava Publishing House in 1925, and again in 1946 by Nova Publishing House. In both the ideological and artistic way of expression it is most similar to Samuel the Seeker. Both novels relate the pure man's coming into antagonism with American society. Both novels are modern epics about the failure of justice. Soon after the appearance of the novel the New Year's Day edition of Népszava included an essay about Jack London, in which may be read an evaluation of Sinclair: "The hard pen of the writer became softened, intimately and pathetically human, in the most mature work of Sinclair, They Call Me Carpenter. But only when his voice and emotions are involved and in order to generate feeling from the readers. The tempestuous rush of event, the plotting of the story always serving to suprise the readers, show Sinclair to be at the climax of his art."

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5 Soma Braun, one of the best Hungarian translaters of Sinclair, called this to be an insinuating novel. "They Call Me 42-3