Get It Now Drop City Narrated By T. Coraghessan Boyle Disseminated As Digital Copy

hippie commune called Drop City gets driven out of California and decides to try making it in Alaska, Wild and crazy! If you've ever dreamed of homesteading in Alaska, take heed and be prepared!

Some interesting observations about how human nature played a role in destroying their utopian dream:
Though they espoused 'peace and love,' they frequently got into fightsmany because, though they said they believed in the concept of 'free love,' jealousy erupted when their current love slept with another.

Though the women did not want to be at all like their mothers, they fell into the traditional roles of cook and housekeeper in the commune, At least one of the men realized that without 'women' filling those roles, the whole system would fall apart, No one ever seemed to imagine that a man might do those tasksexcept to 'grill steaks' on one occasion,
Though they didn't want 'rules,' they began running into situations where leadership, rules and discipline would have been helpful, Like whenof the people did all the work, Like when a gang rape of an underage girl occurred, Like when thefts and vandalism became a problem, Like when plans for survival during an Alaskan winter would have been helpful, Oh, people!

usageographychallengeweektwo: ALASKA
bookvipersbookhunter: CITY




The collapse of the sixties free love movement is perhaps the greatest defeat Western society has endured.
The flower children believed in a world unshackled to government control and whitecollar slavery, they believed in an autonomous collective of free love, drugs and sex, By listening to the Doors and smoking hash in Californian tepees, they hoped to bring about a social revolution, to overthrow the squares by doing nothing whatsoever, Then again, they only believed in this because their bourgeois parents had the misfortune to raise them in a time of plenty, giving them the freedom to run off and party in multicoloured pants with a wad of hardearned notes in their tote bags.
I hate hippies.

Drop City has little sympathy for the hippie movement as it cocks a snook at the idle brothers and sisters whose goal was, essentially, to avoid work at all costs and puff on drug pipes.
Nowadays, hippies are known as PhD or liberal arts students, and the drug consumption remains the same, Centring on a large cast of caricatured freelovers, Boyles detached narrative style has the surgical cynicism and breathless rush of Foster Wallace, with the compassionate satire of Kingsley Amis, Although his narrator goes a sentence or three too far with each description, he hits a note of

buzzy mania, perfect for the vibrant rush of the era, though obviously quite infuriating in its excess.


As the commune based on this real commune in southern Colorado battles nasty Nam dropouts and a planned council demolition, the group hotfoot it to Alaska, where they take refuge in their icedout bus and numerous wellinsulated shacks.
Star, the least loose of the women, is somewhat the centre of the novel, though Boyles narrator is more of your topdown movethemarionettes model, less personally committed, and little genuine empathy is achieved for any of these freeloaders and grizzly weirdoes.
Its a fun ride, regardless,
Full essay can be found at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography cclapcenter, com.

Just like anyone else who is a lover of great books, I find myself sometimes with a desire to become a "completist" of certain authors that is, to have read every book that author has ever written.
This new series of essays chronicles that attempt,

So first, a confession, that I still have a long way to go before becoming a completist of author TC Boyle this is only the second novel of his I've read, to tell you the truth, the other one being The Road to Wellville, possibly his most famous because of themovie version starring Anthony Hopkins, Matthew Broderick, Bridget Fonda, John Cusack and more.
Oh, but what a novel! Who knew that a contemporary author could paint such a vivid picture of events that happened nearly a century ago in this case, the formation of the various health spas in the upper Midwest at the turn of theth century, which for those who don't know were the groups who accidentally invented our modern breakfast cereals In fact, this is one of the things that Boyle is most known for as an author for his meticulous and exacting research into whatever time period he is writing about, and whatever crazy events were happening during that time period.
Now combine this with Boyle's ability to effortlessly jump between comedy and drama, his masterful touch as a story plotter, and a personal writing style that is both unique and never manages to call attention to itself, and you've got yourself one very admired and awardwinning novelist indeed.


