TC Boyle
Author
of Drop
City talks with Robert Birnbaum
 Posted:
March 19, 2003
© 2003 Robert Birnbaum
Images by Red Diaz/Duende Publishing
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interview
Thomas Corghessian (TC) Boyle was
born in Peekshill, New York and attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
He has been teaching at the University of Southern California since
1978. Including Drop City, his latest, he has written nine
novels: Water Music, Budding Prospects, World's End, East Is
East, The Road To Wellville, The Tortilla Curtain, Riven Rock
and A Friend of the Earth. TC Boyle's short-story collections
include: Descent of Man, Greasy Lake, If the River was Whiskey,
Without A Hero, TC Boyle Collected Stories and After the
Plague. Boyle's stories have appeared in The New Yorker,
Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review,
GQ, Antaeus and Granta, and he has been the recipient
of a number of literary awards. He lives with his family outside
of Los Angeles.
Robert Birnbaum: Is Drop City a funny
book?
TC Boyle: Well, what a great question. I just
started to read from it in public and I chose Chapter Six, when
they are still in California from Ronnie's point of view. And it
does get some good laughs out of the audience. But in my view, this
is my first non-comic book. Some would argue with that. Some would
talk about Riven Rock, which I think, by the way, is fairly
hilarious. Others would talk about World's End, but I think
from my point of view the mode and the voice is non-comic. Certainly
you'll get some chuckles out of it. And there are some comic scenes,
but essentially it's played as realism and it's not the kind of
satiric tone that I would usually bring to a work like this. Just
to do something different and see if I can do it.
RB: That's a good reason to do something. I know that some
of the story is supposed to be funny, but I didn't think it was
funny—emotionally. In part, because I lived that era and I
didn't take it all that seriously, but still there is a sepia cast
of melancholy about that time…
TCB: Yeah I suppose. Certainly, it's not meant to be funny.
And it's also not meant to be nostalgic. I'm not interested in writing
about this period in the way that so many people wrote about in
its time. I have my own program and my own life going on here. And
all the books are allied in one way or another. This to me is an
outgrowth of, first Tortilla Curtain, which is about illegal
immigration on the surface but the subtext is about the environment
and our overpopulation and our being animals in nature and how do
we the deal with all of this? Then I did that full blown in my last
novel, A Friend of the Earth, which is set in 2025. I'm
extrapolating from everything that happens today. Well, if it's
all true, global warming and of course we can see it in Boston right
now, this global warming by God [it's very cold outside] then what
will come of it? So, now I felt if I am going to add twenty five
years I would like to go back a given period and in this case thirty
years, to when we had a Back-to-the-Earth movement. And people felt
we should throw off some of the accoutrements of this consumer-based
society and live closer to Nature and live more simply and recycle
and so on. I just wondered how that would play, out especially in
a time when there were only a mere four and half billion people
on Earth. And further I chose Alaska and the year 1970 because that
was the last year on this continent forever on which you could homestead
and live like the pioneers. You could go to Alaska until then and
find a nice lake, "Hey beautiful!" Cut down trees, kill
your moose and live there. That's over. That's over forever.
RB: What ended that?
It's
not as if you know what your themes are and what your obsessions
are. You don't really know that at the beginning. |
TCB: The Native Claims Settlement Act. Oil. We are talking
oil. The Feds, the state, and the Indians, the Inuit and so on divided
it up and now there is no more land. Which is a good thing in many
ways. I think it's nice to know that Alaska exists even for people
who don't go there. Or the Arctic Wildlife Refuge—it’s
a place where other creatures still exist aside from us. But again,
going back to 1970, I am just wondering it's the end, it's absolutely
the end. So I am wondering what is it like to really truly live
off the land in a primitive way.
RB: You have been at this writing game for a while. At what
point did you develop your "program"?
TCB: Only in retrospect.
RB: (Laughs)
TCB: Only in retrospect, Robert. It's not as if you know
what your themes are and what your obsessions are. You don't really
know that at the beginning. I look back, and I can see how all of
the books are allied. But especially the last six or seven. They
seem to be going in a succession and including the one that I am
in the middle of right now. Riven Rock talked about a sexual
dysfunction, the '98 book that is a novel based on a true story
of the McCormack family and Stanley became schizophrenic. He was
called a sexual maniac. He was put away. That also reflects back
on the Road to Wellville, which is about Dr. Kellogg who
never consummated his marriage but in another way. So the book I
am working on now, which also has to do with "man is an animal,"
is about Dr. Kinsey's sex researches in the '40s and '50s. Everything
seems to suggest the next thing. I am just riding it. I just want
to see where it will go. I write these novels in order to try to
understand the world a little better for my own self. And if I help
my fans and readers to go along on the journey, that's great.
