Dad Liked It | Oil! | Upton Sinclair

I enjoyed this book. But.... | Oil! | Upton Sinclair

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	• Oil! Upton Sinclair Penguin (Non-Classics), 2007 - 560 pages average customer review:based on 37 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

On every list, at every school

The film "There will be blood" is a shameless travesty of the book, which analyses the corruption in the oil industry and the intimidation of the unions. Anyone who admires the works of Ayn Rand should get a dose of this by way of a cure. Even the well-intentioned main characters get sucked into the maelstrom of big business. Unfortunately after 300 pages it becomes a bit boring, as the author tries to put in too much, but by then 99% of the readers will have learned a valuable lesson.

Dad Liked It

I bought this for my Dad and he said he really liked it and highly reccomended it to me to borrow from him.

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I enjoyed this book. But....

I really did enjoy this book. But, I really enjoy more true to life historical books, and I think this book if done as historic rather then fiction based on history would have done just as good. Having grown up in the cities of Long Beach and Signal Hill, some of the locations used in this book with altered names, to me it would have been more interesting. And I am sure the real life adventures of oil exploration and drilling would have made this book still the page turner that it was. I have not seen the movie, and may not, this book holds it's own.

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Very different from the loosely adapted film

I am sure that many people have compared _Oil_ with "There Will Be Blood," the film loosely based on the novel. Each is excellent in its own way. _Oil_ is a well written, stirring novel, with richly developed and complex characters. The film's screen writer chooses to tell how greed thoroughly warps and corrupts a self-made oil barren. The oil man in the book, J. Arnold Ross, Sr., is a far more complicated man. Although a "greedy capitalist" as is the entire capitalist system according to the author, Upton Sinclair, Ross, Sr. is often a compassionate man. He agrees to post bail for friends of his son's imprisoned for holding "communist inspired meetings" calling for abolishing the enslavement and exploitation of working men by the capitalist system. Ross Sr. sympathizes with some of the wage demands of his striking workers, but is stymied in his support of them for fear of ostracism from a corporate federation to which he belongs.

Ross, Jr., nicknamed Bunny in the novel, is a sensitive, intelligent, and well educated young man. While Bunny loves and admires his father and is the heir to Ross Sr.'s millions, Bunny works against what his father believes, and heartily sympathizes with the ideals of his "Bolshevik" friends. Bunny's sister, Bertie, firmly against and embarrassed by her brother's socialist activities, believes that his behavior is preventing her being invited to join the monied class to which she feels entitled.

Bunny, from childhood on, becomes close friends with Paul Watkins, one of the sons of the family from whom Ross Sr. cheaply bought the land from which his oil wells were drilled. Paul, a true believer in the radical movement, is one of the most important influences in Bunny's life. Bunny becomes involved with Vee, a movie starlet, who, like his sister, is also against Bunny's socialist leanings. Vernon Roscoe, Ross Sr's partner and perhaps the most corrupt character in the book, believes in industry working closely with and even bribing government officials, which Vernon believes is for the benefit of all.

The last section of the novel, where Bunny becomes particularly close with Rachel Menzies, a Jewish girl who shares much of Bunny's beliefs, is fast paced and engrossing, as is much of the book. One of the only negative aspects of the book is the author's and some of its characters' naive belief that Soviet Russia held promise as a model for a worker's state. This can be forgiven because the book ends in the 1920's before many of the Soviet Union's failings, particularly under Stalin, were uncovered. Although the novel ends tragically, there is some promise held out for a better and fairer world for the members of the working class.

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Highly Entertaining!

I bought "Oil" because I really enjoyed "The Jungle." I didn't expect the book to be like the movie (which I personally thought was boring and pointless, but that's beside the point) and I wasn't disappointed. "Oil" is much more interesting in its complexity; the father in the book is neither a villian nor a hero, he just wants to do the "right thing" according to his own set of morals ... and he is not helped by his son, who questions everything as young people just beginning to discover the "world beyond the front porch" often do. Upton Sinclair does an excellent job of character development and expertly weaves together the lives of his many characters -- including one millionaire who lives with his actress girlfriend in a mansion high on a hill overlooking Pacific Ocean; methinks this person was loosely based on a real-life newspaper magnate? :-)

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In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

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