h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You've heard of Upton Sinclair. Muckraking journalist, author of 'The Jungle'?

Try this gem I found online:

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/u-sinclair/Carpenter.pdf

'They Call Me Carpenter: A Tale of the Second Coming'.

In this work, printed in 1922, there is a pastor named the Rev Dr Lettuce Spray. Mr Upton Sinclair got there first.

He also has pre-empted me in the long-standing claim that Jesus:

1. Is not much of a Christian.
2. Would be ashamed of most Christians.
3. Talks like a socialist.

In Sinclair's day, they used a different word. Dig this:

'"Go to now, you rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you!, etc, etc..."
At this point in the tirade, my old friend the ex-centre-rush, who was standing in the wings with me, turned and whispered: "For God's sake, Billy, what kind of a Goddamn Bolshevik stunt is this, anyhow?"
I answered: "Hush, you dub! He's quoting from the Bible!"'

Indeed he is.

The book is funny in places, profound in places, and a vivid picture of life in 1922, as well as a bang-up retelling of the gospels.

The plot? Oh, that. The narrator starts out by attending a showing of 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' in a fictional US city. A mob breaks up the showing on the grounds that it's 'Hun propaganda'. The narrator manages to see the film, but is hit on the head afterwards and takes refuge in a nearby society church. When Jesus comes down from the stained-glass window to heal him, he is grateful, but worried about the hole in the window. Jesus patches it up with the painting of a wealthy donor - the light catches Mr de Wigg's wallet, which glows golden, as that's 'where his heart is'.

They go on adventures involving anarchists, pacifists, unions, foreigners, Wobblies, the police, and the motion-picture industry. Oh, and the Ku Klux Klan, pluse copious Bible quotes. I think you'd like it.

Oh - all the Scripture Sinclair quotes is correct. Trust me, if you're not a Bible reader. Including all that stuff in the beauty parlour. He's got a reference list in an appendix.

I recommend this book heartily.

Hi Dmitri! Thanks a lot for this recommendation, I've downloaded it ... now will have to find time to read it! Maybe a little bit each day. Sounds like my sort of thing. I really think we need a kind of socialist economical system. My idea is basically that cooperation is better than competition, and we have to look out for each other ... take care of poor people not just by giving them money but giving them better opportunities, and how about really rewarding people for hard work, since as far as I can tell many poor people are working HARD at whatever work they can find but they aren't paid appropriately. It think it is sacrilegious that politicians can earn big salaries for basically doing nothing constructive. There are many such people today who are getting rich without really doing anything worthwhile. This is NOT a meritocracy. I'm speaking from a South African perspective but I think this must be true of many other countries also. There are rich people who work hard and who do something that benefits society, but there are also those who don't. Over here there are entire categories of people who simply lie back and do whatever they want as the money rolls in ...

You've got a point there, Willem.

Those old Socialists knew a thing or two. I think you'll enjoy this little book - too many of the great books for the 1920s and 1930s have got lost in the shuffle. Thanks for archivists and the internet, we can learn from them again.

I am just reading it, and lost all concentration when on page 103 "...the Reverend Lettuce-Spray had moved silently into the pulpit."

Truly the nighthoover moves in mysterious ways and times.
Otherwise, interesting story!

*bookmarks*

Heh-heh. That Rev Lettuce Spray convinced me this was truly a Hootoo work or art.