RB: Did you expect to have such a substantial output when
you left Iowa City in 1978?
TCB: Yes.
RB: You have always been a hard-working, steady, persevering
type guy?
TCB: No, (Both laugh). So two questions. Let's address the
second one first. It's a question of growing up I guess. I was a
very disaffected youth and not very much at school. I didn't like
school. I was a poor undergraduate, barely got through. But I did
discover certain things. Like literature. Writing and history. Then
I had a few very rocky years, and it was part of this hippie culture
and drug culture. But I grew up. I was about twenty-four or so.
I just felt this ability to do things. A kind of power, that I could
do it if I wanted to. When I went to Iowa—by the way I had
never been west of the Hudson River before that—I knew that
this was what I wanted to do and I was a great graduate student.
I got my Ph.D. and I am very proud of the fact that while I was
a screw up prior to this, now I got a perfect 4 point through all
of graduate school. And that's pretty rare there. I am just really
proud of that. I knew what I wanted to do, and my whole life was
transformed, and I have been going at it ever since. It's my life.
It's what I want to do. Everyday.
RB: Was this before the great writing program explosion
and before Iowa was known to the world as a writing Mecca?
TCB: I was there from '72 through '78. Five and half years
in all. But I went there because it was a Mecca for writers. All
of my heroes had gone there or had taught there. Flannery O'Connor
was one of the first graduates. That's when the program began in
the late '40s. It was good for me. Many of the writers in my classes
became well-known writers of today. A lot of them disappeared. I
don't know how that works. I think perseverance plays into it and
so does luck, to a degree.
RB: You leapfrogged across the continent. You went from
upstate New York, to Iowa City and then directly to southern California
where you have been for twenty-five years.
TCB: Absolutely. What's hilarious about it is when I got
to LA, the first year or so, the New York Times Book Review
was asking me to review books by western writers. (Laughs) Hey,
I'm a western guy, "Sure, give me a cowboy hat, I'll do it."
I didn't wind up doing it. I didn't feel very qualified. I don't
know anything about Western writers.
RB: Who were considered Western writers?
 TCB:
I don't remember at the time. I did do a review for them recently
though, of two Edward Abbey biographies. I don't like to do reviews.
I do it only as a kind of obligation, once in a while. But they
just struck a chord to me with Abbey because I had done A Friend
of the Earth much inspired by his work, and so I was able to
do that for them.
RB: I remember those reviews. You haven't done any non-fiction
in book form…
TCB: No, I haven't and I have no intention of doing so.
RB: Why not do a biography of Abbey since in your review
you pointed out certain deficiencies in the two biographies under
discussion? Given your devotion to Abbey, I thought, "Why doesn't
Boyle do it?"
TCB: (laughs) In a novel, of course! I though the books
were informative in a buddyhood sort of way. I spoke to that, actually.
The Jack Leffler book would break your heart. He was one of the
inner circle there. I felt that they weren't really the definitive
biographies, but I loved reading them because I loved reading about
the arc of Abbey's life. And I felt it was my obligation, in my
opinion, to tell people about that.
RB: You wouldn't even do one of these biographical essays
as published by Viking?
TCB: The Penguin ones? I love that series. I was asked by
the editor of the series when he first came up with the idea. No,
because it would take a year out of my life. And it would take one
book out of my life. No, I am only interested in pursuing this whole
fiction oeuvre. It will all be together at some point and I just
want to see how far it's going to go. And what's next. That's really
what interests me, is what is next.
RB: What is your recall of what you have written?
TCB: On TC Boyle.com…
RB: (laughs)
TCB: Which has become a wonderful, wonderful part of my
life. We get five thousand hits a day. The people on the message
boards are fanatics. I am sure some of them will read this. One
guy, in Chicago, his name is The News You Can Use, he will do contests
on my web board—all quizzes from my work. And no one has won,
though people came close. I couldn't do it. What is my recall? I
couldn't win the News quiz and I wrote the book.
RB: I guess you are not concerned.
