Average customer rating:
- Unconditional dysfunctional love...
- Sympathy for the Devil
- Boyle wit and linguistic gusto
- Loved it with qualifications
- absolutely worth a read.
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Riven Rock
T.C. Boyle
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
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Binding: Hardcover
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Boyle, T.C.
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ASIN: 0670878812 |
Amazon.com
In 1905, Stanley McCormick, heir to East Coast millions, is most definitely mad. Heredity and an early, horrifying glimpse of his naked sister have rendered him schizophrenic, incapable of being around women--right down to his wife, Katherine, "a newlywed who might as well have been a widow." Not even the dawn of modern psychiatry can save him. Instead, he's barred and carefully cosseted in Riven Rock, the California estate he helped design for his sister, the first of the McCormicks to crack. Will the 31-year-old patient be cured? His wife, the first female graduate of MIT, believes that he will. So, too, does his loyal head nurse, Eddie O'Kane, a preternaturally articulate, handsome Boston Irishman. Indeed, Eddie thinks himself blessed with good luck. Going to Montecito to care for Mr. McCormick will, he is convinced, enable him to take center stage in the drama of his own life.
Over the next 20 years, Stanley will go from catatonia to a semblance of normality (so long as there's no woman in sight and no sharp cutlery on the table). Eddie, however, will never play the leading role he'd envisioned, instead taking refuge in alcohol and recollections of the one woman he thinks he has let get away, the plainspoken, explosive Giovannella Dimucci. When Eddie first describes his patient's violent response to women, "he wondered if he'd gone too far, if he'd shocked her, but the mask dissolved and she leaned in close, her hand on his elbow. 'Sounds like the average man to me.'" As for Katherine McCormick, she will still visit every Christmas, hoping to at least see her husband if she can't see him get better.
Based on a true story, Riven Rock is unclassifiable, a discomforting and often hilarious mix of tragedy and comedy. (Only Orson Welles could do the book justice on film.) T. C. Boyle writes in a controlled frenzy of rich description and dialogue, pulling us up sharply each time we begin to wonder if his patient isn't a helpless victim. Eddie recalls one nurse before Stanley "got to her": "She was a shadow in a back corner of his mind, a cat you pick up to stroke and then put down again when it stops purring.... Now she was back in Rhode Island, with her mother, but the look of her that day, the way her eyes had melted away to nothing and the color had gone out of her so you could see every lash and hair on her head like brushstrokes in oil, came to him in infinite sadness."
Boyle has great empathy, but there is no avoiding his novel's comic energy. Stanley's first psychiatrist-jailer, Dr. Hamilton, is obsessed with primate sexuality and will go to Riven Rock only if Katherine funds a large living laboratory. He spends all of his time watching the imprisoned creatures copulate, a pathetic counterpoint to his patient's plight. The sight of the disheveled doctor following one animal encounter amuses even the suspicious Katherine. "To his credit, the doctor laughed too. And O'Kane, the bruiser, who'd gone absolutely pale at the tiny hominoids that couldn't have weighed a twentieth of what he did, joined in, albeit belatedly and with a laugh that trailed off into a whinny." Alas, all goes awry when Hamilton takes the joke too far and declares his chimps "the very devils--they're even worse than my patients." Riven Rock is a maximum-velocity study of love, primal energy, and what is sacrosanct in society: control. It is also about loyalty, absurdity, domesticity, and depravity, all of which, Boyle knows, coexist within the best of souls.
Book Description
In Riven Rock, his most fully realized and compassionate novel to date, T.C. Boyle transforms two characters straight out of history into rich mythic creations whose tortured love and epic story is intimate enough to break our hearts. These unforgettable characters invite the reader's care as never before in a Boyle novel. With the scope of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, Riven Rock uses real American subjects to come to terms with love and loss in the early years of our century. Boyle anchors his tale with the remarkable and courageous Katherine Dexter. Wed to Stanley McCormick - thirty-one-year-old son of the millionaire inventor of the Reaper, and a schizophrenic sexual maniac - Katherine struggles to cure him while he is locked up in his Santa Barbara mansion and forbidden the mere sight of a women - above all, his wife. Throughout her career as a scisntist ad suffragette, her faith never wavers: one day, one of the psychiatrists she finds for her husband will, she insists, return him to her, free of demons, a yearned-for lover. "Still America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" (Newsweek), Boyle weaves his hallmark virtuoso prose onto a recreation of America's age of innocence against a backdrop of wealth and privilege. And at the center of Riven Rock are its people, somehow bound together in thier deep sense of fidelity to each other.
