Old Reliable TC -- Budding Prospects

I have started, and set aside, three other books on the 2010 list that either didn't entice me into the tale or appalled my sense of decency, even for a picaresque novel. When all else fails, revert to TC Boyle. Budding Prospects was his second novel befoore his masterpiece World's End. With still some echoes of New York (the hero being arrested for an open container in Lake George) the story takes place in northern California where Felix is lured by evil Vogelsang into growing marijuana in remote ravines near a town called Willits. With two hapless buddies, Phil and Gesh, Felix encounters every imaginable adverse meteorological event that diminishes the crop and the profits. Paranoid and pursued by the wicked drug task force cop, Felix rarely ventures forth from the "summer camp," and his journey is more often than not an internal one, reassessing his worst trait of being a quitter and redefining friendship.

All the things I like most about TC crop up: the need to have a dictionary nearby as he scatters Latinate adjectives like a stoned William Buckley; metaphors that twist the corners of your mouth into a smile that erupts into an out-loud laugh; and the ability to draw out of a host of clutter those features that make a room, cabin or landscape jump into high relief. Aligning the elements for its picaresque score, Felix is engaging in an adventuresome quest; Vogelsang and Trooper Jerpbak of the California Highway Patrol are symbols of all that is bothersome about business and policing; Aorta and Vena are debauched sirens; and Felix certainly misunderstands the motives of all the supporting characters. That said, Budding Prospects does not rank among the top three of Boyle's novels (those honors definitely go to World's End, Mungo Park and Road to Wellville. The story fades like the smoke of a joint rather than staying on a high. Felix's enlightenment seems shallow, despite Boyle's command and talent in writing about it:

"For the moment at least I'd been able to put things in perspective, separate myself from the grip of events, see the absurdity of what we'd come to. If the best stories -- or the funniest, at any rate -- derive from suffering recollected in tranquility then this was hilarious. In telling it, I'd defused it, neutralized the misery through retrospection, made light of the woe." Wow.