Bleak scenario paints a ruined environment
Pat Macenulty
Ft. Lauderdale Sun 10/15/00

T.C. Boyle is a great writer, no doubt about that, but I don't always find his work enjoyable. Sometimes the Boyle Universe presents too bleak a landscape. On the other hand, when he tempers that bleakness with quirky, brilliant characters and a certain amount of sardonic humor, the results can be positively brilliant.

A Friend of the Earth will do nothing to diminish his reputation as one of the most original and powerful writers of our day. An "eco-novel" that follows the fortunes of activist Ty Tierwater, the story alternates between life in the year 2025 and the 1980s and '90s when Tierwater was committing acts of terrorism to try to call attention to the destruction of the country's forests.

If there is any subject matter absolutely perfect for Boyle's darkly humorous cynicism, it is the environmental holocaust we "criminals" of the American middle class are creating. Boyle's description of the future provides the visuals that might help us to imagine what we're in the process of creating. The erratic weather we are experiencing today has gone positively lunatic by the year 2025.

Tierwater informs us, "People have been decapitated by roofing material, crushed, poleaxed, impaled-you hear about it every day on the news.... and then there are the eye and lung problems associated with all the particulate matter in the air, not to mention allergies nobody had heard of 20 years ago."

According to Tierwater, in order to be a friend of the Earth, you have to be an enemy of the people. But this creates problems, especially if you're trying to be a responsible parent at the same time you're trying to hold onto the reins of the blind and hungry beast which our capitalist. society indubitably is. The scene in which Tierwater loses his daughter to state authorities because of his environmental activism is, to me, the scariest in the whole book because the likelihood of such an event feels very, very real.
Before he becomes an activist with Earth Forever!, Tierwater lives a life similar to many Americans: "I drank wine, spent money, spoiled my daughter and watched her accumulate things in her turn. And just like you ... I caused approximately two hundred fifty times the damage to the environment of this tattered, bleeding planet as a Bangladeshi or Balinese, and they do their share, believe me. Or did. But I don't want-to get into that."

The novel begins in 2025 when Tierwater's former wife and partner in activism calls him up. It's been 20 years since he's spoken to her, but the flame is quickly reignited. Her reason for contacting him, she says, is "love," but her underlying purpose, and Tierwater is not naive enough to believe there isn't one, is also to give a young writer the opportunity to tell the story of Ty's daughter, a martyr to the cause of saving the trees.

While the planet's condition in 2025 makes it obvious that the activism of such groups as Earth Forever! are "futilitarian," the message one cannot help but glean from this book is that vain as those efforts are, the fight to save the Earth is the only way to preserve one's soul.

Not only is A Friend of the Earth a wonderful read, it is an important book without being the least bit preachy. Eventually, we're going to have start at least talking about what's happening around us. We can only hope the discussion begins soon. This book is a step in the right direction.