Posted on 10/26/2019 3:55:19 PM PDT by Twotone
Many years ago for the BBC I interviewed T Coraghessan Boyle, author of a novel set in Battle Creek, Michigan - "The Cereal Bowl of the World!" - in the early years of the 20th century. The title of Boyle's book was The Road To Wellville, which in fact was the name of a pamphlet written by C W Post after a stay at Dr Kellogg's sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Mr Post was so inspired by the Kellogg recommendations on "clean living" that he started his own breakfast cereal - Grape Nuts - and included a copy of his pamphlet in every box. In Boyle's novel, the mere mention of "The Road To Wellville" provokes Dr Kellogg to paroxysms of rage.
As soon as my BBC producer told me what the book was about, I thought, "Ah-ha! There's a hit!" But T Coraghessan Boyle is an idiosyncratic writer and rather more of an acquired taste than Corn Flakes or Raisin Bran. His literary style is quite as obsessive as his subject in his measured, clinical pile-up of details - the Nuttolene and Granuto, the rectoscopes and sitz baths. But he's also somewhat fastidious and granular when it comes to both country matters and waste matter: one chapter heading encapsulates his attitude - "The Civilized Bowel". Very civilized. So the novel wasn't quite the runaway bestseller it might have been in others' hands.
He did, however, get an instant movie sale out of it. So a year after publication - 1994, or a quarter-century ago this week - The Road To Wellville hit the big screen in a treatment by writer/director Alan Parker. The film appeared to be Parker's attempt to put a whoopee cushion under Boyle's book, or at any rate a lot of corn among the flakes.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
During a time of drought, He tried to make it rain by firing multiple cannons from the Cap Rock above the town.
John Harvey Kellogg was indeed an advocate of “clean living”
as can be seen by this article...
enjoy this article with your next bowl of corn flakes!
https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/history/cereal-masturbation.aspx
I've always thought The Road to Wellville, both the book and the movie, to be underappreciated comedy. There were so many subtle shots at crank health care, in both. One that stands out is Kellogg's forced vegetarian wolf, shivering, drooping, and skin and bones, in a cage. Kellogg claims it's been "tamed".
Oddly enough, it's impossible to find in the used DVD market...
Uh oh...spicy & flavoursome foods! I add habanero powder to my wine. :-)
“Wellville” is a hoot. And you get to enjoy the ample assets of Traci Lind, too. ;-)
“directorial onanism”
Well said, Mark. Well said.
Kellogg was certifiable, but in many ways no different from other Seventh Day Adventist philosophies at the turn of the century. I know this because my great grandfather was a seventh day adventist preacher, and my grandfather told me stories. He didn’t have his first taste of pork until he took a job in a logging camp.
CC
Lots of them are Hadji DVDs. Copied overseas, in foreign formats. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t...
I thought it ws very funny. Say what you want about Kellogg, but people are still consuming Corn Flakes.
"I couldn't eat that much yogurt."
"Oh son, it's not going in that end."
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