This came up in a ‘one hundred classics’ listicle I found somewhere or the other. I put the whole damn thing on my TBR list, and I have been systematically going through it. A lot of the titles I have near no familiarity with, so each one is a surprise.
This one a pleasant suprise.
Upton Sinclair is much more well known for ‘The Jungle’, which is an account of how food was processed in the early 1900’s. The way it is brought up in most schools is usually just as a passing aside – so much so that many people don’t realize that it is a novel.
So what does a novel titled “Oil!” give us. Apparently the movie “There will be blood” (however loosely), which I never saw.
Oil! Is a Bildungsroman, at least by my assessment. It follows the young and wide eyed son of an oil tycoon, and you watch him grow up to become a rather socialist leaning young man – in America of all places! Towards the end of the novel he really has to walk a very fine line, because while he is a university student with big ideas and ideals, he is also exceedingly wealthy, and living in the lap of luxury that only wealth permits. He dates movie stars. Problems disappear as a courtesy to his oil baron father. There is no mistaking where on the political divide Upton Sinclair falls, as the corruption and hypocrisy of the ultra-wealthy really comes through.
Sinclair is certainly a competent and talented storyteller, and I at least needed that as I read this. A lot of what you read will sound tired, like arguments you have heard a thousand times before. If you’ve been to university, or ever met an economist, you will here what the novel shows you about them. As well, what all the capitalist tell you about the working class and why they shouldn’t unionize is the same vile shit they say today.
I guess things really don’t ever change.
Failures in Polymathy 