Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Eugene register-guard. (Eugene, Or.) 1930-1983 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 6, 1963)
EUGENE REGISTER-GUARD, Sunday, Jan. 6, 1863 Page 9A Two y ' ) ii k7. yr v . V ' V viw i ' -. ns ysi l , , EDITOR'S NOTE Few writers have had such an im pact on their times as Upton Sinclair and few have been so reviled. But, looking back at Si, Sinclair claims credit ior changing the "morals and manners" of three giant in dustrial empires. By BOB THOMAS . Of the Associated Press MONROVIA, Calif. The wispy-haired author was chuckling over a newspaper review of his 82nd book, "The Autobiography of Upton Sin clair." "Sinclair Lewis Writes Own Story" "Oh, my!" said Upton Sin clair, now 84. "Poor Lewis and I were always getting mixed up when he was alive, and it's still going on." Sinclair Lewis won the No bel Prize for literature! Up ton Sinclair did not. "Bernard Shaw started the movement to put me up for it in 1932," the author recalled. "But I didn't get it. (John Galsworthy won.) I guess I was a little disreputable. You see, it is chosen by academi cians, and they get their au thority from authority. So they are inclined to be con servative." A new campaign is being organized by literary figures to win Sinclair the belated Nobel honor. It would mark the climax of a 71-yearwriting career that has been as stormy as any in American letters. Lifetime of Fuss Upton Sinclair is a mild man to have created such a lifetime fuss. His voice is soft and slightly accented with his native Baltimore. His face is placid, and his over hanging upper lip gives the Bulldozers STOCKHOLM tf1 Part of Stockholm is being rebuilt, and some cultural eaders are up in arms over what they call the "bulldozer philosophy" of the civic planners. Reconstruction of the central districts of this 700-year-old cap ital city -r- in the name of air, light and motor traffic has caused severe criticism for more than a decade. But the bulldoz ers, authorized by the city coun cil, continue to eat away block after block of century-old build ings. In their place will be new concrete and - glass office build ings, traffic freeways, and auto mobile parking palaces. Just now the criticism against the "civic renewal" program is more violent than ever. "I have never seen such rav ages as in this city," said author Sigfrid Siwertz. "Not even the cities ravaged by the war have chansed their character more than Stockholm. The traditions WANTED! MEN-WOMEN Prepare now for U.S. Civil Service job openings in this area during the next 12 months. Government positions pay as high as $446.00 a month to start. They provide much greater security than private employment and excellent op portunity for advancement. Many positions require little or no specialized education or experience. But to get one of these jobs ;-ou must pass a test. The com petition is keen and in some cases only one out of five pass. LINCOLN SERVICE, Dept. 12 re.k'n'.ll"l!,?i?h lt.r,tel. PleeM of U.S. Government po.ltlons end qualify for a U.S. Government woo. Famed Poet Relaxes With Shawl and U pton Sinclair t? 'f mm wm '. -m-itpm- m Tms --" 7 Z Stormy Survivor of suggestion of a smile when he speaks. The eyes behind the spec tacles are clear, his step is Raise Angry Cries of the city are being wrecked by dynamite, bulldozer and straight edge." An open letter of protest has gone out over the signatures of 29 persons, including Ingmar Bergman, the motion picture di rector, and five members of the 81-member Swedish Academy, the group that awards Nobel prizes. The letter said: "The elimination of existing construction and terrain has been greater and more vio lent than anyone had expected. It seems obvious to us that fu ture plans must not be drafted after the same pattern." The plans for further devel opment of the city appear to be "mainly concerned with the ad mission of motorized traffic into the city," the letter continued. "We doubt that the city plan ners have chosen the correct point of departure and the cor Lincoln Service helps thou sands prepare for these tests every year. It is one of the largest and oldest privately owned schools of its kind and is not connected with the Government. For FREE information on Gov ernment jobs, including list of positions and salaries, fill out coupon and mail at once TODAY. You will also get full details on how you can prepare yourself for these tests. Don't delay ACT NOW! stnd me ibsolutely FREE (11 A MUrlei; (2 Information on how to Authors, 85 7 " : Cigar Social Protest Era sure and his carriage erect. His only concession to age is the inability to dredge an oc casional name from his past rect aims for their continued work." Rallied behind the letter writ ers is most of the city's press. Two councilmen in charge say they will welcome debate on the subject although they con sider the opposition too conservative." mm f t'V . 