What do you think?
Rate this book
Petroleum Man
Stanley Crawford’s first novel since the ingenious and uproarious Some Instructions, Petroleum Man is a hilariously scathing satire that takes on both sides of some of the raging debates of our times between democrats and republicans, haves and have-nots, trickle-down conservatives and bleeding-heart liberals, environmentalists and industrialists. Bewildered by the odious liberal democrat tendencies of his son-in-law Chip, Leon Tuggs, self-made arch-capitalist billionaire, inventor of the ubiquitous and environmentally hazardous Thingie , and author of the influential General Theory of Industrial Sex decides to rescue his grandchildren from a life of guilt, indecision, and existential anxiety, by educating them in the way the world actually works and telling them, for their own good, the things no teacher or parent in our politically correct and morally relative world could ever venture to say. These life lessons to his grandchildren are accompanied by cast-iron replicas of the cars that he has owned.
- GenresNovels
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
1 person is currently reading
66 people want to read
About the author
Stanley Crawford
28 books41 followersCrawford is the author of "Gascoyne," "Petroleum Man," "Log of the S.S. The Mrs Unguentine," "A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm," "Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico," "The River in Winter," and "Some Instructions to My Wife Concerning the Upkeep of the House and Marriage and to my Son and Daughter Concerning the Conduct of their Childhood." He lives in new Mexico with his wife, RoseMary, where they own and run a garlic farm.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 6, 2014
Fascinating cult author and garlic farmer whose novels are in print from Dalkey and Overlook Press. His most recent novel, Petroleum Man, is an upfront anti-capitalist satire and chilling vision of the future—the pigheaded ideologies behind the systematic destruction of the planet through the corruption of fossil fuels and the careless twatteries of petrolheads is satirised through Leon Tuggs and the invention of the Thingie, an undescribed item that populates our lives and pollutes our oceans. Not dissimilar to French satirist Lydie Salvayre’s Portrait of the Artist as a Domesticated Animal in terms of laughs and attacks, Petroleum Man is a subtler (Swiftian!) novel rendered in exquisite prose and contains many marvellous melancholic and bighearted moments amid the perfect lampoon. The novel was discussed on Bookworm and here is a recent talk where the author discusses the novel and, among other things, his love for The Wire.
December 13, 2011
A disappointing read compared to The U.S.S. Mrs. Ungantine. It begins as a fun and funny parody of wealth, but never says much more. Two beautiful and wildly good moments are hidden between a lot of go-nowhere verbal slapstick. Crawford can write, there is no doubt about it, it's what let me finish the book, but his ideas seem better served when he just lets the plot get ridiculous instead of ridiculous and plausible.
July 19, 2012
Great fun to read this satire.
January 11, 2016
9 jan 16, 2nd from crawford for me. recently, like with this year, i read the 1st from him, Gascoyne, a story i enjoyed although not as much as i enjoyed the movie it's a mad mad mad mad world...throw in another mad if need be. calumet theatre, 1966. we laughed. now this.
onward, ever onward.
just finished The Door an excellent story, give it a look see.
11 jan 16, finished. i liked it. nothing more nothing less though almost less. curious telling, narrator often though not always in his 727...or was it a 767? some sort of big flying thingie. reminds me of the first from crawford wherein the protag/narrator? i forget...was often though not always in his automobile.
thing it, this never got past the current upright bipolar locomotion we should all be familiar with. and it isn't difficult to determine where crawford stands on that waffle-pancake line. so what does it do for you, gentle reader? i guess if you find yourself on that side of the line, syrrup or no syrrup, jam maybe, you're down with that, got a handle on it, cheer. ooga booga. but me, i'm so tired of that old endless meaningless blind debate. wanting to rise above it. capitalism. blah blah blah. yadda yadda yadda. this that the other.
tell me something i don't know, haven't heard, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, el binko pinko and knod.
some nice scenes, like when the occupiers occupy the occupied land, run around nakkid. and now you live on ribbon roads, as the poet said, and no one knows or cares who is his neighbor unless they make too much disturbance. choruses from the rock. rock and a hard place.
reading this, thinking how i'd go about it. sure, does absurdity work? to a degree here it does, this does have that going for it, but it's still same-o same-o nothing knew under the sum. but then, we could have been left with twins at the end...read harry, cars. onward upward.
onward, ever onward.
just finished The Door an excellent story, give it a look see.