And of the eleven novels that Boyle has now written, arguably one of his bestknown ones is's Drop City, mostly because it's about the American hippie movement of thes and 's, of which Boyle was a part of himself in his own youth having gotten his Bachelor's degree in, for those who don't know.
And yes, just like Wellville, this novel also features a semiwacky concept to propel the story forward in this case, it's about a group of young people who start their own "free love" commune at the end of the 's the aforementioned Drop City, which gets its start in California after founding member Norm inherits a large chunk of land from a recently expired relative.
And yes, just like Wellville, Boyle uses this semiwacky concept for both humorous and dramatic purposes to sometimes viciously make fun of how unequipped most of these idealistic flower children are to actually "live off the land," while still legitimately admiring their desire to do such a thing, and arguing why such a desire is ultimately a good thing that all of us should at least partly aspire to.


And of course, this being Boyle, the fun doesn't stop there about halfway through the book, in fact, the residents of Drop City get tired of all the hassles of being in California the constant police harassment, the endless hippie mooches, and decide on a whim to move to Alaska instead, where Norm has access to yet more land owned by a relative, a grizzled furtrapper uncle who has recently retired and moved to Seattle.
And thus does Boyle get the chance to expand the story even further, by introducing the existing population of that small Alaskan town as characters themselves, and by hopping back and forth between the two groups' storylines until the moment the hippies actually get to Alaska and the plots suddenly merge.


In fact Omg! That was soooo amazing man,
This made me feel as though I was born in the wrong decade, of this I am certain! I was meant to be apart of this hippy commune, I am sure I would have contributed more then my fair share and added a different perspective of knowledge that could have helped them battle their cruel Alaskan winter,
This author captured the heart, mind and soul of the Hippy so perfectly!
This was my FAVORITE read of the year by far, But of course all good things had to come to an end, and man, did this really came to a horribly bitter end, I am sad and hoped there would have turned out to be a better outcome, but the odds were against those carefree flower children! I graduated from high school in, the height of the freelove/summeroflove/hippie movement.
And living and growing up in Utah, I always thought that I had missed out on this, I didn't go to San Francisco and live the lifestyle in Haight Ashbury and Berkeley and no, I didn't make it to Woodstock, But after reading Boyle's superb novel, Drop City, I'm actually glad that I missed out on this misguided movement,

The novel takes place inand alternates between the tale of a California commune near the Russian River and a group of trappers and bushmen living and surviving at the farthest outreaches of Alaska.
The group in California is living the life most of them always wanted, dropped out from society with no laws or rules, smoking pot and using LSD, and sleeping with most anyone willing.
But then the leader of the group, Norm, who owns the ranch they are living on, runs into trouble with the local community when he is unable to pay his taxes.
As a result, he comes up with a plan to move the entire group to Alaska where his uncle had a cabin used as a base for his trapping operation.
Well, they make it to Alaska using an old school bus but do they have the stuff to survive The group is mostly naive about the hardships there especially when it gets tobelow zero in the winter.


The book is full of memorable characters including Sess Harder and his wife Pamela who have dropped out of society in Alaska but can achieve their existence through hard work.
Sess and Pamela do make friends with some of the hippie group but conflicts with others still exist, The conditions of the commune in California and later in Alaska were pretty deplorable as described by Boyle, This included a lack of sewer facilities, meager food and subsistence, a lack of bathing by the group, and the inevitable conflicts that come up, As I said earlier, I'm glad I missed out on this experience! Overall though, this was an excellent novel full of emotions from humor to grief, High recommendation. This is a proper, juicy, big novel, I love Boyle's writing style feels somehow like oldfashioned storytelling and it's one if those novels you can just sink into, Saying that though, it is a bit long, And I think I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd read it on a long train journey or something, as it's difficult to get back into if you're just reading a few pages here and there.


