Diet fads provide fodder for comic masterpiece Long before the word "cholesterol" was widely known. or possibly even invented; long before such terms as "polyunsaturated fats" were found anywhere but chemistry textbooks; back when "rough-age" was what happened to kids who got into a fight and "bulk" was a description of the attributes of wrestlers or weight lifters-even then, Americans indulged in food faddism very much like the food fads of today. One need only go back to Battle Creek, AWL, in the early years of this century to find food fads raging. The success of the Kellogg and Post cereal empires brought to the city others who thought they could get rich quick by producing the right combination of grains to appeal to the desire on the part of the American people for food that would prolong their lives. No doubt con men found the city an attractive target in seeking to exploit the persistent human yearning for a food that would provide the qualities of the Fountain of Youth. All this serves as a background to T. Coraghessan Boyle's new novel, but Boyle, like all writers of genius, quickly departs from mere history to build a dream world of riotous imagination and laughter run wild. Like all great writers, Boyle both makes use of history and departs from it when it suits his purpose. The result is a work of comic genius that only Boyle, among today's American writers, could conceive. He is our nation's new answer to the two great Englishborn comic writers of the 20th century, P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh. It is no more than we might expect from Boyle, who has been building up to this, his masterpiece, with a few splendid books in the same vein over the past few years-particularly the short story collection "If the River Was Whiskey" and the novels "World's End" and "East Is East." In "The Road to Wellville," he finally has it all together. The result is a great novel that takes history into the world of fantasy satire into savagery and extends the foibles of a few to all mankind-beginning with what we eat and shifting to the more universal theme of what we're like. There is a new generation of American novelists out there, ready to take over from the Bellows, the Updikes and the Mailers. Boyle is foremost of this new lot. Boyle mixes real and fictional characters and gives real ones attributes that history neglected to supply them with. thus improving on history. Such figures as the nation's two great cereal magnatesW.K. Kellogg and C.W. Post-make cameo appearances in Boyle's novel, and it is a saying reputed to Post that produces the book's title. But the dominant figure of Boyle's Battle Creek-other than the city itself--is one Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Kellogg is described as a brother of the Kellogg who ran the Corn Flakes company. and whether this is an invention or simply a historical embellishment could not be immediately determined. At any rate. Boyle's John Kellogg is a monster. He runs a clinic in Battle Creek :n 1907 catering to the nation's wealthy. These people surrender their souls to Kellogg and are treated as slaves. They may not eat anything except the food he prescribes. mainly cereal products. He not only rules what they eat but what they do. Sexual intercourse, even between married couple is strictly forbidden. Enemas are mandatory. sometimes several a day. There are even Nazi-like forced operations. There are three subplots-all hilarious and all enormously complex. One deals with the efforts of John Kellogg's villainous adopted son, George, to bring-his father down. Another centers around Will Lightbody, who is trying to win back the affections of his wife, Eleanor, while curing his stomach disorder at the Kellogg sanatorium. Finally, there is the getrich-quick scheme of an inept hustler with the name of Charley Ossining. whose efforts to manufacture a new cereal called Per-Fo #13C come to grief at this tasting session: "Bookbinder solemnly scooped up a bowl for each of them, resembl(ing) shavings of green wood with fluted edges.. the milk went round the spoons were dipped.. With an excruciating rumble of palate, sinus and esophagus, he brought up a wad of Per-Fo #13C and spat it into the palm of his hand. 'Christ Jesus!' he gasped, and a spasm passed over his body. 'I'm poisoned!' In the next moment he had the bottle pressed to his lips as a palliative, and each of the taste testers, old Mrs. Bookbinder foremost among them, quietly spat out his or her mouthful into napkin, bowl or palm. Noises of relief, surprise, sorrow, panic and disgust circulated around the table. Bookbinder gravely rose, collected the bowls and scraped them, one after another, into the slop buckets for the pigs. Then it was on to batch #21A." ".. It was five samples this time, and the spoons moved sluggishly in the depths of the bowls. In the end. the hogs got the whole lot ... and the saddest thing was, even they wouldn't eat it." Boyle's imagination is always alive and manages to elevate the chaotic to the level of high art. This is very fine writing indeed. |