Oil!

By Upton Sinclair

The classic novel that inspired the Academy award-winning film, There Will Be Blood.

Penguin Books is proud to now be the sole publisher of Oil!, the classic 1927 novel by Upton Sinclair. After writing The Jungle, his scathing indictment of the meatpacking industry, Sinclair turned his sights on the early days of the California oil industry in a highly entertaining story featuring a cavalcade of characters including senators, oil magnets, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist.

This lively and panoramic book, which was recently cited by David Denby in the New Yorker as being Sinclair’s “most readable” novel, is now the inspiration for the Paramount Vantage major motion picture, There Will Be Blood. It is the long-awaited film from Paul Thomas Anderson, one of the most admired filmmakers working today whose previous movies, Boogie Nights and Magnolia were both multiple Academy Award nominees. The movie stars Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York, My Left Foot) and Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine).

Paramount Vantage will be releasing the film in New York and Los Angeles on December 26, 2007 and go nationwide in January. This is the same company responsible for Babel and A Mighty Heart and the current releases, Into the Wild, Margot at the Wedding, and The Kite Runner.

As wars rage on in the oil region and as anxiety over natural resources rise, the subject of this book, which celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2007, is more timely than ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2007
• ISBN: 9781101201763

Upton Sinclair

American writer UPTON BEALL SINCLAIR (1878-1968) was an active socialist and contributor to many socialist publications. His muckraking books include King Coal (1917), Oil! (1927), and Boston (1928).

Reviews for Oil!

[devil_llama · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The usual preachy fiction from Sinclair, in wihch he manages to take on the oil industry and the over the top evangelists at the same time, in his usual turgid prose. This book creates some memorable and interesting characters, but is too long by half.

[bness2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is not as good as The Jungle, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile read. He certainly exposes the political machinations of the leaders of the oil industry, with all its graft and bribery, and he clearly shows the tendency of capitalistic enterprises to exploit workers. Although the book shows support for socialism and unionism (collectivism), he does so in a restrained way, as if he saw not only the potential of collective bargaining for improving pay and working conditions, but also saw some of its weaknesses. He definitely showed the inherent dangers of infighting within the worker movements and how those problems made unions and organizing less effective than might have been possible. All in all a good book, albeit a little long.

[Estéban Mary T. Barra · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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[jimocracy · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I'm pretty sure that Sinclair was a human being but he doesn't seem to write with any human insight whatsoever. All of his characters are one-dimensional and boring shells of the petty ideals and characteristics the author is trying to elucidate. I have learned my lesson about wasting time with books by this author and I won't make that mistake again.

Upton Sinclair is the polar opposite of Ayn Rand (only he's a moderately better writer). Both try to push their extremist views into their literature (and I'm using the term loosely). No more will I waste time on Sinclair trite propoganda and third -rate novels!

[juva_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is exactly nothing like the movie. The only similarities are a few names and oil. This is a novel about a self-made oil magnate whose son, Bunny, becomes obsessed with the plight of the working man. The novel's action centers around Bunny's inner turmoil. On one hand, he is a man born to privilege who has never worked a day in his life. His entire life he owes to a man he is coming to view as an oppressor of the masses. Constantly torn between his friends, his family, and his own convictions, Bunny must learn a number of hard lessons about politics, religion, and the corrupt nature of people in general.

[jawalter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this book up (and I'm sure I'm not alone in this) because of the movie There Will Be Blood. And so my temptation is to write about the book in relation to the movie. I am thwarted in this, however, by the simple fact that there is no relation between book and movie.

Yes, there's a father and a son and a lot of oil and a charlatan preacher, but that's it. Like the Jason Bourne books and movies, there only connection is a very faint resemblance of character and setting that dissolves upon closer inspection. Strangely, I'm more fascinated than ever in how, exactly, the book became the movie.

But, the book. Frankly, it's tiring. Sinclair throws just about every social issue imaginable into the book, from the dangers of heavy petting to the dangers of socialism, and after a while it becomes more than a little overwhelming. It doesn't help that the main characters are hopelessly naive blank slates, so that they can be the reader's window into multiple sides of every issue.

I don't know why I didn't expect this, since Sinclair is pretty much famous for writing books with specific social agendas, but it's frustrating to read a book where plot and character are so subservient to the author's ulterior social motives.

The movie is better.

[quantum_flapdoodle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The usual preachy fiction from Sinclair, in wihch he manages to take on the oil industry and the over the top evangelists at the same time, in his usual turgid prose. This book creates some memorable and interesting characters, but is too long by half.

[bigbub · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great story in the true "muck-raking" style of Upton's other works, such as "The Jungle". Bunny grows up as a boy of privilege in early 1900's Southern California, heir apparent to an oil empire; yet at the same time being tempted and led into a moral quandary, between the riches and influence lovingly provided by his father, to the social injustice perpetrated by this same system of influence, onto the poorer classes of people.

[araridan · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I think Upton Sinclair cannot help but to beat the reader over the head with whatever ideology he is trying to promote. That being said, I wouldn't be so offended if he at least made a better story out of his propaganda... Like most people, my introduction to Sinclair came in high school in the form of "The Jungle." Truthfully I don't remember much about that novel, but still obviously associate it with exposing the evils of the meat industry. In "Oil!", Sinclair is somewhat trying to expose corruption inherent to the oil industry, but really he has a much bigger target...Capitalism. The way in which Sinclair educates us, the readers, about the problems of capitalism (and how socialism and communism are the preferred options) is through our blank slate of a protagonist, Bunny. Bunny is the son of a successful and wealthy oil man. He represents "new money" and has access to privileged social circles, and is expected to one day take over his dad's business. However, while still a teenager, Bunny meets Paul. Paul comes from a poor family and is sympathetic to labor causes, eventually becoming a communist leader. Paul apparently opens Bunny's eyes to the way the other side lives, and for the rest of the book, Bunny is constantly searching for the right things to believe. Bunny is pretty lacking as far as characters go (basically, he's nice...who cares), and his decisions and personal convictions are constantly influenced by whatever character he happens to be speaking with. The other characters are equally flat and seem to exist purely as a mouthpiece for a certain viewpoint. Paul = communism, Rachel = socialism, Vernon Roscoe = corrupt capitalism, Viola = apolitical, ignorant upper class, etc. This book is way too long (over 550 pages) to function in the manner of shallow, simplistic preaching. If one strips away the monologues of each supporting character, we really aren't left with a story. The language in which this all unfolds isn't even interesting, poetic, remotely subtle...merely boring, naive, and cliched.

[readingrat_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Upton Sinclair books always seem to be a struggle for me to finish. He incorporates SO MUCH political philosophy into his stories. Not being a very political person, it's hard for me to remain interested in the story once it turns that bend in the road. Overall I found The Jungle to be a more interesting story due to the working/living atrocities brought to light there.

[the_unnamable · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oil! certainly lives up to the exclamation mark in it's title. In a hefty 600 pages, Sinclair is sometimes as nuanced as a brick. Utilizing the quaint, coming-of-age tale of oil scion Bunny Ross as a loom, Upton weaves his socialist politics into American fiction. Labor vs. Bureaucrats! Bolsheviks vs. Patriots! Free thought vs. Censorship! Sinclair manages to skewer the burgeoning Hollywood industry as well.Despite powerful descriptions and humor, the book is ultimately weighed down by an excess of preachiness and an unfortunately annoying dualism in our "red" narrator, Bunny. You sometimes have to drill into the text to get better results, but there are definitely some gushers.