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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 10:17 pm Post subject: Re: Upton Sinclair - Oil!! - No Country for Old Men
Penelope wrote:
I have just been reading a review of Oil! by Upton Sinclair on which the film 'No Country for Old Men' is based.
It would be interesting to discuss the work, having been written in 1924 and being about the Trade Unions 'Reds' versus the Industrialists.
In the film the Industrialists are replaced by Fundamentalists - and there are many implications of parallels with the 'Iraq' situation.
It would appear to have been quite a prophetic novel then!
Dare we give it a go??
before we give it a go, we must realize that the film 'no country for old men' was based on the pulitzer prize winning book of the same title by cormac mccarthy. the movie 'there will be blood' was based on the novel oil! by upton sinclair.
I was about to move your suggestion Oil, by Upton Sinclair, to the June and July Suggestions thread when I noticed the book was out of print at amazon.com (selling at outrageous prices) but a new paperback was in print in the UK.
Somebody at amazon.co.uk notes that reading "Oil" will turn you into a socialist.
Was this what you and your Mom were up to?
I was too young to even read (and I can't even remember learning to read) when my Mum used to read Upton Sinclair to me.
You must remember that it would be in the late 1940's/early 1950's when this was occurring. My Mum was a Communist.....there was a politician (socialist) here then, setting up the 'National Health Service' a Welshman named Mr. Bevan......my Mum used to say his name with such reverence. I wish you could have heard her. We have no such reverence now for our politicians...alas!!!
I know that society was changing then in England....due to the cotton mills in Lancashire and due to the Collieries in Durham and elsewhere. The living standards of the workers was dire......I did lived in those circumstances during my childhood. But, there was a great community spirit then....which is not apparent now. Swings and Roundabouts, if you know what that phrase means.
I don't think we were trying to convert anyone to anything. My Mum had a sense of social injustice.....and she wanted to convey that to me.
We do not have a Labour Government...or a Socialist System here now.
All that she taught me was that we must help one another.....and care about one another.....and if some people are very poor....and some people are powerfully rich...without the wisdom to match those riches....then the only power that the poor have is manpower.
I think she was conveying to me the idea that just because a person is from an economically poor background, and consequently is not educated to a specific standard...does not mean he cannot 'think'. Does not mean that he doesn't care about his fellow man. If that is Socialism...all power to it. This sense of ''caring seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.....lost to a sense of 'points scoring'.......'them against us'...will never work.
About Upton Sinclair, the only book by him I have read is The Jungle.
I read it in my early twenties, and I was so horrified I still remember some parts of it very vividly.
This is one of those books that really needed to be written.
What was even more heart-breaking was that the only reaction of the readers was outrage at the unsanitory conditions in meat production: this was good, and led to new legislation, but nothing was learnt about the fate of the workers in the meat industry!
You mentioned the ordinary people who never get a voice, but Sinclair gave those people a voice.
As to whether I'd be brave enough to read another of his novels... rather unlikely I think.
