Upton No Good?

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 10, 2006 8:11PM

We’re sure everyone is tired of hearing about James Frey, but it looks like there’s one more seat open on the truthiness bandwagon and we’re going back eighty years to fill it.

Upton Sinclair, the original muckraker, is best known for his novel, The Jungle. The novel describes the horrific conditions of the Chicago Stockyards and raised public awareness enough for the government to pass the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act.

Now Sinclair is the latest to be Frey’d over his novel, Boston, a fictional account of the criminal trials of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with murdering two men and Sinclair believed they were innocent--victims of an unfair trial and government persecution. This past December, the LA Times reported that a letter had recently been found from Sinclair to his attorney. In the letter, Sinclair states that he had met with Fred Moore, defense attorney for the two men. “I begged him to tell me the full truth,” Sinclair wrote in the 1929 letter. Moore “then told me that the men were guilty, and he told me in every detail how he had framed a set of alibis for them.”

It didn’t take long before some journalists were questioning Sinclair’s character and his responsibility to tell the “whole” truth. However, they would have been better served to read the entire letter and not just the quotes in the Times. Sinclair continues, "I realized certain facts about Fred Moore. I had heard that he was using drugs. I knew that he had parted from the defense committee after the bitterest of quarrels. … Moore admitted to me that the men themselves, had never admitted their guilt to him; and I began to wonder whether his present attitude and conclusions might not be the result of his brooding on his wrongs."

We may never know if Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty or innocent, but it won’t surprise us if there’s an “Authors Note” in the next printing of Boston.

Thanks, Margaret!