Books by T. C. Boyle
Born: 1948T. C. Boyle Biography & Notes
T. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948) is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eleven novels and more than 60 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. Since 1986, Boyle has been Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
Thomas John Boyle was born December 2, 1948 in Peekskill, New York. 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.
Boyle earned a BA in English and history from the State University of New York at Potsdam in 1968, after which he taught for four years at the high school in his home town where his mother worked as head secretary and his father as janitor. After being accepted to the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1972, Boyle served as fiction editor for the Iowa Review and in 1977 first received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1988 a Guggenheim. Boyle has since received many literary awards - - including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Malamud Prize, the PEN/West Literary Prize, the Commonwealth Gold Medal for Literature, National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for prose excellence as well as six O. Henry Awards for short fiction, multiple Best American Short Story awards and Drop City is a National Book Award Finalist.
Boyle earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974 and his Ph.D. degree in 19th century British literature in 1977. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, and currently lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.
Many of Boyle's novels and short stories explore the Baby Boom generation, its appetites, joys, and addictions. Boyle’s themes, such as the often-misguided efforts of the male hero and the slick appeal of the anti-hero, appear alongside brutal satire, humor, and magic realism. As well, Boyle's fiction explores the ruthlessness and the unpredictability of nature and the toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment. Boyle's work has been compared to Mark Twain's for its mixture of humor and social exploration.
His novels include World's End (1987, winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction); The Road to Wellville (1993); and The Tortilla Curtain (1995, winner of France's Prix Medicis Etranger). Boyle is also one of America's most accomplished short story writers and has published eight collections, including Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994). His short stories regularly appear in the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and Playboy.
Renowned for the thorough research he carries out, some literary critics have said that Boyle has given new impetus to the historical novel by spinning bizarre and funny yarns around historical events. For example, Riven Rock, set in 1920s America, is about contemporary treatment for insanity as well as the emerging feminist movement. Similarly, The Road to Wellville features John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the corn flake and peanut butter, as a quack doctor at a turn-of-the-century health spa; a later novel, Drop City, is set in 1970 and deals with the often contradictory aims and promises of the hippie movement.
Boyle's latest novel, an identity-theft literary thriller, Talk Talk, is currently in production at Universal Pictures. Despite the contemporary qualities of his fiction, to date only one film has been made from Boyle's work: 1994's The Road to Wellville, starring Anthony Hopkins, John Cusack and Matthew Broderick. In 2006, two new projects had T. C. Boyle's name attached: Achates McNeil, being screenwritten by Donald Margulies, and The Tortilla Curtain, starring Kevin Costner. Kinsey, a 2004 semi-biographical film starring Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara, is seen by some as a companion piece to Boyle's novel The Inner Circle.
Thomas John Boyle was born December 2, 1948 in Peekskill, New York. 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.
Boyle earned a BA in English and history from the State University of New York at Potsdam in 1968, after which he taught for four years at the high school in his home town where his mother worked as head secretary and his father as janitor. After being accepted to the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1972, Boyle served as fiction editor for the Iowa Review and in 1977 first received a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and in 1988 a Guggenheim. Boyle has since received many literary awards - - including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Malamud Prize, the PEN/West Literary Prize, the Commonwealth Gold Medal for Literature, National Academy of Arts and Letters Award for prose excellence as well as six O. Henry Awards for short fiction, multiple Best American Short Story awards and Drop City is a National Book Award Finalist.
Boyle earned his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974 and his Ph.D. degree in 19th century British literature in 1977. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, and currently lives in Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.
Many of Boyle's novels and short stories explore the Baby Boom generation, its appetites, joys, and addictions. Boyle’s themes, such as the often-misguided efforts of the male hero and the slick appeal of the anti-hero, appear alongside brutal satire, humor, and magic realism. As well, Boyle's fiction explores the ruthlessness and the unpredictability of nature and the toll human society unwittingly takes on the environment. Boyle's work has been compared to Mark Twain's for its mixture of humor and social exploration.
His novels include World's End (1987, winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction); The Road to Wellville (1993); and The Tortilla Curtain (1995, winner of France's Prix Medicis Etranger). Boyle is also one of America's most accomplished short story writers and has published eight collections, including Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994). His short stories regularly appear in the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and Playboy.
