Drop City
by T.C. Boyle
I read The Women earlier in the year and was enthralled by Boyle. Drop City is just as masterfully told but is an uncomfortable story. That's the only way I can think of describing it. I think I was embarrassed by the characters' naivety. I lived on the cusp of this time, when running away and being a hippie seemed so romantic. Figuring out a new way, living communally with like-minded people, those were the attitudes in the air when I was growing up. Question everything. Reject the ways of our elders. Return to the earth. Forty years later, it seems silly that we had such convictions. After all, now we're the elders. And I can see that I didn't know anything. Yet the need to simplify the way we live, to hone away our excesses, to find a cleaner, more respectful way to share this planet is more dire than ever.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams..."
Arthur O'Shaughnessy