Upton Sinclair (1878 – 1968) ~ Quote of the Day

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), American author and one-time candidate for governor of California who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres.  He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle (1906).  It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.  Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence."   Sinclair devoted his writing career to documenting and criticizing the social and economic conditions of the early twentieth century in both fiction and non-fiction.  He exposed his view of the injustices of capitalism and the overwhelming impact of the poverty.  He also edited collections of fiction and non-fiction.  He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends;
 poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and
 the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure
 - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”
                                                                  ~ Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth