Seeking Utopia
Rob Buchanan
Outside Magazine February 2003

In T.C. Boyle's latests affectionate satire, it's the summer of 1970 and the vibe at the hitherto idyllic Sonoma commune of Drop City is getting heavy, LATWIDNO—"Land Access to Which Is Denied No One, dig?"—has attracted a host of slobs and sponges, and county "fascists" are revving their bulldozers, The solution is obvious, at least to the communards: Move to the Alaskan bush. "You want to know what we're going to eat?" asks their unleader, Norm, conjuring banquets of salmon and blue berries. "We're going to eat the land because it's one big smorgasboard." On ono level, Drop City is an elaborate send-up of "To Build a Fire," with cotton-clad hippies standing in for Jack London's dour musher. But by adding another narrative—that of a lonely Alaskan trapper looking for a wife—and by charting the commune's rejection of LATWIDNO for PYWOB (Pull Your Weight Or Bail), Boyle raises meaty questions about that oldest of American dreams: building a utopia in the wild.