T. Coraghessan Boyle
T. Coraghessan Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948, in Peekskill, New York, is a prominent American author known for his diverse storytelling and rich characterizations. He grew up in a challenging environment, shaped by the struggles of his alcoholic parents, and later moved to Southern California to pursue a career in teaching and writing. Boyle earned his doctorate at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has since held a distinguished position as head of the creative writing program at the University of Southern California. His literary career began with the acclaimed short story collections *Descent of Man* (1979) and *Greasy Lake* (1985), which showcased his ability to adopt various perspectives and delve into complex themes.
Boyle's novels, such as *Water Music* (1981) and *The Tortilla Curtain* (1995), explore themes of cultural conflict, identity, and the human condition, often highlighting the universal hopes and dreams that bind people across different societies. His recent works, including *Talk to Me* (2021) and *Blue Skies* (2023), offer thought-provoking narratives that engage with contemporary issues like environmentalism and communication. Boyle's writing is noted for its audacity and depth, making him a unique voice in American literature. Through his works, he invites readers to reflect on the intricacies of human experience, often blending humor with poignant insights.
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Subject Terms
T. Coraghessan Boyle
- Born: December 2, 1948
- Birthplace: Peekskill, New York
Author Profile
The biographical facts of writer T. Coraghessan Boyle’s life abound with the incongruous juxtapositions that one finds in his fiction. Born and reared in Peekskill, a town in New York’s historic Hudson Valley, he moved to Southern California to teach. A troubled son of alcoholic parents who himself indulged in a weekend heroin habit, he achieved early distinction for his fiction and has become that rare writer who earns critical respect and a wide audience.
Boyle was born Thomas John Boyle in 1948, but officially changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was seventeen. At the State University of New York at Potsdam, he was a music major, but switched to English literature and writing. He enrolled at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he studied under and , and graduated in 1977 with a doctorate in nineteenth-century British literature. That same year, he and his wife Karen, with whom he has three children, moved to California, where Boyle became head of the creative writing program at the University of Southern California.
Boyle distinguished himself as a writer capable of assuming a wide variety of personalities in his highly regarded first collection, Descent of Man (1979), among them a rapist (“Drowning”), a female scientist (“Descent of Man”), an African dictator (“Dada”), and even a dog (“Heart of a Champion”). Proving his literary powers, Boyle's second collection, Greasy Lake (1985), was also met with high praise. This collection also contains the short story of the same name and is Boyle's most anthologized short story. Subsequent collections garnered comparisons of his stories to those of and for their audaciousness.
Boyle’s novel-length works expanded the vivid scenarios of his short fiction. Water Music (1981) chronicles the adventures of nineteenth-century British colonials exploring the Niger River, and World’s End (1987) describes the parallels among Dutch, Native American, and European American experience in the Hudson River Valley during three centuries. East Is East (1990) and The Tortilla Curtain (1995) focus on the plight of illegal aliens in the United States from, respectively, Japan and Mexico. Talk, Talk (2006) explores the issues of identity and identity theft, while When the Killing's Done (2011) looks at animal rights and environmentalism, using California's Channel Islands as its backdrop.
Invariably, Boyle’s novels show that people’s hopes and dreams are the same across all cultures and times, but that the different means of achieving them within a specific society lead to problems with comic and tragic dimensions. Boyle’s interest in the universality of human aspirations has allowed him to use themes as different as marijuana farming (Budding Prospects, 1984), physical fitness (The Road to Wellville, 1993), apartment clutter (“Filthy with Things”), pop kitsch (“The Miracle at Ballinspittle”), communal living (Drop City, 2003) and troubled family relationships (The Harder They Come, 2015) as springboards for his inquiries into the human condition. Inspired by the experiments Biosphere 2 and the Harvard LSD experiments of the 1960s, Boyle wrote The Terranauts (2016) and Outside Looking In (2019). Further exploring experiment settings, Boyle's Talk to Me (2021) is a thought-provoking novel of a chimp who speaks American Sign Language and is raised as a human. In the 2023 novel Blue Skies, Boyle offers a satirical, yet partially accurate, view of life on Earth following fallout from global warming. He also published The Relive Box & Other Stories (2017) and I Walk Between the Raindrops (2022), short novels.
Bibliography
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Boyle, T. Coraghessan. “According to Boyle.” Interview by Louisa Ermelino. Publishers Weekly, 19 June 2006.
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---. “T. C. Boyle: Errant Punk.” Interview by Gary Percesepe. Mississippi Review, vol. 35, 2007, pp. 21–43.
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Gregory, Sarah Kay. Reimagining “Human”: Anthropocene Small-Scale Readings of Inter-and Intra-Species Relationships in the Work of TC Boyle. MS thesis. Villanova University, 2024.
Hicks, Heather. “On Whiteness in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s The Tortilla Curtain.” Critique, vol. 45, 2010, pp. 43–64, doi.org/10.1080/00111610309595326. Accessed 20 Apr. 2023.
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Kammen, Michael. “T. Coraghessan Boyle and World’s End.” Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront American’s Past (and Each Other), edited by Mark C. Carnes, Simon, 2001.
Pope, Dan. “A Different Kind of Post-Modernism.” Gettysburg Review, vol. 3, 1990, pp. 658–69.
Schäfer-Wünsche, Elisabeth. “Borders and Catastrophes: T. C. Boyle’s California Ecology.” Space in America: Theory, History, Culture, edited by Klaus Benesch and Kerstin Schmidt, Rodopi, 2005.
Schenker, Daniel. “A Samurai in the South: Cross-Cultural Disaster in T. Coraghessan Boyle’s East Is East.” Southern Quarterly, vol. 34, 1995, pp. 70–80.
Vaid, Krishna Baldev. “Franz Kafka Writes to T. Coraghessan Boyle.” Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 35, no. 3, 1996, pp. 533–49, hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0035.003. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.
Walker, Michael. “Boyle’s "Greasy Lake" and the Moral Failure of Postmodernism.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 31, no. 2, 1994, pp. 247–55.