Shad Sentell: Love, Lust, and Louisiana Oil

Shad Sentell is a Louisiana redneck made good. Shad and his brother E.M. build a corporate empire of their oil company, Omega Oil. The story opens in 1960 with Shad's nephew Sonny, an LSU student being sent by his father to fetch Shad out of a sanatorium in Shreveport where he has been committed by E.M. What follows is a frequently incredible romp as Sonny and Shad make there way to the Gulf of Mexico where Omega Oil's offshore plateform Okeanos no. 1 is burning. Shad is apparently the only man with any chance of putting out the fire. But Shad is in no hurry. As he progresses south from Shreveport, various narrators fill us in on the checkered history of Shad and the rest of the Sentell clan.Be warned that Shad is probably not someone you would invite to Sunday dinner. The book contains some raunchy discriptions of Shad's adventures with women. The book is full of literary allusions including a scene out of Don Giovanni in which Sonny plays Leporello to Shad's Don. Sonny, with seduction on his mind, tries to warn the nubile Missy, daughter of Shad's high school sweetheart, away from Shad by showing her Shad's diary, which is actually a record of sexual encounters complete with an elaborate shorthand rating system.The novel ocillates between Faulkner's Snopes Trilogy and O'Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces." This story contains some of the most finely wrought redneck characterizations anywhere. The book has something for everyone, it is at times pronograhic, philosophic, melodramatic, contemplative and farsical. It is as though the author, fully capable of serious writing, is incaplable of taking himself seriously for very long. At times the story line threatens to go completely off the rails, particularly toward the end when the whole Sentell Clan is holed up in a French Quarter Hotel that is being shot up by a crazed redneck cockold out to take revenge on Shad with a 12 guage sawed off shot gun. But, it is one of the funniest novels I've every read and I heartily recomend it, warts and all.