I'm in mourning. I finished Drop City last night and no longer can I journey to Alaska to be with TC Boyle's richly developed characters and the dramas they're caught up in. TC Boyle had to have been in a commune in the 60s to write with the insight he has. As someone who has abandoned an idealistic lifestyle in order to meet the practical necessities of family life, I found this book vindicating.

Not unlike some of the characters in Drop City I found myself enjoying the ride until about 75% of the way through when I began to feel something was amiss. What it was was the same feeling I have gotten from other work by Boyle. A lack of depth in character that leaves me feeling non plussed about all situations they experience.
I feel that he is a master at setting a sense of place, but it seems that the characters in his books are too one dimensional and tend to fit stereotypes strictly rather than embodying more nuance that would make them more interesting.
The potential in this story, for me, seemed to lie in the comparisons between the world views of Sess and Pamela vs the worldviews of the members of Drop City. Where these different ideas of going back to the land aligned and conflicted seemed rich for exploration. Also the conflict presented by Franklin and Lester early on presented an interesting theme - how would the commune react to the problems they brought? How wouold this be similar or different to the Sess/Joe Bosky conflict?
I would have enjoyed this so much more has those two themes been explored more deeply.

Already a clear-cut five-star, even before I finish, TC Boyle's ripe and agitated revisit to the hippie extremes of the late '60s offers both a celebration and a slam. DROP CITY is the first novel of his I've tasted in a while; for years I'd sampled only the sharply-cornered ironies, their furniture often surreal, of his magazine fiction. Those always cracked the imaginative whip impressively, and trapezed their way through some breathtaking analogies, but this novel puts both those gifts on display and more, taking everything to sonar depths, scary depths, of character and culture. What the novel has to reveal about the exploitation of the counterculture's women, for instance, would elevate Boyle to the stature of a feminist icon -- except he always couches that exploitation in painful individual weakness and drug-addled confusion. The way he dramatizes the inarticulate fumbling of adolescence, and the mistakes it leads to, could make the author some sort of Guide for Youth -- except his monosyllabic exchanges, freighted with hormones and unspoken private histories, are always so hilarious, as are swift, palpable, perfect descriptions. Plus, jeepers, how the plot moils! I'm writing this shortly after getting through a central climactic brouhaha, bloody yet comic, each complication erupting out of the blue yet dead right for the moment and the people involved, and I had to sit back, yank my head out the 360-degree kaleidoscope, and ask: what has he been smoking?

Boyle provides us with a wonderful realistic inside view of the warts of 1960's communal living. We've been dished up rosy back to the land paeans and conservative diatribes blaming the fall of western civilization on hippy culture but we have precious little insight into the complicated day to day reality. Boyle can be counted on to focus his take-no-prisoners microscope on how us humans acted, well, so human, in the 60's. Boyle talks about being writer in the rock and roll tradition and there is that exuberant kick out the jams element in his writing. And I like how he mixes his dark and light palette and this novel is no exception.

It was jarring however to come across so many anachronisms in the novel. Did Boyle do that on purpose or did the editors really miss the boat? I'm talking about references to Tofutti, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Red Zinger, none of which existed in 1970, when the novel is set. Also, K-Mart only had a few stores at the time and I don't think tofu was that readily available.

T.C. Boyle renders a hippie commune in California like none other I've read about. He goes inside the life, plucks out the personalities, the habits, the resulting chaos in expert fashion. Like all things communal, it starts off well enough, but the problems soon mount and they range from mandatory sewage to rape accusations. The members have to move to survive and the leader has a destination in mind: Alaska.

Alaska forgives less than California in terms of the environment and in the colder northern latitudes, things unravel. The archetypes wear thin, lose their communal code, and abandon fantasy for reality. A core lives on and this is redeeming for all involved, including the reader.

Boyle conveys the sense of place as well as the interpersonal relationships in expert fashion. He brings these people to life with less subtlety but more realism than a less talented writer might have. At the same time, his plot gives these characters room to make their mistakes and triumphs. I'd recommend this book for a sociology class, just to provoke thought and commentary. A very good read.