Abstract

Pamphleteering Fiction

The article focuses on the book "The Flivver King" by the author Upton Sinclair. The book carries the reader by the shortest route and at a fast clip from the idyllic valley of U.S. before mass-production to the mountain top of finance capital and the belt-line, from the dirt road to the four-lane highway, from the sunny land of opportunity to the forbidding plateau of industrialization, where at least six million are permanently unemployed. Pamphleteering fiction being a vehicle with an actual destination and not an end in itself, it does not stop for inner subtleties either of character or motivation. Instead it makes use of ready-made character and motivation and it depends for its conviction on the reader's general knowledge of the facts and characters involved rather than on the writer's capacity for creation.