My disappointment over the defeat of Upton Sinclair is not, I fear, on the proper level of social responsibility. It was an earnest and significant fight, involving issues w#der than one State and revealing the deadly antagonisms under the polite surface of things.
But despite my better sense, I feel a good deal like the little boy who missed the circus. I suspect, in fact, that others whose serious views on life are sometimes touched with an impish frivolity, share my sense of deprivation.
Upton Sinclair the novelist, playwright, poet, pamphleteer, muckraker, faddist, dieteer; Upton Sinclair the artist and the social evangelist in a Gubernatorial seat of power! That was something to contemplate with racing pulses. Not more than once in a lifetime does the whirligig of history turn up such a fascinating prospect.
Even the vista of incongruities opened up six years ago by Al Smith’s bid for the presidency seems a bit drab against the perspective of an Upton Sinclair as His Excellency the Governor. Without for a moment questioning the man’s sincerity, I do believe that the fiction writer in Sinclair, the spinner of melodramatic fables, had a lot to do with the vision of himself in a governor’s role projected by his daring and imaginative mind. Had it come off, no literary critic would ever after have dared to refer to any Sinclair novel as strained and synthetic in its plot.
Think to begin with, what the official formulas of Governor Sin##air might have been—routine official fo##ulas sent packing and literary #alent ruling for once in the official Printing Office. A message to the California legislature #formed by the ardor of The ##ngle, the candor of The Brass ##eck, the erudition of The Book of Life might easily have made a State Printing Office for the first time in history the publisher of a bestseller.
Already I saw with my mind’s eye catalogues of rare books listing “Document No A-14593, State of California” among the most sought-after first editions.
And the Epic promises themselves held immense possibilities for curious delights and thrills of a sociological as well as literary nature. Many countries in these difficult years have adopted the principle of “autarchy” or economic self-sufficiency. California under Sinclai## would have been the first local area within any nation to adopt the autarchic principle.
The methods and objectives of the Epic scheme would of necessity have made California a politica# pariah, obliged by its policies and by the opposition of the rest of the country to limit “exports” and “imports” to an absolute minimum and to seek self-sufficiency. Personally I am inclined to believe that the scheme was foredoomed to failure, but whether successful
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
