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40th out of 119 books
—
28 voters
The Road to Wellville
by
T.C. Boyle
Will Lightboy is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor, too much. Eleanor is a health nut of the first stripe, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too.
So begins T. Coraghessan Boyle's wickedly comic look at turn-of-the-century fanatics in sea
...morePaperback, 496 pages
Published
May 1st 1994
by Penguin Books
(first published 1993)
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You have to admire TC Boyle, this is the forth book (after Drop City, Tortilla Curtain and Inner Circle) of his that i have read and they are all different, with different themes and time frames.
This is comedy gold and tells the story of the Kellog family, superbly played by Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptaion.
He runs a sanitarioum in 19th Century smallsville america with some bizarre treatments - mostly based around the bowell and the avoidance of meat, coffee and drink.
Three seperate strorie...more
This is comedy gold and tells the story of the Kellog family, superbly played by Anthony Hopkins in the film adaptaion.
He runs a sanitarioum in 19th Century smallsville america with some bizarre treatments - mostly based around the bowell and the avoidance of meat, coffee and drink.
Three seperate strorie...more
TC Boyle is one of my favorite authors because I simply fall in love with his sentences. The man writes such incredible sentences! The Road to Wellville is a captivating story, too, so between the brilliant sentence structure and the fascinating story line, I was spellbound until the ending. Unfortunately, like other TC Boyle novels I've read, the ending missed the mark for me. It seems that Boyle paints himself into a corner and then just decides that the only way out is to walk back across the...more
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THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE vividly demonstrates what it might have been like to have been a guest at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanitarium during the winter of 1907. Kellogg is the driven, odd-ball egomaniac who was arguably the most important player in the emerging spiritual and health industry at the dawn of the 20th century. The reader watches as Kellogg struggles to maintain and expand his economic empire of breakfast products, and secure his position as the Grand Poobah of health and fit...more
Sep 19, 2012
Amanda Steinhoff
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
books-read-2012
T.C Boyle is an exceptional writer. His prose is intelligent and captivating, both dramatic and darkly humorous.
The story, however, was extremely depressing. It centers around Dr. Kellogg, creator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where the wealthiest people of the world go to shun meet and get enemas. Also at the sanitarium are Will Lightbody, a very sick man who would rather just be back at home with his health crazed wife, and Charles, a poor dupe who just wants to make his fortune selling cere...more
The story, however, was extremely depressing. It centers around Dr. Kellogg, creator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where the wealthiest people of the world go to shun meet and get enemas. Also at the sanitarium are Will Lightbody, a very sick man who would rather just be back at home with his health crazed wife, and Charles, a poor dupe who just wants to make his fortune selling cere...more
Hilarious. This author writes with a thesaurus riffling its pages in the wind on his desk, with whole paragraphs of terrific synonyms flying out onto each page in parades, rows, cavalcades, motorcades, triumphs and processions. etc. He also did some great research about leading edge medicine in the early part of the 20th century--not considered totally quack activities, but at the time, the medical electricians of their time were respectable, working with new technologies to develop the latest t...more
You expect a certain amount of snarkiness from Boyle, and Wellville doesn't dissapoint, but I found no glee in it, as I did in Drop City, or Budding Prospects, or even Water Music. I kept thinking what a marvelous writer he is, yet how unfortunate his choice of stories and characters are. I get it that Kellog's sanitarium and its regimens were for the turn of the century's health nuts, and that many of its practices were misguided and downright dangerous in some cases. I get that there were huck...more
The librarian recommended this book, as he likes the author. I did enjoy the book. A lot of the story was based on loose facts. It is fun to see how people would go to extremes to be healthy back in the days before liposuction, botox and plastic surgery. It was an interesting read and I hear there is a movie based off of this book, which I am looking forward to seeing.
One of TC Boyle’s earlier works, “The Road to Wellville” takes place at Dr. Kellogg’s Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. The main protagonists are a couple from New York and Dr. Kellogg himself. The wife is a “Battle Freak,” obsessed with following the many prescriptions of Dr. Kellogg’s biologic living to the letter, with her husband seeking to regain both his wife and his health. Though it takes place at the turn of the last century, the book is extremely relevant to today’s health foods (o...more
The vivid writing style makes up for the slow pace. Boyle captures the intricate awkwardness of the human body like no one else.
