[Amen, so to speak. A review of two biographies of Upton Sinclair in the NY Times Book Review this week ends on this interesting note:]
... Can such an author [Upton Sinclair] be revived as someone to be read today? Haven't times changed out of sight? Does anyone eat beef today and think of the stockyards? Well, yes, I think beef is still under suspicion, along with just about everyone who feeds the enormous public. Eric Schlosser and others are still questioning the food culture. But the real thing about "The Jungle" is the way Sinclair saw the vicious link between "them" and "us," a dramatic paranoia straight from Dickens. If Sinclair were here today, I'd send him to the San Joaquin Valley, where vegetables fit for Hockney and every farmers' market are produced through dire exploitation. I'd urge him to go to Salinas, John Steinbeck's hometown, where the public libraries nearly closed recently for lack of funding and where the prospects for Hispanics who work the valley are expatriation, gang warfare, a broken back in the sun and the chemicals or . . . the American dream.
There was a period in this country, from the 30's through the 70's, in which government caring seemed to ease away some of the muck. We think of it as the Great Society, and we recall people and politicians who voiced hope for it without irony. It's clearer now that the middle class — the great force that made Dickens's England more benevolent — is in retreat. We are getting back to them and us, in a country that has earned little but shame in its foreign affairs. We are not liked, we are not trusted, we are not respected — and all those shortcomings are eroding our domestic souls. Katrina, that gust of nature, was the rehearsal for the revelation that "they" now have neither the means nor the intent of looking after us. We are on our own, and we may need to find our own Sinclairs.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/books/review/02thomson.html?_r=1&oref=slogin>
Carl