It's a book about a commune that moves to Alaska I felt cosy reading about fires and stew in cold cabins, but the whole thing has an edge of darkness and imminent disaster.
The ending is kind of something and nothing, I hope they're all ok out there!
Drop City was a solid read, Tracing the journeys of members of a commune and the lives of those native Alaskans they encounter, the novel is both social commentary and strong narrative, Evocative both of communal living and the pioneering lifestyle, the prose was fluid,

More interesting, though, was the decidedly apolitical view of both lifestyles whch are outside the status quo, While pointing out the limitations of homesteading and relative anarchy, one never felt the author was lauding one choice over the other,

The more interesting of the two trajectories was the story of Sess and Pamela, a woodsman and his new wife who advertised for a husband, If there was one fault with the book it was that their relationship was less explored than some of those in the commune which became predictable after a while, Eine wunderbare Geschichte ganz im Boyle'schen Style über die Hippiekolonie Drop City, die von Kalifornien nach Alaska zieht und sich dort den Herausforderungen der Natur stellt, In ausgezeichneter Qualität wird der Alltag des Kommunenlebens geschildert von den Drogen über freien Sex und Versorgungs bzw, Entsorgungsproblemen bis hin zum Lagerkoller, Alle Figuren sind sehr dicht und detailgetreu entwickelt,

Leider war für mich der Roman etwas mühsam, was immer gleich daran zu erkennen ist, dass ich für ein Buch mehr als,Wochen benötige.
Seiten weniger würden die Qualität des Romans erheblich verbessern, ich muss wirklich nicht an jedem einzelen Jointzug, jeder ACIDLimo beteiligt sein und brauche auch nicht an jeder Raststätte auf dem Weg von Drop City Süd nach Alaska einkehren.
Mit einer gezielten Reduktion der Seiten und Szenen würde die Geschichte erheblich an Tempo und Elan gewinnen, Aber dass kennt man ja von Boyle eh und auch von vielen anderen Amerikanern, ohne überbordende epische Breite gehts einfach nicht,

Fazit: Guter Roman super Story, aber ein bisschen weniger davon wär besser gewesen, This book is a gas! I thoroughly enjoyed it, It is hilarious and a great adventure story which you wouldn't expect from a bunch of goofy hippies, There are quite a number of books set aroundin counterculture milieus that give us the stories of radical political groups, who live in squats in the cities and who are busy planning abductions or bomb attacks for the good of mankind.
Such as 'The good terrorist' by Doris Lessing, or 'My Revolutions' by Hari Kunzu, Fine books, but not hilarious in the slightest, 'Drop City' is a far cry from political activism and introduces us to this commune in sunny California where people are just lazing around, smoking dope and listening to psychodelic music all day long.
Exactly like you would imagine the majority of the hippies in sunny communes in California were doing! Norm, the leader is the leader solely by virtue of the fact that he ownes the property and provides the cash to buy groceries.
He is a great talker and has no problems getting the girls, although he doesn't believe in brushing his teeth or personal hygiene in general and his glasses are all taped up.
We get to know a wide variety of the people sharing this sunny communal life, ranging from very sweet dopeheads, bad hippie parents a bit of acid couldn't hurt the kid!, exploited girls doing all the cooking and offering their bodies in the name of sexual freedom, to quite a few genuine assholes.
They all go on a great big adventure in a great big schoolbus to the far reaches of the U, S. A. It remains a really hilarious account to the end and, surprisingly enough, nothing really dramatically bad ever happens to them, but perhaps other people wouldn't agree with me on that.
So, if you are in the mood for reading a truly funny book, read this book! I'm not sure quite where the appeal comes from, honestly, I read The Tortilla Curtain, and found it to be a funny enough novel about Californian dipshits, . . Drop City was likewise a tale of colliding cultures, in this case communedwellers and Alaskan survivalists, I'm really not sure what Boyle was going for, The idea of a certain set of ideals crashing headlong into the reality of life on the last frontier was already explored by Into the Wild well enough and thoroughly enough that the subject almost feels closed to me, and while I think Boyle was trying to be funny, it was a bit of a fail.
Also, we already know about the contradictions and sexual inequality that plagued hippie culture again, this is nothing new, and it just feels like recycled tropes at this point, .