"I aimed at the public's heart," Upton Sinclair famously claimed of The Jungle, "and by accident I hit it in the stomach." By trying to have his cake and eat it too--by writing a novel that he styled as a factual expose--Sinclair never even attempted to aim for the public's head.

This year marks the centennial of The Jungle's publication in book form. The Chronicle of Higher Education celebrates by including two pieces on The Jungle in its issue dated tomorrow. The main piece ("How Should We Teach 'The Jungle'), by Ohio State-Mansfield historian Christopher Phelps, notes that the book, which Sinclair styled as America's first "proletarian novel," is "among the top five supplementary texts assigned in the U.S. undergraduate history survey." Why? The Jungle is political screed dressed as novel. It is based on a man's imagination, and not on actual events. It recasts the American dream as the American nightmare. It sees events through the socialist lens of its socialist author. It depicts the typical meatpacking company as unconcerned with selling unhealthy meat at the same it depicts the typical meatpacking company as obsessed with profits (as though selling bad meat is good for business).

The Jungle certainly played a role in shaping history by aiding the passage of 1906's Pure Food and Drugs Act. But the book itself is not history. It is a story about a hardluck immigrant working in a disgusting Chicago meatpacking plant that a left-wing writer dreamed up. Suggesting otherwise to impressionable undergraduates is to obscure rather than to enlighten.

Fiction doesn't work as history. But for historians immersed in the present and unconcerned about the past, fiction will do just fine. Professor Phelps reveals himself as one such historian, and at the same time gives us a big hint as to why The Jungle remains popular on classroom reading lists. "President Ronald Reagan and succeeding Republican presidents gutted the interventionist state by deregulating the meat industry," Phelps writes in The Chronicle. "The result is a reversion to the conditions of The Jungle." I am afraid this is too self-evidently stupid to rate a rebuttal.

Phelps gushes that "The Jungle exemplifies the crusading spirit of the Progressive Era." Kevin Mattson, in the Chronicle's second piece ("The Smoking Gun That Wasn't") on Sinclair, gives insight into why the "crusading spirit" doesn't mesh with the historian's purpose: truth. Mattson refers to the recent find of one of Sinclair's letters in which Sinclair claims knowledge of Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt--in part by way of a defense lawyer for the anarchist pair telling Sinclair so--in the 1920 double-murder/robbery that gained them international celebrity and trips to the electric chair. But, Sinclair concludes in the letter that a proposed novel on the case would prove "much better copy as a naive defense of Sacco and Vanzetti because this is what all my foreign readers expect, and they are 90 percent of my public." Sinclair's critics, of whom Mattson is not one (at least on this matter), conclude that "a naive defense of Sacco and Vanzetti" is precisely what Sinclair went on to write in his book Boston.

In other words, Sinclair subordinated truth to a political cause. But, Boston, like The Jungle, is a novel. Novelists have license to use their imaginations to the fullest. U.S. history class, on the other hand, is supposed to be based on fact. What business do historians (merchants of fact) have in assigning novelists (merchants of fiction)?

Real history is more interesting than made-up history. It is also not so ideologically simplistic as an Upton Sinclair novel, which is why so many historians prefer fiction to fact.

Bullseye, Daniel J. Flynn! He was a Nobel Prize winner and alcoholic, to boot.

It amazes me that the same old tired BS about Sacco and Vanzetti, and about the Jungle, is still taught. I got the typical liberal apologies for these things in high school (early 1990s) -- my history teacher did the apologizing for the Jungle, and my literature teacher did the apologizing for S&V! Topsy turvy.

Let's not forget that it was that bad old Republican President TR who championed the Pure Food and Drugs Act based partially on the impact that The Jungle had on its readers.

One house I lived in in Berkeley in the late 80s had a "mural" painting of Sacco and Vanzetti. (It's been painted over since then.)

I suppose this was an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for early 20th Century and the FDA.

Why is it that the books of the last 100 years that have impacted and stirred the public, much as Uncle Tom's Cabin affected the inevitable American Civil War, been so damned evil? Where is the UTC for the anti-abortion movement? Why haven't movies like "The Island" stirred people's feelings on cloning? (This movie disturbed me like no other I've seen in quite a while, BTW. By making the subjects of the movie the mental equivalents of 3 and 4 year olds, the horrendous actions of the "bad guys" are rendered almost unwatchable. Everyone should see this movie.)

All we have are the UTCs for the left, and its progressive/Nazi/Communist propaganda. Books like The Jungle (Communist), Silent Spring (Progressive), or movies like Cider House Rules (Nazi) & Million Dollar Baby (Nazi). Lest anyone doubt who has the loudest voice in the fight against evil, and these ideas are surely that, there is the proof.

You know, at some point, those of us that value our family, our souls, our children's souls, etc, are going to have the make the decision as to whether we can tolerate living like this much longer. I do have much sypmathy, for instance, for the Opus Dei position of engaging the culture and living holy examples in our everyday lives. But another, stronger inclination is that I would prefer to disengage entirely. How much longer will I have to patiently listen to some knucklehead explain his "pro-choice" position as if it's something I'm supposed to regard as a legitimate stance? As if I'm supposed to take his rationalization of murdering a child seriously... The same can be said for any of these murderous ideologies that are pushed on us, on our children (even in a "catholic" school, i.e. Scully's experience), etc. I would never tolerate living among Nazis, why do I tolerate this? I don't want to live with these people. Of course, if we had a true Federalist system, as the founders intended, I could move to a State where I wouldn't necessarily have to live with them.

...At the beginning of the movie "Boy's Town", Father Flanagan decides that the Homeless men he's been serving are a waste of his time. That he's been seeing the same guys come in and eat, go get drunk, come back and eat again every day for years and not one of them ever changes. So he leaves. He shakes the dust off his shoes, and sets out to save those that can still be saved (the children). At some point, those of us that still believe that anyone can, in fact, BE saved may want to make a similar decision.

Homer, ya hear about a new city founded, in Florida I think, under Catholic-inspired law - i.e., no porn, no birth control, no abortion? (There was a very recent Yahoo! news article about it.)

I did. Maybe that's what made me write this...

I believe novelist Katherine Anne Porter wrote a "second thoughts" article mentioning her support for Sacco and Vanzetti in their day, but later realizing that the American Communist Party was exploiting the case for their own ends.

"...Catholic-inspired law - i.e., no porn, no birth control, no abortion..."

A shame. These used to be rather standard state laws, even in a protestant country.

Upton Sinclair took advantage of a groundswell that was developing in the cities to do sopmething about the living conditions there.

"Municipal engineers of a century ago struggled to protect the populace against hazzards that most of us have forgotten ever existed. Charles F. Chandler, who served as advisor to the New York Metropolitan Board of Health, waged successful campaings against watered milk, adulterated and explosive kerosene. poisonous cosmetics, the obnoxious smell fron gas manufacturing, contamination from manure, and the spread of disease from filthy conditions around the meat markets. He helped to institute plumbing codes and municipal inspection of tenements. In all of these endeavors he was vigorously opposed by powerful business interests and corrupt politions." (from "The Existential Pleasures of Engineering" by Samuel C. Florman)

I think I confused Upton Sinclair with Sinclair Lewis. My bad.