The Road to Wellville by T.C. Boyle
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Book Reviews of The Road to Wellville
Book Review: a delight
Summary: 5 Stars
the first tc boyle book i have read.pure pleasure. the style the humor the story all is absolutely delightful!! and so current !!Book Review: amusing fanatics
Summary: 4 Stars
There is something inherently amusing in any sort of fanaticism, at least until folks start getting hurt, which they almost always do. Manias and fads, by definition, lead folks to engage in behavior that looks nearly insane to the impartial observer. Meanwhile, America, for myriad reasons, has always provided fertile ground for self-improvement crazes. Perhaps the simple fact that democracy and capitalism offer people so much freedom to define themselves and opportunity to mold their own destinies just inevitably carries with it a darker flip-side in this heightened susceptibility to irrational and dubious schemes. Whatever the cause, T. Corraghessan Boyle takes glorious advantage of this national tendency in The Road to Wellville and renders a brutally funny portrait of the health food quacks and con artists of Battle Creek, Michigan. Is there a kid with soul so dead that his heart doesn't start pumping a little bit faster when he hears that magical name?: Battle Creek, Michigan. I know when I was a kid, I so loved breakfast cereal that I ate it, to my Grandmother's abiding horror, out of a dog bowl, so that I could get a sufficiently Brobdignagian portion. And it can't be true, but in memories of childhood it certainly seems like every single on of those cereals was made in Battle Creek and somewhere they must have had a huge repository of knick knacks, gew gaws and various other cheesy toys, because that's always where you had to send away for them.
Well, unbeknownst to those of us who hoovered down Lucky Charms and Cap'n Crunch and Sugar Smacks and the like, the original breakfast cereals were the product of men like C.W. Post and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and they were part of a health fad. Apparently they weren't originally intended to deliver massive amounts of sugar and cheap toys to growing boys. Nor were men like Kellogg simply concerned with getting some grains into people's diets. In fact, he ran an enormous luxurious Sanitarium where wealthy patrons would come to cleanse themselves via meat-free diets, enemas five times a day and a whole battery of other wacky treatments and inspirational harangues from Kellogg.
Boyle takes this potent comic setting, made up of equal parts holiness and hucksterism, and sets up several storylines which all converge at the San. There's a confrontation between Kellogg and a wayward adopted son, the only one of his 40+ adoptees to rebel against Kellogg's bizarre health regimen. There's an increasingly troubled young married couple, Will and Eleanor Lightbody, troubled because she has bought into Kellogg's theories with gusto, while he loathes the regimentation and tasteless diet. Then there's Charlie Ossining, a young man on the make who just wants a piece of the cereal business and his own share of the American Dream.
Boyle gets in his fair share of gratuitous shots and slapstick gags, but there's a broader point that gets driven home along the way. For all of these characters utter self-absorption and the folly of their attempt to sort of re-engineer themselves, in the end they can not escape their essential humanness, their mortality, their physical and mental vulnerability and the ultimate spiritual emptiness of Kellogg's slogans. In the final scenes of the novel each character is reintroduced, abruptly, even violently, to the messy reality of the outside world. Kellogg's Spa is exposed as a kind of Potemkin Village, presenting a facade of health which masks the deep unhappiness and essentially unhealthy lives of it's residents.
It's interesting that Boyle made this a historical rather than a contemporary novel; it sort of has the feel of an E. L. Doctorow to it. Perhaps he was merely seeking Doctorowesque sales, and, indeed, the book was his most successful and was made into a big budget movie, which is supposedly awful. But the stories and themes would work just as well if the novel were set in current society. Dupes are still out there looking for that quick fix and sharpies are still out there getting rich off of their delusions. One hardly knows whether to be reassured or depressed at the basic intransigence of human nature.
GRADE: B+
Book Review: "Each juicy morsel of meat is alive, and swarming with the same filth as found in the carcass of a dead rat."
