Critics feast on The Road to Wellville
“Boyle thrives on our aspirational mania in all its forms…. With each new book it becomes harder to resist the confidence and exuberance of his style, the boldness of his reach.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A fascinating slice of Americana, The Road to Wellville is a classic tale of dreams doomed and renewed, love lost and regained, as well as the evils of dyspepsia, the horrors of autointoxication, the nightmares of neuralgia and the the tribulations of the alimentary canal.”
—The Dallas Morning News
“Boyle’s book has all the nifty plot twists of a spacious John Irving novel, and it is on fire with historical detail…. Boyle proves he still has the gloriously perverse knack of persuading you to laugh at the most disgusting moments.”
—Vogue
“Rarely has so much suffering produced so much fun … Boyle creates his characters with great Dickensian glee.”
—New York Newsday
“Funny, thoughtful, immaculately written … [Boyle] eviscerates the gullible pilgrims and conniving hucksters who rubbed shoulders in turn-of-the-century Battle Creek.”
—Newsweek
“Boyle’s send-up of dietary fanaticism cleverly reminds us of the extremes to which Americans will go in pursuit of perfection.”
—Glamour
“As in brilliant previous books like East is East and World’s End, Boyle brings to bear a dazzling writing style, erudition and sly humor in telling this strange tale of greed, power and kooky obsession.”
—Detroit Monthly
“Boyle doesn’t miss a single hilarious shot…. [The Road to Wellville] establishes him at the top of his literary game…. Boyle has a genius for envisioning his scenes in such delicious detail and for presenting his characters with such subtle insight.”
—Playboy
“Reading The Road to Wellville is like ducking gobs of mashed potatoes—there’s the exhilarating sound of language whizzing overhead.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“Boyle is a brilliant imp, a trickster of the highest order…. In The Road to Wellville, his rich and mind-bendingly delightful language explodes with the early 20th century’s passion for invention, even as he subtly reveals the depth and tragicomedy of the failure of the American dream.”
—St. Petersburg Times
“The Road to Wellville is an old-fashioned, generous book, rich in anecdote, plot, and character, rooted thoroughly in its time and place, even as it winks slyly at the modern reader.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An extraordinarily good book … Boyle has told us something about the human condition.”
—The Milwaukee Journal
“In T. C. Boyle’s meticulously crafted, wildly comic new novel, the American obsession of self-improvement through right-thinking and purification is brilliantly, engagingly, irresistibly savaged.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
PENGUIN BOOKS
THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE
T. C. Boyle is the author of The Inner Circle, Drop City (a finalist for the National Book Award), A Friend of the Earth, Riven Rock, The Tortilla Curtain, The Road to Wellville, East Is East, World’s End (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award), Budding Prospects, Water Music, and seven collections of stories. In 1999, he was the recipient of the PEN/ Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. His stories appear regularly in major American magazines, including The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, and Playboy. He lives near Santa Barbara, California. T. C. Boyle’s Web site is www.tcboyle.com.
The
Road To
Wellville
T. Coraghessan Boyle
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993
Published in Penguin Books 1994
23 25 27 29 30 28 26 24
Copyright © T. Coraghessan Boyle, 1993
All rights reserved
A signed first edition of this book has been privately printed by
The Franklin Library.
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGUED THE HARDCOVER AS FOLLOWS:
Boyle, T. Coraghessan.
Road to Wellville: a novel/T. Coraghessan Boyle
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-64026-5
I. Title.
PS3552.O932R63 1992
813′.54—dc20 92-50731
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Goudy Old Style
Designed by Brian Mulligan
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Rosemary Post
1923–1981
Acknowledgments
Two texts were indispensable in inspiring and informing this novel—Cornflake Crusade, by Gerald Carson, and The Nuts Among the Berries, by Ronald M. Deutsch—and I am indebted to their authors. I would also like to thank Kevin McCarey, James Kaufman, Janet Griffin, Gordon Dale, and the staff of the Charles Willard Memorial Library in Battle Creek, Michigan, for their assistance.
Contents
PART I: DIAGNOSIS
1. Of Steak and Sin
2. Scavengers of the Sea
3. Sears’ White Star Liquor Cure
4. Father to All, Father to None
5. The Civilized Bowel
6. The Biggest Little City in the U.S.A.
7. Symptomitis
8. Changing the Flora
9. Per-Fo
10. A Thankful Bird
PART II: THERAPEUSIS
1. ’Tis the Season
2. The Baser Appetites
3. Cold in the Middle
4. The Advertising Game
5. Kellogg’s Kink
6. From Humble Beginnings
7. Organized Rest Without Ennui
8. Groundhog Day
PART III: PROGNOSIS
1. Questions, Questions, Questions
2. The
Letter and the Note
3. Freikorper Kultur
4. Rigid Control and Other Matters
5. The Per-Fo Factory
6. A Sword of Fire
7. Goguac Lake
8. The Fatal Luncheon
9. Fireworks
10. Decoration Day
CODA
Life is a temporary victory over the causes which induce death.
