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two responses to the sixties/seventies
“A hippie commune in california gets bulldozed by the county, so the hippies pull up stake and move the commune to the interior of Alaska.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-11-09.
A youngish man woos and marries a young woman who is looking for a man that can really live off the land and away from the social disorders of the sixties and seventies.
these two stories are told independently for the first half of the book, until they collide - fantastic book. incredibly well written. the characters are all well developed, but mostly don't evolve, with two exceptions. it ends predictably, but it's enjoyable getting there.
it painted an honest pictures of hippies, which was great, coming from an aging hippie. too often they get painted up as beautiful creatures of light that were destroyed by America- this book portrayed them honestly- as a true piece of american culture, but also with the less than admirable truths- the fact that they were flakey, mooched off the govt by living on food stamps and welfare checks- that they stole and cheated and denied their own weaknesses, even when they stare them in face. blech.
one of the characters- a guy, a cat- Ronny, no, Pan he liked to be called now - is one of the most contemptable characters in all of literature. put five years on Holden Caufield, and make him a hippie. the unjustifed self-righteousness - the self pity- the nastiness disguised as whatever-the-heck Holden was about- Ronny/Pan is a great addition to American letters.” -
love it
“I absolutely love this book. I listened to it in audio form 3 or 4 times and decided to buy it in actual book form so that I can more easily force friends and family to read it, too. His writing is fantastic, and though the story does not in any way glorify or gloss over the realities of the lives portrayed within (hippies in a commune and life in the Alaskan wilderness), I still love to revisit these places for the hope and possibility that it could work. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-10-02. -
Boyle is Boyle But I Enjoyed This One
“I first discovered Boyle when I read Water Music years ago, and initially was enthralled by his wittiness. His hipster irony struck me at the time as a new and very entertaining voice. I also recall that after the first two hundred pages the sensation, along with the plot, wore thin, and I look back on it now as an exercise in very clever but insubstantial fiction writing; I can't remember anything about it other than what I've just said. I then read Budding Prospects, found it somewhat less of the same. Picking up Drop City, I wondered whether he'd progressed. Yes and no.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-09-12.
A coming of age tale of hippies back in the day migrating to Alaska. It should come as a surprise to no one knowing this basic premise that this is a cautionary tale. And that's part of the problem. Boyle simply can't resist his impulse to riff on people's foibles. He's very, very good at it. Select any type and he can create a cartoonish character that illustrates its embarrassing character flaws. Here, his hippies are caricatures of how straight people viewed them back in their heyday. Every stereotype is here for the mocking--naive, dirty, self-indulgent, hypocritical. Sex all the time. Dope all the time (but only the cartoon hippie drugs--pot and LSD). It's as though he once had great affection for this segment of the culture--once was part of it--but later wanted everyone to know he'd outgrown it. As soon as you begin reading about the silly, drug-addled bunch, with names like Star and Sunshine and Sky Dog, you just know they're going to learn their lesson--and he's just the one to teach them, with a little help from Mother Nature.
So in that way, Boyle remains Boyle. But in truth, once I got past this, I really enjoyed Drop City. He's taken more care with the plot, and I wanted to see how he'd bring it all together. And he had something to say--although he may say it by presenting a series of cheap shots--about character. Although the players he doesn't much respect are, as ever, more finely drawn than the characters he does, he does try to show us what he considers the more admirable sides of human nature; all is not ridicule. He creates some characters with depth and humanity that we feel we might like to meet, and we miss them when they're gone.
I also enjoyed his descriptions of Alaska. I wouldn't know, but he seemed to have done his research, and I at least imagined I was learning some interesting information about life in a place I've never been.
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Drop City: America: USA: Planet Earth
“T. C. Boyle has given us a modern western novel in Drop City.
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-08-01.
This is very much a frontier tale. One set just 40 years ago in the somewhat still wild west.
The story evolves around a Northern California hippie commune and the last of the pioneers, trappers, and adventurers in Alaska.
It begins with the communards on inherited property near Santa Rosa California. They are, in a sense, and definitely see themselves as, modern pioneers. They are exploring the outer reaches of communal living, free love and the inter world of the psychedelic experience. They are young and see themselves as special, the hipsters, the chosen, and above all the rules of the straight world. They are going to build a better world. Most of them are still in the process of extended adolescent rebellion form their straight parents and the conventional world in which their parents live. They want to get away from all that, from their families. They have found a new family. It even has an "older cat" in his thirties, Norm, who serves as the "Family's" father figure. Norm is the one with the property, the VW micro-bus and a seemingly unlimited amount of money to keep the thing going. But really, as we look back at them and hippie culture through this novel, we see that they are more of the same, very American, very much filled with the notions of special privilege that effect, and infects much of American life. Hippie culture is taken seriously in the novel. Boyle doesn't directly rant, criticize or make fun of them. He just gives them enough rope to do the job themselves.
Much of the story centers around a love triangle in this "free love " world. Here we see that there is a gap between the ideal notion of free love and the all to human jealousies that undermine the ideal. The triangle involves a couple who traveled across the country together and join the commune; Ronnie (Pan) and Paulette (Star). The third is Marco who is a reader, a little bit brighter than the rest and the most sympathetic character in the book.
The commune also has visitors, new members from the ghetto, a couple of young black men from San Francisco. There is a incident involving the black men in a outer building on the land Drop City. This is the first crisis of the book and Ronnie, though innocent is also implicated. There are unresolved racial tensions. The blacks stay in the periphery, literally the back house, and never really become part of the group, they are apart, quite like the larger society. They are in the commune and at the same time not, but follow along. This could be exactly like the history of black in the larger American culture. A part of it, yet apart.
Things go sour in California and they all head to Alaska with dreams and high hopes. In Alaska they are neighbors of a young homesteading couple. This couple is used by Boyle to show the realities of homesteading in the very unforgiving environment of Alaska. We are also introduced to a long standing rivalry with tragedy waiting to happen. The hippies learn the power of the reality of the harsh unforgiving natural world in Alaska.
This is a fine novel. The set and tone of the hippy characters is very correct. They are just right. The dramas are interesting and though one can see the tragic ending, winter in the 60 below zero coming, it is a fun enthralling ride. The novel is sort of Into the Wild and Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test rolled into one. It also shows us the downside of America idealism and the lack of wisdom of youth.
I strongly recommend Drop City. A very enjoyable ,thought provoking and entertaining read. T C Boyle has a very smooth prose style, that just carries the reader along like a canoe trip downstream on the river. ” -
Expectations met
“The legos were all there and a joy to put together. It was what we expected.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2009-07-12.