11 jan 16, finished. i liked it. nothing more nothing less though almost less. curious telling, narrator often though not always in his 727...or was it a 767? some sort of big flying thingie. reminds me of the first from crawford wherein the protag/narrator? i forget...was often though not always in his automobile.
thing it, this never got past the current upright bipolar locomotion we should all be familiar with. and it isn't difficult to determine where crawford stands on that waffle-pancake line. so what does it do for you, gentle reader? i guess if you find yourself on that side of the line, syrrup or no syrrup, jam maybe, you're down with that, got a handle on it, cheer. ooga booga. but me, i'm so tired of that old endless meaningless blind debate. wanting to rise above it. capitalism. blah blah blah. yadda yadda yadda. this that the other.
tell me something i don't know, haven't heard, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, el binko pinko and knod.
some nice scenes, like when the occupiers occupy the occupied land, run around nakkid. and now you live on ribbon roads, as the poet said, and no one knows or cares who is his neighbor unless they make too much disturbance. choruses from the rock. rock and a hard place.
reading this, thinking how i'd go about it. sure, does absurdity work? to a degree here it does, this does have that going for it, but it's still same-o same-o nothing knew under the sum. but then, we could have been left with twins at the end...read harry, cars. onward upward.
August 23, 2020
What the hell did I just read? No, really, what the hell did I just read?
This book is ostensibly the musings of an incredibly wealthy man to his two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, as each birthday and Christmas he gives them die-cast replicas of automobiles that were important his life. He explains to the children how he acquired each car in his life, what was going on in his life when he got the car, and what he learned while owning the car.
From that description alone, it might sound like a warm, feel-good book, full of family bonding and life lessons about Grandpa's hardscrabble years of hard work and love. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Grandpa is a heartless Ayn Randian SOB, contemptuous of anyone not as rich as he, obsessed with genetics, (“Rowena, you are growing into a fine young woman, you'll definitely inherit the Delahunt figure from your grandmother. Unfortunately, that also comes with the Delahunt teeth.”) and dismissive of the children’s father, the liberal democrat! It may be my imagination, but I think grandpa gets increasingly unhinged as the book goes on.
Yes, the book is over-the-top funny, but that just highlights the biggest problem with writing satire, particularly in the first half of the 21st Century: someone is always ready to take it seriously. With a more serious cover, you could give this book to your average libertarian as a serious book of grandpas’s life lessons, and they’d probably take all these crazy musings seriously.
This book is ostensibly the musings of an incredibly wealthy man to his two grandchildren, a boy and a girl, as each birthday and Christmas he gives them die-cast replicas of automobiles that were important his life. He explains to the children how he acquired each car in his life, what was going on in his life when he got the car, and what he learned while owning the car.
From that description alone, it might sound like a warm, feel-good book, full of family bonding and life lessons about Grandpa's hardscrabble years of hard work and love. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Grandpa is a heartless Ayn Randian SOB, contemptuous of anyone not as rich as he, obsessed with genetics, (“Rowena, you are growing into a fine young woman, you'll definitely inherit the Delahunt figure from your grandmother. Unfortunately, that also comes with the Delahunt teeth.”) and dismissive of the children’s father, the liberal democrat! It may be my imagination, but I think grandpa gets increasingly unhinged as the book goes on.
Yes, the book is over-the-top funny, but that just highlights the biggest problem with writing satire, particularly in the first half of the 21st Century: someone is always ready to take it seriously. With a more serious cover, you could give this book to your average libertarian as a serious book of grandpas’s life lessons, and they’d probably take all these crazy musings seriously.
abandoned
September 3, 2018I didn't read far enough to rate this, but it seemed to be seriously lacking in the freewheeling wackiness of his early work. And the satire was a bit too on the nose for me.
July 2, 2018
Very sad.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews