The Road to Wellville
by T.C. Boyle
List Price:
Our Price: $4.40
You Save: $11.60 (72%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: T.C. BoyleEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1994-05-01
ISBN: 0140167188
Number of pages: 476
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Road to Wellville
Book Review: Goodloe H. Bender: con man to the max
Summary: 5 Stars
I sketch this review of T. C. Boyle's comic masterpiece, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, on Monday March 8, 2010, having just read all 35 customer reviews currently carried by amazon.com. In four or five of them I found flashes of originality, and another dozen came across as searching and well beyond ordinary. Thank you, my fellow reviewers!
Against that backdrop, here are a few observations strewn around the margins of both the novel and its reviews just mentioned. Perhaps I can fill in a gap or two.
-- (1) T. C. Boyle reminds me of novelist Sinclair Lewis, notably in ELMER GANTRY (satire of a preacher), THE MAN WHO KNEW COOLIDGE (poking fun at the corny wisdom of a traveling salesman) and IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE (a satire of a Rotary Club in national politics).
-- (2) THE ROAD TO WELLNESS is not at all a bad (albeit slim) introduction to the early years of American Seventh-day Adventism, as Dr John Harvey Kellogg wrenches control of the Battle Creek Sanitarium away from the Adventist prophetess who had paid for him to go through medical school, "Sister" Ellen White.
-- (3) The subordinate fictional character Goodloe H. Bender deserves a closer look.
-- (4) 19th Century Europe's and America's search for "the road to wellville" is well captured in spirit by T. C. Boyle
*****
(1) Regarding Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951) and T. C. Boyle (1948 - ). I have read all of Sinclair Lewis's novels, but only THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE among T. C. Boyle's output. Both Americans wield the satirist's pen, looking at the rigid, humorous, exaggerated, betimes fanatical aspects of their main characters. They seem to have similar research-drenched narrative habits. When Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, set out to write about a bunch of New Hampshire Rotarians and their politics during a fictitious fascist takeover of the U. S. Government (just after Hitler's rise to power), he immersed himself in visits to Rotary clubs. He did much the same with ELMER GANTRY, assembling preachers of various religions to bounce ideas off.
Although in some areas of THE ROAD TO WELLNESS, Boyle enlarged my ideas of the facts of 1907-08 Michigan, America, Adventist religion and the pursuit of wellness, in others he did not. I already knew them. Where I knew more things than Boyle chose to write, he was always, to my knowledge, accurate as to facts. As was Sinclair Lewis. In Acknowledgements, T. C. Boyle identifies the two principal sources for his facts: Ronald M. Deutsch, THE NUTS AMONG THE BERRIES and Gerald Carson, CORNFLAKE CRUSADE.
(2) About Adventism and religion generally. Boyle makes it clear that Seventh-day Adventism had at one time been Dr John Harvey Kellogg's personal religion and that he retained no small number of its beliefs about health. Boyle shows Dr Kellogg wrenching control of the Battle Creek Sanitarium away from Adventist founding prophetess Ellen Gould Harmon White and her shadowy "elders." This take-away was no small feat, as Elen White was one of the most formidable women in any field that America has ever produced. See Ronald L. Numbers' classic 1976, revised 1992, PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE. Without her early patronage, Dr. Kellogg would never have taken his good medical degree. Note also the parallel in history and the novel of C. W. Post's allegedly stealing a recipe from John Harvey Kellogg's office safe to found the cereal empire that has given us Postum, Post Toasties and Grape Nuts. Ditto for brother William Kellogg's forcing John Harvey out of control of the cereal company that the latter had founded. Delicious ironies.
(3) Goodloe H. Bender. He is an entirely fictional character. In six months Bender has promised to make his naive 25-year old partner, Charlie Ossining, a millionaire. Ossining remembers Bender's suit as flashy, his shoes buffed. Bender, dreams Charlie while traveling by train from New York to far Battle Creek, will have all equipment already purchased, a work force lined up, orders in hand.
We will meet Goodloe Bender a dozen more times, but everything we need to know is revealed in Bender's first November 1907 meeting in Battle Creek with wannabe millionaire Charlie Ossining. Five weeks earlier, back in Peterskill, New York, Mrs Amelia Hookstratten, Charlie's doting patroness, had signed over $1,000 to Bender. What Charlie finds in Battle Creek is that Bender has spent all Mrs Hookstratten's money living the high life himself while accomplishing nothing concrete for the new celery-enriched cereal company. He had parked young Charlie in a cheap Norwegian boarding house 20 blocks away by foot. Meanwhile Bender is living it up in the Post Tavern Hotel, Battle Creek's grandest. Bender has kept Ossining cooling his heels an hour while he finishes up a profitable poker game with local "notables.'