—Sylvester Graham, A Lecture on Epidemic Diseases
Chapter 1
Of Steak
and
Sin
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the corn flake and peanut butter, not to mention caramel-cereal coffee, Bromose, Nuttolene and some seventy-five other gastrically correct foods, paused to level his gaze on the heavyset woman in the front row. He was having difficulty believing what he’d just heard. As was the audience, judging from the gasp that arose after she’d raised her hand, stood shakily and demanded to know what was so sinful about a good porterhouse steak—it had done for the pioneers, hadn’t it? And for her father and his father before him?
The Doctor pushed reflectively at the crisp white frames of his spectacles. To all outward appearances he was a paradigm of concentration, a scientist formulating his response, but in fact he was desperately trying to summon her name—who was she, now? He knew her, didn’t he? That nose, those eyes … he knew them all, knew them by name, a matter of pride … and then, in a snap, it came to him: Tindermarsh. Mrs. Violet. Complaint, obesity. Underlying cause, autointoxication. Tindermarsh. Of course. He couldn’t help feeling a little self-congratulatory flush of pride—nearly a thousand patients and he could call up any one of them as plainly as if he had their charts spread out before him…. But enough of that—the audience was stirring, a monolithic force, one great naked psyche awaiting the hand to clothe it. Dr. Kellogg cleared his throat.
“My dear Mrs. Tindermarsh, I do thank you for your question,” he began, hardly able to restrain his dainty feet from breaking into dance even as the perfect riposte sprang to his lips, “but I wonder how many of those flesh-abusing pioneers lived past the age of forty?” (A murmur from the audience as the collective image of a skeletal man in coonskin cap, dead of salt pork and flapjacks, rose before their eyes.) “And how many of them, your own reverend forebears not excepted, went to bed at night and had a minute’s sleep that wasn’t racked with dyspepsia and the nightmare of carnal decay?” He paused to let that horrible thought sink in. “I say to you, Mrs. Tindermarsh, and to the rest of you ladies and gentlemen of the audience, and I say it with all my heart”—pause, two beats—“a steak is every bit as deadly as a gun. Worse. At least if one points a gun at one’s head and pulls the trigger, the end comes with merciful swiftness, but a steak—ah, the exquisite and unremitting agonies of the flesh eater, his colon clogged with its putrefactive load, the blood settling in his gut, the carnivore’s rage building in his brittle heart—a steak kills day by day, minute by minute, through the martyrdom of a lifetime.”
He had them now—he could see the fear and revulsion in their eyes, the grim set of their jaws as they each inwardly totted up the steaks and sausages, the chops and pullets and geese consumed over the course of the greedy, oblivious years. “But don’t take my word for it,” he said, waving his arms expansively, “let’s be scientific about it. After all, the Sanitarium stands as a monument to biologic living and scientific analysis, a veritable University of Health. Let’s just perform a little experiment here—right here, on the spur of the moment.” He ducked away from the spotlight and called out in a suddenly stentorian voice: “Frank? Dr. Frank Linniman?”
A flurry from the rear of the auditorium, movement, the craning of three hundred necks, and all at once the summoned assistant was striding briskly up the aisle, his chin thrust forward, his carriage flawless. The audience took one look at him and knew that here was a man who would unflinchingly throw himself over a cliff if his Chief required it of him. He came to a halt before the podium and gazed up into the brilliant light. “Yes, Doctor?”
“Do you know the Post Tavern? The finest hostelry in Battle Creek—or, for that matter, anywhere else in this grand state of Michigan?” This was nothing, a bit of stagemanship, and the Doctor had been through it a dozen times before, yet still the image of Charlie Post, blandly handsome, effortlessly tall, a very Judas of a man, rose up before him like an assassin’s blade, and it ever so slightly soured the moment for him.
“I know it, Doctor.”
Dr. Kellogg was a diminutive man himself. It wasn’t so much that he was short, he liked to say—it was just that his legs weren’t long enough. Sit him in a chair and he was as tall as the next fellow. Of course, as he’d grown into his fifties, he’d expanded a bit on the horizontal plane, but that was all right—it gave him a glow of portly health and authority, an effect he enhanced by dressing entirely in white. Tonight, as always, he was a marvel of whiteness, a Santa Claus of health, from his flawless white high-button shoes to the cusp of his Vandyke and the fine pale tenacious hair that clung to his scalp. He paused a moment to take a sip from his water glass and rinse the taste of Charlie Post from his mouth.
Setting the glass back down, he glanced up briefly and saw that the audience was hanging on his every gesture; half a dozen of them were actually gaping. He gave them a sagacious look and then focused on his assistant. “Frank, I want you to go to the chef there—a chef of international renown, I’m told, an epicure Mr. Post has imported from Paris, a Monsieur Delarain, isn’t it?—and I want you to purchase the finest steak he has available and bring it back here, to this very stage, for our inspection.”
