Page:Upton Sinclair - Oil!.pdf/9

 Shuffle the cards, and deal a new round of poker hands: they differ in every way from the previous round, and yet it is the same pack of cards, and the same game, with the same spirit, the players grim-faced and silent, surrounded by a haze of tobacco-smoke.

So with this novel, a picture of civilization in Southern California, as the writer has observed it during eleven years’ residence. The picture is the truth, and the great mass of detail actually exists. But the cards have been shuffled; names, places, dates, details of character, episodes—everything has been dealt over again. The only personalities to be recognized in this book are three presidents of the United States who have held office during the past fifteen years. Manifestly, one could not “shuffle” these, without destroying all sense of reality. But the reader who spends his time seeking to identify oil magnates and moving picture stars will be wasting time, and perhaps doing injustice to some individual, who may happen to have shot off his toe to collect accident insurance, but may not happen to be keeping a mistress or to have bribed a cabinet official.