The Road to Wellville

T Coraghessan Boyle, better known as T.C. Boyle, wrote The Road to Wellville.  I did not know that.  In fact, I have never read a book by T.C. Boyle.  I  picked this book up after a long series of misadventures with the movie by the same name.  Years ago, I caught just enough of the movie on TV to intrigue me, and when it popped back to mind I was not able to find it anywhere.  Not the library.  Not Family Video.  Not on any on-line buy-sell sights.  The dang thing just didn’t exist.  Then, last year, a friend did a deep search, found a copy, and gave it to me for Christmas.  I started watching, got distracted, and I have no idea what happened from that point on.  Aliens would be my best guess. Settling in to finish the movie (months later) the disc was no longer in the VCR.  The case lay on the table, empty, but, again, no disc was to be found. Tearing the room apart produced nothing. Serious frustration.  Stumbling across the book at Goodwill seemed like a final message.   - “Read the book because watching the movie just isn’t meant to be”.

Now, how is it that an avid reader, English major, bookstore 

owner has never read anything by Boyle?  I’ll tell you.  Just look at his photo.  That is one menacing looking dude.  How could a guy with such piercing eyes write anything  other than terrifying and twisted tomes?  I like my authors to look rugged and earthy.  Woodsy types who belong in the Wisconsin North like Nicholas Butler. over there on the left. Now that’s a congenial looking guy. 

 Female writers’ photos get a bit trickier.  Either they are in flowy, Bohemian garb lounging on a futon with a cat, or they are draped in jewels, with bleached,  helmet hair harkening back to the 1950’s.  Neither or those work for me.  Give me an author planting carrots or chasing a chicken around while dangling a two-year-old by the straps of Oshkosh B'Gosh bibs.

To my surprise, T.C. Boyle’s style exemplifies everything I strive for as a writer.  Brilliant wordsmithing.  Musical cadence.  Fierceness.  Balance and more.  Yes, I would love to hone those skills along with composing  at least one paragraph with no spelling errors, no repeated or missed words or phrases, or goofy syntax.

Just check out this perfectly crafted paragraph.  Not a be verb to found, and can’t you just see the people he’s describing?  Don’t you want to know more about them?

“ ‘Scuse me, sir,” the Negro said, digging his head in extenuation, and then he drew out the chair opposite Charlie for the lady (thirtyish, too pale, too thin, nice eyes, a three-tiered hat built up like the Tower of Pisa with artificial fruit, lace, ribbon, assorted geegaws and a pale little dead bird with glass eyes perched atop a wire twig) and the chair beside her for the man (too much nose, unruly hair, dressed up like a prince on his way to the opera).  Charlie took an immediate dislike to them, but then he softened a bit, always willing to make concessions for the rich.

In my personal life, I do not like to read between the lines and I don’t like others to do so either.  I take people at face value and expect that I will be perceived in the same way.  However, if you have glanced between these lines and deduced that I have not read enough of this book to significantly comment, you would be correct.

Thanks for stopping by.