Liza Rodimtseva's Reviews > Drop City

T.C. Boyle casts an eye on the doomed idealism of hippie culture. The frustration that young people had with the authoritarianism and conformity of mainstream culture may have driven them to pursue lofty goals, which in some cases translated into real and lasting social change i.e. women's lib, gay rights, etc. plus a truly inescapable cultural legacy. That legacy has been the cause of much self-satisfied back-patting. (Nothing encapsulates Boomer self-satisfaction like the existence of a 36-hour, $700 commemorative Woodstock box set.) The downside of all that cultural glory, aside from high-profile tragedies like the Manson Family killings, gets a lot less attention, but the reality is that the counterculture was not always so nice. The ethos of Free Love created a breeding ground for sexual abuse, spiritual searching bred religious cults, political protest led to dangerous radicalism, etc. In Boyle's book, good old fashioned naivete and incompetence leads to a deflated utopia, as real life and human nature both undermine the enthusiasm of a "brother- and sisterly" commune aiming to stake it out in wild Alaska. Full disclosure: I was raised in the leavings of a failed hippie commune myself, so I know fair and well the kind of people being written about, probably better than T.C. Boyle himself does, so it's a bit close to home for me. I'd say that he may have a lot the details right, and importantly, doesn't use the absurdity of those details for too easy of a comical target. Those people - their entire generation - may have failed on a lot of levels, but it wasn't for lack of giving it their best shot.