Summary: 4 Stars
John Harvey Kellogg, founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium and developer of the corn flake, is committed to improving the health and well-being of his devoted disciples by promoting a life free of meat, alcohol, tobacco, and sex. In 1907, people flock to the San for lengthy stays to cleanse their bodies of impurities and improve their lives. Will Lightbody has stomach problems, and, encouraged by his wife Eleanor, a Kellogg believer, he agrees to accompany her for several months with Dr. Kellogg.
On the train they meet Charlie Ossining, a young man who wants to set up a rival company to Kellogg's to make corn flakes and to take advantage of the growing health industry. Charlie, who has a sleazy partner, is raising money for the manufacture of Perfo breakfast food, and when he and his partner team up with George Kellogg, one of John Kellogg's many adopted sons, the attempt to capitalize on John Kellogg's pioneering work becomes personal.
Charlie and the Lightbodys go their separate ways in Battle Creek and then reconnect throughout the novel, as Boyle shows Dr. Kellogg's excesses in the name of health--husbands and wives separated to prevent sex, grasses used for food, and regular enemas administered to rid the body of impurities. At the same time, he shows how easy it may be for fly-by-night operators, like Charlie and his partners, to capitalize on the natural desire of people to lead healthier lives. Will Lightbody, enrolled at the clinic, remains skeptical about the doctor's methods and frequently rebels against the most egregious practices, and through him Doyle is able to show the arguments made for and against particular health practices and the willingness of ordinary people to be duped.
The satire here is broad and universal, but Doyle is far more interested in telling a good story than in mounting an attack. When some of the "disciples," especially Eleanor Lightbody, begin to experiment with techniques of "manipulation therapy, " advocated by a rival of Kellogg, the humor enters the realm of the absurd, and when George Kellogg confronts his estranged father, it reaches its peak. Great fun to read and filled with amusing comments on our preoccupation with health, Boyle reminds us that the health industry can ultimately provide "the 'open sesame' to the sucker's purse." n Mary Whipple
Book Review: Great historic novel on the health movement in the US
Summary: 4 Stars
The Road to Wellville takes the reader to Battle Creek Michigan at the beginning of the 20th century, a place and time where the modern health food and breakfast food industries were born. Two men arrive on a train and we follow their experiences in Battle Creek. Will Lightbody arrives with his wife Eleanor to go to the famous Sanitorium run by John Harvey Kellogg seeking a cure to his digestive problems. Charlie Ossining wants to make it rich quick in the breakfast cereal industry started by Dr. Kellogg's brother William and his competitor C. W. Post.
Although the novel is written in the third person, the reader sees the story evolve through the perspective of these two men. Other characters suffer from this approach, especially the women like Eleanor Lightbody, whom Will and Charlie never seem to understand.
The novel differs from the movie, which remains true to the plot and characterization, in that the novel portrays the inner longings and motivations of these two men, while the movie stresses the visual aspects of what they see and do. This makes the movie both funnier and a bit more removed than the novel.
The historicity of the book is well developed. Most of the people, places and events can be confirmed from the record. This is a great book to read if one is interested in healthy living and wants to know the background of today's health movement.
Book Review: "A steak is every bit as deadly as a gun."
Summary: 4 Stars
At the turn of the 20th century Battle Creek, Michigan was a magnet for the health-conscious while simultaneously attracting breakfast food speculators from around the country. In THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE T.C. Boyle spins an insightful and entertaining tale combining both of these historical movements. After surviving many attempts to making breakfast food products that were sabotaged by his jealous brother, he turned his attention to developing a sanitarium to launch his firm beliefs in a scientific diet that will treat the nation's ill health. After much hard work and determinism Kellogg's dream soon materialized as the sick traveled from afar to undergo daily enemas and milk diets in an effort to cleanse their systems.According to the back cover this book is "wickedly comic" and "a comic tour de force", but I felt that this book wasn't all that laugh-out-loud funny. Sure, there is a plenty of T.C. Boyle's smart and intelligent prose but rarely did I find myself giggling while reading. The only passages that made me smile included the antics of Dr. Kellogg's disobedient foster son, especially the Christmas caroling scene.
All in all, I appreciated this book for its unique glimpse into this often-forgotten piece of American history; it's difficult to go wrong with T.C. Boyle as he always seems to spin an entertaining story.