Books: Molasses & Manassas

THEIRS BE THE GUILT (287 pp.)—Upton Sinclair—Twayne Publishers ($3.95).

Upton Sinclair has always been the most unreal character in his own books. He proves this once again in Theirs Be the Guilt, a re-edit of Manassas, which he wrote 56 years ago. Sinclair, then 24, was living in two tents near Princeton, NJ. and doing research from books hauled from the university library in a rented horse and buggy. Years have left the innocent style intact—a genuine fustian or homespun purple—as well as the sentimentality, which would shame Dickens for a cynic. Thus the novel is not only a publishing oddity but...