Budding Prospects

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

At the instigation of Vogelsang, a far-out entrepreneur, Felix, his friend Phil Cherniske, and Phil's housemate, a two-hundred-pound barbarian known as Gesh, set out to grow a crop of sinsemilla in the hills of northern California.

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Literature, Novels, The United States Of America, Drugs, Contemporary

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

T. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twleve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is married with three children. Boyle has been a
Professor of English at the University of Southern California since 1978, when he founded the school's undergraduate creative writing program.

He grew up in the small town on the Hudson Valley that he regularly fictionalizes as Peterskill (as in widely anthologized short story Greasy Lake). Boyle changed his middle name when he was 17 and exclusively used Coraghessan for much of his career, but now also goes by T.C. Boyle.

Reviews

[Tiffany Conner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A man I used to have sex with in California recommended this book to me. One sublime post-coital morning I noticed that his bookshelves were well populated with Boyle's books. I told the man that I'd never read any of Boyle's work.

"Here," the man said. "Start with this one."

At first I thought he'd given me the book because he knew I was an avid pot smoker. But then I grew hopeful that he meant for the book to have some symbolic meaning. As in, our pairing was its own "budding prospect." That was just me being hopeful. It's a good thing I'm more pessimist and quitter than anything else, because it came as no surprise when the man eventually stopped wanting to have sex with me.

But what about the book?

I loved it. Absolutely loved it. I will most definitely be reading more of this man's work. Boyle is not merely a fantastic storyteller, he is a lover of language. His prose is perky, he retains a light mood, but never at the expense of intelligent diction. You are learning something as you read. You are learning that good stories need not be devoid of good words, and that it takes a very special artistry to combine the two in such an appealing, engaging fashion.

I'm glad the man introduced me to Boyle.

[Jayakrishnan · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The constant challenge of modern relationships: how to prove more interesting than the other's smartphone" - Alain de Botton. I guess this applies to books too. I found it hard to focus on T.C.Boyle's merry simile and metaphor laden prose. The writing was brilliant. My smartphone was always beside me, trying to distract my attention from this wonderful book. But it was not a complete hindrance. The book is filled with obscure mythological, historical and pop culture references. And not to mention a lot of rarely used words. So I often picked up my smartphone to look them up. I have read American crime fiction all year. Budding Prospects gave me a real workout.

I watched Terry Zwigoff’s pilot episode for Amazon Prime, based on Budding Prospects. I loved it and decided to read the book. The book is about the journey (picaresque adventures? More like bumbling) of a serial quitter after he is offered half a million dollars to grow marijuana on a remote farm.

Boyle’s writing as I said earlier is packed with similes. It is stylish, magnificently descriptive and the similes evoked weird images (“the rain knocked at the windows like a smirking voyeur”) and thoughts inside my head. I cannot imagine the amount of work he must have put in to arouse all these similes. It is a shame that more people would not read books like this because it requires a lot of hard work.

The book is not without its flaws. The first-person narrative means that everything is told from the point of view of the whiny, self-obsessed middle-class character Felix. After a point, his erratic and unreliable behavior gets a bit boring. His two friends Phil and Gesh, who live with him on the farm were more interesting than him. But they get little attention as Felix is always embarking upon ridiculous alcohol and drug fueled journeys, not all of which are entertaining. You wish that some of the more interesting plot points were developed upon. The gentle villain Vogelsang was a great creation. He deserves a book of his own.

At times, I felt like Boyle was like this amazingly talented cinematographer turned film director who was only interested in conjuring brilliant images and had little interest in telling the story. Boyle’s amazing talent often gets in the way of telling a great story. But it is not an entirely bad thing. I intend to read more of Boyle's books.

[Lola Estelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was kooky and funny and better than I expected, albeit painfully outdated in terms of illegal marijuana and far too many descriptions of women's breasts. (No one's breasts "gently sway" when they walk, come on man). I can forgive its nineteen-eighties-ness but I cannot forgive the constant use of the word "grin" -- I LOATHE the word "grin" and it's in this book around 100 times. Nonetheless, a pretty good read.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably read this more than a dozen times now, still one of my all-time favorite books. Don't let the pastoral part of the title fool you. These guys are farming pot. It's crime. Also picaresque. Maximalist word-play.

[Prusseliese · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 ☆
Ein amüsanter und unterhaltsamer Schelmenroman im typischen Erzählstil des Autoren.

