The Road to Wellville
by Boyle, T. C
- Used
- as new
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- As New/As New
- ISBN 10
- 0670843342
- ISBN 13
- 9780670843343
- Seller
-
Miller Place, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Will Lightbody is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor, too much. Eleanor is a health nut of the first stripe, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too. So begins T. Coraghessan Boyle 's wickedly comic look at turn-of-the-century fanatics in search of the magic pill to prolong their lives--or the profit to be had from manufacturing it. Brimming with a Dickensian cast of characters and laced with wildly wonderful plot twists, Jane Smiley in the New York Times Book Review called The Road to Wellville "A marvel, enjoyable from beginning to end."
Reviews
T. C. Boyle's 1993 novel, THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, is about a (fictional) murder. It is not, however, a murder mystery. It is the story of John Harvey Kellogg, M.D., health perfectionist and guide to others, who cannot accept that he has produced a less than perfect 20 year old in his adopted son George Kellogg. So John Harvey drowns George, with good cause, in a thousand pounds of costly, experimental macadamia butter, "fragrant sloshing unguent froth, baptizing him, purifying him" (Part III, Ch. 10). "... George was an experiment that hadn't worked. ... When an experiment went bad, you had to move on to the next one." When others came to the death scene in the experimental kitchen, Dr Kellogg told them, "'I tried to save him,' he choked, 'and then he said no more.'" His word was accepted and no blame was ever attached to the doctor who had invented various dry cereals, who had preached the health-delivering wonders of nuts, colonic irrigation and breathing radium. He had, we are forced to concede, tried all George's life to "save him." It just hadn't worked. So Kellogg moved on. *****Over and over in this novel, this truly great historical figure, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, is shown to have failed. He could not stop a patient at his Battle Creek Sanatarium, C. W. Post from stealing recipes from Kellogg's office safe and becoming rich through inventing Postum, Grape Nuts and Post Toasties. In every box of Postum, C. W. Post included a little health pamphlet he had written called "The Road to Wellville." *****Dr. Kellogg could not talk wealthy young (30-ish) Will and Eleanor Lighibody out of having sex (very bad for anyone's health) and out of leaving his health regime to return to "the world." Kellogg did succeed in wresting control of the Battle Creek Health Temple away from his patroness, Seventh-Day Adventists founder Sister Ellen G. White. He gradually replaced the originally all Adventist staff. He stopped attending Adventist services. But he remained enmeshed in Mrs. White's ideas about corset-free waists for women, giving up tobacco and alcoholic spirits and not tasting the flesh of animals. *****Another failure: Dr. Kellogg did prevent Charlie Ossining, a young disciple of the ideas of C. W. Post, from getting rich making a cereal marketed as Kellogg's by virtue of enlisting young George Kellogg as a partner. But toward novel's end, a drunken George introduced Charlie to Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, 15 % alcohol. Later, at far lower start-up costs than his failed effort with breakfast cereal, Charlie Ossining remembered Lydia Pinkham's and created Per-To ("Perfect Tonic") with 40% alcohol ("Added Solely as a Solvent and Preservative"). Dr Kellogg would not have been amused. He became a multi-millionaire. *****THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE is funny, on every page. It makes us laugh and laugh again. And laughter, we are taught by French philosopher Henri Bergson is our reaction to an "imperfection which calls for an immediate corrective." Dr. John Harvey Kellogg strives to be perfect in every dimension, not just in healthy living, but as mentor, hospital administrator and lecturer. And he thinks he is perfect. But he is not. Everything he does is exaggerated, out of phase with his deepest, sanest nature: that which he was meant to be. He and the Lighfoots, Charlie Ossining and others all remind us of conditioned reflexes, robots, rats on a treadmill or running a maze. They don't have to be so eccentric. Their imperfections are "immediately correctible." But they are either slow learners or they learn the wrong things. -OOO-
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Details
- Bookseller
- Nothing Like A Good Book (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1001422
- Title
- The Road to Wellville
- Author
- Boyle, T. C
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- New As New
- Jacket Condition
- As New
- Edition
- First Edition, First Printing
- ISBN 10
- 0670843342
- ISBN 13
- 9780670843343
- Publisher
- Viking Press
- Place of Publication
- New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Date Published
- 1993
- Keywords
- MICHIGAN FICTION
- Bookseller catalogs
- Literature; Author B;
Terms of Sale
Nothing Like A Good Book
TERMS OF SALE: We accept MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, American Express, checks drawn on a U.S. bank in USD, Money Orders and Traveler Checks. Please make checks payable to: Charles Spataro SHIPPING: I will ship orders paid by cashiers check/money order within 48 hours. Orders paid with PayPal shipped within 48 hours of receipt of confirmatim. Orders paid with personal check will be held for 10 days before shipping. Within the USA the shipping and handling charge is $4.00 for media rate (old book rate) or $7.75 for priority mail for first book and $2.00 per additional book. International buyers pay $37.45 except Ca3nada customers ($26.90). Insurance available at cost. RETURNS: Books returnable within 10 days with prior approval and in same condition as received. ALL BOOKS ARE PACKED CAREFULLY FOR SHIPMENT. ALL DUST JACKETS WRAPPED IN BRODART PROTECTIVE MYLAR COVER.
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- Brodart
- Generally used to refer to a clear plastic cover that is sometimes added to the dustjacket or outside covering of a book. The...
- First Edition
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