Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The Jungle

1. I can read.
2. I'm married to a beautiful woman.
3. My dad stuck around to help raise me.

So, in the contract I made for myself (because I'm employing myself as a writer), I am supposed to read a lot.  In turn, I've read a bunch of books lately and am now reading The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair.  I'm only on page four, but I can tell it's going to be sad, and I'm going to like it.  How can you not love a guy who loves his family and repeats the phrase, "I will work harder" when times get tough (can anyone else see the connection to Animal Farm?).

Anyway, the reason I felt like writing about this today, and not Bossypants, 1984, or Animal Farm (which I've also read recently) is that I went to the doctor today and brought the book to read while I waited.  The doctor noticed it and said that he read it in high school and didn't like it.  I said that I didn't expect everyone to like it; it certainly wasn't happy.  He then said that it wasn't that which he didn't like.  He didn't like that it was anti-capitalism.  He said it was taught to him as a book that changed America in the way we slaughter animals, but that it was really about an immigrant family who gets squashed by Capitalism.

Now, I can see where he's getting that.  In ways, I could come to that same conclusion.  I see it more as the book being about treating your workers like humans instead of like the cows and pigs that are being slaughtered.  I only said that I think today's Capitalism is better than it was back then and left it at that.  He said something about safety nets and we moved on.  ( I needed my heartburn medicine and wasn't going to lose it over a discussion on the importance of The Jungle)

Either way, I haven't really finished it yet anyway, so I dont' know as my opinion has any real weight.

Have a nice day.

6 comments:

  1. Dude, hilarious. That would make a great Curb Your Enthusiasm plotline... except you would have to yell at the doctor for being an idiot, and he would refuse to give you medicine.

    Why can't awesome stuff like this ever happen to me?

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  2. I have read Animal Farm.
    I need to read this one!
    Hope You got your Heartburn Meds...

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  3. Books make people think and the world needs more of that.

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  4. @OT
    Thanks Man.

    @Kev
    It kinda threw me off. I was only fifty pages in and hadn't fully developed my opinion yet. Now I probably would have argued with him more. I know what he means about books bashing a cerain view without a real cause, but I don't even think Upton is really bashing Capitalism, he's bashing corrupt business owners and workers. So, I don't think it would been much fun for you either (if you were in my exact same situation). Why you're never in similar situations? I really can't say. :)

    @Missy
    It's a good one. It's much like The Grapes of Wrath. And I got the perscription just fine. :)

    @AC
    And how. I kinda want to ask him to read it again and hope he was just a dumb high school student. It makes me wonder if he just doesn't know what it's like to be poor, so business like that just makes sense to him.

    @DBS
    SO TRUE!!!!!!!!

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