Customer Reviews:
Unconditional dysfunctional love..........2007-09-03
Yes, I finished RIVEN ROCK and have been mulling it over.
I remember mulling over a line from LOVE STORY, "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
Now, I have been mulling over a life of loving someone who never seems to be able to love you back, at least not appropriately. Love from afar. Stanley and Katherine.
Can we count love that seems so nontraditional? Perhaps that is the greatest kind of love of all... selfless and unconditional, hoping but not expecting to ever get anything back...Katherine's love for Stanley.
The dysfunction, the heartbreak...The multi-millionaire McCormick Family. Reaping what they sow...mental illness.
Of course I was not disappointed in the darkly humorous aspects of this tale of WHOA! Quirky sex acts that either didn't happen or were all wrong...apes and obssessive compulsive habits and the early courtship before it all went bust...good stuff. Good read. Lots to ponder for a long time.
Thanks, TCB.
Sympathy for the Devil.......2007-07-05
We are drawn into a horrific mental illness.No details are spared; the brilliance of this book is that our sympathy is maintained in spite of this.
Boyle wit and linguistic gusto.......2006-08-14
I'm a Boyle fan. I'm so glad to have discovered him and to know that every six months or so I can pick up a book (a new one or one of his many earlier works) and enjoy his quirky characters, inventive storylines and his wonderful language. Riven Rock is another strong showing. It's not as purely entertaining as Drop City, or as inventive as A Friend of the Earth, but it's a solid novel that displays all of Boyle's wit and linguistic gusto.
He's so good that I've come to accept certain characteristics of his writing that others might call flaws. For example, I don't think he nails endings with real finality. His books just eventually get to a point where it's time to stop. Everything isn't necessarily wrapped up. Now, if you're looking for things tied up neatly you'll be disappointed. But if you know that's unlikely to happen you'll do just fine. A T.C. Boyle book is likely NOT to lead to Stanley's miraculous recovery. You may hope for it throughout, but any Boyle reader will know not to expect the obvious.
I also find that over various books some of his charactes start to be duplicated in variations. The Edward character from this one, for example, is much like other selfish - horney - fickle - pathetic (and yet charismatic) characters from Boyle stories and novels. It's a type he returns to again and again. Personally, I like that. I'll take a little break, and then pick up another T.C. novel soon.
Loved it with qualifications.......2005-06-23
TC Boyle is such a good writer and story-teller, and this particular story and its attendant characters are so fascinating, that I found I couldn't put the book down. The prose is, for the most part, energetic, riveting, lush, evocative -- everything I've come to expect from Boyle. But I do agree with reviewer A. Maxham that Boyle hasn't dug quite deep enough into the character of Katherine to make us understand how such an obviously intelligent woman could have married the lunatic Stanley. I think he comes close -- love is a strange thing, and people fall in love despite obvious red flags all the time -- but in this case I had trouble believing that, when all was said and done, Katherine would go ahead and marry Stanley anyway. So it took a little more concerted effort to suspend my disbelief concerning that aspect of the book (and it's a central aspect). Still, I was willing to make the effort bec. I was enjoying the book so much, and I was sorry when the story ended.
absolutely worth a read........2005-05-16
My favorite part is the theme of being thwarted. Incrementally, and not perpetually, and frequently from within -- within yourself, your marriage, your family. Hope and frustration grappling back and forth, neither giving way for long.
It was a fascinating read and I devoured the book. I liked the descriptions, I liked the intermeshed characters, and I really, really liked the narrative structure that passes back and forth between past and present very skillfully. That said, while reading it was deeply satisfying, thinking back, there's something I just can't put my thumb on, something inside the book that feels... well, thwarted.
