Dragon’s Teeth – Upton Sinclair

Rating: 3.5 stars

Before I start, I want to say that I only read volume 1 of Dragon’s Teeth. I’ll get around to reading volume 2 one day, but it might be after the quarantine is lifted. I have read a few other Upton Sinclair books so I know somewhat what his style is, and that’s mostly not very entertaining but informative books because he doesn’t care much for fiction structures.

Dragon’s teeth is about a rich American, Lanny Budd, and his coterie of friends and acquaintances as they go around 1930s Europe. It has no character progression and zero stakes. That said, even if it has almost no novel-like qualities, I enjoyed it.

It talks about something I don’t find easily in fiction: what people were thinking in antebellum Europe. I can go to Wikipedia and find out that the Communist party was banned in Germany after the Reichstag fire, but this book gives us the point of view from a few perspectives: Socialists and Communists from Germany and France, Americans, industrialists, German monarchists, Nazis and a rich Jew in Germany (I recommend the Garden of the Finzi-Contini for an Italian perspective, but I also just like the book).

One thing that I appreciate is that it examines, specifically, the way in which the Communist and Socialist parties failed to unite against Fascism. The fundamental difference seems to be that Communists don’t believe in the electoral process and the Socialists so, even though they have similar or nearly so goals, they find themselves opposed to each other. The Communists see the Socialists as a big of a threat as the Nazis, and the Socialists seem to find no common ground.

There’s a bit of logic with this, in that Communism at that point (and in the future, unbeknownst to Sinclair when this was published in 1942) only comes about as a product of revolution. On the other hand, the book talks about Socialists who were in office in France and England especially, and how they capitulated to moneyed powers, effectively betraying the laborers that supported them. Hey, it sounds relevant. I guess every good to great book will be relevant in the common era.

The last third of the book is Lanny and his crew experiencing the rise of Adolf Hitler. It occurs before that, but it really starts accelerating at that point. I like it because it spells out each and every thing step leading up to the point.

Now what feels way more petty: Sinclair (through his protagonist who is more or less a reflection of the author at times or at least his journalist background) frequently uses belittling names with Hitler, obviously out of disrespect, such as Adi or Schicklgruber. It’s as equally ineffective as calling someone Orange Benito, but it makes the speaker feel better.

P.S. I learned the difference between pink and red. A pink is a Socialist and a red is a Communist. That I didn’t know the difference between them in TYOOL 2020 means that the anti-left propaganda has worked fairly effectively in the US.