[Letterrausch · Rating 4 out of 5]

So langsam komme ich voran mit den Büchern von T.C. Boyle. Gelesen von Stefan Kaminski machen die schon ziemlichen Spaß und zum Glück hat meine Bibliothek eine ganze Menge davon. Ich fühlte mich hier ständig an Der alte Mann und das Meer erinnert, nur nicht mit einem Fisch, sondern mit Pflanzen. Nach einem schier endlosen Kampf gegen die Natur kommt der Mensch mit quasi nix nach Hause.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few years back I read The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle and loved every 5 star bit of it, so when I came across another Boyle book at a used book sale I of course snatched it up. Ugh! Good thing I read Tortilla Curtain first or I would not have bothered.

Budding Prospects, written in 1984 is about the quest for easy money, sex, drugs, and booze but is really about bad decision-making of the less evolved gender. Felix and his loser friends find themselves as the caretakers of a pot farm in Northern California, expecting a half-million dollar payoff. Everything that can go wrong does and the reader is expected to find some humor in each maddening situation. However, we are privy to Felix's thoughts as penned by Boyle, a brilliant wordsmith, winner of numerous writing awards. This creates an incomprehensible dissonance between Felix's apparent intelligence and his conduct. If he has so much self-awareness why are his actions so brainless? Why does he treat women as one-dimensional pleasure units? Why is he sabotaging his life?

[culley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrative voice of this novel is so playful that I read most sentences with a smile on my face. At the end of each paragraph I’d have to stop and massage my aching sides and wipe tears of laughter from my eyes. I’ve heard that Boyle’s tone has become darker and more cynical over the years. I am interested in these darker books and will read some of them soon. But, as an introduction to his style, I am glad that I started with one of first books. Pure, delightful comedy. It’s going on the favorites list!

[Sophie Bathe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grün ist die Hoffnung von T. C. Boyle ist eine herrlich überzeichnete, humorvolle Geschichte über eine Gruppe von Hanfbauern. Mit detailreichen Beschreibungen und überraschenden Wendungen zieht der Roman schnell in seinen skurrilen Bann. Die Absurditäten und Abfolgen verleihen der Geschichte dabei ihren ganz eigenen Charme.

Ich kann das kurzweilige Buch sehr empfehlen, möchte aber darauf hinweisen, dass es nicht mehr den Standards der heutigen Sprache und Zeit entspricht und auch nicht diskriminierungssensibel ist. Doch wer sich darauf einlassen kann und reflektiert genug ist, um problematische Darstellungen einzuordnen, wird mit einer witzigen, einfallsreichen und temporeichen Erzählung belohnt.

Aufgrund der diskriminierungsbehafteten Sprache ziehe ich einen Stern ab. Die Geschichte ansich, verdient 5 Punkte.

[KatSie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man könnte einen Film draus machen. Es liest sich schon so als würde man einen Filme sehen.
Amüsant und lebhaft.
Hier lernt man noch was über das Anbauen von Gras :D

[Katzenkindliest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das hat mir wirklich Spaß gemacht!

[Kevan · Rating 5 out of 5]

SCENE: prolix protagonist Felix Nasmyth adventures into the local County Sheriff's Department in order to bail out a detained comrade. Unfortunately, our hero soon finds himself en agua caliente...