A tentative ripple of laughter, the scrape of chair legs.
“Well, go, Frank—fly. What are you waiting for?”
“A steak, sir?” Frank knew the routine, God bless him, as sturdy a straight man as you could hope to find.
“Not just a steak, Frank—the finest steak money can buy.”
Frank’s face was an open book. He was guileless, as baffled as the audience, his only desire to gratify his Chief. “I’ll be back in a twinkling,” he announced, and he was already turning away, already poised to dash up the aisle, when the Doctor spoke again.
“And Frank,” he said, drawing it out, “Frank, would you do me one other great favor?”
Silence. Not a breath expelled anywhere in the house.
“Would you stop at the livery stable and pick up a sample of another sort—for comparison, that is?” The Doctor chuckled amiably, avuncular, warm, the very avatar of geniality and good sense. “I’m referring to a bit of, well, horse excretus”—stunned laughter, picking up now, gales of it, so lusty the sequel could barely be heard—“about four hundred forty-eight grams, to be precise … or the size of a good sixteen-ounce steak.”
It was a typical Monday night at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, bastion of right thinking, vegetarianism and self-improvement, citadel of temperance and dress reform, and, not coincidentally, the single healthiest spot on the planet. The women were uncorseted, the men slack in their suspenders, both sexes quietly percolating over the toxin-free load of dinner in an atmosphere cleansed of tobacco, alcohol, corned beef, mutton chops and the coffee jitters. Stomachs full, minds at rest, they were gathered in the Grand Parlor to hear their Chief instruct them on matters relating to physical well-being and its happy concomitant, longevity. They might have been at Baden or Worishofen or Saratoga, but instead they were assembled here in the icebox of south-central Michigan—and paying a handsome price for the privilege—because there was no place on the map to equal it.
In the thirty-one years of his directorship, Dr. Kellogg had transformed the San, as it was affectionately known, from an Adventist boarding house specializing in Graham bread and water cures to the “Temple of Health” it had now become, a place celebrated from coast to coast—and across the great wide weltering Atlantic to London, Paris, Heidelberg and’ beyond. Twenty-eight hundred patients annually passed through its portals, and one thous
and employees, including twenty full-time physicians and three hundred nurses and bath attendants, saw to their needs; Six stories high, with a gleaming lobby half the size of a football field, with four hundred rooms and treatment facilities for a thousand, with elevators, central heating and cooling, indoor swimming pools and a whole range of therapeutic diversions and wholesome entertainments, the San was the sine qua non of the cure business—luxury hotel, hospital and spa all rolled into one.
And the impresario, the overseer, the presiding genius behind it all, was John Harvey Kellogg. Preaching dietary restraint and the simple life, he eased overweight housewives and dyspeptic businessmen along the path to enlightenment and recovery. Severe cases—the cancerous, the moribund, the mentally unbalanced and the disfigured—were rejected. The San’s patients tended to be of a certain class, and they really had no interest in sitting across the dining table from the plebeian or the pedestrian or those who had the bad grace to be truly and dangerously ill. No, they came to the San to see and be seen; to mingle with the celebrated, the rich and the preposterously rich; to think positively, eat wisely and subdue their afflictions with a good long pious round of pampering, abstention and rest.
At this juncture, in the fall of 1907, the San numbered among its guests such luminaries as Admiral Nieblock of the U.S. Naval Academy, Upton and Meta Sinclair, Horace B. Fletcher, and Tiepolo Cappucini, the great Italian tenor, as well as a smattering of state and national legislators, captains of industry, entertainers and assorted dukes, con-tessas and baronets. On the horizon were visits by Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison, Admiral Richard M. Byrd and the voluminous William Howard Taft. Dr. Kellogg was no fool, and he extracted as much benefit as he could from these dignataries, in terms of both promotional service and raw cash donations. He knew, too, that a diet of Protose fillets, beet tops and nut savory broth, combined with a prohibition on artificial stimulants and long unbroken stretches of ruminative time, might prove a bit, well, dull to the high-livers and men and women of action among his patients. And so he kept them busy, with a regimen of sports, exercise, rest and treatment, and he kept them entertained, too. There were concerts, lectures, sleigh rides, grand marches and sing-alongs. The Jubilee Singers might appear one night and George W. Leitch, twenty years in India and with his stereopticon slides in hand, the next. Or it would be “Professor” Sammy Siegel, hot off the vaudeville circuit, milking the strings of his mandolin, or the Tozer Twins and their trained dachshunds. And on Monday nights, without fail, the Chief himself took possession of the podium and held it for two and a half rapid-fire hours, enlightening his charges, edifying them and, as much as possible, scaring them half to death.