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MAMMONART—Upton Sinclair—Published by himself ($2.00). Homer was a hanger-on, Pindar a pressagent, Æschylus a 100% Athenian, Raphael a pampered pet of popes. Dryden was a "bedroom" playwright, Coleridge a reactionary sensualist, Balzac a predatory careerist. And so on.
Conversely, Euripides was a great Bolshevik, Aristophanes a greater; Michelangelo and Milton, Bunyan and Beethoven, Dante and Dostoievski, George Bernard Shaw and Upton Sinclair—all splendid Bolsheviks looking forward to "a complex social order and to social art which will possess an intensity and subtlety beyond the power of comprehension, not merely of Russian peasants, but of the exclusive and fastidious culture of our time."
This sprawling "essay in economic interpretation . . . a text book of culture . . ." which "will be serving in the schools of Russia within six months," labors two rather self-evident main points: 1) That many an artist now called "great" was a comfortable parasite upon the body plutocratic of his day; 2) that the word "propaganda" may connote the exertion of unconscious as well as conscious efforts to further a doctrine.
When glib Mr. Sinclair writes a book, it has no creative value. It is sure to lapse into intellectual dishonesties. For Mr. Sinclair is sorely egocentric. He constantly mistakes vulgarity for strength of purpose and the woes of the world for his own.
But Mr. Sinclair is a gifted journalist, if you care for the Hearst variety. He knows the news value of a similarity in the plots of Madame Bovary and Main Street. He knows that it catches the eye—and should pay—to headline "Prayer in Adultery" for his chapter on George Sand; and "God's Propaganda" for an A. D. 300 "review" of the four Gospels.
*THE LOST OASES—A. M. Hassanein Bey Century ($4.00).
*Vanity Fair.