Pyat in The Jungle

[pyat]

“….yet so sordid and petty, so ugly, so humiliating—unredeemed by the slightest touch of dignity or even of pathos.”

Novel 25 of the year was The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, published in 1906. I was rather surprised that I’d not heard of this book before, given my interest in the general topic it covers and the fame of the author. The book is about a family of Lithuanian immigrants and the troubles they face working for a meat packer in 1900s Chicago. If that synopsis causes your eyes to glaze over, please note that one of the characters is eaten alive by rats, while another drowns on a sidewalk. There is also prostitution, hoboism, and “scientific chewing.”

I found the novel quite gripping, keying in as it did to several themes that interest me, like industrialism, poverty, Socialism, and daily life in the 1900s. There are fairly detailed descriptions of the (horrific) processes used in the vast Chicago slaughterhouses of the day, and industrial processes have always interested me professionally and personally. I found the novel invading my thoughts at odd times, and had dreams that included elements of my time working on the line at a soap factory with the much bloodier details of production lines in the novel.

I could not help by compare the book to Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, a novel I’ve read several times. Sister Carrie was written in 1900, and widely considered shocking and unpleasant when it came out. It was withdrawn from print soon after appearing because it was too “sordid.” Until 1980, it was only available in a bowdlerized, somewhat moralizing edition. Sister Carrie depicts (at least partially) the desperate life of the working poor in 1900s Chicago, yet in comparison to The Jungle, it is a bloodless manners play full of quaintly naïve and sheltered characters.

THE JUNGLE was a sensation when it came out, though it contains fairly detailed descriptions of prostitution and drug addiction, and a primary character who falls into a life of crime. It might have been considered edgy even 50 years later. One wonders what changed in the six years between Sister Carrie and The Jungle

The last third of the book begins to strain credulity somewhat, as minor characters turn into mouthpieces for Sinclair’s politics. They sit about a room and talk about the wonders of Socialism for several pages, in a scene that contains slightly amusing references to 19th century pseudosciences like “scientific chewing.” This is seen as a way to reduce the need for arable land significantly by tripling the amount of food energy people get from every mouthful of food, simply by chewing each bite 35 times. However, even this section of the book, if not very naturalistic, is at least eloquently written.

Finally, I have this book to thank for informing me of the existence of the Chicago tunnel railway, which ran from the 1900s till the 1950s. 60 miles of narrow railway tunnels exist under Chicago, rarely visited and almost unknown even while they operated. It seems like the ultimate destination for steam-tunnel LARPers and urban infiltration fans.

Comments

[athelind.livejournal.com]

After reading The Jungle, Theodore Roosevelt became a vegetarian -- and founded the FDA.

As for people sitting around in a room expounding about social theories -- well, what else are they going to do without the Internet?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

As for people sitting around in a room expounding about social theories -- well, what else are they going to do without the Internet?

Start APAs, of course!

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

The Jungle caused sweeping changes in the meat-packing industry as well. Overall, looks like a lot of things at the turn of the century sucked.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It certainly explains why diarrhea was the #1 cause of death in America until around WWI. Bleah!

[athelind.livejournal.com]

One of my history textbooks when I first went to college was a great little book entitled, The Good Old Days... They Were Terrible!!

It discussed all manner of filth and tainted food and pollution of the turn of the last century.

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

I loved this book so much when I read it as a teen. Time for a re-read!

[pyat.livejournal.com]

It's free on the Internet, if you don't have a copy!

[paka.livejournal.com]

minor characters turn into mouthpieces for Sinclair’s politics. They sit about a room and talk about the wonders of Socialism for several pages

Yeah, but keep in mind socialism is one of those things that was completely new and technically unmentionable in those days. Not that it's politically correct to talk about socialism and social democracy now, but the early 1900s was before anyone'd really tried putting socialism or anarchy into actual practice. Since I'm interested in both labor and Israel, I find that socialism/communism/anarchy/Zionism share similar traits; by now, the ideas may seem a little weird and detractors can go point to dozens of examples of things going wrong, but back around 1900, people seriously believed this stuff was going to quite literally save their lives. You look at some of the stuff going on around that time, and very clearly big government in the pockets of big business and big religion was the enemy of the common man. It's liberal paranoia now, to those guys it was daily reality.

I dunno. Hard to talk about any of this and make sense.

You know, taking time out from the narrative to harangue you about what you're supposed to think is pretty characteristic of CS Lewis. Tolkien does that to a much, much, much lesser extent, I've seen other writers do that too. I wonder if it might be a stylistic thing from the period resulting in the "you're supposed to get something moral out of reading this" school of thought?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Well, this book was actually commissioned as a work of Socialist, so its certainly not surprising. And I don't mind the sentiment behind it, since I'm pretty darn socialist myself. The whole last couple of chapters seem very different, though, tacked on and verbose. Much worse than anything you'd see in Lewis, IMHO.

I wonder if it might be a stylistic thing from the period resulting in the "you're supposed to get something moral out of reading this" school of thought?

Quite possibly - and, as I say, this novel actually WAS a deliberate piece of Socialist ideology.

[paka.livejournal.com]

Which I guess gets back to publishing, and the question of "wait a moment, how come you could say this in 1906, and you couldn't say a much milder version of the same thing in 1900?"

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, come to think of it, that does explain it. Mainstream publishers were leery of Sister Carrie, even though the public might have been ready for it, but The Jungle wasn't mainstream.