Love's Pilgrimage by Upton Sinclair, Fiction, Classics, Literary 12+

🔖 George Middleton, who reviewed this book for The Bookman back in the day, was quite unkind to this tale of a love that dare not speak its name. "Mr. Sinclair has written one of the frankest books in English;" he wrote, "we wonder, in this connection, if that was his main intention, whether in some slight justification of the severe criticism he will no doubt receive, he has entirely forgotten Mrs. Gilchrist's letter to Rossetti on receiving a copy of Walt Whitman: ' ... as for what you specially allude to, who so well able to bear it -- I will say, to judge wisely of it as one who, having been a happy wife and mother, has learned to accept with tenderness, to feel a sacredness in all the fact of nature? But perhaps Walt Whitman has forgotten -- or, through some theory in his head has overridden the truth that our instincts are beautiful facts of nature, as well as our bodies, and that we have a strong instinct of silence about some things.'" Was he right? We say you ought to decide that for yourself: The author of The Jungle certainly had a thing or two to say.