Drop City

by T.C. Boyle

book data

2,219 ratings, 3.75 average rating, 357 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		21%
4		41%
3		27%
2		6%
1		1%

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published

January 27th 2004 (first published 2002) by Penguin (Non-Classics)

binding

Paperback, 512 pages

isbn

0142003808 (isbn13: 9780142003800)

description

With Drop City, T. Coraghessan Boyle offers proof that he has become one of America's most prolific, gifted storytellers. Set in the 1970s, Boyle ente...more

[close] With Drop City, T. Coraghessan Boyle offers proof that he has become one of America's most prolific, gifted storytellers. Set in the 1970s, Boyle entertains readers with the denizens of "Drop City," a counterculture California commune that welcomes anyone wanting to live off the grid, use drugs, and practice free love. Boyle sublimely captures the sociology of its rebellious members, who doubt the sincerity or beliefs of newcomers, express some insecurity about nonconformity, and chastise outsiders while remaining oblivious to their own hypocrisy. Marco, Pan, Star, and other "cats" and "chicks" live hassle-free until dissention and cries of racism mount amid increasing run-ins with the local government (a young girl is raped, installation of a sewage system is mandated, a mother lets her toddlers drink LSD-laced juice). Seeking refuge, the citizens move north, to Alaska, to reinvent their utopia, but soon learn the natural environment is more unforgiving of a lackadaisical lifestyle.

Drop City is funny, evocative, and well-paced, shifting between the hippies and the Alaskan locals--primarily Sess and his new bride Pamela (a city dweller who arranged stays with several trappers over a few weeks to determine whom she would marry)--until the two cultures collide. Balanced between plot and character, Boyle excels at describing the physical world and his characters' interaction with it, whether portraying the harshness (or sheer beauty) of the Alaskan wilderness, the simple survival routines of its grizzled inhabitants, or the sounds wafting through Drop City: "the goats bleating to be milked or fed, the single sharp ringing note of a dog surprised by its own hunger, the regular slap of the screen door at the back of the house--and underneath it all, like the soundtrack to a movie, the dull hum of rock and roll leaking out the kitchen windows." Truly American in spirit, Drop City is a strong novel of freedom and those in pursuit of lives of liberty. --Michael Ferch

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07/18/07

Jason Pettus rated it:

Read in July, 2007

(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 on...more (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 the 1994 movie 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 the 20th 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 award-winning novelist indeed.

And of the eleven novels that Boyle has now written, arguably one of his best-known ones is 2003's Drop City, mostly because it's about the American hippie movement of the 1960s and '70s, of which Boyle was a part of himself in his own youth (having gotten his Bachelor's degree in 1968, for those who don't know). And yes, just like Wellville, this novel also features a semi-wacky 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 '60s (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 semi-wacky 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 fur-trapper 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...(less)

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09/05/08

John rated it:

bookshelves: american-novels-that-matter

Read in April, 2009

recommended to John by: a couple of friends
recommends it for: readers who like a laugh & a challenge

Already a clear-cut five-star, even before I finish, TC Boyle's ripe and agitated revisit to the hippie extremes of the late '60s offers both a celebration and a slam. DROP CITY is the first novel of his I've tasted in a while; for years I'd sampled only the sharply-cornered ironies, their furniture often surreal, of his magazine fiction. Those always cracked the imaginative whip impressively, and trapezed their way through some breathtaking analogies, but this novel puts both those gifts on d...more

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01/25/09

Bonnie Jeanne rated it:

I read T.C. Boyle's, Tortilla Curtain, which I did enjoy, though not love. Having now read two of his books, I think I might retire this author to my "Only If There Is Nothing Else To Read" list. Not that I didn't like this story, I did, but I don't think I could take another tale of good and evil and how easy it is to confuse the two. [return][return]One of the annoying things in this book is the author's tendency to use the given and hippie names of the Drop City residents interchang...more

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04/22/07

Jeffrey rated it:

Drop City? More like Drop - alright I won't go there. Needless to say I was not pleased with this read. T.C. Boyle has apparently won prestigious literary awards. This is the only book I have read by him and it leaves me wondering how this is possible. Drop City is the story of a 20-something girl, nicknamed Star (ugh...), who joins a hippie commune in the early '70s in California that eventually chooses to pick up and move to their leader's uncle's cabin and land in Alaska. The book is sim...more

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03/25/07

Conrad rated it:

bookshelves: fiction

What to make of this book? It's two parallel stories about the 60s in Alaska. One: a hardy homesteader couple. Two: a bunch of hippies, "persecuted" by the law in Mendocino county, who decide to go back to the land, or at least drive a few thousand miles in a giant school bus and set up camp. No points for guessing which social experiment lasts longer.