4 e? , .tZsL?r eFty By JOHN C. DILLS Ashetllle clUstn-Tlmn WrilKn lor Associated Press FLAT ROCK, N.C. Eighty-five years lie light ly on his shoulders, this white - thatched literary giant who is an adopted son of North Carolina. While his vigor cannot match that of many a 20-year-old, it puts to shame the in activity of many of his jun iors. A few days before marking the 85th anniversary of his birth Sunday Carl Sandburg, who came to Flat Rock the last week of 1945 to settle in the home of C. G. Memmin ger, Confederate treasury sec retary, had just finished a stroll up a steep rise from his little lake a hundred or so yards from the sprawling house on the hill. Then he and Mrs. Sandburg busied themselves preparing for a plane flight to New York. There, on his birthday, a dinner party in the Waldorf Astoria marked publication of a new volume of Sandburg poems entitled "Honey and Salt." Interviewed before his de parture, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Lincoln biographer settled into a chair in his study and tossed a shawl across his knees to "The same thing will hap pen to you when you're 84." The author lives in the Sierra Madre foothills with the former Mary Elizabeth Willis, a sprightly 80-year-old he married a year ago. His second wife, to whom he was wedded for 48 years, died in 1961. An earlier marriage ended in divorce. The Sinclairs live servant less in a venerable, slightly Spanish house which he bought from a banker for $12,500 in 1943. "I remember the date be cause after we moved in the local editor called to say I had just won the Pulitzer Prize for 'Dragon's Teeth.' "The banker had wanted $50,000 for the house at first," added Sinclair with a Socialist's glee. Socialist Zeal He remains a Socialist "A Democratic Socialist; I never advocated revolution." In his time he has seen a quiet revo lution as the causes he cham pioned in the early 1900s pure food laws, the right of labor to organize, etc. be come the law of the land. But that hasn't dampened his Socialist zeal. Nor has an era of apparent prosperity. "I have been all my life studying poverty in the midst of plenty," he said. "We can produce unlimited goods, but we lack the facilities to dis tribute them. The result is that we over-produce and then production stops until the goods can be used up. That's when people are thrown out of work." Sinclair's economic ideas got their most dramatic air ing in the California guberna torial campaign of 1934. He was asked how it compared to this year's hot race be tween Richard M. Nixon and Gov. Edmund G. Brown. "It was a love feast com pared to the one I was in," 3 OREGON TYPEWRITER & RECORDER Now you ran own the famous BUR ROUGHS 2SI alatnt machine . . . AND SAVII Here's honey of an addlnt machine that Is helnt offered to you by OREGON TYPEWRITER RECORD- and 84, Reminisce Carl ftSistsHSMBSaUi muse about the state of the world and some of the men in it. He prefers that to talk about poetry. Sandburg apparently has . changed his mind about John F. Kennedy since 1960, when he called the then Senator Kennedy a "high-powered high school boy." 'Considerable Vision' Of the President today, Sandburg had this to say: "He hasn't made a miss-step yet, and he has shown consider able vision. He trained for that job in a way that Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover never did. "Kennedy," continued the poet-philosopher, "knew the United States of America somewhat better than most presidents on taking office. That is, in the past 30 or 40 years." He compared the President favorably with another young President Theodore Roose velt, and with an older, and said Sinclair. "They pinned horns and a tail on me." Running as a Democrat, he lost to Republican Frank Merriam by nearly the same margin as in the 1962 race 260,000. Sinclair attracted na tional attention and wide vituperation with his End Poverty in California cam paign. "The EPIC race was the "Then I won the primary and I was stuck, much against my wife's wishes ... I dinn't expect to win, but I wanted most vivid experience of my life," he recalled. "I really didn't expect to get into it; I had merely outlined a pro gram to be presented in the primary. to. When you're lied about as much as I was, naturally you want to lick those fellows." If He'd Won? And what if he had won out over Merriam? "I wouldn't be alive to tell the story today. I'm not any thing ot a giant; I've always overworked, and I've had to spare my energies. Being con stantly in the crowd would have killed me. "Or else someone would have. I heard after the elec tion of a businessman who had made out his will and told his family that if I had been elected he was going to take a gun and shoot me." ' Sinclair has led a quiet life of writing and reading since ORDER YOUR CUSTOM FIRE SCREEN TODAY ... ready to install TOMORROW EUGENE HARDWARE 2825 Willamette DI 5-3412 IT'S TIME FOR A Burroughs i ADDING '0 MACHINE ONLY $149.50 (plus F.E.T.) WITH YOUR OLD MACHINE SI 89.50 without trade t i lijBi ft l K 4,IMI1 m tremendous bargain pricei Many moneyMvtng r lures such aa DIRECT SURTRACTION, ELEC TRIC MULTIPLICATION, AND TOTALING CAPA CITV TO WITHIN le of a MILLION DOLLARS! SEE1 TRY IT! OTIIKR MACHINES NEW ELECTRIC Choote from a larre aelecUon In this group . . . they add, subtract and multiply . . . and for such a tiny price! See them! CALL TOR FREE TRIAL TERMS: Willi or without Renul plan available. Rent trade-In we offer terms up paid Is deductible from the to I year WITHOUT CAR purchase price within N RYING CHARGE! days. 11th Sc Willamette DI 2-2463 Sandburg (in Sandburg's eyes) better one Franklin D. Roosevelt. "Kennedy," Sandburg mused, "has shown at times an awareness in an immediate situation and immediate prob lems that parallels FDR's. But more interesting would be . the parallel of Kennedy with Teddy Roosevelt neither of them was a creature of spe cial interests. Both have prov en to be strong presidents." Sandburg's prolific literary output is not yet at an end. The volume brought out on his 85th birthday by Harcourt Brace and Co., includes 77 new poems which show the vigor and affirmation which long have marked his work. Right now he's going over books of his poems and chil dren's stories and laying down the plot for "a long, commo dious novel," but he didn't say what the theme of the noved would be. Sandburg said that he planned "nothing special" to mark his 85th anniversary his plunge into politics. He reads four daily newspapers and 50 magazines. He has written almost constantly, though he is without a project right now. "I am trying to put some 'social' in the Socialist," said his cheery wife. "He considers himself a recluse, but he real ly likes to be out among peo ple. Like many men, he com plains about going to parties; but he had a good time when he gets there." 