World's End, 1940
Between Two Worlds, 1941
Dragon's Teeth, 1942 (Pulitzer winner)
Wide Is the Gate, 1943
The Presidential Agent, 1944
Dragon Harvest, 1945
A World to Win, 1946
A Presidential Mission, 1947
One Clear Call, 1948
O Shepherd, Speak!, 1949
The Return of Lanny Budd, 1953
Thus far I have read the first 8 in the series. It kinda sucks but it is required reading in the Marxist Obama Nazi Club where I spend my spare time, so I figured blogging about it might make it interesting. But seriously....
Upton Sinclair was an American Socialist from the great city of Baltimore, Maryland who was very active in pink politics for the first half of the 20th Century. He was a prolific writer who wrote to illustrate his world view and to make a living while he pursued his political life.
Lanny Budd has been described as the antithesis of 'the ugly American' - an aristocratic American who spent his youth in France and the rest of his life traveling the world. These adventures are a fictionalization of the events of the First and Second World Wars. I am enjoying the journey thoroughly. To me, it serves as a great escape from the current state of my country and world.
The horror and violence of the first half of the last century are presented in the then-contemporary political and cultural contexts of left/right politics that does not exist today. Sure the Nazis are the bad guys and Franklin Roosevelt is the good guy, but through the eleven the reader sits in discussions with Nazi 'appeasers' (aka isolationist) Republicans and Tories, Communists, Socialists, Militarists, peasants and most political leaders of the times. All the while, Lanny Budd has children and marriages and the human events that make for good drama.
Most fascinating for me is the political discussions Lanny has with everyone from Mao Tse Tung, "Adi" Hitler, FDR "The Governor" , "Winnie" Churchill, "Uncle Joe" Stalin and many others all in the context of contemporary political thinking of the day. These books are out of print now, and not easy to find and read. I have gotten my hands on them via the interwebs and my wonderful local library. Its a shame that these aren't more available (because it should be easier for ME), but an even bigger shame that the political contexts of these recent history are lost today.
Socialism is a dirty word, despite the fact that we are living in a more socialist society than we were then. Even more shocking is the way Tories, Republicans and other conservatives embrace socialistic programs like Social Security, Medicare, National Health (in England), subsidized nuclear power and more government activities in the international economy too numerous to list.
I love these books, but I can't recommend them to anyone. It is a long haul, bordering on tedious. The political ideas are archaic. There is no sex and the gore and sensationalistic violence are nearly non-existent. Spy stories without great suspense, war stories without heroic soldiers, love stories without sex, and melodrama a bit lacking in the drama. You might enjoy it if you are a bit of a freak.
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2 comments:
This series came to me by a completely random event: picked up the Curtis paperback edition of volume #8 for $1 at a local bookstore, read & was hooked. Three years later, I have a complete set of the Curtis Edition published in 1973, gotten mostly from the internet, but also from raiding a friend's gigantic book collection--he didn't even know he had the two volumes I 'borrowed'--Since I had read number eight, I needed to find all the 11 volumes before I could feel right about launching into a definitive study of the whole work. You see, I'm the daughter of a French survivor of the Occupation and an American soldier stationed in France...All my life I heard about the Nazis & the deprivations of life during WWII. My mother can't even look at a rutabaga, much less eat one & she spent 7 years wearing the same brown wool coat over layers of clothes while she did her homework in an apartment with no heat.
I'm done reading Lanny Budd--just finished the last Volume--and I sort of feel like I lost a friend; I miss reading about his crazy family & his seances with various mediums & the sudden dives into peril that seems tame by our present standards, but which must have raised the hackles of readers who were contemporaries of the actual events. I really am glad for the time I spent with this series. It just makes me sad that we apparently have made little or no progress since the end of the War. We may be even worse off.
I began with Dragon's Teeth and was absolutely hooked by the ending. I bought all of the original hardbounds on the secondary market and then decided to publish the entire series in beautiful hardbound. There are twelve, not eleven, because Between Two Worlds required two books. All of these books are available along with detailed summaries at: www.uptonsinclairinstitute.com
Stephen Courts
July 5,011
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