A Friend of the Earth is a Friend of Mine--Mostly

TC Boyle's eighth novel, A Friend of the Earth, was released more than a decade ago, at a time when the environmentalist movement was gathering some strength. Recycling programs were becoming mainstream, people cared about the rain forests, and there was a push for greener energy. Capitalists were on the brink of developing "green" products, Whole Foods was rapidly expanding, "organic" was on the rise to become a buzzword and another entry into the free-market lexicon. But for all the progress made since the turn of the century, environmental concerns have taken a back seat to the economy, jobs, and wars overseas. Boyle could see that environmentalists were an extremely vocal but small segment of the American population, and makes the rather grim statement that people will not care so long as they are comfortable--with a twisted, ironic grin.

A Friend of the Earth follows a convicted eco-criminal Tyrone Tierwater across two segments of time: that of the year 2025-26, when the environment in the American Southwest, at least, has rapidly degenerated to deadly monsoons in the winter, and dry desert heat in the summer, and the years 1989-1997, when he was periodically engaged in extreme eco-actions and spending time in jail for them. In both storylines we get a sense of what he was like before and between these periods, and learn a little of the tragic fate of his only daughter, who decided to follow the extremist path.

While the story was interesting enough to keep me reading, I wasn't all on board. The escalation of Ty's grievous actions from mere civil disobedience to assault and kidnapping (of his own daughter) was more mortifying than hilarious, and the grumpy-old-man schtick got on my nerves from time to time. Particularly in the beginning, when his ex-wife Andrea and former friend of his daughter April Wind seem to work against him, to dredge up the past he no loner wants to talk about. I can understand his resentment, I suppose, as it seems to him that all they had done was for nothing, but he seemed to hate April for no good reason--and described her in some pretty racist ways. I know that he is the narrator and therefore his own prejudices that I won't like--but there are ways to do it better. (Exhibit A, always and forever: Lolita) He also made some sweeping generalizations about women that ticked me off--and no, they were not funny, not funny at all. The 2025 storyline improved when April leaves and Ty ends up appreciating his wife and his life a lot more.

The story is supposed to be a dark comedy--and I can certainly attest that there is a grim, farcical vibe throughout the whole story. From Ty being the most famous yet the most pathetic eco-terrorist I have ever heard of, to the enduring willful ignorance of the population in spite of disastrous storms, to the mauling of a pop star by a lion, darkly comic events happen one after another. But for some reason it is either just very difficult for me to do more than a crack a smile at a funny occurrence in a novel, or this book was not very funny at all. Absurd, yes, but not laugh-out-loud hilarious.

A Friend of the Earth is a well-written novel, with plenty of instances with beautiful language and thematic moments, and poses several interesting ideas, but Kurt Vonnegut this is not. Honestly, I think it would have been better as a movie: the visuals would be funnier, and it would get more to the point. Not to mention that the narrative voice and style didn't give us something new--at least not to someone already all-too-familiar with the challenges of the environmentalist movement and old-white-guy perspectives. I give it a 3 out of 5. The oppression score of 3, as well, because there must be worse material out there--and I don't think this is the TC Boyle work that people will be reading in 2025.

Oh, and will there be a perpetual El Nino, depleted Social Security, nil biodiversity, and too many old people? It doesn't look like we'll have all that in 2025, but this year's been a doozy so far, and there's still 13 years to go. Fact can be stranger than fiction.