Good intentions

The Road to Wellville - T. Coraghessan Boyle (Penguin Books, 1993)

I have a fairly sensitive digestive tract, so the idea of a whole novel dedicated to Kellogg's Sanitarium, where the wealthy went to be indoctrinated with vegetarian ideals and all manners of enemas and the like.... well, it didn't strike me as the best plan.

But T.C. Boyle is a pleasure, and so I survived the icky parts that made me uncomfortable. Here we go -- we're at the turn of the last century, when Kellogg and Post and the like were making up new cereals and pills and everyone was a health nut looking for the key to living healthfully (and forever). Sound familiar? [Actually, one of the funniest things to me about reading this was how half of Kellogg's meals had major amounts of gluten.]

John Harvey Kellogg is a major character, as self-righteous and awful as you'd probably expect. Will Lightbody is one of his patients, dragged to the Sanitarium by his wife, who throws herself wholeheartedly into whatever quack strikes her fancy. Charles Ossining has also come to Michigan to make his fortune in the health industry, except he finds that staying afloat in a glutted market is more difficult than he may have imagined.

And the games begin. A whole feast of minor (and mid-major) characters flood the stage, and an awful lot happens in a year. And each character appears on a roller coaster of ups and downs, suffering wild setbacks and imagining massive victories. Which is particularly exciting, since they are essentially all working at odds.

On a side note, was struck by Goodloe Bender, the confidence man. It is probably coincidence that he shares a last name with Ilf & Petrov's Ostap Bender, the comic con man of the early Soviet era. But I thought of him throughout. And since I've also been working on a project to organize my Russian books, now I want more than ever to go back and see that Bender in action.

Festival of Books, Day 1

It was that time of year again, where I drop everything and spend the weekend traipsing around UCLA. I was choosier this year about panels, but still spent 8 hours at the Festival on Saturday.

My morning began with a trip around the grounds before heading to "Food Fight: When Did Eating Get Controversial?" moderated by Times columnist Russ Parsons. Joining him were three professors: sociologist Barry Glassner (USC), nutrition scientist Marion Nestle (NYU), and journalist Michael Pollan (Cal). Discussion ranged from GMOs to industrial farming to the rise of farmers markets to the cultural identities involved in eating. And probably more. Calories and corn made several appearances as well. I was utterly taken with Nestle, who was joyful and enthusiastic. I imagine she is amazing in the classroom (not to imply that the others aren't). Several books going on my list after this.

Next up, a trip across campus to the oddly named "Fiction: Jumping Off the Page," I guess referring to the vivid nature of these writer's prose. And the writers? A uniformly witty crew: Chris Bohjalian, Peter Orner, Gary Shteyngart (the only of the writers I knew before), and Marianne Wiggins, whose name was familiar but unplaced. The authors discussed their upcoming/most recent books, their writing habits and styles, how they are best friends with their editors, and... oh, and lots of comments about various quirks and neuroses. I want to read all of their books now. And I kind of have a crush on Orner.

Next came more wandering and time for reading the paper. And finally, a reading by T.C. Boyle. He read the story "Beat," a pulsing account of a adolescent boy's rendezvous with Jack Kerouac and his cohorts. He said, and I forget how often this is true, that there is something so valuable about hearing a work in the author's own voice. I would add that hearing it at all is a different and important way to experience fiction. Cadence and timing become important, and it's utterly unlike reading, where I see at least 5 or 6 words (if not more) at once. So that was cool, and of course he is himself an epitome of sorts of cool. And therefore a good way to end the day.

Day 1 Purchases:
"Save a Child, Save the World" t-shirt from Skirball, supporting International Relief Committee work in Darfur.

Day 1 Swag:
Ghiradelli chocolate squares
free copies of The Nation
soundtrack to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, coming soon to HBO (plus bookmarks!)
BookTV totebag
Walt Disney Concert Hall magnet
Organic basil seeds from Toyota
Shake and light flashlight (also from Toyota)

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.

Turn on, tune in, drop out (Mom, did I get that right?)

Finally, Erin's Library has a book to report! Now that the Move and the Cold are in the rearview mirror (mostly, at least), I have been able to pick up a book and get some serious reading done. The choice? T.C. Boyle's Drop City, a novel about two different communities of drop outs.

The parallels between the two are pretty cool. The novel is set in the late 1960s, so one group consists of your stereotypical hippies. And since I know my Ken Kesey and Merry Pranksters pretty well, no real surprises there. Although Boyle is skillful in getting inside the heads of his three hippie protagonists to show that in some ways they are just as square as I am - and that is always reassuring. Their counterparts are a some off-the-gridders in BFN, Alaska. Except for booze, everything is freshly caught, skinned, stuffed, and built. They are self-reliant in a way the commune is not, and their relationship with nature is more authentic. And of course - though I haven't gotten that far yet - these drop outs are about to collide.

When I was first reading, I thought I preferred the Alaskans to the hippies, but as I read, I realized that I didn't. And Boyle isn't setting it up for the readers to identify more with one group than another. At least I don't think so. His real motivations will be revealed later, when Free Love and Northern Exposure come face to face. I can't wait.