TCB: Well, what is so interesting, Robert, is that when
you get to talk to an author they are in the middle of a new book
and have forgotten the others. You read it yesterday. I may sound
a little flippant. I don't mean it exactly in that way. I stand
by what I have done and I am proud and pleased and particularly
of Drop City because this one of all the recent ones seems
to be getting the most attention. And the most positive attention.
Nonetheless, if you are a creative person you are well into the
next project by the time you come around with this one. In fact
my publisher held this one for a while. This was done eighteen months
ago. Done and delivered and ready to go. They have their managing
people and they do their things. And so I trust them and listen—whenever
they want to do it is fine with me. I think what has happened is
the press seems to enjoy interviewing me because I am somewhat more
flamboyant than other writers.
RB: You strike me as a rock of stability. What's this flamboyance
thing?
TCB: And I say things that are interesting and they like
it, and so maybe I got a little too much attention, and so I have
too many books coming out. So they like to space them a little bit.
So I listen to my publishers and when they want to bring the books
out, that's fine with me. But it's been eighteen months and I am
totally in to the new one.
RB: Are you taken for granted because you are so prolific?
Like Joyce Carol Oates…
TCB: Updike.
RB: To some degree Roth…
TCB: He's the monk of literature now. I am very impressed
with his last four or five books and what he is doing. And there
was that great Remnick profile of him in the New Yorker
in which Roth is basically going to sit in that house and write
books and forget celebrity, forget sex, forget it all. He's just
going to write books. That's hallelujah, you know.
RB: Is that happening to you?
TCB: I still enjoy sex, Robert. I am going to continue to
do that, in fact that's why I am writing about Dr. Kinsey. And that
has been really tough on my wife.
RB: Really?
TCB: I promised her that the next book will be about a monk.
RB: Are you reading sections aloud to her?
TCB: It's been tough, let's put it that way (laughs).
RB: I was referring to your prodigious output. I was looking
at the NY Times archive and it seems that at least the
last six or seven books have been reviewed.
I
write these novels in order to try to understand the world
a little better for my own self. And if I help my fans and
readers to go along on the journey, that's great. |
TCB: They have done all my books, all fifteen of them.
RB: That would seem to be a benchmark of success and certainly
spurs book sales.
TCB: I don't know anything about that. I don't know how
the industry works or whatever happens. I don't know about it. I'm
a cottage industry sort of guy. I do my thing, and I am very pleased
if people respond to it. What I have seen over the years of my career
is that the audience is constantly growing and becoming more and
more aware. Again, the web page, there are constantly students contacting
it for help on papers on my work, and on all sorts of my writings,
not just the recent work. Every journalist I talk to, anywhere now
has gone to the web page first and gone through and gotten material.
There is an allied web page from one of the fans called TCBoyle.net,
which is infinite. If you started today it would be a year before
you got through that. So there is a lot of interest and I am very
pleased. I am an academic guy. I am professor and I was a graduate
student. I admire writers and writing. I wrote papers on writers
and am very pleased that kids from high school on up to scholars
are writing about me. I am honored. It's great.
RB: You seem to be one of those writers that journalists
use to bridge high and low art?
TCB: I operate on the highest level of art. I always have.
That's what I want to do. But, I made many enemies in this way.
And I am a professor, a Ph.D. I believe in all of this. I've made
enemies because I have tried to demystify the whole process. I am
also a regular guy. I am also a showman. I love to be on stage.
I give readings that people enjoy. There is some kind of mystique
with being a writer where you are an intellectual, need a bunch
of critics in the university to be intermediaries between you and
the audience, I think that's just crap. No matter what we want to
make of it. Art is for entertainment. You can put it in the university
but it is for entertainment. And if a book doesn't entertain it's
useless. Everything else must derive from that. And so I am an entertainer.
And yet I am often misunderstood or maybe willfully misunderstood
by my legions of enemies, who say, "He wants to dumb it down."
Of course they haven't read my books. Not at all. I am doing exactly
what I am doing for the very highest audience possible. But I also
want anybody who knows how to read to be able to enjoy this as a
story. They may not get all the subtleties; they may not know all
my work. They may not know all of literature. But they can read
this and get a charge out of it. That's what it's about. It's entertainment.
RB: Why does it seem that more and more people want to become
writers?
