(Full essay can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)(Just like anyone else who is a lover of great books, I find myself sometimes with a desire to become a "completist" of certain authors; that is, to have read every book that author has ever written. This new series of essays chronicles that attempt.)So first, a confession, that I still have a long way to go before becoming a completist of author TC Boyle; this is only the second novel of his I've read, to tell you the truth, the other one being The Road to Wellville, possibly his most famous because of the 1994 movie version starring Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack and more. Oh, but what a novel! Who knew that a contemporary author could paint such a vivid picture of events that happened nearly a century ago -- in this case, the formation of the various health spas in the upper Midwest at the turn of the 20th century, which for those who don't know were the groups who accidentally invented our modern breakfast cereals? In fact, this is one of the things that Boyle is most known for as an author; for his meticulous and exacting research into whatever time period he is writing about, and whatever crazy events were happening during that time period. Now combine this with Boyle's ability to effortlessly jump between comedy and drama, his masterful touch as a story plotter, and a personal writing style that is both unique and never manages to call attention to itself, and you've got yourself one very admired and award-winning novelist indeed.And of the eleven novels that Boyle has now written, arguably one of his best-known ones is 2003's Drop City, mostly because it's about the American hippie movement of the 1960s and '70s, of which Boyle was a part of himself in his own youth (having gotten his Bachelor's degree in 1968, for those who don't know). And yes, just like Wellville, this novel also features a semi-wacky concept to propel the story forward; in this case, it's about a group of young people who start their own "free love" commune at the end of the '60s (the aforementioned Drop City), which gets its start in California after founding member Norm inherits a large chunk of land from a recently expired relative. And yes, just like Wellville, Boyle uses this semi-wacky concept for both humorous and dramatic purposes; to sometimes viciously make fun of how unequipped most of these idealistic flower children are to actually "live off the land," while still legitimately admiring their desire to do such a thing, and arguing why such a desire is ultimately a good thing that all of us should at least partly aspire to.And of course, this being Boyle, the fun doesn't stop there; about halfway through the book, in fact, the residents of Drop City get tired of all the hassles of being in California (the constant police harassment, the endless hippie mooches), and decide on a whim to move to Alaska instead, where Norm has access to yet more land owned by a relative, a grizzled fur-trapper uncle who has recently retired and moved to Seattle. And thus does Boyle get the chance to expand the story even further, by introducing the existing population of that small Alaskan town as characters themselves, and by hopping back and forth between the two groups' storylines until the moment the hippies actually get to Alaska and the plots suddenly merge.In fact...
The collapse of the sixties free love movement is perhaps the greatest defeat Western society has endured. The flower children believed in a world unshackled to government control and white-collar slavery, they believed in an autonomous collective of free love, drugs and sex. By listening to the Doors and smoking hash in Californian tepees, they hoped to bring about a social revolution, to overthrow the squares by doing nothing whatsoever. Then again, they only believed in this because their bourgeois parents had the misfortune to raise them in a time of plenty, giving them the freedom to run off and party in multicoloured pants with a wad of hard-earned notes in their tote bags. I hate hippies.Drop City has little sympathy for the hippie movement as it cocks a snook at the idle brothers and sisters whose goal was, essentially, to avoid work at all costs and puff on drug pipes. Nowadays, hippies are known as PhD or liberal arts students, and the drug consumption remains the same. Centring on a large cast of caricatured free-lovers, Boyle’s detached narrative style has the surgical cynicism and breathless rush of Foster Wallace, with the compassionate satire of Kingsley Amis. Although his narrator goes a sentence or three too far with each description, he hits a note of buzzy mania, perfect for the vibrant rush of the era, though obviously quite infuriating in its excess.As the commune (based on this real commune in southern Colorado) battles nasty Nam dropouts and a planned council demolition, the group hotfoot it to Alaska, where they take refuge in their iced-out bus and numerous well-insulated shacks. Star, the least loose of the women, is somewhat the centre of the novel, though Boyle’s narrator is more of your top-down move-the-marionettes model, less personally committed, and little genuine empathy is achieved for any of these freeloaders and grizzly weirdoes. It’s a fun ride, regardless.
What do You think about Drop City (2004)?
