Boston is a novel by Upton Sinclair. It is a "documentary novel" that combines the facts of the case with journalistic depictions of actual participants and fictional characters and events. Sinclair mixed his fictional characters into the prosecution and execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
Research and writing Sinclair worked from a passionate conviction that the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti constituted "the most shocking crime that has been committed in American history since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln" and a belief that "It will empoison our public life for a generation."Harris, 244
He interviewed Bartolomeo Vanzetti twice and conducted research following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. For his central character he used as his model a California acquaintance who recounted stories of her earlier life amid Boston's aristocracy. As part of his research he attended the funeral of a Boston industrialist. He recognized that some of his readers might find that disrespectful and offered this defense: "if you are a novelist you think about 'copy' and not about anybody's feelings, even your own."Sinclair, Autobiography, 240-1 To verify dialogue, he even contacted a journalist to verify his fidelity in transcribing a jailhouse conversation. As a result, he avoided repeating the oft-quoted description of Sacco and Vanzetti, falsely attributed to Vanzetti, as "a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler."D'Attilio, 77, details how journalist Phil Strong explained in a letter to Upton Sinclair that he inserted those words into the transcript of his interview with Vanzetti in order to "inject that humility and simplicity that was in his [Vanzetti's] presence into my story artificially." In hundreds of letters he sought to acquire and verify details, such as the timing and physical setting of prison visits. He asked other correspondents to review parts of the manuscript for errors.Harris, 244-5
Another bit of his research has attracted periodic interest and political criticism.Harris, 246; and Bloodworth, 115-6. The controversy erupted again in 2005-6. For the charges see Los Angeles Times: Jean O. Pasco, "Sinclair Letter Turns Out to Be Another Expose," December 24, 2005, accessed July 6, 2010. For the rebuttal see Greg Mitchell "Sliming a Famous Muckraker: The Untold Story," in Editor & Publisher, January 30, 2006, available online as History News Network: "Roundup: Talking About History" , accessed July 6, 2010 He interviewed Fred Moore, who served as defense attorney for the murder trial. Moore offered his opinion that Sacco was probably guilty of the payroll robbery, while Vanzetti might have known of plans for the robbery but not participated. Opponents of Sinclair's politics contend that his failure to adapt Moore's judgment in the novel constitutes a betrayal of his documentary claims. Sinclair, on the other hand, did not consider Moore's estimation determinative and Moore never claimed that either defendant had ever confessed his guilt to him.Neville, 55, 152 Much like the principal characters in the novel, Sinclair claimed no certain knowledge, only his instinct: "I did not know and could only guess."Sinclair, Autobiography, 242Sinclair described his conversation with Moore in 1953. Richard Newby, ed., Kill Now, Talk Forever (Bloomington, IN: 1st Books Library, 2001), 507-8, quoting Upton Sinclair, "The Fishpeddler and the Shoemaker," in Institute of Social Studies Bulletin, II (1953) Later research has documented that Moore told Sinclair that the two were guilty and that he had contrived their alibis. Following the novel's publication, Sinclair wrote in a private letter to John Beardsley that this had presented him with "the most difficult ethical problem of my life", but he had not altered the presentation he had planned for his novel, as everyone with whom he had spoken who had in-depth knowledge of the case had given him contradictory reports as to the guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti. "So you see that in the end I don't really know any more about the thing than I did in the beginning, and can only take my stand as I did in "Boston", upon the thesis that men should not be executed upon anybody's rumors."Upton Sinclair's 1929 letter to John Beardsley Upton Sinclair
In sum, he wrote: "Some of the things I told displeased the fanatical believers; but having portrayed the aristocrats as they were, I had to do the same thing for the anarchists." He expanded on the situation in a letter:Harris, 246
All these matters are terribly complicated....my problem was the hardest I have ever faced in my life.... It is my belief that if I had taken an entirely naive attitude toward the Sacco-Vanzetti defense, and represented the defense as all white and prosecution as all black, I would have done very little good to the case, because too many people know the truth, and it is bound to come out sooner or later. The only thing I would accomplish would be to destroy entirely my own reputation as a trustworthy writer. I have never hesitated about my own reputation where it was in a good cause. But I really could not see any sense in making myself foolish to no purpose.
A detailed analysis of Sinclair's "investigative method" cites a number of questionable assertions, but concludes that in Boston "one discovers a fidelity to the factual record which is seldom met with in historical novels."Joughin and Morgan, 445-54, quotes 445, 454
Publication Sinclair met with attorneys in New York City to make final changes to the text to allay their fears of libel suits.May Craig Sinclair, Southern Belle: A Personal Story of a Crusader's Wife (NY: Crown Publishers, 1957), 312
The novel first appeared serially in The Bookman between February and November 1928 under the title "Boston, a Contemporary Historical Novel" and was then published in 2 volumes by Albert & Charles Boni that same year.Ronald Gottesman, Upton Sinclair: An Annotated Checklist (Kent State University Press, 1973), entries A1169, A1195. The final installment for November 1928 appeared as a supplement to The Bookman. The two volumes were continuously paginated.