TCB: I am the first writer they had at USC in the English
Department and I started up their undergraduate program and it's
huge. We took over the entire department. I think writing and reading
are unique in this—in all of human culture—but particularly
in this electronic culture, this busy culture, you can do it on
your own. You can be an independent agent. You can be a punk. You
can be a crank and a crazy and you can do it and you can find an
audience for it. On the other hand the audience for serious fiction
dwindles while the number of writers increases. I hope that there
will be some point at which that legion of writers—some of
which I am helping to push in to the world—will be become the
readers of the future. That is probably the best end of this trend.
Not every one will be a writer even if they take creative writing,
but at least they will understand it and appreciate it.
RB: Most of them won't become published writers…
TCB: I don't know about that. There are no guarantees. It's
an art when you get to me at my level as a student it's almost as
if you have gone to the academy now. It's like you have played your
instrument in high school and you are really good and now you are
at Julliard and I'm going to coach you and push you on your way.
Who you are, what your work becomes, is nothing that I can help
with. I just want you to do it in your own individually way and
be as good as you can be and, "By the way have you tried this?"
Or my opinion on this, you can take it or leave it. Or structurally,
what if you did this? I'm teaching a graduate class now. We just
started a graduate program with a Ph.D. lit. And some young novelists
are in there; all struggling against the enormous structures of
the novels that they have dedicated themselves to. All trying to
be as good as they can. And I have had tremendous success that makes
me feel great, finding a key for them. One guy in particular is
having his book published. He just needed someone to say, "Well,
what about structurally if you did this?" And he did and boom
it worked. So that makes me feel great if I am able to do that.
I am not always able to do that. I am only able to give them an
opinion. This is what I think, take it or leave it.
RB: It's probably too large a question to deal with to think
about how writers fit into our culture, so I will try to trim that
one down…
TCB: I'll take a stab at that. When I meet people out of
the reading and writing and university loop and they don't know
me or who I am, they say, "So what do you do?" I say,
"I'm a writer." "Wow, man, you're a writer. I can
hardly read." (laughs) So that's my function. (Laughs)
RB: Oh yeah, there's that too.
 TCB:
They are impressed but they don't care. I'm not a soap opera star.
I'm nothing. I'm joking about it. I am well recognized. People know
who I am, that's not a problem. Hmm (pauses), for the general public,
it's somewhat off-putting that your profession is writing. It’s
untrustworthy. They don't know exactly how you do it, what you do.
What that means. They are impressed though. They think. "Well,
this pretty good he is a writer." It's not like you are an
oncologist. You know what the oncologist is going to do for you.
They don't know what the writer is going to do for you. But that's
great. That's why we are writers. We are loose cannons. We are beholding
to no one. We do exactly what we please. And again that may be why
so many people are attracted to writing because it is such an individual
expression and this society at least you can get away with it. In
this free society you can get away with it.
RB: You have a prodigious output and at the same time you
have been teaching steadily since '78.
TCB: Since birth.
RB: Since birth? Why do you say that?
TCB: Only kidding.
RB: There is no such thing as a joke in these matters.
TCB: It seems like it.
RB: Would you prefer just to write?
TCB: If I preferred just to write, that's what I would do.
Because the prodigious output that you point out has garnered me
many fans around the world and has given me—maybe even as long
ago as fifteen years ago, the income to turn my back on teaching
if I wanted to. It's a very important part of my life. As I say,
I was a student. I had great mentors who turned my life around.
I want to do that for other people. And I want to keep literature
viable. Again part of this demystifying process. I want them to
know that it is hip, that it’s okay. We have things in our
culture beyond the latest movie and MTV or TV shows. We have literature
too and it's viable and it's great and it can do things for you
that the electronic media can't. It’s a kind of a campaign
and that campaign involves going on the road an giving public performances,
writing the books and encouraging people who are like minded. My
students, for instance. So yeah, I will continue to do that as long
as I possibly can. I love it.
RB: Give me sense of your view of Southern California as
a literary hotbed. Is there a lot going on?
TCB: Hmm. I have to step back first because I have an after-thought
here. I now live a hundred miles from USC. So it's a haul to get
in there. I teach one class in the spring and two classes in the
fall. And so I have to listen to books on tape and fight the traffic
and so on. I could do it forever if the Dean will agree to drive
me in a limo both ways, but I want him to sit up front a wear a
little cap.
RB: (Kind of laughs)
TCB: He's balking at the cap. I don' t think I am being
unreasonable.
