Hippie Chic

I made it through Drop City, leaving hippies and trappers alike in the endless night of an Alaskan December. But the kind of endless night that still allows for the Northern Lights. And another summer to come.

While logging into Blogger, I was trying to think of how exactly to describe T.C. Boyle's writing and his evocation of another world. The best I could do was "pretty." There's something very elegant in his prose, and also attractive. Sensual. But all just to the extent that I would label "pretty."

He keeps up his juxtaposition of the two different groups who have gone back to nature, and handles the scandal of the inevitable clash as unexpectedly anticlimactic. Which works better than the "and neither group will ever be the same again" cinematic b.s. that I was expecting. So bravo.

But above all, what kept me most engaged was the novel as a tale of two couples. Star and Marco, Sess and Pamela are together before they really even know one another - the other that they love is more an archetype than a person. But through the course of the novel, the lover becomes real, and their relationships mature in a way that is, again, somehow rather pretty.

And going back to nature? Despite Boyle's best efforts, it still seems pretty damn romantic.