Drop City

T.C. Boyle comes through once again with a complex tale, full of insight, twists and turns, great writing, and overall satisfaction. The guy hasn't written a bad thing yet and my only complaint is that he hasn't turned out more jewels like this one. But then, I suppose he's into quality, not quantity. Suffice it to say that I'm a major Boyle fan and this is my favorite so far. Also recommended: Even Cowgirls get the Blues by Robbins and Bark of the Dogwood by McCrae

I was not familiar with T.C. Boyle, and therefore had never ready anything he had written. I chose this book because I was a young woman during the 70's, and was very much a part of the hippie movement in California. I hoped this book would be a bit of a walk down memory lane. How delighted I was to find it was so much more. In the first part of the book, the members of the "California" Drop City so accurately represented people I knew. Idealism overrode reality, fueled by a drug-induced sense of invincibility. But the real impact of this book hits when the Drop City members move to Alaska, with their naive belief that living in the untamed Alaskan wilds would be the ultimate adventure. But they found that the "free love" and "living off the fat of the land" philosophy did not work in the harsh Alaskan winter. Contrasted with this loopy group of people are Seth and Pamela, Alaskan natives, who represent the salt of the earth folks, who's contact with the Drop City inhabitants clearly demonstrates the clash of cultures between good intentioned idealism and harsh reality. All the characters in this book are finely etched. The transition from carefree love children to frightened, unprepared hostages of the Alaskan wilds, is at once predictable and heartbreaking. Several of the Drop City members defect: the original founder takes his allegedly sick girlfriend and bails; Pan becomes a victim of his own materialism and suffers the ultimate consequence. The juxtaposition of the Drop City inhabitants and the lives of native Alaskans Seth and Pamela, is what makes this book so incredibly moving. I found Mr. Boyle's understanding of the 70's insightful and realistic. The plot and characters are not the only strength of this book. Mr. Boyle's writing is both crisp and poetic, interlaced with a biting and acerbic sense of humor. Yes, I definitely recommend this book to anyone, but most specifically those of us who either were, or knew those who were, members of the 70's, and understood how quickly the sense of love and peace could be transformed by reality. The move to Alaska in this book is, is my mind, an allegory of how the harsh realities of life ultimately transformed the idealism of the 70's. The book is well worth reading, no matter where or who you were during that pivotal time.

Drop City is a good book. I'm going to ask to be trusted on that, because -- try as I might -- I can't find a way to describe it and make it sound as good as it is. Of course, that may be part of the attraction of this soulful, entertaining, and rewarding novel, the fact that its value cannot be easily identified and named. Certainly it wasn't the subject matter that captured me. Born in the mid-1960s, I'm of the generation old enough to remember the Summer of Love, tie-die tee-shirts, and flower-painted VW vans, but not old enough to have been part of the era they are identified with. And even since then, when some aspect of those days rides into vogue on a wave of nostalgia, the period has seemed interesting to me only in the most general terms.But T. Coraghessan Boyle's important new novel is about the details: a 1970s California commune burning out a step or two faster than the hippie movement as a whole. The story has the obligatory bad LSD trip, and the predictable complaints about free love. But instead of becoming a cliché, it manages to reveal the ugly (and smelly) realities of commune life while drawing the reader in with something other than the kind of curiosity that makes people stare at car accidents. The prose is fast-paced, easy to read, and at times very funny, while also exposing a surprising level of human complexity and societal insight.I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise. As anyone who has read World's End knows, Mr. Boyle is one of contemporary literature's best pure storytellers, and he's returned to his former heights here. Trust me on that.

Deft, wise, assured, and entertaining, T.C. Boyle's new novel is a sure-fire wintertime treat. The time is 1970. Drop City is Norm Sender's commune outside of Santa Rosa, California. Actually, Drop City is a commune wannabe; at this point it's nothing more than a crash spot for a fluid population of counter culturists who come by, do a lot of drugs, groove on the free love, and wander on down the road when they need a real meal or a serious wash. Over time a core group has formed which includes the 40-ish Norm, Star and Marco. Star is smart even when she's stoned, and Marco is the only guy--pardon me, cat,--who actually does any physical work to improve things at Drop City. "It's all about the chicks," one cat says. Yep, it is up to the women to cook, clean, wash, and offer themselves freely to the men. If any female ever wakes up and realizes that the emperor has no clothes, Drop City will fall apart. That same summer, Sess Harder is on his way to town to try his luck as one of Pamela's three suitors. She's an Anchorage woman who wants to live in the wilderness and is looking for a husband to do it with. Sess is a trapper with a cabin eight miles upriver from the closest tiny settlement, and he, and the life, are exactly what Pamela wants. She has saved herself for this.Norm runs into trouble with the county and his ranch just about the same time that he inherits a cabin just downriver from Sess, and Drop City goes on the road to live off the land in northern Alaska. Obviously this is going to be a play-pattern mismatch, and Boyle has set up that both Sess and Marco have terrible tempers and checkered pasts. Both have an enemy. The two capable women, Star and Pamela, have very different beliefs. And winter comes very early in that part of Alaska.Having set up an intriguing culture clash, Boyle unspools with exquisite tension a story that does not develop as expected, yet everything plays out in a completely plausible fashion. "Drop City" works on many different levels, tickling the mind and satisfying the demanding reader.

I've had an uneasy relationship with the authorship of T. Coraghessan Boyle. He has always obviously been a gifted and imaginative writer with a great sense of both grandeur as well as an eye for the circumstances of society's more marginalized inhabitants. More than that, he has a great eye for, and ability to render in words, the physical surroundings of his characters-whether it be the beauty of the Alaskan wilderness as rendered in this book or, say, a desolate roadside ravine as so definitively described in The Tortilla Curtain. And, on top of all that, he's a great storyteller.However, there has always been an unpleasant aspect to Boyles work. Boyle has typically written as if angry at the unseen reader-as if he knows unauthorized persons are entering his world. There has been an aggressiveness and sharpness to his style that grates and irritates.Until now. With Drop City Boyle seems finally to be able to write without this underlying angst. The result is his first fully formed and truly accessible work. Finally the reader can sit back and enjoy the story. And the story is wonderful.With a keen eye and laser like efficiency Boyle recreates and dissects the "free-love" communal subculture of the 1970's. This is not the romanticized nostalgia trip of an aging hippie. This is as much a social commentary as it is a novel. Boyle seeks to-and succeeds in-demonstrating the incredible naiveté, hypocrisy and stupidity that was at the root of the communal life.As usual the story is intricately woven and rendered. The plot is well developed and constructed and plays out in a well-paced manner. The characters here are among Boyles best ever-fully formed, evocative, ingratiating in an albeit loathsome sort of way. It is, however, his mastery of his description and rendering of the physical environments and surroundings of the communes that really sets this Boyle effort apart. That and the maturity to write a story that allows the reader full entry.This is a great book.