...If the stereotypical desk sergeant is loose of jowl, corpulent, balding and noncommunicative, the man I encountered at the Sheriff's Department didn't break any new ground. A cardboard container of coffee steamed on the counter before him, his eyes were as puffed as a prizefighter's, and his loose jowls were reddened with a thousand tiny nicks and abrasions that gave evidence of a recent and clumsy shave with one of the new, ultramodern, reclining-head skin-whittlers reinvented Gilette, Bic and the rest each month. I wear a beard myself.
"Excuse me, officer," I said. "I'd like to put up bail for someone you might be holding here." I felt like Raskolnikov in Myshkin's office, born guilty, guilty in perpetuity, guilty of everything from not honoring and obeying my parents to adolescent masturbation and stealing cigars to the larger and more heinous crimes of adulthood. I wanted to blurt it all out, confess in spate, be shriven and forgiven. Uniforms did that to me.
The desk sergeant said nothing.
I repeated myself, with a slight variation, and began to think wildly of all the possible permutations of this simple communication I might have to sift through until I hit the right one --the combination that would set clicking the tumblers of the policeman's speech centers -- when I hit on revealing the name of the incarceree after whom I was enquiring. "Cherniske, I said. "Phillip T."
Still nothing. The man was immovable, emotionless, a jade Buddha serenely contemplating some quintessential episode of a TV police show, perhaps one in which a mild-mannered desk sergeant is moved to heroics by the sick and sad state of society, leaping out from behind his deceptive mask of lethargy to pound drunks, pleaders, crooks and loophole-manipulating lawyers back into the dirt where they belonged. I tried again, this time making it a question: "Phil Cherniske?" Brought in this morning? Public intoxication?"
The thick neck swiveled like a lazy susan, the blue beads of the eyes hesitated on me with a look of hatred or impassivity -- I couldn't tell which -- and continued past me to focus on an object over my left shoulder. The officer's next motion was almost magical, so abrupt and yet so conservative of energy: his chins compressed briefly and then relaxed. I looked over my shoulder to a wooden bench flanked by a battered water cooler and a forlorn flag. "You want me to wait over here?" I said, my voice unnaturally loud, as if in compensation for his rigorous silence.
I watched his eyes for the answer, in the way one watches the eyes of a stroke victim for life. They squeezed shut, slowly, tenderly, then flashed open again -- he could have been a dragon disturbed in its sleep -- before drifting down to contemplate the steam rising from the cup. I turned, obsequiously dodging leather-booted, black-jacketed, hip-slung patrolmen, who stomped and jangled across the scuffed linoleum floor, and started for the bench. Halfway there, pausing to maneuver around a fleshy colossus who stood yawning and scratching before the water cooler, I was suddenly arrested by a summons at my back, a croak really, like some barely breathed disclosure of the oracle. "Sixty-five dollars," the voice whispered.
I gave him three twenties and a five. As the crisp folded bills passed between us, I'd felt we'd attained some sort of brotherhood, a moment of truth and accord, and I took advantage of it to ask the sergeant if he could possibly tell me when the prisoner might be released. His eyes were glass. Five fat fingers lay on the bills like dead things. When I saw no answer was forthcoming, I wheeled round, irritated, and blundered into an officer of the California Highway Patrol, replete with mirror shades, Wehrmacht boots and outsized gunbelt...

Addendum 11/16/21: this scene still kills me.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story of bucolic adventure like only Boyle can tell it. At once epic and hilarious, the characters and their various mishaps and paranoias feel very real and lived-in, regardless of how farcical. Cool your jets in Sausalito and give it a read.

[Eileenxy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich kann mich nicht entscheiden, ob das Buch gut oder schlecht war: es ist voller kreativer Vergleiche, die aber oftmals ins Absurde abrutschen. Mit viel Humor betrachtet ist es interessant.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this wacky story about a bunch of lovable losers trying to make their fortune growing pot in northern California (Humboldt?). Very funny.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant writing, exceptionally entertaining, a plot best described as "if it can go wrong it will" and a familiar setting to me, Northern Calif. You gotta love T.C. Boyle's way of telling a story!

[Sofie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Boyle has the most vivid and creative metaphores and similies. His language alone is worth the read!

[Jim Howell · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a coming of age story for thirty-year-old stoners. I wanted to like this more than I did. It was a fun read and one that I got through rather quickly once I got into to story. I haven't looked, but it is one of those books that is bound to have the phrase "Rollicking Tale" in at least one of the blurbs on the back cover. Plot-wise the protagonist begins a pot farm in California, paranoia, lies, binges, and outrageous situations ensue. We have bad cops and sinister characters and a seemingly sinister fate awaiting all. Boy meets girl continues his behavior and ultimately realizes it is time to put aside childish things and comes clean with the girl. At this point, he is able to stand up and deal with all his problems, sinister characters, and issues like an adult. And ends the b0ok leaving his childish ways behind and contemplating planting seeds with the girlfriend who has stated that having children is rather the point of becoming an adult. And Presto! he is an adult. I just have to add that in my notes there were so many bad metaphors, similes, and phrases that I kept on the Kindle a running list called "Awkward". So a nice rollicking tale but meh...

[Rogue Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comedy of errors, unlikely expectations and ineptitude in this northern California work about illegal grows where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Legalization hasn't slowed the grows, but at least crime is reportable now for those licensed. Pretty realistic from what I can see here in Southern Oregon. Today the illegal grows hide in plain sight, no need for mountain hideaways though there's better funding for regulation and enforcement this year than in earlier years.