If this were written by anyone but TC Boyle, I would've given it four stars, however I've come to expect better from Boyle. The basic plot is not overly complex. A hippy commune--Drop City--is chased out of California and decides to reincarnate in Alaska as "Drop City North". Overall, TC does a good job of bringing down the microscope on the whole hippy culture, the good and the bad. There are the innocents, idealistic dreamers, and the hustlers and layabouts who run their game under the guise of being true to the tenets of the culture. There are some fine descriptions of the hippy habitat, communal meals, parties, acid trips, etc. However, the story of Sess Harder and Pam led me down a road that didn't seem to end anywhere. It's a LONG parallel story. I didn't buy Pam's character: why would a total babe like Pam take up with a backwoods misanthrope like Sess? I guessed she was a scout for Drop City, sent to con a lonely man in the Alaska wild--but no, she really falls for the guy. Or so we are told--literally--but I didn't buy it. I also didn't buy how quickly Sess accepts the hippies just upriver from his cabin. From this point, the novel just loses focus, and all the characters karma (good or bad) comes back on them. Bottom line? A good read, but if you haven't read TC Boyle pick up any book of his short stories, and for a novel "Water Music" was his best.
—Spike
I was very dissappointed by T.C. Boyle on this one. A sad depiction of communal living. Having lived in the midst myself, and visited other communes (intentional living places) all I can really say is his rendering is pure hogwash! I believe the man is a pig, he's lazy and lacking in ability to do proper research. He seemed to find pleasure in making subtle innuendos using the norm of stereotypical stigma(s) in his writing. I found his book ridiculous. The stigma around the counter culture needs to be diminished, not hardened, and his writings would foster hate as all squares & people who are not in the know would like to foster. I know a hell of a lot more about grass roots counter cultural movements, and those of us who do know may have a duty to report more on it. This is the only beneficial thing to come out of reading his despicable book...I was actually sickened by the way he portreyed my tribe, and the sort of people I was raised around. I really wish I had never had the experience of reading this book. I was pretty much horrified, page by desperate page, and only kept reading it, to see if before all his b.s. ended there would be some kind of enlightenment glommed, on his part. T.C. Boyle failed miserably to gather the right information, to give the world a look inside the cult of personality we would call intentional living, now, once known as the commune in America. All in all, an extremely *Massive Fail* to communicate the truth about hippy culture!ZeRo Stars....in fact Minus Three Stars, you ridiculous man.
—Tikay Hill
This book had caught me somewhat by surprise. Not in a good or bad way, rather just simply a way I did not anticipate the story going. The plot moves in a static style, jumping forward here and there and sometimes skipping scenes you would assume would be there. Which is okay, no complaints here, its just not the way I would have envisioned the story going, I guess. But I like surprises, so that works out just fine. I have read T.C. before, his anthologized short story "Greasy Lake" (which I LOVE, by the way), so I had a little bit of an idea on how T.C. constructs things, seeing him on with larger canvas like this was really a delight. I read some of the other reviews before writing this, and although I think many of them have good points, the same things just didn't bother me as much. Many people said that he used "and" too much, which is really a stylistic choice, much like some authors had using the word "said" after every bit of dialogue, and instead change it to something different after every time someone speaks. T.C. likes to have a static, intense style to his writing, you have to hear him speaking it while you're reading (go on youtube and watch him do a reading, it's more of a performance than a reading, believe me), and you'll understand why he wrote it the way he did. Another complaint I heard was that they didn't like the characters. Which boggles my mind, because if you hate the hippies, and this book is about a hippie comune, then why pick up the book in the first place? Of course they're going to do hippie things, and have hippie-like ideals, at least most of the time. If you despise counter culture I think you might still enjoy this book because it's not really a "hippie's are awesome and i wish we were all hippies!" kind of book, rather, it's a "make of this what you will" kind of book, one where the answer is something you fill in the gaps for, instead of the book providing it. Unless you just want to be judgmental of the whole thing, of course. But really, I enjoyed reading the story for the glimpse of these rambling nomads looking for a place to call their own, I found them interesting. For me it didn't matter what their lifestyle choices were, I was just interested in where the story was taking them, because in the end that's all that should matter.
—J.C.
