Word: sinclairism
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George Bernard Shaw, who once proposed Sinclair for the Nobel Prize, told him: "When people ask me what happened in my long lifetime, I do not refer them to the newspaper files and to authorities but to your novels." Sinclair has probably been read as widely abroad as any U.S. writer, and in spite of his antiCommunism, he is particularly popular in the Soviet Union. At recent count, there were 772 translations of his books in 47 languages, published in 39 countries...
Jesus and Shelley. Sinclair's writing was long-winded, his naivete often distracting, his fiction more polemical than literary. He was a vegetarian who lived on brown rice, fresh fruit, celery and dried milk. He never smoked or drank (his temperance tracts were inspired by the sad example of his father, an alcoholic whisky salesman). He dabbled in spiritualism...
Despite his eccentricities, Sinclair was a quiet, gentle man who claimed an unexceptionable pantheon of heroes: Jesus, Hamlet and Shelley. Critic Alfred Kazin called his special quality "combative innocence." Sinclair, wrote Kazin, represented "one of the last ties we have with that halcyon day when Marxists still sounded like Methodists...
...long ago, Sinclair said of his life: "I don't know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there-'social justice.' For that is what I have believed in and fought for." He fought that fight well and effectively. Last year, in recognition of his pioneering role in advocating consumer-protection legislation, Lyndon Johnson invited him back to the White House for the first time since his lunch with Teddy Roosevelt. Fittingly, the occasion was the signing of the Wholesome Meat Act, which filled the few remaining...
Died. Upton Sinclair, 90, author and social crusader who permanently affected the quality of American life (see THE NATION...