NP Drop City

[Otto]

"Drop City, TC Boyle's touching and comic ninth novel, finds him among those
original anti-establishment rebels with a cause: the hippies. It takes him a
step further back than the futuristic A Friend of the Earth (and yes, he did
used to be known as T Coraghessan Boyle) in which he considered the politics
of 80s and early 90s environmentalists.
Drop City is an early 70s Californian commune set up by acid-addled guru
Norm. It's a place where "chicks" like Star, Merry, Lydia and Verbie, "cats"
like Marco, Sky Dog and Pan/Ronnie (a man who appears to have taken the
lyrics to Dave Crosby's "Triad" as a personal creed) and even "spades" like
Lester and Franklin can "just ball and do dope all day long". "Everything is
groovy" and they're all making "a new age, free and enlightened and without
hang-ups, climb every mountain, milk every goat".

Well, that's the theory anyway; even the Garden of Eden had a serpent, after
all, and poor sanitation, freeloaders, sexual abuse, petty rivalries and the
unwelcome attentions of the authorities are giving Drop City a severe case
of bad karma. With the bulldozers closing in, Norm decides that the only
option is to up sticks and relocate to the frozen wastes of Boynton,
Alaska--population 170. Drop City North is born."
(Amazon)