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Oil!
 
 
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Oil! [Paperback]

Upton Sinclair (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)

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From Library Journal

Sinclair's 1927 novel did for California's oil industry what The Jungle did for Chicago's meat-packing factories. The plot follows the clash between an oil developer and his son. Typical of Sinclair, there are undertones here of socialism and sympathy for the common working stiff. Though the book is not out of print, this is the only paperback currently available.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"He does his little bit of muck-raking. . . but the glorious story of the oil man and his son rushes on. It is a marvelous panorama of Southern California life. It is storytelling with an edge on it." -- The New Republic

"Oil! remains the most ambitious Southern California novel of the 1920s. . . . Chosen by the Literary Guild, Oil! made the best-seller list. Its sales were helped along when Sinclair, hoping to get arrested, personally hawked copies of the book on the streets of Boston, after it was banned there for its outspoken advocacy of birth control." -- Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams
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First Sentence
The road ran, smooth and flawless, precisely fourteen feet wide, the edges trimmed as if by shears, a ribbon of grey concrete, rolled out over the valley by a giant hand. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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4.2 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars Generally entertaining, Oct 16 2002
This review is from: Oil! (Paperback)
Unlike Sinclair's best-known novel, "The Jungle," with its bleak story and gloomy characters, "Oil!" is a fast-paced, lively and colorful story. Although Sinclair uses it to preach his political views, it is nevertheless a good piece of literature and an interesting historical testimony to the era in which it was written. Another striking thing is how Sinclair's descriptions of corporate manipulations tend to mirror very recent events. Interesting also is that Sinclair uses one of the oldest cliches in American literature, the coming-of-age story, as the vehicle for this epic; at the same time, there are indications that Sinclair seems to mock this manner of story-telling - from the main character's rather silly nick-name, "Bunny" to his perennial inability to make up his mind about where he wants to go with his life, i.e. he never really 'comes of age.' Other reviewers have noted Sinclair's apparently naive promotion of socialism/communism/the Bolsheviks, which is a valid criticism, although to me it seemed more a case of the author throwing out ideas to provoke readers into thinking rather than an attempt to persuade them. In this sense, his use of the family of a wealthy California oil baron as the main protagonists is quite telling: although Sinclair does take the opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy and greed of the moneyed classes, he also makes a genuine attempt to portray them as real people rather than just grotesque caricatures. I also noticed that many of his characterizations of the working class/poor are often less than flattering. Regardless, this is a really entertaining novel, probably Sinclair's best.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing..., Feb 25 2001
By 
Paula Martersteck (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Oil! (Paperback)
Given Sinclair's reputation as a muckracker extraordinaire, I was disappointed in this book. Or, on the other hand, maybe "Oil!" proves he was good at muckracking, just not at fiction.

On the negative side, the book struck me as trite, bloated (rambling and repetitive) and extremely dated in tone and style. Sinclair resorts to the amateur's trick of ending almost every other quote with an exclamation point to convey a sense of the speaker's urgency. The book has the subtletly of a sledgehammer.

On the plus side, Sinclair definitely raises some worthwhile social and political issues. Considering his era (he wrote the book in the mid-20s), I found it especially noteworthy that he raised concerns about such lightning-rod issues as monopolization; corporate greed; media propaganda; religious movements; sexual double standards; and birth control and abortion.

Maybe for Sinclair's contemporaries of that era, getting information in the overly broad cartoonish format that he offers was the most palatable alternative. However, as for myself, after sticking it out through 300-plus of the book's 500-odd pages, I can safely safe I'd rather bone up on the issues of that era by rereading my old collection of essays by anarchist Emma Goldman or turning to another, as yet unsampled work, by a writer *other than* Sinclair -- perhaps a historian particularly versed in California politics and/or labor history (among other issues).

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Oil!....a timely tale, Aug 23 2003
This review is from: Oil! (Paperback)
Anyone who wants a vivid, first-hand account of Southern California life in the 1920's will love this novel. It captures the go-go energy of the times, peppered with jazz-era slang, which perhaps was so fresh at the time this novel was written that Sinclair chose to put these terms in quotations. (Modern readers will be surprised that most of this slang is in common use today). Of course, one can't ignore the larger political, social and cultural themes that explode upon these pages. The oil boom that grips everyone in Southern California is just the tip of the iceberg. The weirder aspect is how little has changed in the past 75 years, We are still grappling with the same issues of political corruption, wage inequality, excesses of capitalism, cult of celebrity, and lest we forget, the youth and car culture. Even more disturbing are the passing references to American oil interests in the middle east. There's some laugh out loud passages; one of the most memorable concerns an Oklahoma oil man who lays on the down-home drawl to intimadate European diplomats. Hmmmm, now that sounds familiar....
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