RB: A black cap?
TCB: Yeah the chauffeur's cap.
RB: That's a little rigid for a freewheeling guy like you.
TCB: (Laughs) Southern California. When I first arrived
there in the late '70s, there wasn't much of a literary scene. There
were some novelists and of course writers have always been attracted
out there by the lure of Hollywood. And many screenwriters, of course,
that's changed in the intervening years. We are such a peripatetic
society. People choose to live there who have nothing to do with
movies and there are a lot of good writers in town. And there is
a pretty good literary scene going on. LA Weekly is great. There
is Beyond Baroque,
it's been there forever, a writer's program. And many of the universities
have adopted, now, writing programs and of course they have invited
writers to move to town. Cal Irvine has a great program that has
produced lots of great writers too. See I think it's a pretty lively
literary scene, as lively as any other town with the exception of
New York, I suppose.
RB: I always think of LA as a crime-writer central.
TCB: There are a lot.
RB: Besides you, I can't think of a literary fiction writer
in LA.
TCB: There are a lot. I'm not going to mention them. I agree
with you as far as genre writers.
RB: Why not? You may forget some? (Laughs)
TCB: That's exactly right. Where I live now in Santa Barbara
it's mainly genre writers. Almost all, because no one else can afford
to live there. I'm just lucky that I am the literary writer who
can afford it. (Laughs) They sell a hundred books for every one
I sell. I have something that they don't have, which they crave.
Which is respect. But on the other hand, they never get reviewed
or rarely, and they never get attacked. So they can just make their
millions and be happy.
RB: You don't think that's changing?
TCB: No, it's not.
RB: People still try to break the walls down. Every year
there is one other guy who writes in a genre but is supposed to
be more than that.
TCB: Well that's good. Hallelujah. I don't want to diss
any writers, we are all in it together, but I'm a not a genre fiction
guy. I don't read it, don't like it, don't think about it. I have
never read any science fiction, never read any detective novels,
thrillers. I am just not interested in them because they are conventional.
That's why people like them. They want the same thing, the same
characters. Great writing to me is, you open the book and you are
surprised each time out. That's what I want to do. That's literature.
Genre writing is limited not only by the fact that it is a genre
and so that are certain expectations that have to be fulfilled.
Like filling in the blanks. But also, the writing isn't usually
as good as it is in literary fiction. And I need to read something
that is as good or better than I can do or it doesn't interest me.
RB: That would be a high standard.
I
think writing and reading are unique in this--in all of human
culture--but particularly in this electronic culture, this
busy culture, you can do it on your own. You can be an independent
agent. You can be a punk. You can be a crank and a crazy and
you can do it and you can find an audience for it. |
TCB: Yeah that's right. Well, there are a lot of great books
to read. If human life lasted ten thousand years, I couldn't get
through the books I want to know about. So why waste my time? It's
thrilling t o read something that is a literary book that is great.
Much more than reading some whodunnit or thriller. They are so standard.
I have no objection to going to movies to see a thriller or a SCI
fi movie or something. Two hours, my mind goes numb I'm having fun.
I love it. It's great. But I am not going to waste my time reading
a pulp book when I could be reading great stuff.
RB: There are writers who recognize that one of the problems
with genre is that the good guy always comes out alive…
TCB: But Robert, I know anyone who reads this will think,
"Well what a schmuck Boyle is." I am not coming down on
these people. I am just expressing my opinion. It doesn't interest
me. And yo, okay, so you change the formula slightly and the good
guy gets killed. Who cares? It’s still the same convention.
People fudge the margins a little bit. Look at Borges, what fun
he had with the idea of detective stories.
RB: Umberto Eco.
TCB: Yeah Eco. Calvino even. Much more with folk stories,
which I loved. There are people who can do new things with it, and
then there are people who are part of the genre because that's what
they love and that's what they know. Fine, let them do it. It doesn't
interest me.
RB: Do you look at current literature and say there is a
book that people will be talking about in a hundred years?
TCB: Of course I am a great fan of many, many writers and
many books.
RB: Part of your criteria is that a book will last?
TCB: Right, it's one man's opinion. Just as I have an opinion
on genre writers in general…Raymond Chandler, I've read him;
I like him the fact that he takes me back in LA history. But I am
always disappointed because it has to adhere to the conventions.
Ian McEwan just won the National Book Critic's Circle for Atonement.
