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| Author | Upton Sinclair |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Self (Pasadena, California) |
Publication date | 1925 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 390 pages |
| Preceded by | Mammonart |
Money Writes! is a book of literary criticism of contemporary American writers from a Socialist point of view, written by the prolific muckraking journalist, novelist and Socialist activist Upton Sinclair, and published in 19. The title is adapted from the phrase “money talks.”
Overview[edit]
The book is one of the “Dead Hand” series: six books Sinclair wrote on American institutions. The series also includes The Profits of Religion, The Brass Check (journalism), The Goose-step (higher education), The Goslings (elementary and high school education), and Mammonart (Western Civilization’s artistic canon). The term “Dead Hand” criticizes Adam Smith’s concept that allowing an "invisible hand" of capitalist greed to shape economic relations provides the best result for society as a whole.
In each chapter, Sinclair critiques an artist according to his or her support for the rich and powerful. Most artists do not challenge the status quo and take positions such as 'art for art's sake' or 'art is entertainment.' No matter how beautiful their work, by their passivity such artists perpetuate oppression and inequality.
Artists Sinclair disapproves of: H.L. Mencken Edith Wharton Henry James Van Wyck Brooks Carl Van Vechten Joseph Hergesheimer Edwin Arlington Robinson Sherwood Anderson Theodore Dreiser James Branch Cabell Robert W. Chambers Peter By. Kyne Rex Beach James Huneker Booth Tarkington Amy Lowell Zane Grey Stewart Edward White Rupert Hughes Ambrose Bierce
Writers Sinclair approves of to some degree: Sinclair Lewis Robert Herrick John Dos Passos Louis Brofield Charles Rumford Walker William c. Bullitt Edith Summers Kelley Arturo Giovannitti Harry Kemp Vachel Lindsay George Sterling David Graham Phillips
Money Writes! was reprinted in paperback in 2003 by Simon Publications, ISBN-10: 0972518975.
Critical reception[edit]
A contemporary critic wrote, “Having read [Money Writes!] twice, I regret to say I can find in it almost no concern for anything in literature save Socialist propaganda, preferably in its direct form, but at all events in such a form that attention is drawn to social and economic problems….If [Sinclair] wishes to refute his critics on this point, he must learn that he cannot do so merely by quoting them and then telling two stories illustrating timidity in a volume whose every page amply demonstrates the absolute truth of their contention.”[1]
Quotations[edit]
External links[edit]
- Sinclair’s papers for Money Writes! are at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
- ^ Boyd, Ernest. “Readers and Writers”, The Independent, December 10, 1927, p. 529.