I picked this book up because old-fashioned medical quackery is hilarious, and as I expected the book did a thorough job of skewering that, but the plot stands on its own as well. A handful of subplots are capably woven together and each one centers around a character who's fleshed out enough to seem real. (Except the doctor, but he's meant to be a caricature.) I found...more
I picked this book up because old-fashioned medical quackery is hilarious, and as I expected the book did a thorough job of skewering that, but the plot stands on its own as well. A handful of subplots are capably woven together and each one centers around a character who's fleshed out enough to seem real. (Except the doctor, but he's meant to be a caricature.) I found...more
A rather wild romp through a rather rompish period of American history. Quackery (love that word) and frivolous searches for the next best thing intellectually, medically and spiritually - kinda like some of the new-agey stuff happening 100 years later. There was an episode of 60 minutes this winter discussing the placebo effect upon depression. They interviewed some researchers who claimed that placebos were as effective as prescribed drugs in many (I believe a majority) cases. SO here we are i...more
A rollicking, shocking, satirical blast of a novel based on the life and times of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (he of the famous Battle Creek Sanitorium),his exploits with diet and enemas, as well as those of CW Post and other purveyors of tinctures and tortures designed to improve and extend the Good Life. Will Lightbody comes to the Spa with his wife, Eleanor, who's into dietary and physiological conditioning. A parallel story involves George Kellogg, adopted son of John, who pursues his father int...more
Jan 31, 2010
Rauf
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
People who think organic foods are so edgy
1907.
Battle Creek, Michigan.
The American bourgeois were lining up to get top treatments for their sick, frail bodies at the Sanatorium. Most of them suffered the same ailment: their colons were shot to hell. The man in charge (and who could save them) was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Surgeon, inventor, author, cap'n of industry. His methods were simple but very challenging.
Stop eating meat, stop drinking, stop smoking. Don't worry. The menu in the San living room would make you want to forget those...more
Battle Creek, Michigan.
The American bourgeois were lining up to get top treatments for their sick, frail bodies at the Sanatorium. Most of them suffered the same ailment: their colons were shot to hell. The man in charge (and who could save them) was Dr. John Harvey Kellogg. Surgeon, inventor, author, cap'n of industry. His methods were simple but very challenging.
Stop eating meat, stop drinking, stop smoking. Don't worry. The menu in the San living room would make you want to forget those...more
1 like · like · see review
TC Boyle does a good job of routing out crazy social experiments in history and exposing them in a fictional context (see "Drop City" for historical fictional account of a California Hippie colony transplanted to the Alaskan wilderness). In this oeuvre Boyle picks on Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of Corn Flake and peanut butter fame, who ran a health sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI. In one fell swoop, he parodies the ridiculous measures the rich would revere the quackery of turn of the century (ahem, n...more
This is one of those hard to rate books. It's funny and the subject and time period are surprising and compelling to me. But after a certain point, the story just stops moving forward. To stereotype wildly, this seems to happen to me often with modern fiction- I like the characters and the story, but somewhere in the middle things just start to amble, and the thing ends up being 400 pages for no good reason.
Historical fiction is so weird, anyway. Somewhere in the middle of this, I thought "why...more
Historical fiction is so weird, anyway. Somewhere in the middle of this, I thought "why...more
The Road to Wellville is a story of people in search of Organic Grace. Dr. Kellogg's followers believe they suffer from the visceral accumulation of toxic sludge brought on by years of improper diet. Since the rigors of eating were never mastered better than by the great Cleansed Colon himself, Dr. Kellogg, they follow his every command. They scour their colons, blast out their bowels, purge their way to purity--yet, despite the daily intrusions to their lower orifices', they still end up diggin...more
This book has been kicking around on my to-read shelf for over a year. What took me so long? It's fantastic. It's packed full of memorable characters, dark comedy, and a vivid look into a really esoteric piece of US consumer history. One of the central characters, a small-time con man, gets himself into a lie that's bigger than he can control, and watching him get more and more tangled in it drives the story forward at a quicker and quicker pace until the inevitable fall happens. And even though...more
I started this book a couple of weekends ago for a "quick weekend read." Not only did it take longer than I expected but I often had a hard time devoting myself to the book because none of the characters were likeable. Okay, one character. I also experienced this while reading The Women. I can appreciate the fact that most humans have an ugliness in them but when the dark parts of people take over the story, I just find it difficult to read. Having said that, I obviously chose to finish. It was...more
One of the best comic novels of the late 20th century. The language is beautiful and precise, the characterizations rich and varied, the story a wild ride into the American stomach.
Boyle has a unique flavor to his writing that I really enjoyed and I will probably give him one more try for that reason alone because this story really did nothing for me. There was a cast of eccentric characters, but I found myself seriously disliking every single one of them. The only one I was remotely routing for was Charlie, the hustler who gets hustled. Other than that, I pretty much detested everyone else and didn't really care one way or the other what happened to them in the end.
I did...more
I did...more
I'm not very far into this book yet, but the main characters are from my home town, which is kind of fun. The author has inexplicably changed the name from Peekskill to Peterskill, but he mentions illustrious town citizen Chauncy Depew, the Hudson Line, Lonsbury Pond, Water St., Division St. - lots of references to Peekskill. I was kind of intrigued, and so I looked up the author's bio, and sure enough, he was born and raised in Peekskill. Oddly, he also mentions at one point the town of Sedro W...more
TC Boyle has taken the historical figure John Harvey Kellogg who founded a bizarre health spa and invented cornflakes and has created an intelligent novel set at the spa.
Eleanor Lightbody has been to the spa twice before and, like all well-meaning wives, has decided her husband, Will, will benefit from Kellogg's health miracles. Kellogg is written as authoritarian monomaniac with grandiose delusions about his power over his patients' lives.
The satirical read is entertaining, intelligent and fun...more
Eleanor Lightbody has been to the spa twice before and, like all well-meaning wives, has decided her husband, Will, will benefit from Kellogg's health miracles. Kellogg is written as authoritarian monomaniac with grandiose delusions about his power over his patients' lives.
The satirical read is entertaining, intelligent and fun...more
my 3rd TC Boyle book, this one did not disappoint. I vaguely recall seeing some portion of the movie version years ago, but beyond the fact that it starred Matthew Broderick, nothing stayed with me. this book, like the others of Boyle's I've read, is funny, well-plotted, smart, and dramatic--all the qualities that make me love Boyle's work. there seems to be nothing this man isn't an expert about: environmental terrorism, the plight of mexican immigrants in california, turn-of-the-century health...more
This is quite a fascinating moment in the history of food and health culture in the history of the U.S.--the advent of Kellog and breakfast cereal! Who knew such an engaging and funny story could arise from breakfast cereal? The novel made me wonder just how much of it was fabricated, since it seemed so outlandish, but some of the more outlandish things turn out to be true.
Boyle really knows how to tell a good story, but unfortunately I wasn't very sympathetic with these characters. I kept wish...more
Boyle really knows how to tell a good story, but unfortunately I wasn't very sympathetic with these characters. I kept wish...more
The book's fiction plot details three narratives which take place between November 1907 and late May 1908 in John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek, Michigan sanitarium. One deals with Kellogg's, inventor of corn flakes, living and eating healthy views and how he runs the health sanitarium which attracts the wealthy and notables, a young couple from the New York who come for treatment and a young man duped a con man to help start up a cereal company and what he goes through.
An overly long narrative...more
An overly long narrative...more
You know, I've given T.C. Boyle a couple of tries now. In both cases (the other was Drop City, which I liked slightly better), I found myself vaguely interested and vaguely irritated, in equal measure. In both cases, he gives us a utopian experiment pulled down by the most banal of human flaws (which, I suppose, is the real tragedy: at our worst, we're not so much "evil" or even "bad" as we are distressingly petty and self-involved). In each, he draws his characters with some depth, but you can'...more
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T. C. Boyle's tale of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. The main characters are Will Lightbody, his wife Eleanor and Charlie Ossining. Also featured is Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. The book is set around 1907. Will and Eleanor are patients at the "San", submitting to Kellogg's ridiculous diets and diagnoses. Charlie is a young ambitious man looking to make a fortune in the breakfast cereal business. They meet in the train on the way to Battle Creek. The bo...more
Just finished this comic masterpiece from TC Boyle, one of my favorite American writers. This time out, Boyle focuses on turn of the century American health nuts, centering on the Sanitarium run by John Harvey Kellogg in Battle Creek, MI. Although the main characters are largely whiny, arrogant, or otherwise unlikeable, Boyle (as he always does) finds the humanity behind the characters, which is one of the things that makes his novels so enjoyable.
If the concept of multiple daily enemas makes y...more
If the concept of multiple daily enemas makes y...more
Did not enjoy this book as much as Tortilla Curtain. But having seen the movie about 10 years ago, I wanted to read the book. I was amazed at how accurate the movie was to the book, with one exception at the ending of the movie. Thought the parts that dealt with the Lighbody's and Kellogg were very good, but the Charlie Ossining parts got boring after a while.
Nonetheless, this book was very historically accurate. It made me do a lot of research on Kelloggs, The San, and the treatments and philo...more
Nonetheless, this book was very historically accurate. It made me do a lot of research on Kelloggs, The San, and the treatments and philo...more
T.C. Boyle has this fascination with strange people. He did a book on Kinsey, and his most recent was on that architect whose name escapes me right now. In this book, Boyle focuses on one of the Kellogg brothers (not the one who make corn flakes famous, but his brother) who has established an empire on America's fascination with health, and on the population's willingness to undergo any kind of humiliation in the name of health. I enjoyed the book, but I thought it was a mite long. I got tired b...more
When I first watched the movie "About Schmidt" I had heard so many good things about it that I was expecting to really enjoy it. I was surprised when I started the film and found I wanted to turn it off several different times while watching. However, since I had nothing better to do that day, I continued to watch just in case some turn of events would change my mind about the film. I was not disappointed. The movie was slow-paced, and filled with mostly unlikable characters - especially Schmidt...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| History, Medicine...: turn of the century sanatoriums | 2 | 26 | Oct 20, 2011 02:39pm |
T. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948) is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eleven novels and more than 60 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is married with three children. Boyle has been a Distinguis...more
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