Going out with a splash
Lance Gould
New York Daily News 9/10/00

In "A Friend of the Earth," T .C. Boyle envisions the planet's gradual deterioration as a humorous, apocalyptic pie in the face.
The novel's protagonist, Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, is a long-suffering environmentalist - his daughter's name is Sierra. Meanwhile, his ex-wife, Andrea, is the Lucy Ricardo of eco-terrorists, always hatching some wacky, backfiring scheme to call attention to environmental destruction.

Like the time she persuades Ty and two other conspirators to join her in disrupting production at a lumber camp. The members of this Earth Forever! quartet dig a trench in the main artery of a logging area and cement themselves into it. The plan is to create headlines while halting the traffic in trees. But the media never get word, leaving the activists trapped and enduring the taunts of the locals.

In another brainstorm, Andrea suggests that she and Ty strip naked for reporters before fore going to live in the woods and off the land. But she doesn't tell him that a j journalist will be following them to record every move. "To see that we don't cheat," she explains. Meanwhile, the journalist enjoys "freeze-dried lobster thermidor [and] scallop enchiladas" while they stick it out with "scraped watercress out of the muck and toasted grasshoppers." Hmmm, naked people eating bugs, struggling in the wilderness without any comforts from home - no "toothpaste or dental floss, aspirin, Desenex ... English muffins, canned tuna, chocolate [or] vodka" - while a third party observes and details their travails. Sound familiar, "Survivor" fans?

It is getting increasingly difficult to satirize anything modern, be it pop culture or political activism, because by the time it's down on paper, it may well have already have been scripted for "reality" television. Boyle similarly breaks little comedic ground in parodying Michael Jackson, which he does with his Maclovio Pulchris character, a freakish California-based pop star who owns a menagerie and is rarely seen without his hat and sunglasses.

Where Boyle scores is with his sharp observations on our unhealthy planet's worsening condition.- In the scenes set in 2025, the rain is uneasing all sea life is presumed extinct ("except maybe zebra mussels"), and the Earth is so eternally wet that the "muck is tugging at [Ty's] gum boots like a greedy sucking mouth, a mouth that's going to pull me all the way down, eventually"

Global warming, the melting Arctic ice cap and rising waters pose very real threats, as this novel indicates. To make its pages come truly alive, try reading it in the bathtub.