T. C Boyle’s latest novel, When the Killing’s Done, continues his thematic exploration of the environment and the complex balance of ecosystems both natural and man-made. Set in the central Coast of California and the Channel Islands off that shore, the tensions between animal rights activists and the National Park Service, and the conflicts in the natural world that result of those tensions form both narrative and theme. Boyle is covering old territory; a Friend of the Earth and Tortilla Curtain, among other works, cover these ideas.
Boyle asserts a sort of contemporary naturalist's idea about nature. What makes it contemporary is that Boyle folds society and the fabrications of humankind into a part of "nature"; if not quite a conflation of the natural and the man-made, he problematizes the very definition of the word "nature," (and our relationship with it--or lack thereof). His descriptions of the natural world are frequently mirrored by his descriptions of the man-made, and their many intersections, both actual and metaphorical.
On this particular day, a Saturday in June, the ship encountered dense fog on entering the Santa Barbara channel from the north and Captain Nishizawa himself appeared on the bridge to oversee operations....He was right dead center in the middle of the southbound lane and nothing was showing on the radar up ahead of him. If there was an emergency, the Tokachi-maru would take two miles and three and a half minutes to come to a stop. The tightest turn of which she was capable was nearly a mile across. And at seven stories above the surface, even in the clearest conditions, the crew on the bridge would have little chance of sighing any small craft below in any case.
That was the way it was. That was what the shipping lanes---and the Separation Zone---were meant for. Was the system perfect? Of course not. The Separation Zone functioned like the median on a freeway, but here were no lines drawn on the water to delineate the lanes and no concrete bumpers, palms or oleanders to separate north- and southbound traffic. Were there accidents? Of course there were. But in most cases the crew of a freighter or tanker never saw, felt or heard a thing when a small craft was unlucky enough to blunder across its path. Think of it this way: a heavyset woman, heavier even than Marta at the Cactus Cafe, a real monument of flesh and bone and live working juices, plods out to her car on aching feet after a double shift and can't begin to know the devastation she wreaks on the world of the ant, the beetle and the grub.
There are countless such encounters as the one presaged here. Shipwrecks and boating accidents past and present shape the narrative of this novel, and show the entwining of animal and man and sea. In true, old-fashioned narrative fashion, Boyle gives the reader satisfaction along with a lot of fun writing. Yet Boyle sometimes uses stock figures and easy marks. Character Dave LaJoy, an animal-rights activist, is obsessed, short-sighted, and ferociously angry at everyone and everything. The main focus of his fury is the National Park Service, which is undergoing controlled extermination of rats on Santa Cruz Island---an extermination that really took place (Boyle did extensive research on the Islands and the work of the Park Service). These rats---hitchhikers traveling by boat—are not native, and their presence has threatened several species found only on the islands. Without the removal of the rats, extinction of certain birds found nowhere else in the world is certain. Is the Park Service doing the right thing? In the novel, Alma Boyd Takesue, Park Service officer, has science on her side; she is invested in the long-range reestablishment of the delicate balance of the islands’ ecosystems. Unlike the character of LaJoy, Takesue actually considers, weighs and struggles with decisions. In contrast, LaJoy’s hypocrisies are laid bare bluntly and the character is devoid of nuance, making him less than interesting. This could be Boyle’s point, as he clearly has no patience with the sort of dogmatism that characterizes the obsessed of any political stripe. The activists of LaJoy's organization, FPA (For the Protection of Animals) are portrayed by Boyle as completely inept and misguided. They believe Takesue and the Park Service are acting out of hubris, but fail to see their own attempts to manipulate nature in the same light. Boyle reads the Park Services work as more Sissyphean---both the forces of nature and the forces of human society (if we are to separate them) are unlikely to be controlled. LaJoy’s ignorance is clearly garden-variety American, an ignorance born of removal---he is well-off, and his money and leisure feed a sense of superiority that clouds his mind. His paucity of information and lack of context and perspective on the very issues that he claims to champion seems representative of a willful ignorance that marks much political debate, whatever the issue.
These are clearly lessons taken from the moment. As this book came to publication, a very contested move to restore Malibu Lagoon, instigated by the government and supported by the environmental groups Heal the Bay and the Surfrider Foundation met with resistance from well-meaning, beach-loving locals who found the plan suspect. The rhetoric and subsequent protest on this restoration was, according to a source in Outside magazine’s on the topic, “.. another example of how facts, reason, and nuance have lost their place in America’s public discourse.”
Boyle’s style is very much of the moment, replete with references to contemporary culture and send-ups of stereotypical suburban and urban denizens of all types. His typically descriptive, sometimes lush writing is loaded with scenes of the natural world, but nature for the most part mediated and viewed by humans--with some notable exceptions. Some of it is over the top, but it is all in service of the ideas and generally very fun.
Boyle could be accused of overwriting; I think it true in spots, but it’s also a matter of taste. Hemingway he’s not. He's T.C. Boyle.
