Exploring "The Jungle"

Subject: [oconee] Exploring "The Jungle"

 

Next up for the community book group sponsored by the Oconee Democrats is Upton Sinclair's classic "The Jungle," a book on most best-of lists pertaining to 20th-century fiction.

We'll meet Wednesday, September 30th, upstairs at Chops and Hops in Watkinsville, with the discussion beginning at 7. (Join us around 6:30, though, to order dinner and get to know others in our area who are interested in politics, history and literature.)

This excellent article from The Guardian about the book's legacy is very interesting:

http://gu.com/p/xf3tm/sbl

Here's an excerpt:

Before the year was out the Meat Inspection Act was passed, authorising the secretary of agriculture to inspect meat and condemn any found unfit for human consumption. On the same day, the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, which prohibited the manufacture, sale or transport of adulterated food products or poisonous patent medicines. The latter paved the way for the Food and Drug Administration that still exists today, regulating everything from cosmetics to blood products.

It is difficult to think of a book, let alone a novel, that has forced the state to respond in such a comprehensive manner. And yet, while Sinclair was delighted with both sales and fame, it was not quite the response that he intended. He had dedicated the book to the "Workingmen of America" and had set out to make an emotional appeal to the nation over the plight of the working poor and the prospects of a socialist alternative. Instead he had generated a public panic about food quality. "I aimed for the public's heart," he wrote in his autobiography, "and by accident I hit it in the stomach."

Hope to see you to talk about this important book — and what's going on today, too!

Pat Priest

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