my reading this weekend

[grladams at teleport.com]

I have read most of Oil! by Upton Sinclair, since I want to see the movie
but want to read the book first. It's amazing to get halfway finished with
it in two sittings, Pynchon's ATD primed my reading mind so that this book
is a page turner. Will return to ATD feedback later. But I'm struck by
visions of the characters in this book and their preocupations meshing and
being partly a thread inside ATD. Most obvious is the theme of pulling up
from the earth this "stuff" so quickly, which took so long to get there,
and suddenly with this rearrangement, for so much to change for so many
people. And the way that the war was a handy trade market for Oil (and
maybe how all wars are). Scarce are railways but still there. Flying
overhead just out of view are the Chums I'm sure. All the little details,
the riproaring speech snippets from Roosevelt marking human nature's desire
to believe in a comforting propaganda, double edged sword of capital,
advantages it gives some, the humanity that gets taken away from others,
and how all socialists get washed out with tossed bathwater of any
anarchist destruction. I'll one up myself with expanding the motif:
dualities or maybe n plus one dimensionalities emerge as sides of a coin,
the shiny corporate side buys the grease for the rails, the idealist soft
side that bears itself openly to predators with sharpened grabbing talons.
Other sides, anyone? Also noteworthy and familiar to ATD readers were the
references to increasing debauchery of sex and free love. I was educated by
references to the Trans Siberian Railway being a locale for allied help
that was provided to both rebelling-against-the german-BohemiansCzecho
Slovakians and Russian-non Bolsheviks 

sigh. back to my book

Jill

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