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University Daily Kansan
Friday, April 21. 1961
. . . Books in Review . . .
By Calder M. Pickett Associate Professor of Journalism
THE JUNGLE, By Upton Sinclair. Signet Classics, 50 cents.
Among the muckraking tracts of the early 1900s one book may emerge as the representative of the genre. It alone, of the many successful works of the muckrakers, is cast in fictional form. The book is Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," which Signet has made available in pocketbook form.
This is the book about which Sinclair wailed, "I aimed at the public's heart and by accident I hit it in the stomach." His crudely written, compassionate story of the troubles of Jurgis Rudkis in the Chicago stockyards area played a key role in bringing about passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Sinclair has been a stormy figure of American letters throughout the 20th century. His arena has included Massachusetts in Sacco-Vanzetti days, Michigan in the Ford era, newspapers, prohibition, the Teapot Dome affair, and a world heading for war and a world at war. Few can pretend that he is a master of style. But he long has been part of the American conscience.
"The Jungle" is probably his most important work. It does not deal solely with the grim aspects of packing meat in Chicago. It is more basically an indictment of the capitalistic system. As the immigrant Jurgis tries to make a home for himself in the jungle of Chicago, he gradually comes to a realization that only under socialism can he achieve any degree of happiness.
That was long the thesis of Sinclair himself. Even his dilettante Lanny Budd was a socialist. It is the system that Sinclair condemns. Life in the packing yards is only incidental.
But it is life in the packing yards that made "The Jungle" a topical success, and had it not been for the impact that the book had on the food industries it now might occupy a place alongside such lesser works as "The Wet Parade" or "The Flivver King."
To see why the public shuddered, and endorsed official investigations, sample this paragraph, selected at random:
"All day long the rivers of hot blood poured forth, until, with the sun beating down, and the air motionless, the stench was enough to knock a man over; all the old smells of a generation would be drawn out by this heat—for there was never any washing of the walls and rafters and pillars... The men who worked on the killing beds would come to reek with foulness, so that you could smell one of them fifty feet away;... Whether it was the slaughter houses or the dumps that were responsible, one could not say, but with the hot weather there descended upon Packing-town a veritable Egyptian plague of flies;..."
"The overture ended; the gold curtain went up; and a young lady from Mexico City named Carmen de Solis came out on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House and sang Caro Nome. Being no opera buff, I do not know on what note this aria ends, but I do know it is awfully high and hard that Miss de Solis made an angelic pianissimo of it. She knew this, too, and favored us with a delightful Latin grin as she walked off.
Our Musical Nation
"THUS BEGAN the second New York finals of the Metropolitan Opera auditions, one of the most exciting and depressing events of the musical year. I say "exciting" because the seventeen young voices brought forth from North America's various regions were exciting, even in timewarned arias. I say "depressing" because I cannot help thinking about what Mickey Mantle is going to be paid this summer to hit a baseball with a bat. The best these youngsters, who can sing Tosca and Siegmund and Gilda, may hope for are a couple of $2000 scholarships and, for one of them, a beginner's Met contract.
"The 1960 Met contract was won by a graceful Californian mezzo named Mary MacKenzie. She sang o Mio Fernando, accompanied by a middle-aged lady who sat in front of me and hummed, not quite on key. I would have tapped her shoulder, except that I figured
Safety Measure
DAVIS, Calif. — (UPI) — A 29-ton steel room has been placed on the Davis campus of the University of California to house a 22-inch cyclotron which is scheduled for operation next fall.
The room was built in Sacramento of $1 \frac{1}{2} -$ inch steel. It is 12 by 12 feet in size and will act as a magnetic shield to keep the cyclotron's magnetic radiation from interfering with the beta ray spectrometer already in use in the physics department.
she might be one of the many people there who had given $500 or $250 to the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera, which makes possible the hundreds of hearings all over the continent which yield the finalists. Young Mr. Howard Hook, the council's chairman, and Mr. John Gutman, one of the Metropolitan's two assistant managers, make the arrangements and do the listening. They do it, as the phrase goes, con amore and indefatigably, and their harvest is astounding. We have on this continent a quite wonderful supply of magnificent young voices, with good musical brains behind them.
"UFORTUNATELY we have in this country, so far as I know, fewer than a half-dozen opera companies that present anything
JIM'S CAFE 838 Mass.
GOOD FOOD DAY and NIGHT
like a full season. So what do these youngsters do? They go to West Germany, where nearly every town big enough to call itself a city has a state-subsidized opera theater. (Ironically, many of these have been substantially helped by American aid money.) Sometimes one wonders about America's boast that it is the world's most musical nation."
(Excerpted from the column "They Shall Have Music" by John M. Conly in the June, 1960, Atlantic Monthly.)
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Senior Class Party
After the Relays
April 21
10 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Admission by Senior IDs or $1.00