The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair

by Upton Sinclair

III

Something happened that the author of Springtime and Harvest had not dreamed of in his most pessimistic moment; a publisher rejected the novel. Several publishers rejected it, one after another! The Macmillans were first, and Scribner’s second; Brander Matthews kindly read the manuscript and passed it on to W. C. Brownell, literary adviser of Scribner’s, and I went to see this soft-spoken, gray-bearded critic, who explained his opinion that the book was not one that would sell. What that had to do with the matter was not clear to me. Again and again those in authority had to explain that they were representing businessmen who had capital invested in the publishing of books and who desired to receive dividends on that capital. I could understand such a business fact; what I couldn’t understand was how men employed for such a purpose could consider themselves critics, and be solemnly discussed as critics by other critics like themselves.

Professor Matthews saw me at his home—very fashionable, on West End Avenue, the walls of the study lined with rare editions and autographed pictures and such literary trophies. He was sorry, he said, but he had no further suggestions to offer. When I asked about the possibility of publishing the book myself, he advised strongly against it; there would be no way to market the book. When I suggested that I might market it to everybody I knew, a chill settled over the conversational atmosphere. “Of course, if you are willing to do anything like that—” When I persisted in talking about it, I completely lost caste with my “man of the world” professor, and never regained it.

I wrote a potboiler, and earned a couple of hundred dollars, and borrowed another two hundred from my uncle, and went downtown and shopped among printers until I found one who would make a thousand copies of a cheap and unattractive-looking little red volume, such as my ascetic notions required. The book contained a preface, telling how it had been written and what a wonderful book it was. This preface was made into a pamphlet and sent to everybody I knew—not so very many, but by dint of including my father’s friends and my mother’s, there were several hundred names. The price of the book was one dollar; about two hundred copies were sold, just enough to pay back the debt to my uncle.

The pitiful little book with its pitiful little preface was sent to all the New York newspapers; two of them, the Times and the American, sent a reporter to see the author. Hopes mounted high, but next morning they dropped with a thud. All the picturesque details about the young poet and his wife were there, but not one word of the wonderful message he hoped to deliver to mankind. Incidentally, the author learned the value of personal publicity in the marketing of literature. As a result of a column apiece in the two largest morning papers of New York, he sold two copies of Springtime and Harvest. He knew—because they were the only two copies sold to strangers.

Corydon and Thyrsis were now fast in the “trap” of marriage; living in one crowded room, opening on an airshaft, in a flat belonging to the mother and father of Thyrsis. The would-be creative artist was writing potboilers in order to pay the board of his wife and himself; incidentally, he was learning the grim reality behind those mother-in-law jokes he had written so blithely a few years back! The mother of Thyrsis did not like Corydon; she would not have liked a female angel who had come down to earth and taken away her darling son, until recently destined to become an admiral, or else a bishop, or else a Supreme Court judge. Neither did the mother of Corydon like Thyrsis; she would not have liked a male angel who had taken a daughter without having money to take proper care of her.

The idea of a marriage that involved no more than the reading of German and the playing of violin and piano duets had been broken up by an old family doctor, who insisted that it was not in accordance with the laws of physiology. He made Thyrsis acquainted with the practice of birth control; but alas, it turned out that his knowledge had not been adequate; and now suddenly the terrified poet discovered the purpose of the trap into which mother nature had lured him. Corydon was going to have a baby; and so the reading of German and the playing of violin and piano duets gave place to visiting other doctors, who professed to know how to thwart the ways of nature; then rambling about in the park on chilly spring days, debating the problem of “to be or not to be” for that incipient baby.

These experiences were harrowing and made indelible scars upon two young and oversensitive souls. Aspects of life that should have been full of beauty and dignity became freighted with a burden of terror and death. Under the law, what the young couple contemplated was a state-prison offense, and the fact that it is committed by a million American women every year does not make it any the less ghastly. Thyrsis saw himself prisoned in a cage, the bars being made not of steel but of human beings; everybody he knew was a bar, and he hurled himself against one after another, and found them harder than steel.