[reherrma]

Einen ganzen Sommer über mühen drei Hippies sich ab und bauen in den Hügeln nördlich von San Francisco Marihuana an, um endlich an das große Geld zu kommen. Der Botaniker, der sie dabei beraten soll, lässt sich bald nicht mehr blicken, denn er hat das Projekt als Misserfolg abgeschrieben. Nur der Initiator, dem das Grundstück gehört, bleibt bis zum Schluss zuversichtlich ...
Das ist der Hintergrund von T.C.Boyles Klassiker, der mit viel Humor, außergewöhnlicher Fabulierlust und Freude an ausgefallenen Details erzählt wird.
Diese farbige, lebendige und ausgesprochen unterhaltsame Geschichte über drei schräge Kerle, die sich von einem aalglatten Geschäftemacher hereinlegen und ausbeuten lassen, besticht einerseits beim Lesen durch die sprachliche Brillanz und es ist beinahe auf jeder Seite sehr unterhaltsam das Auf und Ab beim Hanfanbau dreier sympathischer (Looser)Typen mit zu verfolgen.
Das Hoffen und Bangen und die Probleme beim Anbau von Marihuana mitten in der Wildnis, sind auf eine wunderbar humoristische Art dargestellt, so das einem die Herren von Seite zu Seite sympathischer werden und man auf deren Erfolg gespannt sein kann. Man weiß nie mit welchen Schwierigkeiten - neugierige Nachbarn, korrupte Freunde etc. - die Jungs auf der nächste Seite zu kämpfen haben...

[Jmoscari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though, at its base, the novel may seem like a simple story about the misadventures of a group of guys who get caught-up in a pot growing scheme, it quickly becomes apparent that so much more is at work here. Felix's quirky and often hyperbolic first person narration gives the story a mock-epic feel, which, first, makes for some hilarious situations and, second, creates an interesting critique of how we view the problems we face, especially in comparison to how those problems play out in the grander scheme of things. Great characters, some shockingly amazing moments, and an awesome ending.

My only major problem is that Boyle gets himself a little bogged down with figurative language in this one. It feels like every other sentence has an elaborate simile in it. Individually, these are moments of brilliant writing and they give the novel a great satiric tone, but the similes really do get so numerous that it becomes a little irritating, as though the narrator is trying to impress you... then again, Felix is that kind of character, so the over-describe issue becomes a tough one to navigate.

Still, great read.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

So 5 stars may seem a little on the chubby-side for a book that is more like an Elmore Leonard/Carl Hiassen-style light-hearted adventure tale, but I had never read a TC Boyle book before, and I haven't been this "into" a book in a really long time. I read the vast majority of it in about 4 days, and then moved, lost it in a box of stuff, became generally disinterested in reading for about a week or 2, then finished it! The writing is beautiful, the characters/situations relatively relatable, and it's damn funny. One of those books you read, and immediately wish you could've written it. I recommend this one for just about everyone, but especially anyone who enjoys a good get-rich-quick scheme, or pot.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought if Prop 19 passed, this would be a quaint reminder of the bygone days of prohibition, but since Prop 19 didn't pass, this book may serve as a field guide, cautionary tale, and call to arms for DIY 420ers. A pastoral set in 1970s California about a dude who never finishes anything who goes in with two buddies to solve all his woes by making a big killing clandestinely raising a crop of pot in the mountains of NoCal. As with most Boyle novels, anything that can go wrong for the narrator does go wrong and as they say, hilarity ensues as our hero attempts to see one project through to the bitter end.

Don't ask me how this book ended up in my small-town library when I was in high school, but it introduced me to Boyle's great command of language and strong narrative voice.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about five morons who decide to grow pot in the middle of nowhere to make money. Everything they can do wrong, they do, including burning down the sad little shack they live in.
The story would've been much better if the main characters had stopped lucking out and started getting what they deserved. The beauty of tragedy is when the hero is finally brought down. Because the hammer never fell, it seemed like I was being strung along. And the level of writing was not up to TC Boyle's usual level - probably because this is one of his earlier books?

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stuck about half way thorough. I don't care anough about the characters or the events to bother to finish. But it gets 2 stars instead of 1 because Boyle is a good writer. Just not good enough to get me interested in these losers and their dope farm.

[Martina Tschapka · Rating 5 out of 5]

As ever, I Loved how TC Boyle creates characters and tells stories. I'd probably read a phone book if he wrote the entries.
But of course the suspenseful build-up of this story made it entertaining from start to finish as well!

[Alex Kudera · Rating 5 out of 5]

an important how-to (or how-to-not) guide to life.

[Jennifer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and obvious. Boyle's worst. I had to force myself to finish. I just didn't care about these characters.

[Sabine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious.

[Denise Löfflad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Drei Idioten die sich idiotisch verhalten. Dazu Frauen die nur da sind, um sexualisiert zu werden. Das ganze mit viel Geschwafel und 'Philosophie'.