Product Description
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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 intellectual treat ( nukerplunker )
The handling of social issues was much more diverse than the movie "There Will Be Blood." The oil man is not nearly as bad in the book, but the industry is a pathetic mess.
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 Great Story, but a long listen
I purchased the audiobook version of 'Oil', because I remembered enjoying reading 'The Jungle' in High School.
This was a good story, and even though it is set in Southern California in the 1920's the story largely transcends time. However, and this is a big however it was VERY detailed, so much so that it detracted from the story and was too long to listen to it (20+ hours). Go with the abridged version if it is available.
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 From Oil in the 1920s to Washington and Wall Street Today
Though set in the California oil fields of the 1920s, the great Upton Sinclair's classic "Oil!" is as relevant and meaningful(aka "alarming" and "frightening")today as it was when it was written more than 80 years ago.
The characters are great, well written and well developed, coming off the pages in living technicolor. You get to know these people, care about some, empathize with few and dispise others.
But the issue, the real isue, is the buying of government and greed. Greed with a capital "G."
Read with John Grisham's latest, "The Appeal," (Judicial "justice" being bought and paid for in Mississippi--fiction there, truth in Alabama and all states where supreme court judges are elected), and looking at the tremendously obscene amounts of money spent on judicial, congressional and legislative races, there is enough to seriously raise questions about the fairness and openness of our government, national, state and local.
As for the greed part, look no further than Wall Street as it was when this book was written 80 years ago and as it is today.
The fact that 80 years have passed since this book was written sweetens the medicine as it goes down..but the poision is still there and it still goes down...
The more things change, the more they remain the same...
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Dad Liked It ( mrsconanobrien6000 )
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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Very different from the loosely adapted film ( daddycub )
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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