T. C. Boyle's
The Road to Wellville
Photo Source: wikiperia.org
It may have been Charles William Post who coined the phrase, "The Road to Wellville," but it is his rival and erstwhile mentor, John Harvey Kellogg, who appears at the center of T. C. Boyle's satirical 1993 novel by the same title. The book offers a humorous but critical look at the Battle Creek Sanitarium health craze and its litany of bizarre notions of diet and fitness, noting the turn-of-the-century convergence of dietary reform, the expanding market, and the modern-day huckster. Kellogg is portrayed as a naive and haphazard quack who, despite the best of intentions, does more harm than good to his faithful patients. The story revolves around Will Lightbody, a true "dyspeptic" suffering from digestive trouble. His wife, Eleanor -- already a devout Battle Creek-er -- convinces him to accompany her to the Sanitarium for a curative stay, where Will suffers through its various dietary remedies, electric shock treatments, hydropathic bath treatments, and, of course, enemas. On the train to Battle Creek, they meet Charlie Ossining, an entrepreneur heading to town in hopes of riding the local dietary craze to personal riches by creating his own rival brand of cereal health-food.
The year after publication of Boyle's book, it was made into a film by Alan Parker, who directed and adapted the novel into screenplay format, and starring Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda as the Lightbodys, John Cusak as Charles Ossining, and Anthony Hopkins as J. H. Kellogg.