Renowned for the thorough research he carries out, some literary critics have said that Boyle has given new impetus to the historical novel by spinning bizarre and funny yarns around historical events. For example, Riven Rock, set in 1920s America, is about contemporary treatment for insanity as well as the emerging feminist movement. Similarly, The Road to Wellville features John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the corn flake and peanut butter, as a quack doctor at a turn-of-the-century health spa; a later novel, Drop City, is set in 1970 and deals with the often contradictory aims and promises of the hippie movement.
Boyle's latest novel, an identity-theft literary thriller, Talk Talk, is currently in production at Universal Pictures. Despite the contemporary qualities of his fiction, to date only one film has been made from Boyle's work: 1994's The Road to Wellville, starring Anthony Hopkins, John Cusack and Matthew Broderick. In 2006, two new projects had T. C. Boyle's name attached: Achates McNeil, being screenwritten by Donald Margulies, and The Tortilla Curtain, starring Kevin Costner. Kinsey, a 2004 semi-biographical film starring Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara, is seen by some as a companion piece to Boyle's novel The Inner Circle.
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America by T. C. Boyle ( 2007) |
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America / The Tortilla Curtain Library Edition by T. C. Boyle ( 2007) |
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America / The Tortilla Curtain Library Edition by T. C. Boyle ( 2007) |
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American Writers A Collection of Literary Biographies Supplement VIII by T. C. Boyle, August Wilson ( 2001) |
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Best of Playboy Fiction by T. C. Boyle, John Collier, Billy Crystal, David Foster Wallace ( 1997) |
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Budding Prospects A Pastoral by T. C. Boyle ( 1990)
T. C. Boyle is one of the most inventive and wickedly funny short story writers at work today. Over the course of twenty-five years, Boyle has built up a body of short fiction that is remarkable in its range, richness, and exuberance. His stories have won accolades for their irony and black humor, for their verbal pyrotechnics, for their fascination with everything bizarre and queasy, and for the razor-sharp way in which they dissect America's obsession with image and materialism. Gathered together here are all of the stories that have appeared in his four previous collections, as well as seven that have never before appeared in book form. Together they comprise a book of small treasures, a definitive gift for Boyle fans and for every reader ready to discover the "ferocious, delicious imagination" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of a "vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society" (The New York Times).
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The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle by T. C. Boyle ( 1993) |
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Descent of Man Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 1990)
A mad, hilarious collection of short stories, wherein Boyle offers his unique view of dictators, animals, scientists, explorers, collectors, teetotalers, and others.
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Descent of Man. an Atlantic Monthly Press Book Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 1979)
In these outrageous, hilarious stories by one of the most imaginative young writers of fiction today, Idi Amin presides over the Second International Dada Fair, the Yerkes chimp runs off with his female trainer, and a Norse poet tries to overcome bard-block.
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Doubletakes Pairs of Contemporary Short Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 2003)
Selected by celebrated author and professor T. Coraghessan Boyle, DOUBLETAKES: PAIRS OF CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES gives students the opportunity to enjoy, through close reading and analysis, the works of some of the most recognized names in contemporary literature.
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Drop City by T. C. Boyle ( 2004)
The members of the Drop City commune clash with Alaskan homesteaders who live near to where the commune has recently moved, as both groups struggle for love, nourishment, and shelter. By the author of A Friend of the Earth.
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East Is East by T. C. Boyle ( 1991)
A young Japanese seaman jumps ship off the coast of Georgia and washes ashore on a barrier island inhabited by a strange mix of rednecks, descendents of slaves, genteel retired people, and a colony of artists. The result is a sexy, savagely hilarious tragicomedy of thwarted expectations, mistaken identity, love, jealousy and betrayal. "An absolutely stunning work, full of brilliant cross-cultural insights".--The New York Times Book Review.
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A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle ( 2001)
Set in a grim near-future 2025 A.D. southern California, this novel follows the adventures of an ecoterrorist whose efforts to save the planet unwittingly place his own family at risk. By the author of The Tortilla Curtain. Reprint.
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A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle ( )
A Friend of the Earth opens in the year 2025, as Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tidewater ekes out a bleak living in southern California, managing a rock star's private menagerie. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most of the major mammalian species are extinct.
