Drop City (novel)

Drop City is a novel by the American writer TC Boyle from 2003, in which the story is told of a hippie commune who moved from California to Alaska in 1970. The book was translated into German by Werner Richter.

People

Content

Overview

Drop City consists of two successive zubewegenden plot lines, which unite about halfway through the book. The main strand tells the story of the eponymous commune Drop City in California, which comprises about 60 members. Each dropout is welcome, life dominated by drugs, promiscuity and the attempt to live in harmony with nature. Every day is one big party, everything is shared. The men are called freaks and women as brides. However, the community suffers from stresses due to the uneven distribution of the resulting work, which leads to health and supply problems. The group is divided among themselves, and not all share the peace-loving approaches. When one day the eviction is imminent, decides the Community to move to Alaska, where her guru standard transmitter has inherited a plot of land.

In parallel, the history of sedentary in Alaska Trappers Sess Harder is told who finds his dream woman and marries her. In Alaska, now make that two different societies are interrelated, it conflicts arise, but also friendships.

Reception

" Not Pop, but art, cutting sharp but full of fine deeper meaning that opens up, once you get overcome the superficial tension. T.C. Boyle can do both - analyze and entertain ".

" Hardcore fans of Tom Coraghessan Boyle like this ... novel may find to clarify, the looming happy ending in the Winter Christmas even as a betrayal of the usual apocalypse .... One eye has Boyle directed to the utopia, the other on reality. He might thereby come to a squint and miss. Large American art to make both. "

" Boyle's strength is its dialectical portrayal of the struggle of outsiders who penetrate into either the company or they want to leave at all costs ... A writer who, like Boyle every eight years, gives us such a book, must be counted among the greats. "

Book

• T.C. Boyle: Drop City. Übers Werner Richter. dtv, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-423-21113-0.