After some softening up of the young sucker, con man Bender asks, "You've got the check, I presume." Charlie reacts: "The check. The cash. Bender didn't care about him, didn't care about anyone or anything -- all he cared about was Mrs. Hookstratten's money. (Part One, Ch. 6). Perceptive of Charlie. But it did him no good. Articulate, almost mind-reading Bender played Charlie and his get-rich-quick greed like a violin throughout the rest of the novel. Months later, toward the end Bender skipped town (only to be arrested in Detroit), leaving Charlie still with no factory and also with Bender's unpaid bills.
Bender is delicious. Like one of Sir Walter Scott's rogues, even with a bit of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff about him. It is a pleasure to make the literary acquaintance of Goodloe H. Bender. Charlie tried at that first meeting in November 1907 to pull back from the spider's web: "Listen, Goodloe." In reply, Charlie heard "Good, Charlie. Just call me 'Good,' for short. Let my enemies call me 'Goodloe' -- or Mr. Bender.'" So long, sucker!
(4) American Concern for Healthy Living.
As early as the 1840s many Americans were thinking and writing their separate and collective ways into healthy living: away with corsets for women! No tobacco or spirits! No meat! Fresh air! Nudism!
And there was often a religious dimension to the road to wellness. Ellen White nee Harmon was told by God in 1863 that He wanted all men to be healthy. Over the decades God gave Mrs White precise details. Later, Mrs Mary Baker Eddy, foundress of Christian Science, gave health an even more intellectual religious spin. Dr John Harvey Kellogg preached ingesting nuts and five times daily irrigating the colon , breathing radium and more. Kellogg had, during a visit to Africa, observed the healthy defecation habits of baboons. He then applied their wisdom to his patients in Battle Creek. Bad science? No, not exactly. Early science, yes, but correctible science. All medicine, I dare to guess, looks primitive a hundred years later.
THE ROAD TO WELLNESS is a once in a generation grand Rabelaisian comic masterpiece. And the film, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, that opened only months after the novel hit the streets, is the best, most faithful film adaptation of any novel I know. I hope that you will enjoy them both.
-OOO-
Summary of The Road to Wellville
A snobbish wife and her henpecked husband travel to Dr. Kellogg's spa in turn-of-the-century Battle Creek, where the youth-crazed affluent succumb to quackery. By the author of East is East. Reprint. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo.Comic Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Comic Books
Plum Lucky (Stephanie Plum: Between the Numbers)by Janet Evanovich
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2008-01-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 13) (Stephanie Plum Novels)by Janet Evanovich
St. Martin's Press; Published: 2008-06-17; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
The Oxford Bookworms Library: Stage 4: 1,400 Headwords Three Men in a Boatby Jerome K. Jerome, Tricia Hedge
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-08-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.95
Nine Kinds of Nakedby Tony Vigorito
Mariner Books; Published: 2008-10-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.07
Price in other shops:
The Fourth Bear: A Nursery Crimeby Jasper Fforde
Penguin Audio; Published: 2006-08-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $57.42
The Late Mr. Shakespeareby Robert Nye
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2000-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.50
Price in other shops:
The Other Side of the Story: A Novelby Marian Keyes
William Morrow Paperbacks; Published: 2006-04-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.29
Price in other shops:
Guards! Guards!by Terry Pratchett
HarperTorch; Published: 2001-07-31; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.74
Price in other shops:
Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (Confessions of Georgia Nicolson)by Louise Rennison
HarperTeen; Published: 2000-05-31; Library Binding; Book
Best price: $15.33
Price in other shops:
Dancing in My Nuddy-Pants: Even Further Confessions of Georgia Nicolsonby Louise Rennison
HarperTeen; Published: 2003-03-04; Library Binding; Book
Best price: $1.25
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
When the Killing's Done: A Novelby T.C. Boyle
Viking Adult; Published: 2011-02-22; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $10.01
Price in other shops:
East Is East (Contemporary American Fiction)by T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1991-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.67
Price in other shops:
The Inner Circleby T. Coraghessan Boyle
Viking; Published: 2004-09-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.24
Price in other shops:
Drop Cityby T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2004-01-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.79
Price in other shops:
The Inner Circleby T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2005-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $1.96
Price in other shops:
World's End (Contemporary American Fiction)by T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1990-07-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.35
Price in other shops:
Riven Rockby T.C. Boyle, T. Coraghessan Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1999-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.72
Price in other shops:
Water Music (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series)by T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1983-07-28; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.95
Price in other shops:
Drop Cityby T. C. Boyle
Viking, New York; Published: 2003-02-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.25
Price in other shops:
The Women: A Novelby T.C. Boyle
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-12-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.67
Price in other shops: