Upton Sinclair, �The Cup of Fury�
History lesson time! There are two authors whose books changed federal laws after the general public were shocked and outraged from their works of fiction. One was John Steinbeck after publishing The Grapes of Wrath. The other was Upton Sinclair, whose novel The Jungle led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
The Jungle has fallen by the wayside, particularly after Sinclair ran for Governor of California under the Democratic Party, but who was an avowed socialist. Which is too bad, because it�s a great fucking book, even with its vegetarian agenda. But unlike The Grapes of Wrath making me check out any and all things by Steinbeck, The Jungle never made me pick up other works by Sinclair. Oh, I thought about it but until I picked up this book, I never did.
I should have left it alone.
Okay, the Jungle is pretty heavy-handed in its delivery about the evils of corporations and pro-union bias. It�s not subtle to write about the rats gnawing on meat just before it�s wrapped in plastic � in fact, it�s more like a song by Crass.
That�s okay. I like Crass. But Sinclair never had another hit after that, and so he decided to tackle another serious piece.
The problem was that he was, by this time, too old to do the old journalistic work that he used to. While researching �The Jungle,� he worked undercover in the meat processing plants. So, he�s now old, he�s tired, but he wants to write about something threatening to destroy America. But what?
And so, he decides to write about how other talented writers that he�s known have destroyed themselves through alcohol. You know that this automatically makes it a book that I won�t, nay, can�t like. So let�s put all our drinks on the table.
First of all, it should be noted Sinclair, to his own admission, has never � NEVER � been drunk. His experience with alcohol is limited to communion wine, and even that was switched to grape juice.
As much as I hate uppity Christians who talk about how they were addicted to all sorts of things before they became addicted to God, I don�t think somebody with no experience with the subject should have a platform on why it is evil (and should be abolished, in his view).
Second, Sinclair praises the actions of Alcoholics Anonymous over and over in these pages. I have a big problem with AA, for a number of reasons. First and foremost, they state that you as an individual have NO control over your addiction, that the only way you can beat it is by lifelong constant association with their group. To me, that�s replacing one crutch with another. There�s a reason that seven of the twelve steps have direct correlation to religion, with a mean slant toward western religion.
Third, there�s an obvious lack of proportion to his arguments against alcohol and how it has destroyed several of his fellow writers. I could write a similar book about people who have died in car crashes, yet you don�t see me demanding people join Automobiles Anonymous. How about the other people of his generation that have imbibed in alcohol and had no ill effects?
Fourth, I�ll offer a concession: there are many people who should not drink, as they become assholes when they do. The fact that I write this on Ash Wednesday, after Mardi Gras, or as I call it, �amateur drinking night� just proves my point. These idiot frat boys and prom queens who whoop and holler like evil weasels up and down the street can�t handle their booze, and in fact use it as an excuse to do crazy things like tip over newspaper bins and grope girls, love the excuse of getting liquored up to justify their behavior.
It does not. In fact, such behavior worries me, as I wonder what exactly they feel they need to cut loose from. I know lots of people personally who drink and probably shouldn�t. They�ve lost all the fun in it. I have my moments of melancholy or depression, but most of the time I�m the happy guy who will drink enough to be silly, but not so much as to be a total ass.
And that�s how most of my drinking buddies are. Joe, for instance, is a fun guy to get loaded around because we�ll be willing to do silly happy fun dances for one minute, then get into a long drunken philosophical discussion the next. And what�s better is that we�ve done the same thing when there was no alcohol around.
Whoops, sorry. I was delving into drunken ramblings. I�ll try and tighten this up. The point is, Sinclair is too uniformed to criticize, too heavy handed to be taken seriously, and too pompous in his own achievements to be liked. He writes about former friends who treat him differently when he refuses to drink in their presence. I think they treated him differently because he came off as such an ass.
And it�s too bad he�s dead, because I would love it if he knew that I read his book in a bar.
