Upton Sinclair

Upton Beall Sinclair ( born September 20, 1878 in Baltimore, Maryland, † November 25, 1968 in Bound Brook, New Jersey) was an American writer. His work spans various literary genres and focuses on social criticism in many forms. In particular, the early 20th century it enjoyed in the United States, but also in German-speaking great Popularität.Seit 1915 he lived in Pasadena, California, then in Buckeye, Arizona. He was married three times. Sinclair became known in Germany through numerous translations.

Youth and Education

Sinclair grew up in unusual circumstances: his father was an alcoholic, marked by bitter poverty of everyday life. With his grandparents in New York could turn Sinclair learn about the life of wealthy Americans. So he met early in the two extreme positions of the American society.

To finance his studies at New York City College, he wrote jokes, dime novels and short stories for magazines and newspapers. He was so successful that he could afford to study at the prestigious Columbia University.

" The Jungle " as a breakthrough

His novel " The Jungle " (German title first " The Swamp ", and later: The jungle ) of 1906, which dealt with the living conditions in American meat canning industry in the Union Stockyards of Chicago, led to general attention in the public and finally prompted the enforcement of a special law for the inspection of slaughterhouses in order to maintain hygiene standards and wage levels. Thus, the working conditions were improved but only temporarily.

1914 Sinclair worked with on the film adaptation of his novel.

Socio-political ambitions

After he published The Jungle, he invested about $ 30,000 of his wages in the Helicon Home Colony, a utopian community in New Jersey. However, this burned down four months later.

Theodore Roosevelt coined for him and other socially critical authors to name-calling Muckraker ( = Schmutzaufwühler, traitor ), which did not prevent him to use Sinclair's arguments if they could serve his own reform. The term muckraking is still used today in American everyday language for the socially critical literature and investigative journalism.

Several times a candidate Sinclair for political posts, as in 1906 and 1920 as a member of the Socialist Party for the House of Representatives and in 1922 for the Senate. 1926 and 1930 he stood as a Socialist without chances of success in the gubernatorial election in California. Together with his second wife, Mary Craig, he funded in 1930/31 Sergei Eisenstein's film ¡ Qué viva México! .

In 1934 Sinclair to the Democratic Party and won their nomination for election to the governor of California. His election program included a social plan, the EPIC ( End Poverty in California) was known. Nevertheless, he was defeated by Republican incumbent Frank Merriam with 38:49 percent of the vote.

As an author, Sinclair was constantly trying to denounce social injustices. His rank as a journalist and social reformer remained undisputed. His greatest recognition he found - with the exception of the short period of time, where in the U.S. he was universally popular thanks to The Jungle - in Europe. In the German left he was widely read, and his form of the good, disciplined party activists Jimmie Higgins was temporarily proverbial. Because of its political exposure, however, Sinclair had to move partially even his dramas, novels, children's books and political- sociological studies in the United States.

Quote

• The movie unites and unifies the world. That is, he Americanized it. ( Sinclair 1917)

Honors

It was not until 1943, Sinclair became the Pulitzer Prize awarded for Dragon's Teeth, the third novel of a multi-volume series that leads the hero Lanny Budd adventure through historical events from 1913 to 1949. Albert Einstein dedicated to him the following lines: Who does not contest the dirtiest pot on / Who is knocking the world on the hollow tooth? / He who despises what today / and swears by the morning? / ... The Sinclair is the brave man / If one, then I can testify it! In 1937 he wrote the poem it because there is your courage to fight not to curb? / Does it only to beat up an old females? / Stop, my friend, there are far ernst're objectives / Where heroism needed in the whirlpool! The two had written from the early 30s to mid-50s many letters that store in the Einstein Archive.

Works (selection)

• (same pseudonym :) Clif Faraday In Command or The Fight of His Life in: True Blue. Striking Stories of Naval Academy Life. Street & Smith Publ, NY 1899, Magazine, no. 39 February 4, 1899
• ( gl Pseud. :) Strange Cruise Or Cliff Faraday 's Yacht Chase series: Annapolis Series Vol 5, ibid 1903
• Springtime and Harvest (1901 ); first amendment, (Eng. King Midas 1922);
• The Jungle (1906 ) (Eng. The Jungle 1906), as a new translation of The Jungle 1974
• The Cry for Justice (1915 ). Dt. Slavery, Interterrit. Verl "Renaissance", 1923.
• King Coal (1917 ) (German king coal 1925)
• The Profits of Religion (1918 ) (Eng. Religion and Profit 1922) essays
• Jimmie Higgins (1919). Dt. Jimmie Higgins, Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1919.
• The Brass Check ( 1920); Criticism of journalism (Eng. The wages of sin 1921, abridged)
• The Book of Life, Mind and Body (Eng. The Book of Life 1920); Pressure 1922 ( 3 volumes: 1 book of the Spirit, 2- Book of the body and of love, 3- book of the company)
• The House of Wonder. In: Pearson 's Magazine, June 1922 (Eng. The House of Wonders: ., A report on Dr. Albert Abrams revolutionary discovery: the determination of the diagnosis by means of the radioactivity of the blood, transmitted from Hermynia to mills Prague:. . Orbis - Verl, 1922 )
• The Goose Step (1923 ); Social critique of the institutions of higher education
• Oil! (1927 ); (Eng. Petroleum 1927. novel for the film " There Will Be Blood" with Daniel Day Lewis, 2007) German Andrea Ott ( 2013): oil, with an afterword by Ilya Trojanov. Manesseplatz Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-7175-2254-6.

• What Didymus Did ( 1954) (Eng. The miracles of Didymus 1955)
• Mountain City (1930 ) (Eng. How to make dollars 1931). Malik -Verlag, Berlin
• Affectionately, Eve (1961 ) (Eng. Eva discovered the paradise 1962)