It's a sort of unaffectionate look at the pomp and circumstance of the 1960s. I can certainly sympathize with Boyle's derisi...more

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10/17/07

Yelena Malcolm rated it:

Read in November, 2007

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 lau...more

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11/30/08

Tara rated it:

This book made me homesick for Santa Rosa. The story is about a hippie commune built just outside the city limits on the principal of "Land Access To Which Is Denied No One" [oft referred to in the story by the cumbersome acronym LATWIDNO] by the callow but good-hearted nephew who inherits a large tract of land. The commune members are eventually evicted from the county on the grounds of all sorts of fire codes, condemned buildings, and that everyone was too high to make a real latri...more This book made me homesick for Santa Rosa. The story is about a hippie commune built just outside the city limits on the principal of "Land Access To Which Is Denied No One" [oft referred to in the story by the cumbersome acronym LATWIDNO] by the callow but good-hearted nephew who inherits a large tract of land. The commune members are eventually evicted from the county on the grounds of all sorts of fire codes, condemned buildings, and that everyone was too high to make a real latrine trench. >.> So they moved to Alaska! Where the living is easy and poop freezes. Pretty much the rest of the book is about the commune members and another native family who live nearby, and how a bunch of hippies learn to survive [or not] in the land of endless night. I really enjoy Boyle's writing, and the story was unserious and entertaining. It didn't really go into the politics of drop outs, except for some racial tensions within the group and the difficulty of crossing the Canadian border as a draft dodger in the latter years of the war, but it does present some of the Severe Logical Flaws of the typical hippie commune that made me want to tear my hair out. "Dropping out" of productive society so that you can collect cash aid and foodstamps does not mean you are subverting the dominant paradigm! It means you are lazy and leeching. There were also a couple of scenes that made me glare at the book - most notably one in which a mother knowingly doses her young children with acid, and is then shocked - shocked! - when there are problems resulting from this.
Anyway, the name 'Drop City' sounded deadly familiar but unplaceable to me the whole time I was reading the book, and I wondered if I had heard about such a place in Santa Rosa. It turns out the real Drop City was in Colorado, and was disbanded due to lack of interest, rather than facility codes, in 1977.
So it was a quick read with a fast-paced plot. Sometimes it was difficult for me to keep the characters straight, since they all had 'straight' names as well as 'drop out' names, like 'Pan' and 'Sky Dog', and the narrative POV shifts many times, but by the time the collective had reached Alaska, the personalities were well-developed enough to identify on their own merits. It also has a bunch of nekkid butts on the cover. Whee!(less)

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05/21/09

Becky rated it:

Read in October, 2008

Slightly off my own self imposed bizarre system of order to this task, I bought Drop City in London after totally underestimating how much I'd manage to read on my stupendously long train journeys this weekend (back to Edinburgh via Newcastle then Carlisle?! Riiiight). Drop City details the occurences when two worlds collide - that of the "drop out" hippies in California with that of the men of the forest in Alaska - men who live off the land, who inhabit a single roomed cabin th...more

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05/07/09

Jeff rated it:

Read in May, 2009

I am almost obsessive about picking out extraneous language while reading novels, all the thoughtless barnacles of thought that cling to, and obscure, precision and clarity. Many times during my reading of this novel I stopped, looked away from the text and asked, "why would he say that?" finding that perfectly lucid passages were compromised by meaningless descriptors--dead words. Particularly annoying was "replete with" because that description has to correlation to any rea...more

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04/06/09

Lizzy rated it:

Read in April, 2009

I read this book because there was hella butts on the cover and it always caught my eye on the shelf. After enough eye-catching, I finally read the back cover blurbs and decided that a story about a failing hippie commune was something I could work with. Since I was about 12 I've had a "problem" with T.C. Boyle, in that I always maintained that I "didn't like him" for "various reasons" which were actually "undefined" and maybe "actually non-existent."...more

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07/25/08

Trina rated it:

I adored this long novel about 70s back-to-the-land hippies in California who move to Alaska and confront not only the weather and wilderness but also the tough, intolerant, self-reliant Alaskan bush dwellers who have an entirely different take on "back-to-the-land." T.C. Boyle is a great writer.

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03/23/09

Joan rated it:

Read in March, 2009

For anyone who grew up in “the sixties,” the idea of dropping out of society and the establishment – tune in, turn on, drop out – seemed pretty romantic at the time, -- for a time. Barefoot hippies with granny dresses and flowers in their hair, a constant flow of drugs, free love, living off the land – what’s not to like, except for constantly dirty feet and bad trips, venereal disease, and cleaning up other people’s messes while never having time to yourself or food that seems ma...more

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02/19/09

Andrea rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in March, 2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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03/18/09

Oscar rated it:

Read in March, 2009

The year is 1970 and the the US is split...one one side you have the establishment and on the other you have Drop City. What is Drop City?!? Its anywhere where people can escape the rules and regulations of society and create their own little nirvana, a place to be free!!! What society fails to realize, often way too late, is that freedom isnt free.

