Easter and The Jungle
April 24, 2011

What are you reading during this fine, lovely springtime?

For me, it’s two books: A Dangerous Woman: The Life, Loves, and Scandals of Adah Isaacs Menken, which has proven to be something beyond what I had anticipated and about which I will report next week, and a reread of the new Penguin Classics Deluxe edition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The latter has a foreword by Eric Schlosser, and an introduction by Ronald Gottesman, and it is these two parts but especially the foreword that has me bound up in a combination of horror and fascination.

Easter is one of those holidays that means nothing to me, but to my parents it is important. So I drove down to their home today for a celebratory luncheon. I knew they planned ham, a food I cannot eat, smell, or even see without nausea overtaking me. And as today drew nearer the words I had read only a couple of days before kept re-surfacing in my mind like a bad Chinese dinner.

Sinclair, of course, intended the book to bring the plight of immigrants to public view (he dedicated the book to “the workingmen of America”), but as he so famously said, he “aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident hit it in the stomach.”

It’s not surprising, given the horrors of the meat-packing plants into which he placed his characters. When I first read the book, perhaps twenty years ago, I was, to say the least, appalled—and not just at the industry’s food production practices but at the story, the “heart,” that ripped me apart. I had hoped that those production practices had, with legislation, improved, though I am nowhere near naïve enough to believe they don’t exist. Reading Schlosser’s foreword, however, disabused me of that quickly.

So what happened to American meatpacking workers in the years following The Jungle? The conditions in slaughterhouses gradually improved—not because of Upton Sinclair and not because of any sudden burst of corporate social responsibility. Things got better because labor unions fought to make them better. . . . by the late 1930s, however, most of the industry was unionized. And by the mid-1950s, meatpacking workers had one of the highest-paid jobs in the United States. It was still a dirty and dangerous job. But it had finally become a good job, with decent wages, health benefits, and pension plans.

. . . Then the tide began to turn. During the 1970s fast food chains like McDonald’s began to play a larger role in the market, purchasing large volumes of frozen ground beef. Their demand for a uniform product that would taste the same at thousands of locations encouraged the rise of big meat suppliers. A new meatpacking company, IBP, opened slaughterhouses in rural areas where labor unions were weak.  . . . The election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980 revived the faith in free markets, small government, and laissez faire.

The result is that the current beef industry is even more centralized and concentrated now than it was when The Jungle first appeared a little more than one hundred years ago. And that centralization has affected more than workers.

During the same years that working conditions got worse in the meatpacking industry, so did the threat of contamination. The centralization of the industry has made it easier for harmful pathogens to cause widespread outbreaks of foodborne illness. A generation ago, contaminated meat at a butcher shop or a small processing plant might sicken people in the local community. Today just thirteen slaughterhouses process most of the beef consumed in the United States. Food safety problems at a single slaughterhouse can cause outbreaks that extend not only nationwide, but worldwide. . . . At a time when dangerous new pathogens like E. coli O157:H7 are emerging, food safety regulations have been weakened and companies have been given greater freedom to monitor their own practices. Although rats are no longer being turned into sausage, unappetizing things still wind up in meat. The fecal contamination of ground beef explains why ordering a hamburger medium rare now qualifies as a form of high-risk behavior.

I bought this book for its cover, which I loved from the moment I first saw it. The back cover, unfortunately not available in the link above, is black with a large round image—an illustration of a microscopic view of bacteria (E. coli?), their bodies red against the pale melon of the background. It’s a dramatic representation of this part of the book, and it certainly played a role in my decision to avoid any meat-based protein today.

What did I have? Delicious potato salad. A summer fruits salad. Steamed artichokes. A hardboiled egg (from the farmers’ market). I sat at the end of the table so that the ham could be passed around without needing to bypass me. And it worked. The meal was lively, full of laughter and stories. We teased my Dad about his two full helpings of everything, which was a delight because he is under his doctor’s orders to gain weight. And I wasn't the least bit bothered. 