Once Ty was so seriously committed to environmental causes that he became an ecoterrorist and convicted felon. Once he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now when he's just trying to survive, Andrea comes back into his life. What happens as the two slip into a reborn involvement makes for a gripping and topical story told in Boyle's uniquely funny and serious voice. |
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Greasy Lake and Other Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 1990)
Stories ranging from the farcical to the mythic present the doings and darings of an aging Latin ball player, an Elvis Presley look-alike, a survivalist, and other figures of our times.
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Hidden Histories Granta 85, Spring 2004 by T. C. Boyle, Ian Jack, Orhan Pamuk, Giles Foden ( 2004) |
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Human Fly and Other Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 2005) |
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The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle ( 2005)
In 1940, innocent young John Milk accepts a job as an assistant to Dr. Alfred Kinsey, an Indiana University zoologist who has taken up the study of human sexuality, and takes part, along with his beautiful wife, in a series of sexual experiments that become ever more uninhibited. Reader's Guide available. Reprint.
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Most Powerful Tailor in the World by T. C. Boyle, Michael Crichton, Frederick Forsyth ( 1996) |
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Riven Rock by T. C. Boyle ( 1999)
T. C. Boyle's seventh novel transforms two characters straight out of history into rich mythic figures whose tortured love story is as heartbreaking as it is hilarious. It is the dawn of the twentieth century when the beautiful, budding feminist Katherine Dexter falls in love with Stanley McCormick, son of a millionaire inventor. The two wed, but before the marriage is consummated, Stanley experiences a nervous breakdown and is diagnosed as a schizophrenic sex maniac. Locked up for the rest of his life at Riven Rock, the family's California mansion, Stanley is treated by a series of confident doctors determined to cure him. But his true salvation lies with Katherine who, throughout her career as a scientist and suffragette, continues a patient vigil from beyond the walls of Riven Rock, never losing hope that one day Stanley will be healed. Blending social history with some of the most deliciously dark humor ever written, Boyle employs his hallmark virtuoso prose to tell the story of America's age of innocence--and of a love affair that is as extraordinary as it is unforgettable.
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The Road to Wellville by T. C. Boyle ( 1994)
T. C. Boyle tells the fictionalized story of John Harvey Kellogg, the inventor of cornflakes. As perhaps the world's most successful health nut, Kellogg founded the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he preached vegetarianism, colonic irrigation, and various other extreme remedies to his wealthy clients. (On his website, Boyle lists a typical breakfast menu at the spa: Nut Lisbon Steak, Protose Patties, Nuttolene & Jelly, Corn Pulp, Sliced Banana with Beaten Meltose, Granuto, and Graham Grits.) Among those there for the cure are Will and Eleanor Lightbody, who hope to alleviate both their stomach problems and their grief over the death of a child. The action is enlivened by George Kellogg, John's ne'er-do-well son, who tries to undermine his father's empire, and by a young entrepreneur, Charlie Ossining, who has his own ambitions for breakfast food success. Boyle's wry satire takes on American dreams, entrepreneurialism, money-worship, and gullibility with his characteristic comic gusto. It was made into a 1994 movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Kellogg.
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T. C. Boyle Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 1999)
Twenty-five years of short fiction by the celebrated author of Riven Rock and The Tortilla Curtain are collected here, in an anthology that includes seven never before published in book form. Reprint. NYT.
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Tales of the Diamond Selected Gems of Baseball Fiction by Thomas Wolfe, James Thurber, Zane Grey, P.G. Wodehouse, Garrison Keillor, T. C. Boyle, Damon Runyon, Wilbur Schramm, William Price Fox ( 1996)
Gathers baseball stories by Damon Runyon, James Thurber, W.P. Kinsella, Paul Gallico, Garrison Keillor, Roger Angell, Shirley Jackson, and Thomas Wolfe.
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Talk Talk by T. C. Boyle ( 2007)
Having fallen completely in love with hearing-impaired Dana, Bridger is unable to believe her guilty of charges ranging from assault to auto theft and discovers that a man named Peck Wilson has been living a life of criminal excess at Dana's expense. By the author of
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Tooth And Claw And Other Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 2006) |
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Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle ( 2006)
Two diametrically opposed couples meet--or rather, collide--in this tragi-comedy of coincidence and error. One couple--a Thoreau-esque nature writer and a rabid realtor, both L.A. liberals--lead fairly conventional 90s lives, while the other couple--two hungry illegal Mexican immigrants--scratch out an existence in a dwelling held together with spit. Told from each of their view-points, the narrative unravels to reveal an American crisis of identity.
