Taking On Wilderness In Nature Or People T. Coraghessan Boyle has a thing about survivalism and physical hardship. For his characters, battling the elements and wrestling a living from the cruel hand of nature is somehow intrinsic to their realization of the American dream. Whether it's an illegal immigrant from Japan, forced to forage for survival in the bug-infested marshes of a small coastal island off Georgia (“East is East”); an apocalypse-fearing survivalist holed up in a Montana cabin with his family (“Greasy Lake”); or a pair of environmentalists spending a month alone in the wilderness, naked as Adam and Eve (“A Friend of the Earth”), his people find themselves forced by circumstances or their own quixotic dreams to test themselves against Mother Nature, to find their way, like the earliest pioneers, in a new world. The hippies and fur trappers in Mr. Boyle's latest novel, “ Drop City ,” are no exception. Though the novel, set in 1970, is in some respects about the culture clash between a group of flower children and the grizzled locals in a tiny Alaskan community, the book is essentially a variation on Mr. Boyle's 1984 novel, “Budding Prospects,” in which a former hippie and his pals try to make a go of a marijuana farm in the California hills while contending with the local yokels, the California highway patrol and the perils of rain, fire, drought and filth. The difference between “Budding Prospects” and “ Drop City ” is a measure of how Mr. Boyle has matured as an artist in the last two decades: pure satire and rollicking farce have given way to a more subtle and sympathetic brand of comedy; manic verbal pyrotechnics to more sustained storytelling verve. Like so many earlier Boyle characters, the resident of the Drop City commune buy into the whole 60's trip: hash in their brownies, acid in their O.J., funky hats and beaded hair bands on their heads. Brotherhood-sisterhood is the mantra at Drop City , and free love is de rigueur. Its residents have come from all over the country, spurning the “plastic society” of suburban sprawl, packaged foods and bourgeois values for a new life dedicated to love and peace and freedom in the wilds of California. Drop City 's utopian ideals, however, quickly founder in a host of practical problems like sewage disposal, zoning laws and hassles from the authorities. Several new arrivals in Drop City sexually assault a 14-yearold girl. There are accusations of racism flung back and forth among the residents and fractious debates about the future of the community, until Norm, its founder and leader, announces the Drop City is moving to Alaska , the last frontier and promised land, where its members can write the second chapter to their dream of starting over. As might be expected, Mr. Boyle uses his merciless sociological eye and antic sense of humor to send up the self-delusions and flaky pretensions of the Drop City denizens. Though this might sound like shooting fish in a barrel—exposing the sexism that flourishes beneath the talk of sexual freedom and the nostalgia for the comforts of bourgeois life that lurks beneath the commune's self-righteous proselytizing—he manages to make their hypocrisies funny and oddly touching. And while many of the subsidiary Drop City residents verge perilously close to parody—a bubble-headed nymphomaniac; and earth mother who lets her kids take acid; a humorless former art student; and a mercenary hipster who charges tourists a fee to take photographs of him “in full hippie regalia”—Mr. Boyle's three main characters gradually emerge as fully realized individuals. There's Star, the former Paulette Regina Starr, “her name and being shrunk down to four essential letters now,” a pretty misfit whose naïveté and sentimentality are matched by a strong will; her former lover and road companion, Pan, a feckless pragmatist out for a good time; and her new boyfriend Marco, a draft dodger who's learned a sort of Emersonian self-reliance from his years on the road. Intercut with the story of Star, Marco, Pan and the rest of the Drop City gang is the story of Sess Harder, a hard-bitten Alaskan fur trapper involved in a bitter feud with a rival named Joe Bosky, and Sess's new bride, Pamela, a spirited young woman who grew up in the bush and who has recently decided to opt out of the city life for an ascetic life in the wild. Eager to eke out a living in the snowy wilds of northern Alaska, where the temperature drops to 40 below zero and the nearest town is more than 10 miles away, the Harders will suddenly find themselves living within shouting distance of Drop City North, where rock ‘n' roll, dope smoking and all-night partying are the rule. Mr. Boyle extracts considerable comedy from the culture war between Drop City residents and their neighbors, while also making the reader appreciate the two camps' shared impulses: their rebellion against the establishment and their very American desire to construct new lives, tabula rasa. He is even better at evoking the daily hardships both the hippies and the locals face in dealing with the onset of brutal Alaskan winter. He credibly evokes the beauty and danger of this untamed land, and he limns the rituals of hunting, trapping, planting and canning with a wry mixture of amusement and respect. Though the violent ending of the book is foreshadowed with a heavy hand, Mr. Boyle's sheer brio as a storyteller and his delight in recounting his characters' adventures quickly win the reader over. He has written a novel that is not only an entertaining romp through the madness of the counterculture 70's, but a stirring parable about the American dream as well. |