When things dont go quite right at the first Drop City, Star, Marco, Pan, Norm, Premstar, Lydia, Verbie, Bill and the rest of the Dr...more

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03/26/09

Gymdogfran rated it:

Read in April, 2009

I always really enjoy T.C. Boyle who writes about "eccentric" topics, usually inspired by actual events/history. (I have read The Road to Wellville, Riven Rock, and The Inner Circle, and there always seem to be naked people lying about here and there doing things that are often described in gratifying detail - not that there's anything wrong with that.) This book is about a Hippie/counter-culture compound in the late 1960s in California. The real one was in Colorado, and appears to ...more

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01/26/09

Jessica rated it:

bookshelves: 1001-books

Read in January, 2009

3.5 out of 5
In T.C. Boyle's novel, the Drop City referred to in the title is a free love hippie commune in the 1970's. The commune starts out in California where the hippies lounge about enjoying their lifestyle. After a run-in with the local law enforcement, they decide to move north to Alaska to start Drop City North on land that belongs to one of their uncles.

The book also follows the story of Sess and Pam Harder, two newlywed homesteaders living in the wilds of remote Alask...more

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12/07/08

katie rated it:

Read in December, 2008

I was given this book by a good friend who said it would be good beach reading for a recent trip... I thought "trashy page turned" especially since I had a British publication with a hippy couple going at it on the cover (got some good stares from fellow passengers on the plane!) But it turned into a really riveting story about different methods of escaping "plastic" society in the late 60's - early 70's... Follows 2 very different cultures, a hippie commune and Alaskan survi...more

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05/17/09

Tim Mccollough rated it:

Read in May, 2009

Excellent characters; and a good story interwoven with social commentary. Here, 1970's hippies -- peace, love, dope-loving California hippies -- facing a merciless Alaskan reality and a couldn't-be-starker contrast to Sess Harder, original outdoorsman.

Boyle is great at developing characters not only original and unique, but ones that you end up having strong feelings about, one way or another. Fuckin' Joe Bosky... what an asshole!

Good read, but a 500-page novel that...more

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12/23/08

Sonia rated it:

Read in February, 2009

This is my first T.C.Boyle book and I'm definitely going to read more of his because his writing is really good. The story, set in the late 60's, is about life in a Hippie commune in California, and a rustic newlywed couple in Alaska and what happens when the Hippie community packs up their camp in California and moves to the married couple's "neighborhood." I use the term lightly because this neighborhood in the middle of the wilderness, where you have to hunt for food and take a bo...more This is my first T.C.Boyle book and I'm definitely going to read more of his because his writing is really good. The story, set in the late 60's, is about life in a Hippie commune in California, and a rustic newlywed couple in Alaska and what happens when the Hippie community packs up their camp in California and moves to the married couple's "neighborhood." I use the term lightly because this neighborhood in the middle of the wilderness, where you have to hunt for food and take a boat to the nearest town. These two stories are separate at first, and then they intersect. I usually don't like when a book is cut into parts that jump to a whole different story but I was pulled into the second story right away. In both parts, you have people who are trying to find/make a lifestyle that feels right to them.

Boyle takes his time with each scene, conjuring vivid atmospheres and motivated characters, (with several third person points of view) and even though there were eight or nine words that I had never seen before, the writing has an easy flow.

One of the best parts was the hippie caravan (referred to as the freak parade) on their way to Alaska, most of them travelling in a school bus with a pen of goats on top. Would they make it past the Canadian border? Would the draft dodger get busted? It was hilarious, but also true to what hippies would do and how they would do it. It kept me glued to the book, expecting disaster around every corner. It makes you wonder how they're going to survive in Alaska.

The parallel story about the young couple, Cecil and Pamela, was very sweet. I appreciated the in-depth characterization and I cared about those two characters trying to live a quiet, self-sufficient life.

Both of these peoples trying to "live off the land" in the perilous Alaskan wild makes for a good fictional social experiment, lots of potential for things to happen. So I wonder why Boyle needed to put in "the Villain" in the character of Joe Bosky. It worked, though. One on the last scenes–a chase scene–is pretty exciting. But I think the end was too abrupt. The four main characters are going to live happily for some time but what happens with the other hippies, do they stay, does their leader come back and all the rest.

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08/21/08

Starlight Bannon rated it:

Read in January, 2004

recommended to Starlight by: T.C. Boyle is a favorite of mine, so I found it on my own.

One of the things I loved about this book is that it wasn't a romanticized version of the 60s. As a teenager in the 80s, I heard so many fantastic stories of the 60s and listened to all the music from that time, and wished I could have been a teen 20 years earlier, without ever really considering the reality of living during wartime and watching friends and family members, maybe a boyfriend, go away to fight and not come back. I never really thought about what it took to be brave enough to go ...more

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