T.C. Boyle’s new novel, Talk Talk,
is at once a thrilling road trip across America and a moving tale
about love, language, and who we are. The bestselling author of The
Inner Circle and Drop City, his new novel is about
a woman in desperate pursuit of a man who has stolen her identity.
Bill Leggett asked Boyle about the influence of life on fiction,
the difference between short stories and novels, and his approach
to writing.
BL: You have enjoyed success as both a novelist and short story
writer. Have you felt pressure to publish one genre over the other?
TCB: The only pressure I feel is internal (and no, I'm not talking
about digestive problems). I work for myself only and put pressure
on myself to make art because I understand that our time on this
planet is limited. As for my publishers and the public so eagerly
clamoring (and clawing) for my works, they seem happy to open each
of my books as if it were a special gift wrapped in opaque paper
and infused with all the mystery and joy of discovery. I write
stories because I like to. I write novels because I like to. Somebody,
somewhere, buys them, and somebody else sends me a little check
in the mail. This is very encouraging.
BL: How do you know when your work is a short story or a novel
in the making? What triggers that decision?
TCB: Usually, while writing a novel, I find myself jotting down truncated
ideas for the stories to come, most often regarding subjects
that pop bewilderingly out of the pages of the newspapers
and out of the mouths of people with whom I come into contact
(mainly in bars). Very rarely do these ideas grow larger than the
confines of a story because I have selected them specifically for
stories. There are exceptions. The new novel, Talk Talk, began
with the notion of exploring identity theft, and I saw it at first
as a story but quickly realized that it needed a fuller expression
because of the notion of identity itself. Who are we and how do
we know who we are?
BL: A number of the stories presented in Tooth and Claw show
characters in conflict with a harsh and indifferent world (“Tooth
and Claw”, “Chicxulub”, and “The Swift
Passage of the Animals”). Is this how you see the world or
is it a characteristic particular to the times in which we live?
TCB: Yes. And yes. This is how I see the world, a place densely
obscured by the Veil of Maya and operating only on the observable
principles of Darwinian reality. It has always been like this,
as far as I can imagine, and it will continue to be like this long
after our species has erased itself.
BL: For This is My Best, an anthology comprising selected
writers’ favorite short stories, you chose “Filthy
with Things.” In your introduction to that story you mentioned
it was inspired by your wife and her penchant for collecting. Does
your work often spring from moments or details in your own life?
TCB: I am not an autobiographical writer. To me, a story is an
exercise of the imagination, and my imagination would be woefully
constricted if I had to create fiction solely from the stuff
of my own life. Let's say, though, that certain of the irritations
and limitations and mysteries and recalcitrant thumps and
toils and worries of daily life do leak through, as in the
aforementioned story. Or "Peace of Mind," for instance,
about the couple puzzling over the fact of their new house-alarm
system. We are all trying to engage the world even as the world grinds
numbingly round its axis, intent on crushing us. In the process,
things can get pretty funny.
BL: When I read your work I often have to go to the dictionary
to look up a definition. From where did your love of words emerge?
How did you develop your menagerie of fitting and unusual words?
TCB: The love of words—and sentences and the rhythm and
beauty of them--is integral to reading and loving literature. I
collect odd words, I suppose, in the way that anyone does, but
my profession allows me to rub your collective noses in them.
BL: In your most recent novel, Talk
Talk, your villain,
William Peck Wilson, is gradually eroded. From family man to loner,
gourmand to fast-food patron, and professional criminal to obsessed
stalker he loses every sense of his identity. Does his punishment
fit his crimes, and does he learn from the experience?
TCB: I very much like your take on Peck's loss of the identity
he has created for himself. Whether he learns from the experience
or deserves his downfall is not for me to say. There are people
far more astute and deserving than I who will provide the answers to
these questions (and they are, of course, the readers of this
book, who are invited by the fact of its existence to
enter its world in a fully sensory and interpretive way).
BL: The protagonists of Talk Talk, Bridger and Dana,
suffer greatly, but gain an understanding about their own identities
that would not have happened otherwise. Did they exit your novel
better or worse for their experiences?
TCB: Again, as in the preceding question, this is not for
me to judge. I will say, though, that they fare better than
Hiro Tanaka of East Is
East or Ronnie (Pan) Sommers of
Drop City.
BL: I understand you spent time as a young adult in the Hudson
River Valley in New York and then moved to California. Talk
Talk brings characters from California to New York’s
Hudson River Valley to resolve their conflicts and regain their
identities. Was this a conscious parallel with your own life?
TCB: Yes,
very much so. I will always feel a bit of an outsider
here—in a positive way, one that allows me to cast a cold eye
about me—and this has enabled my work to grow in directions
it would not have if I had clung to my native turf (yes,
yes: down on my knees, holding fast to the biggest rock in
Westchester County). It all works out. At least I haven't been
consigned to the Gulag yet. As the Dead Kennedys said, "California
uber alles."
BL: You have recently released a short story collection for young
adults, The Human Fly and Other Stories. Has becoming
a father changed your perspective on writing?
TCB: I expect so, just as aging has. As much as I would have liked
to remain juvenile in all attitudes, postures and thoughts,
I have had, like everybody else, to count up the attrition of the
days. The Human Fly, however, was not written for young adults,
but rather it was put together at the behest of Sharyn November
of the Penguin Young Adult Division. She collected a
group of my previously published stories (together with one new
one) that she felt would have special appeal for young readers.
I wrote an afterword for the book, speaking a bit about each story,
its composition and valence, and I am mightily pleased by it. Recently
a fourteen-year-old reader sent me a letter (a consummately literate
and entertaining letter) about the stories in the collection and
her own aspirations as a writer and she appended a story of her
own. This is pretty awfully amazingly marvelous and I am very pleased.
To reach young readers in any way is a triumphant thing. (Not
that they don't read my books on their own initiative, but to find
the readers who browse the Y.A. section is something altogether
different, like getting an extra dollop of whipped cream on your
pie).
BL: What’s your next project?
TCB: I am just tidying up four months' worth of research
on an historically based fiction and preparing to tear my brain
out over the page as it creeps into being. I've also written a
number of new stories toward the next collection, including "La
Conchita," which appeared this past fall in The
New Yorker; "Question 62," from the March Harper's; and "Wild
Child," the novella written by Dana Halter, the
heroine of Talk Talk, which appears in the current McSweeney's (#19); as well as "The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado," forthcoming
in Playboy.
And thank you, Bill, for asking.
T.C. Boyle, Santa Barbara
