T.C. Boyle to share two short stories
By Giselle Maund
April 23, 2007 9:32 p.m.
Internationally renowned author T.C. Boyle ““ that’s Thomas Coraghessan, for those who don’t know ““ kindly says it’s an accident that he wound up as a professor at USC instead of UCLA, since USC was the first university that offered him a job after he completed his graduate program in Iowa.
But this weekend, Boyle will be on Bruin soil for the 12th Annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, reading two short stories at 4 p.m. on Saturday in Schoenberg Hall.
“I like the fact that I can do my own show. I refuse to be on a panel or part of a discussion because I’m too cranky,” Boyle said. “This is the first year in a long time that I’m not introducing a new book, the reason being that it’s not done yet. It frees me up. I’m going to do two complete short stories that are very enjoyable for me to read and perform for people. I think it’ll be lively and also pretty funny.”
As a returning author that has missed only one year of the festival, Boyle is a true devotee to the Festival of Books.
“I think it’s the best one in the world, and I’ve been to lots of them,” he said. “This one has a great feeling to it, and I think part of it is the UCLA campus. There is so much space ““ you can just drift around.”
Book festivals and tours have taken Boyle from Miami to Frankfurt, Germany, and everywhere in between, but the constant change of scenery is fodder for his work. His 19 books range in setting from the 17th century to 20 years in the future and take place all over the globe.
Boyle’s upcoming book, “The Women,” is still in its final phases. Like some of his previous works, “The Women” is about an egomaniac of the 20th century. This time, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright is the featured egomaniac.
“It’s mainly in the point of view of the four women in his life and their social life living with this guy: What’s it like living with a great egomaniac and a great genius?” Boyle said. “It’s funny and tragic because his second woman ““ I’m not going to say wife … his companion, partner, his mate ““ was murdered. So there’s a tragic element, but it’s presented in a way that will be very informative. And I love historical novels.”
Critics love Boyle’s historical novels too, partly because of the extensive research he is known for, but also because of his talent for making characters real.
But Boyle’s personal history has its own intriguing plot. Before his novels were published, before his name graced the pages of The New Yorker, GQ and Esquire, and before he entered graduate school at the University of Iowa, Boyle was, as he calls himself, a “disaffected” and “discouraged” undergraduate studying music at SUNY Potsdam.
Though he had aspirations of being a musician and wanted to play clarinet and saxophone in college, Boyle halted his academic musical pursuits as an undergraduate student.
Soon after, he discovered his writing voice in a creative writing class during his junior year.
“By (graduate school) I was a really good student because I’d realized what I wanted to do,” he said. “The irony is that I’ve been in school my whole life. And I hope always to be.”
Boyle is now as a professor at USC, where he joined the English department in 1986.
This semester, Boyle teaches on Fridays, which he notes is convenient because he can wholeheartedly thank God it’s Friday ““ and settle back into his own work, which is a full-time job. He makes the hundred-mile trek from his home in Santa Barbara to Los Angeles 26 days a year.
“There’s something about driving there through traffic that makes me feel like I’m doing some good work … if I did the writing 365 days a year, I feel like I’d be in a mental hospital,” Boyle said.
Students who have the well-known author as a professor are aware that they are lucky to be studying under him, although, Boyle says, they’re sometimes unclear on what to call him.
“They call me Dr. Boyle, some call me T.C., but mainly they just kind of tend to throw out the “˜hey,’ because they’re too embarrassed to try to figure out what they’re supposed to call me,” Boyle said. “(But) that’s OK because that’s how it is for students and that’s how I was when I was a student.”
Boyle advises his students, or anyone who is interested in pursuing a literary career, to keep reading books upon books.
“(You) have to read a lot. A lot of students have a lot of talent, but they’re not familiar with what’s going on now in art,” he said. “The best writers are … reading their contemporaries, browsing bookstores for inspiration. Everything that you’ve taken in will be filtered and come out in some juncture.”
Above all, Boyle says that although writing can be unpredictable, it is an inspiration and an addiction for him.
“I never know in my stories where it will go, what it will be, what it means,” he said. “It begins to become clear to me in the process. And when I come to an ending and I feel that it’s right, I feel this tremendous rush of satisfaction. And I want to do it again.”
