my reading this weekend

[grladams at teleport.com]

I think: The completely insane excitement that ensues as drilling strikes
black gold, and oil forces it's way up from millions of years ago to the
moment, filling the air and falling all over them, well, it makes people
shout "Oil!". The book delivers very fine descriptions of this on many
occasions. Also, noteworthy, is how in dialogue, the word _slacker_ is used
to describe certain workers in the chapters before the war, during the
labor union part..

Jill

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Daniel Julius daniel.julius at gmail.com
Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 16:15:01 -0500
To: grladams at teleport.com, pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: my reading this weekend


Why does he put an exclamation point in the title, do you think?




On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:46 AM, grladams at teleport.com <
grladams at teleport.com> wrote:

> 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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