I Dreamed I Saw Upton Sinclair Last Night

U.S.! A Novel
By Chris Bachelder




"U.S.!" may be the oddest book I've read this year. Chris Bachelder sets up a story in which the famous socialist-utopian writer (and one-time California gubernatorial candidate) Upton Sinclair keeps being assassinated and resurrected. And Bachelder tells the story through a variety of sources, some of which contradict each other. One chapter will be told from the point of view of some of the people who resurrect Sinclair or try to hide him from his would-be assassins, the next will be from Sinclair's point of view, or from one of the assassins. And then the next will be the transcript of a TV show, a collection of quotes overheard at the Museum of Upton Sinclair Assassination, or text from eBay auctions and Amazon reader reviews.

Bachelder is setting up Sinclair as a symbol of something, but it's hard to say what. He could represent a socialist-utopian impulse in America that keeps getting killed off, but comes back. But then, the novel makes clear that Sinclair's followers are few and the chances of socialism ever taking off in the United States are slim. It's more accurate to say that Sinclair represents the left-wing activist impulse in American fiction writing. There is much here making fun of Sinclair's propagandistic style. Even the title's exclamation mark is a joke at Sinclair's expense. (There's also a long segment detailing Sinclair's use of exclamation marks in his novel "Oil!")

Along the way, a portrait emerges of Sinclair that is both mocking and affectionate. I mean, if you respect a guy who is willing to get shot for his beliefs, you really have to respect a guy who is willing to be resurrected and shot again and again. And, eventually we get a portrait of an America that -- despite the periodic presence of a resurrected socialist novelist, who by the way, has some psychic abilities -- is an only slightly exaggerated version our ours. It's a hypercapitalistic America in which working class people are the most violently anti-socialist even though they probably would have the most to gain under the system. It's an America in which people are so addled by entertainment that they distrust any talk of changing things. It's a world in which people don't even imagine anymore that there is might be an alternative to capitalism. (Yes, Islamic militancy makes an appearance, but it's just a cameo.)

The way Bachelder sets the scene is all very clever and often funny, but in the second half of the book, he has to resort to a comparatively straightforward narrative in order to bring things to a satisfying conclusion. And he does bring it to a satisfying conclusion. There's even suspense, which you might not expect from a novel in which the central character apparently can't be permanently killed. There's also stuff about the plight of the contemporary folk singer (Wes Stace, a.k.a. John Wesley Harding, apparently helped out Bachelder with the song lyrics), father-son relations, even a gratuitous sex scene or two.