It has since been republished in one volume as Boston: A NovelBoston: A Novel (St. Clair Shores, MI: Scholarly Press, 1970) and then Boston: A Documentary Novel.Boston: A Documentary Novel (Cambridge, MA: Robert Bentley, Inc., 1978). This edition contains a preface by Howard Zinn as well as the complete text of 2 1977 documents: "Report to the Governor of Massachusetts in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti" and "A Proclamation by Michael Dukakis, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts."
It has been published as well in at least 15 other languages.Gottesman, Checklist, entries C33, C75, C137, C167, C195, C397, C475, C542, C662, C762, C954, C1066, C1104, C1130, C1176: Bulgarian, Chinese, Czech, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Yiddish.
Sinclair hoped Boston would win the Pulitzer Prize, but the chairman of the 1928 Pulitzer Prize Committee said his personal opinion was that its "socialistic tendencies" and "special pleading" made it unsuitable. When the Committee named John B. Oliver's Victim and Victor instead, Sinclair denounced the selection in a widely distributed letter that pointed out how that novel was as argumentative as Boston only for a more respectable cause. In the end, the Pulitzer advisory committee at the Columbia University School of Journalism overrode the Committee's choice and awarded the Pulitzer to Julia Peterkin's Scarlet Sister Mary.Harris, 250-1
Criticism Boston met with a largely favorable reception, though some found difficulties with its political perspective or its length and detail. One scholarly assessment a few years after its publication located it in the tradition of the realistic and socially conscious novel, a successor to Dickens' Hard Times, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the novels and plays of Galsworthy.Lovett, 97-8, 101 In this view, Boston "compares favorably with its predecessors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."Lovett, 102 Though Boston is "fifty percent pamphlet," Sinclair's "mingling of actual and fictitious characters...has brought the historical novel up to date, and created a new form of realism."Lovett, 104-5 Yet even this critic thought the novel could have proved more persuasive. "One suspects that the patently biased comment of the author weakens rather than strengthens his case, and that greater artfulness in presenting the facts might have brought the disinterested or disaffected reader into more active sympathy with his viewpoint."Lovett, 105 Though allowing that some readers will be irritated by Sinclair's broad attack on private property, this critic concluded that "whatever the reaction to the doctrine it sets forth, no one can doubt the eloquence of the plea."Lovett, 112
Publications that sympathized with Sinclair's politics greeted Boston with glowing reviews. The Nation compared him favorably to Dickens and Fielding.Harris, 249 The New York Times, normally quite critical, praised it apart from its politics as "a literary achievement...wrought into a narrative on the heroic scale with form and coherence," demonstrating "a craftsmanship in the technique of the novel that the author has seldom displayed before."New York Times: Others voicing enthusiasm included his sometime political adversary Lewis Mumford ("it has the finality of truth and art") and Arthur Conan Doyle ("the Zola of America").Harris, 250
Sinclair's failure to avow the innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti brought denunciations from the political left, including former allies. One called him "a hired liar, a coward and a traitor." During the novel's serial publication, he even feared that "some anarchist might think it his duty to keep me from finishing the book."Harris, 245-6
Synopsis Chapter 1: The Runaway GrandmotherSee also R. Baird Shuman, Great American Writers: Twentieth Century, vol. 10 (Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish, 2002), 1390-1; available online, accessed August 5, 2010
The summer of 1915. The Thornwell estate outside of Boston. Cornelia Thornwell, aged 60, is suddenly widowed after 40 disappointing years of marriage: "she had lived, a prisoner in a cell." (31) The family is patrician and powerful, part of New England's economic and cultural elite. Her 3 daughters, all married to millionaires, squabble over their inheritances during funeral preparations. They continue their disputes as relations and retainers assemble for the reading of the will. Cornelia sees their behavior as "the revelation of hidden natures." "Trembling with excitement," (32) she pens a farewell note declaring herself a "runaway grandmother" (33) and asking the family not to pursue her. She leaves by a back stairway.
Chapter 2: Plymouth Rock
Calling herself Mrs. Cornell, Cornelia finds work at a cordage plant in Plymouth, a town not far from Boston. She learns how hard factory work is and how hard the life of the poor. She boards with the Brini family and becomes friends with their other boarder, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant ditch digger, atheist, anarchist, and pacifist. She first thinks his political beliefs naive, "a dreamer of dreams, so simple of mind as to have no conception of the odds against him," (56) especially his opposition to reformers and all organizations, even unions. Early in 1916, shortly after a public meeting Vanzetti and his anarchist comrades hold to promote their ideas, a spontaneous strike breaks out.
Chapter 3: Dago Red