Floor Show

WIDE Is THE GATE--Upton Sinclair--Viking ($3).

Upton Sinclair has written still another novel about Lanny Budd, with his neat tan mustache, his Franco-American charm, and the art dealer's trade which takes him anywhere (TIME, Jan. 5, 1942).

Through three volumes totaling 2,230 pages Lanny has played Master of Ceremonies for a mammoth floorshow version of 20th-century history, and in the fourth he is still one of the most adroit and likable quick-change artists in the profession. He can beard Basil Zaharoff with tips from The Beyond, josh Hermann Goring, rip off a bit of Beethoven for "Adi" Schicklgruber, rescue a beautiful Social Democrat from "Naziland" and an intrepid young Briton from the Spanish Fascists. He can carom all over "this old continent" (Europe) in his high-powered roadster, keeping dates with the major crises of his time, without for a moment losing the reader's interest and sympathy.

He is not, in spite of all he goes through, a very complicated human being. Neither is anyone else in the enormous cast which surrounds him. Neither is Author Sinclair. But they are all so friendly, so engaging, so oddly innocent, that it does not greatly matter.

To Upton Sinclair, human beings are all essentially nice people who go right or wrong strictly according to their background. The history which they make or break is in no sense their own doing. It is the inevitable product of the infernal machine of the age, Capitalism. History and humanity alike might be set right if only Capitalism were retired in favor of Socialism, plus the large kindliness which Author Sinclair is so obviously filled with, and which half exonerates even his most villainous characters.

Both literature and life (in which Upton Sinclair is more warmly interested) are crueler and more disenchanted than he knows. The time may come when Upton Sinclair's novel and history will foam down the homestretch neck & neck. Meanwhile, charging along a few lengths behind history (this volume ends in 1937), calling the fouls in a loud, clear voice, and always polite to his horse, Upton Sinclair is one of his century's most gallant losers.

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