That's one of the best books I have read in years. The Remains
of the Day by Ishiguro is a masterpiece. To me is one the best
books ever written by anyone at any time. Louise Erdrich's Love
Medicine is a masterpiece. Denis Johnson's books, Fiskadoro
and Jesus' Son, brilliant writing going on out there that
is utterly new, utterly unconventional. Beautifully wrought, beautifully
structured, thought out. It's amazing stuff. The Hours…why
would I want to…? I couldn't get through all of these books
if I had a million years. So these are the books I want to read.
By the way, I read popular books. I had never read Seabiscuit.
Because I don't like horses. Their eyeballs are too big. I don't
like racing and I don’t know anything about it and don't like
it. But people kept telling me. "Ya gotta read this."
And I just finished it, and I had tears in my eyes. It was wonderful.
I now love horses. That's a popular book that is just brilliantly
done. It's not conventional in any way. I was blown away by it.
RB: It's somewhat neat that a book like that sold. I wonder
if they thought it would be big.
TCB: I don't think they know what fiction will sell either.
Fortunately for some of us who have a track record and I been with
the same publisher all this time [Viking] and all my books have
always been in print which I love and it's a kind of miracle in
itself. They will look at what I give them and put it out there
and hope for the best. I can't say why one book gets more attention
than another. But for some reason Drop City is back in
the loop and getting huge attention including from my own publisher.
When the NY Times ran its cover story you open the page
and there's the full-page ad. I haven't had that before. I'm very
pleased.
RB: Who is your editor at Viking?
TCB: Paul Slovak. He edits a few writers whom he has really
has loved over the years. The late Ken Kesey was one of them. Bill
Vollman is one of them. I think Bill Kennedy might be one of his
authors. This got us off the subject—we were talking how editors
edit my books. I am a nutball perfectionist and now with the computer
what I deliver to them is pretty much what you are going to see.
Which is not to say that I don't appreciate comments and sometimes
adopt them. For instance, in A Friend of the Earth, there
is a scene when which the two protagonists as protest against environmental
destruction and logging strip naked before the press, hand them
their clothes and walk off in to the Sierras for one month to live
off the land. With nothing. Paul said this is a great scene. Why
don't you extend it a little? And he was absolutely right. I had
a lot of material to get to in that book and to move this story,
Perhaps I had summarized too much of that. And I went back and added
four or five pages and I think the scene is richer for it. That
sort of thing can be wonderful. This book, Drop City, is
exactly what I gave them. Exactly, that's it.
RB: How many drafts did you do?
TCB: I can't really say because it is all done in one draft.
One long repeated draft.
RB: Sentence by sentence.
TCB: Over and over, over and over before I move ahead. And
the next day I go back to where I was the day before. Over and over
until I move ahead. So it's one single draft that has been gone
over many, many times in the process of writing it.
RB: Usually people who work that way take a very long time.
TCB: I work a little faster than most because I began to
realize that you generally produce most of your best work before
death. So that's a stimulant. What I am doing right now is the problem;
it interrupts the flow of books. I am flying on this book The
Inner Circle, the Kinsey Book. And I didn’t want to stop.
I got farther than I even thought I would before I went on tour.
RB: Wasn't there a Solzhenitsyn book by that title?
TCB: He had book with circle in the title…The
First Circle.
RB: What's your response when a critic makes an judgement
that Drop City is a hundred pages too short?
 TCB:
Yeah, I'm glad. I think that's wonderful. Many people felt this
about Tortilla Curtain too. Each book, each story has its
proper moment to end and sometimes the author doesn’t know
that until he gets there. I'm delighted, that means he's thinking
beyond it and he liked and wanted it to go on. In many of my historical
novels, I give you a coda, like with the Road to Wellville,
or Riven Rock or Water Music. This is what happened
in subsequent times. But with books like this one and Tortilla
Curtain I feel like I have come to a point when you can write
the ending yourself. You know what's going to happen the next day,
the next week, six months from now. And to limn that for you would
be wrong. Because the best books—and genre writing doesn't
do this—invite you in as much as possible to create the book
yourself. At the very end of this book I am glad that you want it
to go on. Obviously, we can go on…all of the questions the
reader should be posing for themselves.
RB: Occasionally people come back to a novel they have written—Richard
Ford with Independence Day, Julian
Barnes with Love Etc. and Frederick
Busch is writing one for Girls—and a few years
later want to write a sequel.