But, you know, I just could not help but think that for many immigrants their lives are not that changed from those of their great-grandparents. Nor is our meat.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Several popular festivals will be taking place this week and next weekend, so if you live near or will be visiting New York, Los Angeles, Massachusetts or Pennsylvania

Location: New York, New York
Festival: PEN World Voices Festival
Date: April 25 - May 1
This is an extraordinary festival whose key mission is “encourage people to speak out against censorship and condemn the suppression of freedom of expression everywhere.” It is run by PEN American Center, the largest branch of the world’s oldest literary and human rights organization. Events centering on this theme include free-spirited literary conversations (including Russia in Two Acts, American Exile; The Prison Industry, Written on Water, Revolutionaries in the Arab World, etc.) with 100 writers from forty nations, that go on morning, noon, and night,  and a new event called Poetry: The Second Skin, which is a literary extravaganza with national and international poets that explores the music of poetry and the poetry of music. There’s also a film series. Some events are free, others require tickets.

Location: Newburyport, Massachusetts
Festival: Newburyport Literary Festival
Date: April 29-30
Because this year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Massachusetts is using this festival to honor Newburyport’s William Lloyd Garrison, a journalist, essayist, and vocal abolitionist and suffragist of the time. Events include the Opening Night Ceremony, the Dinner with the Authors, Breakfast with the Poets, lectures, talks, author readings and presentations, book signings, special events for children, and a Closing Ceremony.

Location: Los Angeles, California
Festival: Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
Date: April 30-May 1
This is one of the biggest and most popular book festivals in the country, and this year, for the first time it will be held at the famous private university, USC in downtown Los Angeles. The campus is a lovely, old-world one that mixes new buildings with old, and the shady walkways and easy parking make this worth seeing. Saturday hours are from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm, and Sunday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. What’s going on? Well . . . everything. Five hundred authors, 325 exhibitors; more than 100 indoor panels (that require tickets, though they are free); seven outdoor stages with continuous entertainment; the LA Times pavilion with a photography exhibit, signing corner, a “What Are You Reading” graffiti wall, “Smile & Win”, and Times’ Talks; and three writing seminars (Finding and Working with a Literary Agent, Making a Life for Writing, and Working with Editors and Publishers). If you are anywhere—and I mean anywhere within “southern California-reasonable driving distance—be there. This is one that should not be missed, even if you don’t buy a single book.

Location: Allentown, Pennsylvania
Festival: Great Eastern US Spring Antique Book, Paper & Advertising Show
Date: April 30-May 1
Pennsylvania will host this antiquarian and ephemera show at the Allentown Fairgrounds. More than 170 dealers will be there with books, maps, photographs, and other literary ephemera so if paper and books are your thing be there.

Location: Arlington, Virginia
Festival: Malice Domestic
Date: April 29-May 1
An annual fan convention for readers of the “traditional mystery,” that is, mysteries that contain no explicit sex or excessive gore or violence, this festival Guest authors attending include Carole Nelson Douglas, Donna Andrews, Sue Grafton, Lyn Hamilton, Anne Murphy, and Janet Rudolph. There are numerous fascinating panels and talks, interviews, the Opening Reception, a live charity auction, the New Authors Breakfast, the Agatha Awards Banquet, and the Closing Tea. A superb convention for fans of this genre.

The Pub House:
The publishing house, Little Books/Max Press, began as Little Books, which issued “natty, concise books to fit in your pocket, authored by a glittering array of contemporary, well-known authors.” As its name implies, it has gone on to add Max Press, which focuses on serious nonfiction, biography, travel, and history in both small and substantial editions.

Imaging Books & Reading:
Book burning did not begin or die with Nazi Germany, but it is certainly one of the most notorious. And there have been hundreds since—Christian groups burning books they view as anti-Christian, and even bookstore owners desperate to get rid of books no one has bought. But I think one of the most disturbing is this poster, calling those “interested in the conscientious control of dangerous information” to protest the “spread of divisive ideologies, insidious rhetoric & hate texts.” There is no date, but my research indicates that August 18 last fell on a Sunday in 2002.

Of Interest:
Literary Worlds: Illumination of the Mind is an online exhibition that encourages readers to think about what “a writer does to produce a poem or a book. . . . on the creative processes that writers go through from the idea, to the writing, to the working with publishers, to the editing, to the selling of the work.” It shares the spark of creativity and individual personality of each of the twenty-eight authors as diverse as Beatrix Potter and Zane Grey. Click on any of them and you’ll be taken to a page with a bio, links, and captions that all provide detailed information and digital images. A letter from Charles Dickens to his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth (May 23, 1861) updates her about his stay in Dover. She had joined the household as housekeeper but evolved into an adviser and one of his closest friends. Both pages of the letter can be seen and there is also a typed transcript. These are superb insights into the minds of each of the authors. I highly recommend this exhibit, an excellent example of how the Internet can work at its best.

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren