The Harder They Come

I finished reading this engrossing novel a few weeks ago, just before two inmates from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora staged a daring escape through a maze of steam pipes. Even as authorities in hot pursuit claim daily (as of this writing) that they are closing in on the fugitives, the dangerous duo’s whereabouts are anybody’s guess. Residents near the facility are locking themselves in their homes, fearing for their lives and property. Boyle’s latest novel about a murderous renegade in Northern California spares residents this torment. There are many resonances of the Dannemora prison escape in T.C. Boyle’s latest novel, including the involvement of a woman. I enjoyed the twist and turns of the novel, thanks to Boyle’s, easy-to-follow and straightforward narrative despite switches in points of view among the three main characters. The first is Sten Stensen, a 70-year- old former Marine who had fought in Vietnam and is now a retired school principal. On a trip to Costa Rica, Sten, with his bare hands, saves his wife and their group of vacationers from gun-wielding locals out to rob them. It is a great opening, wonderfully and vividly rendered; it is vintage Boyle. We are immediately drawn to Sten’s action and the ensuing events it foreshadows, and to this gentle, ‘aw-shucks’ elderly American who tries to deflect the attention he has garnered for his heroic deed.The novel then focuses on his crack-crazed son, Adam, who should be in the care of a psychiatrist or taking psychotropic drugs for his mental illness. Boyle instead sets him loose him in the wild, where he carries out his fantasies of being a modern-day John Colter, the intrepid scout for the Lewis and Clark expedition hailed as the first Mountain Man in America for eluding a mob of Blackfoot Indians through what is known as Colter’s Run.The ensuing chapters go back and forth between Colter’s actual adventures and Adam’s latter-day copycat escapade which sees him kill two men, setting off an epic manhunt. Some readers may find those passages disorienting as Boyle switches between Colter's consciousness and Adam’s rabid musings. Adam’s love interest, a farrier, named Sara, is some 15 years older than he; she is a renegade in her own right who despises authority and government; in a way Boyle makes us identify with her because who hasn't at one time or another, fantasized about living in unfettered freedom, free of restrictions from the laws and government? But the novel also makes clear the high cost of unruliness: Sara’s life is a string of chaos, she can’t even retrieve her beloved dog from the pound by paying the fine without putting up a protracted and fruitless fight. She and Adam strike a co-dependency relationship, but Sara’s character is not believable; it is not clear what motivates her to live the way she does, full of bitterness; after all she works for a living, caring for animals, and so has to attract and interact with customers.In Sten, Adam, and Sara, Boyle explores the role of violence in American life. Some of this ferociousness is praiseworthy, even necessary, if wielded to save other people’s lives, to fight in a war for one’s country, or in in self-defense.More worrisome has been gratuitous violence triggered by mental illness, a belief of being above the law or a victim of society’s laws.In this highly satisfying novel, Adam, who drives most of the narrative, clearly suffers from autism and is an indictment of the system's failure to deal with the growing problem of mental illness exacerbated by use of illegal drugs.This is a novel of realism, based on actual events in Northern California not too long ago and so the plot is not that original. But through his vivid and imaginative writing Boyle puts a human face on violence in America. His rendering of the seasons on the California coasts is inimitable: “The winter rains came and buried everything. They swelled the streams scoured the ravines, drove deep to refresh the roots of the big sentinel trees that stood watch over the forest and climbed steadily up into the greening hills.”Boyle’s novel doesn’t offer any solution to the violent aspect of our society, only shows that it has frustratingly become part of its landscape. The point seems to be that the goal of controlling gun ownership, wanton killings and bombings of innocent people by misguided and unstable people will remain aspirational, like Sten Stensen vowing once in his youth to master golf but, as he painfully realizes after several decades, fails to follow through.

The explorer John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition and widely considered the first Mountain Man in America, famously once escaped a murderous mob of Blackfoot Indians through a series of maneuvers which is known now as Colter's Run. This legendary gauntlet, outlined in T.C. Boyle's novel, The Harder They Come, is just one the heroic feats which guide one of its main character, Adam Stensen, through his cracked existence. Adam identifies so much with the mountain man, he christens himself with his champion's surname; Colter: evocative not only of the explorer himself but of guns or horses or of the plow wheel it describes; an instrument used to cut through the earth. It seems the real John Colter lived his life in a far different environment, in a more brutal, less sensitive world; one which celebrated violence and aggression as much as it is misplaced today.Adam is the son of Sten Stensen, a seventy year old Vietnam vet and retired High School principal. The outset of Boyle's tale finds Sten and his wife, Carolee, vacationing down in Costa Rica where they find themselves on a "nature tour" traveling for too long over rough jungle terrain in a rickety bus full of their fellow slightly hungover tourists. When they finally arrive at their destination, the bemused travelers are set upon by a gang of three local thugs, one of whom brandishes a gun. In the confusion, Sten's military training prevails. Boyle tells us: "What he'd learned as a nineteen-year-old himself, a recruit, green as an apple, wasn't about self defense, it was about killing, and does anybody ever forget that?" Ineluctably, Sten is able to overcome the gun-toter, putting him in a choke hold and keeping him there, perhaps a bit too long, until the boy goes limp in his arms.The third character Boyle chooses to closely follow is Sara, a disaffected anarchist in her late thirties who just happens to cross paths with our anti-hero, Adam. She allows him first into her car, then into her life or should we say he allows her into his life. Either way it is a believable pairing given the age gap (15 years). Sara is perpetually at odds with the authorities, refusing to acknowledge their control over her sovereign self, not buying in to the contract with civil service (the police or the DMV). She cites the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment which allows for the principle of freedom of contract, the basis of laissez faire economics. This philosophy, however altruistic in her own mind, quickly leaves her life in chaos. Sara's embrace of Adam's free range lifestyle, which to her seems to emulate some sort of extreme off-the-grid survivalism, is at first blush a perfect fit. But sadly it becomes all too apparent just how little reality is a part of Adam's psyche.The Harder They Come, based on real events which transpired in Northern California a few years back, examines the interplay between these three deeply flawed characters, yet only by revealing their own decisive and responsible behavior; how one may affect or dissuade the other is really subtextual. Boyle lets the reader work that out. The tone of this work is somewhat somber and pessimistic. There is not much room for humor here as the author continues to ignore comically eccentric figures as he'd employed in the past (Mungo Park, John Harvey Kellogg); once again he eschews the biting satire which was so much a part of his early work (World's End, The Road to Wellville) in favor of more weighty material. In the case of The Harder They Come this is good news; for the veteran novelist and for his readers. It allows him to more thoroughly mine the quarry of human condition; to reveal the profound effect which society can impose on individuals, especially ones who happen to be mentally ill; Adam, though he fancies himself Colter, a modern Mountain Man, though his limbs are hard as stone from his incessant work in the deep woods beyond his home, and because of his condition, cannot impose himself in the real world without escaping from it. With this work, Boyle shows how guilt and shame can lead to rage or violence or perhaps most consequentially, inaction.~ 4.7 Stars

boyle’s archetypes, a take on ralph waldo emerson’s Representative Men, are usually surrounded by acolytes, disciples and apprentices. here, the two models are dead and their disciples follow after their deaths. john colter, real life u.s. american, is a figure from the past, a mountain man hired as a scout by lewis & clark. after his contract with them was finished, instead of returning to civilization, colter continued living in the wilderness. his legendary exploits become the blueprint for a young man living in mendocino county, ca, rifle toting adam who spends much of his time in the forest growing marijuana and toughening himself as a self-styled mountain man. hitch-hiking one day, he’s picked up by sara jennings, a middle-aged woman, who earns her living as a local farrier. sara, like adam, has her deceased role model, the real-life jerry kane, founding member of the sovereign citizens, an anti-government group with beliefs that if citizens state they have no contract with the u.s. government they are absolved from paying taxes and following many laws, such as using seatbelts, resulting in an infraction that entangles sara jennings with local law enforcement. after a simmilar run in with local enforcement, kane and his son were killed during a shootout with the police. adam and sara hook-up forming an alliance of human needs, tolerant of and irritated by each other’s alienated obsession, obsessions with separate outcomes. a grim story of disaffected people that with each passing day reflects segments of our society. a book highly recommended for book groups.

A while ago I wrote a fairly damning review of TCB's The Terranauts, mentioning that a lot of his recent books ( e.g. When the Killing's Done, San Miguel, and The Women) had fallen far short of his earlier high standard. This came before Terranauts and while I have to say that I wouldn't particularly want any of the characters at a dinner party I was attending, it is at least a much better novel than the above-mentioned ones. It has a much more interesting, if downbeat, plot, and you do want to know how it ends. It doesn't offer any answers, or even ask many questions about why the people behave as they do, and there isn't a lot of sympathy for the psychological plight of the central character, but it captures the moral quagmire that is contemporary America, and does prove he can still summon the verve for situations and outrageousness that typified his greatest work.

Very very compelling.

Atmospheric and beautifully written. Excellent characters that you care about. Scarily true to life in contemporary America. A must read.

„The harder they come“ ist meine erstes Buch von T.C. Boyle gewesen, und nach seiner Lektüre bin ich mir nicht sicher, warum Boyle teils als neuer Messias der amerikanischen Literatur gehandelt wird.Einerseits ist klar, dass „Harder“ einfach mal gute Literatur ist. Die Dreierkonstellation aus Vater Sten, Sohn Adam und Kollegin/Geliebter Sara, die in verschiedenen Abstufungen und Facetten einem Ideal von persönlicher Souveränität anhängen, ist eine clevere; die Geschichte als Eskalation dieser Melange ist erstmal durchaus faszinierend. Um so mehr, wenn man weiß, dass das Ganze auf wahren Begebenheiten beruht. Das Ganze ist schön lesbar geschrieben, ohne beliebig zu werden.Doch andererseits wird aus diesem Szenario dann nur sehr wenig herausgeholt. Die Figuren bleiben auffällig flach und eindimensional: Der Vater ist noch die spanndendste Figur des Trios, und das obwohl/weil er der normalste Typ ist. Sara, die sich ideologisch im Mittelfeld des Trios befindet, ist anfangs inhaltlich noch recht spannend, aber irgendwann hat man die Logik ihres Weltbildes dann auch kapiert, und dann ist sie letztlich eine ziemlich uninteressante Figur. Adam ist potentiell die spannendste Figur, denn Boyle schafft es, den Leser zeitweilig in seinen zu einem gerüttelt Maß verrückten Kopf zu versetzen, was einen echt manchmal erschaudern lässt. Aber auch Adam ist nur kurzzeitig faszinierend; eigentlich ist er einfach „nur“ verrückt, das ist Prämisse und Finale gleichzeitig und billig noch dazu.Ich habe „Child of God“ und „The harder they come“ zusammen gekauft, weil mich die Thematik der sozialen Absonderung des Individuums fasziniert hat. Die Transformation von McCormacks Lester Ballard hat Fleisch und Seele – obwohl auch nichts erklärt und erläutert wird. In Lester Ballards Innenwelt taucht man ein, obwohl sie eigentlich gar nicht existiert. Ich weiß nicht, wie McCormack das geschafft hat, aber er hat es geschafft. Boyle hingegen scheitert, obwohl Adam Stenson Innenwelt durchaus ausgearbeitet wird. Sie wirkt flach und klischeehaft, und damit seelenlos.Und was mir „Harder“ jetzt nun über die „american psyche“ und ihren Hang zur Gewalt erklärt, müsste mir auch noch mal jemand erläutern. Das Szenario wäre so auch mit einem deutschen Rentner, einer Reichsbürgerin und einem bekloppten Einzelgänger aus Bottrop denkbar, kein Problem. Dass Boyle da nun unbedingt die Sonde in der amerikanischen Seele ist, sehe ich keineswegs.Fazit: Eine durchaus feines Buch, das stellenweise fesselt, den ersten Lorbeeren dann auf die Länge aber nicht gerecht wird.

T.C. Boyle ist für mich einer der interessantesten Gegenwartsautoren. Seine Romane bleiben unberechenbar, sind immer anders als die vorangegangenen. Was hingegen gleich bleibt, ist seine Gabe, Charaktere zu beschreiben. Boyle widmet sich gerne dem Geknickten, dem Abgründigen, dem Wirren, bisweilen Irren seiner Protagonisten und Protagonistinnen.In „The Harder They Come“ (dt. „Hart auf hart“) stehen drei Figuren im Mittelpunkt.Da wäre einmal der 70-jährige Ex-Marine Sten, der mit seiner Frau eine Kreuzfahrt nach Costa Rica unternimmt und im tropischen Unterholz mit Ereignissen konfrontiert wird, die ihn für die Öffentlichkeit im heimischen Kalifornien zum Helden machen, die er selbst allerdings weit weniger heroisch sieht. Mit Sten beginnt und endet der Roman.Viel Raum wird der Tierärztin Sara (40) eingeräumt. Kennzeichnend für sie ist ihre Ablehnung der US-Behörden, die sie als nicht rechtmäßig und als Unterdrücker ihrer Freiheitsrechte betrachtet. Sara neigt zu Verschwörungstheorien und lebt mit ihrem Hund Kutya als Single. Bis auf den Tag als sie Adam kennenlernt, Stens Sohn.Adam ist ein kahl geschorener, eigenbrötlerischer Naturbursch, der viel Zeit in den Wäldern verbringt und immer mehr in die Persönlichkeit eines Wildwest-Pioniers aus dem 19. Jahrhundert schlüpft. Er fühlt sich von Chinesen verfolgt, die er als Aliens bezeichnet, ist auch sonst nicht gerade arm an Psychosen. Adam wird Saras Lover.Wer Boyle kennt, weiß, dass diese Konstellation unter keinem guten Stern stehen kann. In unaffektierter, kraftvoller Sprache nimmt die Geschichte ihren Lauf. Es wird nicht moralisiert, sondern einfach unbeschönigend erzählt; eine Stärke des Romans.Anfangs konnte ich das Buch nur schwer aus der Hand legen, da ich erpicht darauf war, wie es weitergeht. Im letzten Drittel, gerade in jenem Teil also, in dem die Spannung kulminieren sollte, verlor sich dieser Thrill. Vieles endete so, wie ich es vorhergesehen hatte, von ein paar Feinheiten abgesehen; eine Schwäche des Romans.Summa summarum kommt „The Harder They Come“ nicht an das packende „América“ heran, vier Sterne sind aber immer noch drinnen.