NOBEL PRIZE

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 84, 9 April 1932, Page 17

NOBEL PRIZE

UPTON SINCLAIR'S CLAIMS

Eight years ago Upton Sinclair drew scorn upon American university professors in a book called "The Goose Step." Now a goodly number of them havo signed tho petition nominating him for tho Nobel Prize. "Tho Goose Stop" carried a caricature in which a big goose, clad in mortar-board and gown, was leading a flock of little goose through college. A Nobel Prize candidate, notes the New York "Sun," "has to be cited to the Swedish Academy by holders and former.holders of academic positions." Mr. Sinclair has a formidable array of sponsors for his selection: "Foreign holders and former holders arc signers, too, in interesting ratios —thirteen Russians, twenty-four Indians, one Tasmanian, one Algerian, one Greek, one Icelander, seven Portuguese, thirteen from various countries whose signatures were received too late to classify—including some more forgiving Americans —their signatures and those of others are on the way, or will bo shortly, to Stockholm."

Tho petition states its claim thus: "Upton Sinclair is the author of some forty volumes of fiction, drama, economics, and social and literary criticism, and is unquestionably the most widely read of writers living to-day; his books have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have profoundly affected the thinking of both tho masses and the more alert portion of the cultured world.

"Wo consider his greatest novels, as 'Tho Jungle,' 'Love's Pilgrimage,' 'Oil,' 'Boston,' outstanding achievements in ' the contemporary fiction of all lands, for their mastery of fact, for their, social vision, for consistent, honest, and courageous thinking, for humanitarian passion, for originality in the technique of presentation, and for vitality and sweep of creative art."

The petition is said to carry 770 names. About half are Americans. Distinguished names from abroad, according to Farrar and Rinehart, Mr. Sinclair's publishers, include Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell, as forming the original impulse. In the New York "Herald-Tribune" we read: "Among the seventy-nine Britons who joined in the proposal are Maurice Baring, Mrs. Thomas Hardy, Laurenco Housman, J. "6. Irving, Sir Arthur Pinero, Siegfried Sassoon, and Warren Dawson. The Greek Minister to the Court of St. James's, Dr. Joannes Gennadius, also signed in London. "More than a score signed the proposal, in France^ among. ~ them Jules Cainbon and Gabriel Hanotaus, of L'Academic Francaise; Lueion\ Descav'es, of L'Academie Goncourt, and Professor Fortunat Starowski, of the University of Paris. Louis Raeniaekers was among the Belgian signatories. The signatures obtained abroad included members of tho Royal A'eadeiriy of Holland, and the academies and similar institutions in many other countries, including Soviet Russia, where Mr. Sinclair 's works arc perennial best-sell-ers."

Among Americans are f'John Dewey, Edwin Markham, William MeDouglas3, F.j C. S. Schiller, Harold: J. Laski, Robert Herrick, Kobert Morss'Lovett, "William Ellery Leonard, Harry Kilmer Barnes, Paul H. Douglas, , Edward A. Ross, and Paul S. Ep3tcin." Reviewing' Mr. Sinclair's achievement: "A native of Baltimore, Mr. Sinclair was reared and educated in New' York City, and for the last several years has lived in. Pasadena. He is fifty-three years old. After a youth of poverty and of unremuneratiye hack writing, lie burst out as the fire-brand of--American-literaturp,.in 1906, with 'Tho' Jungle;' a hovel whieh>caH'ea: attention to cruelties and unkealthful conditions in the Chicago stockyards, and became an international best-seller. His 'King Coal,' which followed a few years later, was a- novel based on the Colorado coal strike. 'The Brass Cheek' was an 'exposure' of the 'capitalist Press,' and his 'Boston,' brought out in 1928, vented the author's feelings over the Sacco-Vanzetti affair and the lives of Back Bay residents. Between his novels Mr. Sinclair's pen has produced scores of pamphlets, monographs on political, social, and economic questions, and an occasional play. The Princetown Playhouse produced his 'Singing Jailbirds' in 1928. • "In his own words, Mr. Sinclair, in the last twenty-five years and more, has 'written exclusively in the cause of human welfare.' His autobiography has been listed for publication in the spring." ,