Capitalism!

Yesterday I finished Oil! by Upton Sinclair. In January my friend Dave and I decided to try to read a book together and we chose this one in late February due to it being the basis for the movie There Will Be Blood. We were hoping to finish in time to see the movie in the theaters but it looks like we are too late.
I called Dave last night to talk about the book for a few minutes and we agreed that it didn’t seem to us that Sinclair executed what he intended to accomplish with the book. The first two-thirds of the book are focused and at times pedantic. The final third of the book becomes very broad, even in it’s setting, and becomes less about the oil industry and more an indictment of capitalism. I am not in opposition to indicting capitalism but I think that was being accomplished more subtly by continuing to focus on the oil industry and the exploitation of its workers.
Halfway through the book I was amazed by the relevancy of Sinclair’s writing. It doesn’t take much to imagine oil magnates buying the presidency! I also found his critique of the media insightful, which leads to my favorite quote from the book. Sinclair says this about the most recent delivery mode of information of his time:

“The radio is a one-sided institution; you can listen, but you cannot answer back. In that lies it’s enormous usefulness to the capitalist system. The householder sits at home and takes what is handed to him, like an infant being fed through a tube. It is a basis upon which to build the greatest slave empire in history.”

Just in case you didn’t already, substitute the word television for radio, and you find yourself a mere ninety years into the future (the book was written in 1927) at exactly the same place.

Finally, I recommend reading a book with someone else to experience the increased intellectual significance and life prescribed to a book read in community.