TCB: I've never written sequels of my own work. Of course
I have written sequels of classic works. I wrote the sequel to For
Whom the Bell Tolls in fifteen pages. Also, wrote the Overcoat
II, to help the memory of Nikolai Gogol, The Devil and
Irv Cherniske. I love to do that. I love to play with literary
form and classic stories. I have never written a sequel yet. Because
I am so caught with what's next and what's new, I don't want to
look back. I don't want to go back. When I present something to
the public I have put everything that I possibly can into it and
I have made it as good as I thin it can be. I don't second-guess.
I don't go back. When I did the Collected Stories in '98
I looked at some of my very earliest stories and I obviously I would
write then differently today. But I didn't want to change them at
all. Why do a collected stories? Especially, at that stage in my
career. I hope to do a second Collected Stories. Well,
it's for the interest of people who want to see where I came from.
Whether they be scholars or students or people who just want to
be inspired. Or just have a good laugh. Here it is. As far as my
next book will be this Inner Circle but the following book
will be another collection. I have half of that ready.
RB: Gee whiz.
TCB: Of course, of course. I am totally committed to the
short story and I will always write them equally with novels.
RB: I brought up the sequel idea because I see an opportunity
here because a child is about to be born at the end of Drop
City which wouldn't compel you to…
TCB: Rehash the old characters…I am kind of sly in
the way that I have learned from Vonnegut when I was kid. By making
references to my other works In this book, for instance this was
proceeded by the story Termination Dust in my last book, After
the Plague, which is also set in Alaska in a town I invented
called Boynton. Some of the people in that story were young then.
I am waiting for an irate fan or astute geographer to point out
that I have changed the geography of the Boynton from the story
to the novel. I did that intentionally.
RB: For some people you are in the heart of Babylon in Southern
California. The last time I talked with you mentioned that you were
going to have a TV program.
TCB: I had a television show going down. I don't watch TV.
I'm not a TV guy but I will do anything to get my stories out to
a greater audience and my agent came to me that Fox would do a series
of my stories and I would be the host. I would only have to be the
host. At the last minute they went with a horror anthology instead.
Which I understand is no longer on the air. I hadn't invested much
in that but I had hopes for it. I love when my books are made into
movies because it will get a boost for people reading the books.
RB: What has been made besides the Road to Wellville?
TCB: It looks like next we’ll see The Tortilla
Curtain. Luis Mendocky will direct it; he's a Mexican director
who did The White Palace. Robin Williams and Helen
Hunt will play the Mossbachers and Benjamin Bratt and Eve Mendez
will play the Rincons and it will be financed through HBO films
for theatrical release. And they are going to start filming in May.
But you know, with movies until you have the extra buttered popcorn
between your thighs and it's playing on the screen, you never know.
I loved the idea. Really it was a thrill—when Alan Parker made
the Road to Wellville—to go there and see characters
that you'd imagined and lines that you had written, there and appearing
on the screen even if it's in a different version form how you pictured
it. It's just a thrill. And it helped to broadcast the book. That's
my only interest. I don't work for the movies, I don't participate
in any way. I don't go on the set. I don't care about that. But
if it's a really sappy horrible movie (laughs) I'll have to distance
myself from it because after all I didn' t do the movie and people
will blame me for the movie. So it can cut both ways.
RB: So whose picture will go on the cover of the paperback?
TCB: They put Anthony Hopkins and Bridget Fonda on the cover
of The Road to Wellville. And I resent that. To a degree.
But it sold lots and lots of copies. Benjamin Bratt is extremely
handsome and young…
RB: Did you see his movie Pinero?
TCB: Yes I did. He's handsome, he's young and doesn't look
like Candido. I'm hoping he's going to go the Robert De Niro/Raging
Bull way, gain thirty pounds and let his hair fall out and
get real dirty and sleep in a pit for a couple of weeks. Otherwise,
I don't know…I also hope that they use Spanish for when the
Rincons start talking to each other. If they talk with an accent
which Hollywood will probably do, I think it will spoil the effect.
I have nothing to do with this. I am sure they are not going to
listen to me (both laugh) but I really hope that the Spanish portions
are in Spanish. But don't hold your breath.
RB: You are here with me in Boston talking about a book
you finished a year and half ago. And you are almost finished with
the next one. When will it come out?
