厄普顿·辛克莱

小厄普顿·辛克莱（英语：Upton Sinclair Jr.，1878年9月20日—1968年11月25日），美国左翼作家，出生于巴尔的摩，曾经创作超过90本著作，并获得过普利策奖的肯定，代表作则是《屠场》（The Jungle）等。

生平

他生于马里兰州巴尔的摩市。1897年于纽约市立大学毕业后进哥伦比亚大学读研究生。后长期从事新闻和写作，倡导社会改革。1902年参加社会党。1906年发表小说《生死搏斗场》，揭露资本统治下屠宰业的腐败，引起社会注意，迫使政府通过第一个联邦食品纯净法。曾参与“工业民主同盟”和“美国民权自由联合会南加利福尼亚分会”的创建工作。初赞扬俄国十月革命，但反对无产阶级专政。三十年代末至四十年代积极参加反法西斯斗争。一生写有八十多部著作，旨在揭露美国资本主义的罪恶，主张实行人道主义和自由主义的改革。

作品

《屠场》（The Jungle）该小说所揭露的问题引起美国全社会的关注，并导致有关食品饮料法案的通过。

《石油！》），被改编成电影《黑金企业》

主要作品还有《大都会》《煤业大王》《煤油》《宗教的利润》《傻瓜》《拜金主义者》《龙牙》等。

Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California. He wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair's work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the 1943 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

In 1906, Sinclair acquired particular fame for his novel The Jungle, which "exposed the labor and sanitary conditions in the U.S. meatpacking industry", causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the enactment a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. In 1919, he published The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism that publicized the issue of journalistic malpractice in the United States. Four years after publication of The Brass Check, the first code of ethics for journalists was created. Time magazine called him "a man with every gift except humor and silence" based on his wife Mary Craig Sinclair's book Southern Belle: A Personal Story of a Crusader's Wife. He is also well remembered for the quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." He used this line in speeches and the book about his campaign for governor as a way to explain why the editors and publishers of the major newspapers in California would not treat seriously his proposals for old age pensions and other progressive reforms. Writing during the Progressive Era, Sinclair describes the world of the industrialized United States from both the working man's and the industrialist's points of view. Novels such as King Coal (1917), The Coal War (published posthumously), Oil! (1927), and The Flivver King (1937) describe the working conditions of the coal, oil, and auto industries at the time.

The Flivver King describes the rise of Henry Ford, his "wage reform" and his company's Sociological Department, to his decline into antisemitism as publisher of The Dearborn Independent. King Coal confronts John D. Rockefeller Jr., and his role in the 1914 Ludlow Massacre in the coal fields of Colorado.

Sinclair was an outspoken socialist and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a nominee from the Socialist Party. He was also the Democratic Party candidate for governor of California during the Great Depression, running under the banner of the End Poverty in California campaign, but was defeated in the 1934 election.

Early life and education

Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. and Priscilla Harden Sinclair. His father was a liquor salesman whose alcoholism shadowed his son's childhood. Priscilla Harden Sinclair was a strict Episcopalian who disliked alcohol, tea, and coffee. Both of Upton Sinclair's parents were of British ancestry. His paternal grandparents were Scottish, and all of his ancestors emigrated to America from Great Britain during the late 1600s and early 1700s. As a child, Sinclair slept either on sofas or cross-ways on his parents' bed. When his father was out for the night, he would sleep in the bed with his mother. His mother's family was very affluent: her parents were very prosperous in Baltimore, and her sister married a millionaire. Sinclair had wealthy maternal grandparents with whom he often stayed. This gave him insight into how both the rich and the poor lived during the late 19th century. Living in two social settings affected him and greatly influenced his books. Upton Beall Sinclair Sr. was from a highly respected family in the South, but the family was financially ruined by the Civil War, the end of slavery causing disruptions of the labor system during the Reconstruction era, and by an extended agricultural depression.