The Prime of T. Coraghessan Boyle T. Coraghessan Boyle is back ... and better than ever! Next month the novelist's latest work, The Road to Wellville, will be published by Viking, and it promises to be one of the hottest reads of 1993. Inspired by the career of John Harvey Kellogg, "the inventor of the corn flake and peanut butter, not to mention some 75 other gastrically correct foods," and his world: famous Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, the book is set in the years 1907 and 1908. However, given the chronic obsession Americans have with health fads, and considering the vocalness of this generadon's "health Nazis" (to use writer Peggy Noonan's term), there's nothing dusty about Boyle's book. The 44-yearold author has lived for a number of years in California, but his roots still run deep in the Peekskill area where he grew up. Readers of the novel will meet such Valley "residents" as huckster Charlie Ossining, who talked "Westchester socialite" Mrs. Amelia Hookstratten out of $3,000; Will and Eleanor Lightbody of Peterskill, and "Miss Muntz, the greenish girl, from Poughkeepsie." (You'll remember that the novelist invented Peterskill in one of his earlier works, World's End.) Boyle's favorite character? 'Will Lightbody is the hero of the book and has a kinship with Tom Crane from World's End," Boyle said in an interview with Hudson Valley. He added, however, that writing Kellogg's character was "the most fun." Rolling Stone is excerpting this immensely enjoyable novel this month. Meanwhile, Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning) has written "a screenplay of the book and is expected to direct the filming this fall, in upstate New York. It is due for release in the spring of 1994. Next month, while on a promotional tour, Boyle will spend a few weekends visiting his beloved Hudson Valley and old friends. If you want to see the novelist, drop down to the Manhattan Theater Club at 8 p.m. on May 3, when he will do a reading with Susan Fromberg Schaeffer, or visit Central Park's summer stage July 8 for another reading, also at 8 p.m. Boyle has reached new literary heights with this novel. The Road to Wellville is destined to become an American classic. |