In 1927, 21 years after The Jungle, Upton Sinclair published Oil!, a Bildungsroman about Bunny Ross, heir to an oil fortune. Bunny’s father is a self-made man, so the boy grows up pulled between worlds: that of the well-to-do, the fancy social circles that his sister aspires to; that of his father, a no-nonsense, hard-nosed businessman; and that of his truest friends in the world, Paul and Ruth Watkins, country working-people.
Unfortunately, the best parts of the book are really before the Bildung begins. At the opening of the novel, Bunny is 13 years old, and he accompanies his father on all his business trips. They are driving together to a new town, to make a deal on an oil lease and begin a new well. Sinclair is not a great prose stylist, but the drive up and down a mountain pass in the fog, the stop to put chains on the tires, the avoidance of the speed cop, are all vividly told. A clear picture of this opening journey is still in my mind as one of the most memorable parts of the book. Bunny’s relationship with his father, and his father’s whole character, are laid out perfectly here. Not a word Dad says when he gets to the meeting with the property-holders comes as a surprise, we know him so well.
Not a word the property-holders have said to each other does, either, if we are honest. The episode in Mrs. Groarty’s house is excellent too, and an integral part of the move from motor journey to oil well. The scene: there’s a gusher on a nearby property. The members of a whole subdivision have come together to make a community agreement that they will only contract as a group with a drilling concern, thus as a larger lease to get better concessions.
This document had been duly recorded in the county archives; and now day by day they were realizing what they had done to themselves. They had agreed to agree; and from that time on, they had never been able to agree to anything!
The community is cut-throat, of course. Everyone is suspected of taking kickbacks from the oil companies, and the division of royalties is an issue. Should we blame these simple people?
Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.
Oh, but we should blame them. They are fools. J. Arnold Ross—Bunny’s Dad, that is—comes to negotiate with them and they still can’t settle the details. They are petty and sniping and Ross doesn’t mess around. He’s offering them a better deal than anyone else would, but when they come to blows he leaves, saying “They’re a bunch of boobs, and you can’t do anything with them. I wouldn’t take their lease if they offered it as a gift.”
Here, as elsewhere, it’s hard to get a handle on just what Sinclair thinks. The whole thing has a didactic feel, but still seems ambivalent. The narrator decries the greed that is tearing the community apart, but there was no community until oil came along. The owners of the lots are members of different classes, different ethnicities; some live there, some live in town; some are tradesmen, some farmers; some are investors who would turn up their noses at the rest in any other situation. They wouldn’t trust each other even if thousands of dollars weren’t in the balance.
Mrs. Groarty and her friends get their comeuppance. Ross makes a killing on the other side of the hill, where a single owner controlled enough land for him to drill on. The landowner, who took a good deal when he saw one, ended up set for life too. The “community” turned its lease over to speculators who never drilled but a few hundred barrels.
The oscillation between sympathy for the little guy and portrayal of all his most unflattering qualities—in contrast with the still-unstained morality of Dad—is a continuing feature of the Bildung. Only problem is, Bunny doesn’t seem to learn anything. At least not for a very, very long time. And that whole time, the reader is left drifting too.
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