Upton Sinclair (1878–1968)

This is an astonishing book. One of the more astonishing things about it is that it was written 112 years ago. Many of the same things destroying America today, albeit in different areas today than in the meat packing industry of 1906, were already very much alive (and, unfortunately well) then. Sinclair's hope of changing the political thinking of Americans at the beginning of the 20th century did little more than encourage the passage of legislation protecting the food consumption of the show more Americans of his day. As he wrote himself, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident hit its stomach." Sadly, in spite of that moderate success, his socialist dream is no closer to becoming reality today than it was then. Nevertheless, Sinclair's hero, Lithuanian immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, would be proud to know that there are still people willing to fight for those ideals today, however hopeless it might seem in America at the beginning of the 21st century. show less

The Fasting Cure is a reprint of two articles written by Upton Sinclair in 1910 for Cosmopolitan Magazine magazine about his personal experience and championing of fasting as a natural cure-all. Sinclair was exceedingly open-minded towards advances in holistic medicine - he was a customer and advocate of John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Sanitarium - not surprising for a man who also experimented with telepathy and even built his own whites-only socialist utopia (it burned down show more under mysterious circumstances after just one year). Far from a medical treatise, the majority of The Fasting Cure is comprised of Sinclair's anecdotal experiences experimenting with fasting as a cure for his own physical ailments, and success stories from people who successfully followed his example. In between the reader letters and Sinclair-centric testimonial he briefly tackles the "science" behind fasting as a cure-all in very basic terms - bacteria in the gut causes all forms of illness, apparently - with the occasional name-drop of medical pioneers like Kellogg. Slightly reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's experimentation with LSD, The Fasting Cure is a great example of how some of our greatest literary minds were shaped by their innovative and adventurous embrace of fringe ideas and theories. An interesting read, but you might want to seek medical advice from a physician before contemplating a sixty or ninety day fast to treat your colon cancer. show less

This book is widely considered a classic, and with good reason. Sinclair follows the fate of Jurgis and his extended Lithuanian family as they try to make a decent living in the Packingtown district of Chicago. They’re swindled in every sphere, and the innocent suffer the most. The book exposes the abysmal working conditions that the men in the meat-packing plants faced and the extent of the political corruption designed to keep businessmen happy and the general electorate downtrodden. show more It’s vividly written and feels relevant today, too, unfortunately.

I’m rating this a 3.5 because the content is a 4, but the book just kind of stops. show less

Jurgis Rudkus and his family emigrate from Lithuania to the United States because they live a very hard life and were told the wages are much higher here. What they were not told is that costs are also much higher, so the family ends up typical of the poorest of the poor. After having most of their money swindled in New York, they make it to Chicago to live in a single room in a fetid boarding house, from which all the family members can get jobs. With several incomes they make the smart show more choice to buy a house in the slaughterhouse district, the only place they can afford to live and work. This proves to be another swindle, as the house is falling apart, their interest is high, and if they fail to make a single payment they will be evicted. Their jobs in the slaughterhouses are incredibly difficult and dangerous. Men have life-threatening accidents every day, and the meat is rotting and full of toxic chemicals. The workers get sick with tuberculosis and other contagious disease often, but can’t afford to take time off, even unpaid, as they will lose their job. Family members die or go missing. Jurgis ends up in prison for beating a man who raped his wife, and when he gets out his wife dies in childbirth, the family is evicted, and his other child dies. Jurgis leaves them and becomes a tramp and then a thief. He becomes a vote fixer for the Republican Party, then the Democratic Party, and then a strikebreaker for the very union he used to belong to. After another stint in prison he returns to his two remaining family members, his wife’s stepmother and cousin, to find the latter has been trafficked into prostitution. One day, when looking for a warm place to loiter, Jurgis hears a speech by a great socialist orator. The words he hears reflect Jurgis’ lived experience, unlike any politics he's heard before, and offer him hope for the future and something to fight for. After the speech, Jurgis meets the speaker, who offers him a job as a porter at a hotel run by a socialist, where he thrives.

I had not ever read this classic before, and I'm very glad that I did. The descriptions of work at the slaughterhouse that are so famous are only in about a third of the book (the first third, which makes me wonder if some readers only get that far). Overall, the book is about the plight of immigrants, the poor who work so hard for nothing, and the lie of the American Dream. Jurgis and his family frequently lament that there's no such thing as freedom if you can't afford it, and they would not have been fundamentally worse off if they had stayed in Lithuania.
After the horrible things he's been through, socialism is a light at the end of the tunnel for Jurgis. He doesn't find utopia, he just finds a system that acknowledges him and cares about people like him and gives him something to look forward to. The ending is bittersweet from a modern perspective, as the socialists are so optimistic but the reader knows what will actually happen to the reputation of socialism over the next 115 years. The book does go a bit too far in trying to overexplain the nickels and dimes of how much different people will get paid for different tasks under socialism. Quit while you're ahead!
Cynics like to point out that the only change this book catalyzed when it was published was food safety, not socialism or worker welfare or a social safety net, but that's absolutely not nothing. The upper class aren't eating the rotten tubercular pork or the beef sausage full of rats and workers’ body parts - the workers and the poor themselves are. Food safety improvements help them most.
I often find that “classics” don't hold up as well as people claim they do, but this book is great and I'm so glad I finally read it. show less