My Cup Boyleth Over
Usually, I can’t stand short stories, with their writerly dips and feints and gotcha endings. To me, they’re the literary one-night stand. Dinner, dancing, coffee, cabfare. The dramatic situations feel forced, self-conscious, and not a little desperate, like a stand-up comic pushing out out a few last clunkers before getting the hook. Always in the back of my mind, I picture the smug, goateed author "workshopping" the latest ditty with his class of beaming sycophants at State U. Ho ho. They’ll never see THAT coming! Clearly, I have some issues with the genre. But sweet resolution may be on the way in the form of a certain T.C. Boyle.
T.C. Boyle (formerly T. Coraghessan Boyle — mail me a dollar and I’ll tell you how to pronounce Coraghessan) has my undivided attention. I received After the Plague, a 2001 collection of short stories, as a Christmas gift, and I’ve been inwardly smiling ever since. Boyle’s stories don’t unfold, they detonate, bomblets of pleasure and pain and humanity. His imagination roams from sleepy Anchorage, Alaska, to California at the end of civilization, to the claustrophic confines of a a malfunctioning airliner. The characters are deeply, lovingly flawed and more often than not, things do not go well for them. But when they win, their victories are our victories, won in the spaces and scope of our lives: dorm rooms, bars, and backyards. Boyle tends to upshift to drinking, sex, and murder; his is a male gaze, but not overpoweringly so. A central thread running through this collection is need as the primary driver for most individuals. To be human is to know that you need, to know what you need, and to act on your need (and not get caught).
Recently Read
It’s nice to be back in the blogosphere. Why so long between posts? That’s technically classified, but I’ll give the true fans a hint: Sloppy Joe injury. Post a comment, boyos (Clay, you are exempt), and I’ll dance like an electrified monkey. Recent reads:
The Areas of My Experise by John Hodgman
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carre
The Waterworks, World’s Fair, and The March by E.L. Doctorow
Wicked by Gregory McGuire
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
The Windup Bird Chronicles by Haruki Murakami
January 23rd, 2006 at 5:56 pm
I love your description of how you feel about short stories: I feel the same way about certain authors — I just can’t get past the self-indulgent prose (even if I’m only imagining the self-indulgence).
Of the recently read books, what do you recommend? And why is Clay exempt?