Upton Sinclair fetched me for dinner. I was surprised when I saw
the author of “The Jungle,” whom I expected to be aggressive and
strong-faced. Instead I found a gentle creature, rather vague, and
rather shy and with a rather weak chin. We decided that our sort of
background was not the Ambassador Hotel, and I asked him to take me
anywhere else. We motored into the heart of the town, and went to a
cafeteria. This was new to me. Never before had I been to a cafeteria.
I had never even heard what they were like. I followed him and did
what he did, and tried to look as if I knew what to do; he first took
a metal tray from a column of trays, and passed along a row or buffet
of hot dishes, selecting what he liked, and the serving woman behind
the buffet placed a ration of his selection on his tray. Carrying our
own trayfuls we retired to a little table. We talked until everyone
else had left, until men on step ladders re-arranged the flowers on
their columns, until finally the cafeteria closed and we were expelled.
Most of that time we talked about “The Jungle.” I asked him a hundred
questions. How did he _know_ about the lives of the foreign immigrants?
How did he get into their souls? Had he imagined it, or did he know
it? How had he learnt so much about the details of work at the packing
houses?
I learnt all I wanted to know. He had imagined nothing. The Russian
family was a real family. The wedding feast was real--he was present.
He had lived in Packingtown. Every story was a real story, a proven
story. Everything was true ... and that was fifteen years ago, and
conditions, he said, were much the same today. They had not much
improved. He is a most sincere Socialist. Unrelenting, uncompromising,
he is at war with all the powers that be. Don Quixote tilting at a
windmill isn’t in it. Sinclair tilts at industrial kings in armor, at
the octopus tendons of the newspaper kingdom--at all the mailed fists
in the world in general and the United States in particular. He is in
quest of truth and light. He wishes to undress the veiled spectres,
and show us the naked truth beneath, the truth with all its maladies
and sores, its hideousness, its terrible deformities, so ably hidden.
This mild-faced man will stop at nothing. He has great courage and
never fears destruction. He is unwavering in his determination. He goes
crashing in where angels fear to tread.
Driven from the cafeteria into the night, we motored fast and aimless,
talking as we drove, talking, never ceasing, until we could drive
no more. Our road led down a hill, straight like the road of the
Nazarene swine, into the sea, and so we stopped; a great long white
line of breakers confronted us, we left the car, and stood for a
moment undecidedly. Then a long seaside bench came crawling past me.
I thought for a moment that I was in madland. I remembered in a flash
the sham village, the illusions of filmland, still so near me. Really
one should not be surprised by anything any more. In the dim light I
again looked at the walking seat and yet again, and then I realized
the man who was sitting on it was really driving it. The seat was a
motor seat. We jumped upon it and were carried miles, as it seemed to
me, along the sea walk. In the distance were bright lights, we stopped
when we reached them, and this was “Venice.” I have always longed
to go to Venice, but I never knew it looked like this. Over-head a
network of colored lights, and from no visible location, the music of a
gramaphone. Before us a square stone stately building, called a “Bath
house” and in large letters over a door “check babies here.” “Check”
(I have learnt) is an American word which described what people do
with their hats and umbrellas when they go into a restaurant. Further
on, dazzled by the lights and laughter of Venice, we stopped for an
ice-cream soda, and then took shots at sham rabbits and moving ducks
with a rifle. Here too I was introduced for the first time to chewing
gum, pleasant to chew, but unfortunately unpleasant to taste.