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Water Music by T. C. Boyle ( 1983)
Mungo Park, based on a real-life African explorer, and Ned Rise, a scoundrel, pimp, thief, and cheat, travel about Africa and meet up with a varied assortment of characters--native and colonial, antic and dangerous.
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Welcome to the Monkey House by Roald Dahl, T. C. Boyle, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, Jane Smiley ( 1996)
These 25 short stories form Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (mostly published in the 1950s and '60s) feature the wildly imaginative and fiercely satiric style that made Vonnegut one of the most recognizable and popular voices of late 20th-century fiction. The title story features a dystopian future where overpopulation is rampant and the government has implemented a policy of Suicide Parlors and libido-reducing pills--a policy fought by the revolutionary Casanova called Billy the Poet.
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Wild Child And Other Stories, Library Edition by T. C. Boyle ( 2010)
Any list of the best short-story writers in America must contain the name T.C. Boyle, and this exuberant collection may elevate him to the top. In novels such as THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE and THE WOMEN, Boyle has proven himself to be adept at humanizing eccentric figures from history, and he does it again in the title story of this volume, which definitively re-imagines the childhood of Victor, the feral boy who was discovered in the wilds of France near the turn of the 19th century and then domesticated as a grand social experiment. Elsewhere, in "The Lie," a languid worker who has run of excuses with his boss conjures up a horrific story about his newborn baby, and then struggles to live with the ensuing charitable response. "Question 62" brims with many of Boyle's favorite themes, as the suburban tranquility of a quiet neighborhood unravels under the threat of an escaped tiger. Boyle is a master of marking his characters with bizarre behaviors or afflictions, and then gradually revealing how these apparent aberrations are merely extensions of more mundane human qualities.
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Without a Hero Stories by T. C. Boyle ( 1995)
T. C. Boyle was first feted as a master of the short story for his critically acclaimed Greasy Lake. With these stories applauded by People magazine as "wickedly comical, " he displays once again a virtuosity and versatility rare in literary America today. Without a Hero zooms in on American phenomena such as a center for the treatment of acquisitive disorders; a couple in search of the last toads on earth; and a real estate wonder boy on a dude safari near convenient Bakerfield, California. Sharp, guileful, and malevolently funny, Boyle's stories are" more than funny, better than wicked," says The Philadelphia Inquirer. "They make you cringe with their clarity."
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The Women by T. C. Boyle ( 2009)
As he did with Alfred Kinsey in THE INNER CIRCLE and John Harvey Kellogg in THE ROAD TO WELLVILLE, T.C. Boyle mines the biography of a monumental figure in American history, and transmutes it into a vivid novelistic portrait. In THE WOMEN, Boyle provides an alternate view of master architect Frank Lloyd Wright, seen through his turbulent relationships with four women who loved him at different times of his life--Olgivanna, a lithe beauty from Montenegro, Miriam, a vivacious, drug-addicted Southern belle, Mamah, his soul mate and true beloved, and his first wife Kitty, who remains forever faithful. The story of THE WOMEN is told by a man, Tadashi Sato, an apprentice of Wright, who relates the episodes in reverse chronological order. As Wright's ephemeral affections and tyrannical obsessions continually frustrate his love interests, his unconventional architectural visions, particularly his magnificent estate, Taliesin, emerge as the genuine loves of his life in this grand re-imagining of an artistic icon.
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The Women A Novel by T. C. Boyle ( 2009)
A tale inspired by the life of Frank Lloyd Wright is presented from the perspectives of four very different women who loved him and offers insight into the eminent architect's enduring struggles against conventional boundaries. 75,000 first printing.
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World's End A Novel by T. C. Boyle ( 1987)
Walter Van Brunt, woozy with pot, cheap wine, and sex, collides with his own historical roots when he crashes his motorcycle into a historical marker along the highway.
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Un amigo de la tierra/ A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle ( 2002) |
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El fin del mundo/ The End of the World by T. C. Boyle ( 2002) |
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