The ROAD TO WELLVILLE is a fictional account of a cast of characters at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a health resorts that caters to the rich and famous around the turn of the century. The main characters are Eleanor Lightbody, a health zealot, and her poor husband Will, Charlie Ossining, a naive young man who dreams of breaking into the breakfast cereal business but is taken in by scam artist Bender, Kellogg the self righteous founder and head physician of "the San," and his wayward adopted son, George, a homeless alcoholic who is the bane of his father's existence.
Will Lightbody has terrible stomach pain and is dragged by his wife, Eleanor, to the Sanitarium for treatment. Eleanor has been to the San a few times before and swears by Kellogg's "physiologic" lifestyle (not that that kept her from drugging her husband with White Star Secret Liquor Cure). On her most recent trip, Eleanor lost the couple's baby. On the way to the San, the couple meet Charlie, who is heading to Battle Creek with funds entrusted to him by his rich adopted "aunt" to make a go of founding a breakfast cereal company. However, when the trio reach Battle Creek things do not go as planned. Charlie is repeatedly duped by Bender, a con man who lives large on the money of "investors" in the breakfast cereal business while forcing Charlie to endure a meager existence and repeated humiliations. Kellogg, the self righteous preacher of the physiologic gospel, takes Eleanor's and Will's under his personal care, much to Will's chagrin. George arrives in Battle Creek and extorts his adopted father before joining Bender and Charlie in their "venture." The fates of the characters mingle and collide before the story resolves, and I wish I could say that everyone got what they deserved, but unfortunately this was not the case.
We kicked off our discussion by lamenting the fact that this book failed to live up to the rave reviews the book has gotten online. The book was described as "wickedly funny," "a marvel," and "captivating." I, Archimedes, had nominated the book, so I felt very bad that I'd subjected the rest of the group to such misery. We all agreed that we did NOT find this book funny. However, I believe we all also agreed that the book was at least very well written. Many of us marveled at the vocabulary of the book and we all had looked up several of the words, many of them arcane, that were used in book.
Not to be deterred, the Novel Spirits found plenty to discuss. First, as pointed out in Baron's excellent blog post, we noted that while we were amazed at the "crazy" methods used by the people of Kellogg's time in pursuit of good health, their are methods (and scams) that are just as crazy that people try today. We also discussed Kellogg's character in the book and how he was confident in his method to the extreme. He also appeared not care about the health of his patients or anyone but himself. We discussed his motivation in contrast to Charlie's motivation; where Charlie wanted wealth, Kellogg wanted notoriety. Kellogg, in our minds, was much like a cult leader, and we had an interesting discussion about why people follow an individual like Kellogg. We concluded that many people, like Eleanor in the book, are searching for acceptance.
Similarly, we discussed George's character, and wondered how he would have turned out if he would have been adopted into a loving, nurturing family, rather than by Kellogg who was harsh and demanded conformity.
In discussing the characters in the book, we felt like most of the characters were quite two-dimensional and did not have the complexity that many of us like to read about.
I know there were many other good discussion topics and thoughtful points made, but I hope I have at least captured the essence of the discussion. I am very proud of the Novel Spirits for hanging in there with this book and really making the most of the discussion, even though this was not the most enjoyable book we have read. I am looking forward and next month, and a fresh book to discuss at our next meeting. Until then, Novel Spirits!!
No comments:
Post a Comment