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April 15, 2024

Book tip: "Green is the hope" by T.C. Boyle

If you are still looking for an equally witty and captivating holiday reading, can you stop the search now? T. C. Boyle's novel? Green is the hope? That's exactly what it is and a lot more. The moral of the story can be summarized in a single sentence: crime does not pay. Felix Nasmythe, the protagonist of this bizarre adventure, must also realize this at the end of a long and busy summer. What happens to him and his two best buddies, Phil and Gesh, on nearly 400 pages, is, in my opinion, one of the funniest things that T.C. Boyle has ever written. I myself read the novel for the first time shortly after its first German release in 1990. In 2016 appeared? Green is the hope? in a new translation and last winter I had the pleasure to enjoy the story as an audiobook? read by my fiancé, who (this must be said now, sweetheart), of course, the best reader in the world.

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Felix Nasmythe is 31 and leads the typical life of a late-born hippie. He is, to put it very diplomatically, not the best chance exploiter when it comes to giving his life a little plan and structure. He also has a lack of stamina and so Boyle lets his anti-hero at the beginning of the novel slightly disillusioned summarize:

"I never finished anything. I quit the Boy Scout Group, the Choir and the Marching Band. I stopped delivering newspapers and going to church or basketball training?

After just as many as badly paid jobs, Felix makes his living by restoring (occasionally) Victorian mansions in San Francisco. In addition, he has resumed his (already aborted) study of English literature of the 19th century and lives as a single in the day. Until one evening surprisingly his old buddy Herbert Vogelsang turns up. Vogelsang is rich and cunning, no better: rich because he's torn, and he has a plan.

With a bagful of cannabis seeds, a fallow land somewhere in the middle of nowhere and a bit of physical work, he wants to make well over a million and a half dollars in one summer. Specifically, does he want Felix to do that? he himself provides seed and land along with a hut on it, Felix should take over the sweaty part and grow marijuana. A botanist friend of Vogelsang would drop by every few weeks and look at the state of development of the plants. After the harvest, Vogelsang expects the increasingly fascinated Felix, one thousand pounds of marijuana à sixteen hundred dollars would be divided by three. Furthermore Vogelsang, as a true artist of manipulation, proposes to Felix, who is still calculating, to bring his old buddy Phil on board? the work would be in the "summer camp" for two? but let it be done much easier. Two beers later Felix agrees to Vogelsang's proposal and the catastrophe takes its course?

Boyle describes in the best tradition of a development novel the involuntary maturation of Felix? The Happy? over the period of a single summer. Blue-eyed, he stumbles into the midst of an equally illegal as well as nerve-racking adventure, makes acquaintance with curious Redneck neighbors, stoned bears and a choleric village Sheriff. And again and again it is the nature that pushes the trio (Phil's friend Gesh) to their limits: Glowing heat, monsoon-like rain and mud endanger their mental health and the planned harvest. Blue-eyed Felix is guaranteed after this summer no more? maybe got off with a black eye? Or maybe a little bit in love? I would NEVER reveal such a thing, have fun reading it.

The author

Tom Coraghessan Boyle was born in 1948 in New York, the son of Irish immigrants. Both father and mother are alcoholics, so provide the best conditions for what is universally known as a? Difficult childhood? referred to as. Tom makes a name for himself as a truant and playwright already at a young age and creates his high school graduation only with Ach and noise. During the subsequent history studies, Boyle discovers his love of writing. After a brief interlude as a teacher, Boyle relocates to Iowa with his wife, studies English literature (not the only common ground with Felix), and begins to write seriously. During a Writers Workshop, John Irving draws attention to the young writer and supports him. With the release of his first volume of narrative, Boyle seems to have broken a dam and he is writing, writing and then writing a bit. Boyle himself says about his incredible output of nearly one book a year:

"My agents always say I should not write so fast. But I do not write because of the money, writing is my life! Maybe I write a lot of books in stock, then you could bring out for years after my death.Like Jim Morrison, he also releases a new record every year.