3 Giants Changed His next book? It won't be a Lanny Budd. He has written 11 novels about the political adventurer, spanning the years from the early 1900s to after World War II. That's enough, he thinks. "I've written a novel which I haven't published yet," he said. "I won't let it go out until I've had a chance to do some more work on it." Sinclair belonged to a school of American novelists who wrote of social protest; Theo dore Dreisser, Jack London and Frank Norris were his contemporaries. He claims that his writings altered the policies of three industrial empires Armour, Rockefel ler and Ford. "They all changed their manners and morals after we gave 'em hell," said he. . Will he ever stop writing? "Yes," he said soberly. "When I'm dead." 6ih & JEFFERSON CO. CHANGE o TRADE-IN ON YOUR OLD MACHINE IN WORKING CONDITION HI M il J mm Nw from $79 "just quiet, silent thanks that I have health and that I hav n't lost a leg, an arm, a hand or an ear in the past year. "I'm a little surprised that I'm alive and have health," he said, "and no rheuma tism." Nevertheless, he will attend a gala birthday party Sunday in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, given by his publishers. "Honey and Salt," will be the 35th of Sandburg's works the company has published since 1919. He has had a total of 40 works published to date. The occasion will not go unnoticed elsewhere: Gov. Terry Sanford of North Caro lina and Gov. Otto Kerner of his native state of Illinois have proclaimed Jan. 6 to bo Carl Sandburg Day in those states. And officials of Gales burg, 111., high school later will confer his long-delayed high school diploma. He was admitted to, and graduated from college without a high school diploma. Sandburg believes the pos sibility for nuclear war is re mote because of the deadli nes of the weapons. "Kennedy," he said, "may be the first President to use the new nuclear weapons." Of tho possibility of such a horrendous war, Sandburg declared: "If it comes, it will be harder to look at than our Civil War." The problems arc, ho im plied, something similar to those facing Lincoln when the dissolution of the Union was threatened. Awful Responsibility "Lincoln," he said, "had to face an Immense and tor turous problem no other Pros ident has had to face," and he then remarked that Kennedy might have to be the first President to have the awful responsibility of making nu clear warfare. Sandburg knows something of battle he was, at the age of 20, a member of the 8th Illinois Volunteers during the Spanish American war, the first outfit to step on foreign soil. He didn't go to Cuba, but went to Puerto Rico, an island, ho said, which "will be well-behaved." "Cuba is going to have trou ble for quite a while," he pre dicted. "Tho big landowners ELLINGSWOR TH For Men ' rift lm OuaffrV NumBush ANKLt.eAeHIONSO (HOI SALE Your Opportunity to Buy Quality Shoes at Substantial Reductions EDGERTON SHOES $Q9.0 SELECTED STYLES Not all sizes In every style but almost every size In some style Entire Stock of TOP COATS SLACKS JACKETS SUITS and almost ALL RAINCOATS Reduced Prices en Nearly All Other Merchandise in Our Store. SHOP and SAVE NOW at a Bit there are going to be a prob lem for some time to come." On the atatus of the Negro in tho South, Sandburg point ed out that "the Emancipation Proclamation still holds." But as to the Negro's raising his status from what it is at pres ent, the white-haired poet said, "Let's see, there are now about 16 million in the United States." He paused, and add ed, "When they get to be 30 or 40 million, there will be some slight changes made." Of James Meredith: "He had what you might term a decent hankering for an edu cation at a state university." Reminiscing a bit, Sand burg recalled, "In Galesburg the grade schools and gram mar schools all had one, two or three Negroes in every class and there never was any trouble." He shook his head sadly that "there should be such a -hullabaloo over one innocent little Negro wanting to enter the university." "We had a bloody war once that had to do with the status of the Negro," he said, and deplored the conditions on the Mississippi campus that threatened to erupt into al most a small war. On youth: "There have been wild boys in every gen- . eration in America," he said. "Lincoln, when he was run ning for the legislature and ' for Congress, always kept close to the wild boys." Sandburg said he was "a little surprised that I'm alive and havo good health. You know, I like numbers divisi ble by 11 I'll die when I'm 8B or 99." 1 He said he doesn't expect to live to be 110 but those who know him, and can yet see his blue eyes twinkle, wouldn't be surprised if he made it. WE RENT Roll-a-way BEDS & CRIBS VALLEY RENTAL 886 VI. 6th DI 8-2115 IF YOU VALUE YOUR PICTURES INSIST ON '5 Broadway and Oak, DI 3-2823 AND AND Ufa Kama.. Street. City Age.. Phone 837 Willamette DI 4-6116 ..State..