TCB: It depends on the endless book tours. And when I get
my life back together again. I will have the summer I hope to be
finished by fall.
RB: And you have a story collection…
TCB: Once the novel is done, I will start writing new stories
again.
RB: It's a collection?
TCB: I already have nine.
RB: They have already been published?
TCB: Yeah some were published. The first came out in January
of last year, "Swept Away," in the New Yorker.
I'd finished this book and then I put together a textbook for Heinley,
a book I have always wanted to do—for classes like—mine
of contemporary writers. It's called Double Takes. Thirty-two
writers, each one has two stories, I've done head notes and an introduction.
It's an anthology. It a lot of work. Then I began to write stories.
I went up to the Sierra Nevada. I always do. And the first I wrote
is a very whimsical piece based on the notion, I had read about
the windiest town on earth, it's in the Shetland Islands and cats
blow by, so I wrote my flying cat story called "Swept Away."
I continued to write stories until May and then I began the research
on this Kinsey book. I went to all the biographies and histories
and went to Bloomington [Indiana] and I began writing the book on
Halloween, a propitious day. I'm writing better and faster than
I ever have. It's the first 'I' narrator of a novel since Budding
Prospects. I'm really enjoying it.
RB: Your daughter is writing now.
TCB: I am very proud of my daughter and a little jealous
of her, by the way.
RB: Is she better than you are?
I
work a little faster than most because I began to realize
that you generally produce most of your best work before death.
So that's a stimulant. |
TCB: Well, of course she is. What's great is she is a very
different writer. She is very textured with dense beautiful writing.
As if William Gass were her father instead of me. Her name is Kerry
Kobashe Boyle. She just published her first story in McSweeney's,
a great place to publish. On the strength of that she has gotten
into two anthologies and NPR has asked her to be a commentator.
Now when I published my first story nobody cared, nobody noticed.
(Both laugh) And furthermore she is in the Iowa Writers' Workshop
right now.
RB: Somebody at Slate wrote a
piece on fam fic, children continuing the work of their parents
or relatives…
TCB: Has that ever happened?
RB: Well that was the premise of the piece. Tolkien, Jeff
Shaama, Brian Herbert. As well as the Godfather saga continuing,
a sequel to Gone with the Wind…
TCB: I think it is mainly unhappy…the best example
I can think of that seems happy to me, although I don't know the
circumstances, is Martin Amis and his father Kingsley. Both brilliant.
In fact, I think Martin is more brilliant than his father. But they
both have successful careers as writers.
RB: I am more interested about the legitimacy of one writer
continuing another's work. Robert Parker finished a Raymond Chandler
book at the behest of the Chandler Estate…
TCB: I have no idea why anyone would do that. I would never
do that. When I have done rewritten classic stories, It's for my
own purposes in order to make a point. And it's somewhat of a homage
to the story, but it's not an attempt to write in the mode of that
author but rather to do a riff on it for fun. To make a comment
on how this story holds up now and the attitudes of this story hold
up now. The Over Coat II, I wrote in the mid '80s and it
retold the story with the same characters and the same scenario
except that it took place in the worker's paradise. And it was rather
harsh commentary on the Soviet System. I haven't been fully credited
for this, but it was I who was responsible for bringing down the
Soviet Union by having written that story.
RB: I will inform the rest of the media. (laughs)
TCB: Thank you.
RB: Are you familiar with the Will
Self book Dorian?
TCB: No. But I know Will and I have read Cock &
Bull and his Great Apes, which is a wonderful book.
He has new one?
RB: Yes, and he calls it an imitation.
TCB: Oh. Dorian Gray?
RB: Yes.
TCB: I'd be interested because he is a guy who could really
ring changes on that. He has an amazingly idiosyncratic point of
view.
RB: I'm not sure what the conclusion is but that other than
for commercial reasons to continue an author's work.
TCB: I think it is corrupt actually. The writer's work is
individual, and we love the writer for having taken us someplace
we have never been before. And to imitate for commercial reasons
is kind of artistically bankrupt. It's like writing the novelization
of a movie or something.
RB: Wait, you aren't suggesting that multi-national corporations
that publish books are corrupting the arts?
TCB: Well, I don't even know what the subject is exactly.
I hadn't even heard of this. You asked my opinion and there it is.
(Both laugh)
RB: Let's end there before we provoke dark forces... Thanks.
TCB: Thank you.
____
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