Living & Arts

T.C. Boyle

In print | March 20, 2008

As I walked through a grey drizzle to LPAC this past Wednesday afternoon, I realized that meeting one’s heroes is a daunting task. What questions could I possibly ask TC Boyle, renowned author and creative writing professor of 30 years, that he had not heard many times before? Yet Boyle, dressed in punk rock red Converse and a black leather jacket, soon put me at ease with his soft voice and stories of his addiction to the craft of writing.

Although he has attained an intimidating amount of critical success, Boyle’s path to literary fame was never predestined or narrow. As a high school student in New York’s Hudson Valley, he struggled to discover where his interests lay. “There was always this pressure to be a polymath and to be good at everything … I wasn’t,” Boyle said.

Bent on a career in music, Boyle attended SUNY Pottsdam. However, a failed audition redirected his focus to the study of History, which in turn, introduced him to English literature and creative writing. Taking a course on the contemporary American short story, Boyle discovered the work of authors such as Flannery O’Connor and John Updike. In his junior year, he “blundered into a creative writing class” and finally found his passion. “I didn’t care in the slightest bit about [the future]. I just thought, ‘I am going to do what I am going to do.’”

With an MFA and a PhD in nineteenth century British literature from the University of Iowa, Boyle did not “desire to be a man of letters.” Drawn in by the rush he felt when completing a story, he wanted only to write creatively and to teach. Today, Boyle has published 19 books of fiction on a broad range of topics. For Boyle, a story is “an exercise in the imagination. It’s a spark, it’s a riff, it’s like playing jazz.” Using a mix of comedy, tragedy and fantasy, his stories reach beyond the everyday to find a universal nub of truth. Defying the old cliche “Write what you know,” Boyle finds that his “mantra is more, ‘Write about something you don’t know and discover something.’”

Boyle’s eclectic fiction has garnered him an equally diverse group of fans. “One reason that I think that my stories have had wide appeal is that there is nothing that I won’t try.” With the creation of his website in 1999, he has had the opportunity to interact with his readers via a monthly blog and a discussion forum. “The best thing about it is…when you have contact with people who have read your work in a way that is interpretive and they get what you are doing,” Boyle said. Although the forum has endured its fair share of hackers, Boyle takes great pleasure in watching the creation of an active community focused on but not limited to his work.

Before the Internet age, “if you published a story in Harpers or something, six months later, two letters would come sent … and they would mainly be from people who felt that you had a fact wrong in your story.” According to Boyle, the Internet has created a whole new “broiling world” for fans.

Yet no matter how many stories he has published in The New Yorker, Boyle maintains a grounded level of frank openness about his life and work. Hours after my interview with Boyle, he stood poised for a reading behind a wooden podium in the LPAC cinema. Although he had abandoned his Converse sneakers and leather jacket, he entertained the audience with similar tales of his journey to becoming a celebrated author.

Unfazed by microphone troubles, Boyle read two “daughter stories.” The first, “Back in the Eocene” from 1994’s “Without a Hero,” was intended to amuse with its SAT vocabulary word infused account of a DARE award ceremony. Boyle admitted that the second piece, “Chicxulub” from 2005’s “Tooth and Claw,” was going to break the audience’s heart. A harrowing account of the aftermath of a car accident, “Chicxulub” explored the human struggle with death and the inability to comprehend the universe.

When he reads his own work, Boyle’s meandering voice takes on a new tone tinged with dramatic tension. He is absorbed in the story, held captive by his own characters. It is this transformative dedication to fiction that makes Boyle such a powerful speaker and author. His status as a literary hero is certainly well deserved.

TC Boyle’s reading at Swarthmore was sponsored by the English Department and the Cooper Committee.