Book Description
T.C. Boyle's riotous first novel—now in a new edition for its 25th anniversary
Twenty five years ago, T.C. Boyle published his first novel, Water Music—a funny, bawdy, extremely entertaining novel of imaginative and stylistic fancy that announced to the world Boyle's tremendous gifts as a storyteller. Set in the late eighteenth century, Water Music follows the wild adventures of Ned Rise, thief and whoremaster, and Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, through London's seamy gutters and Scotland's scenic highlands—to their grand meeting in the heart of darkest Africa. There they join forces and wend their hilarious way to the source of the Niger. BACKCOVER: “Ribald, hilarious, exotic—an engrossing flight of the literary imagination.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Water Music does for fiction what Raiders of the Lost Ark did for film. . . . Boyle is an adept plotter, a crazed humorist, and a fierce describer.”
—The Boston Globe
“High comic fiction . . . Boyle is a writer of considerable talent. He pulls off his most implausible inventions with wit, a perfect sense of timing, and his considerable linguistic gifts.”
—The Washington Post
Customer Reviews:
Great First Novel.......2007-09-01
T. C. Boyle's novel, Water Music, is an amazing mix of Dickens, Heller, and Burroughs. It is a globetrotting epic of a novel that juxtaposes the lives of two wildly different characters in late 18th/early 19th century England and Africa. Mungo Park is a less than intrepid explorer who has been tasked with finding the source of the Niger River. Ned Rise is a pornographer, graverobber, and purveyor of fine caviar.
While Park hobnobs with the London elite, propelled to fame by lurid tales of a purportedly successful expedition to Africa, Rise rots in Newgate Prison. In 1805 both men went to Africa, Park as an explorer returning for one last glorious expedition, Rise as a convict. When they finally meet on an expedition intended to map the full course of the Niger River, they run into one of Park's old enemies, and this amazing story of love, sex, war, and mayhem races to an amazing conclusion.
T. C. Boyle's first book of fiction, The Descent of Man, was released in 1979 to critical acclaim. Water Music was released two years later after three years of writing. Talk Talk, Boyle's 18th book and 11th novel was released by Viking in 2006. Boyle holds a Ph.D in 19th century British literature from the University of Iowa, and teaches English at the University of Southern California.
Water Music is an excellent novel, the product of a consummate storyteller whose fluid, confident prose leaps from the page. Boyle's characters are rich and compelling, even the secondary ones. Johnson, Park's guide, was a slave sent from Africa to Carolina who became a valet to a wealthy Englishman in London, and finally was condemned to be a convict back in Africa. The only fee he demanded for his services as a guide was a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare.
In the world of Water Music, Johnson is fairly ordinary, for it is a zany world of fateful meetings, crimes of passion, and star-crossed lovers. That world is hard to leave.
Water Music is both a great story and a scathing critique of British Imperialism, and Boyles' fantastic semi-fictional Africa is a place well worth exploring. Much like the Niger River that is so central to its plot, this book twists and turns through palaces and slums, Bedouin camps and Scottish villages, but Boyle's critique of Park's missions as a "geographical missionary" never lets up.
Boyle's diction and plotting is reminiscent of another writer whose novels were both entertaining and full of social commentary, Charles Dickens, but Boyle largely avoids long passages in which nothing happens that plague Dickens' longer works. Unfortunately, Water Music drags a bit towards the end.
For readers that want to be engrossed in a truly great story, a story that is both fantastic and factual, Water Music is a great selection.
I am a new fan of Boyle.......2007-03-09
This was the first book I have read by T.C. Boyle but it will certainly not be the last. I would have never expected a semi-historical account of the exploration of the Niger River to be so entertaining. An excellent read.
Not Exactly Handel..........2007-01-30
A note to the putative reader who is not already enraptured by Boyle and his writings (as many of the reviewers here are), it's going to take a bit of getting used to, to put it mildly. Boyle comes at you full throttle from the first chapter with his, at first, somewhat, disorienting take on Mungo Park and his journeys. What may hold you back from continuing with the book is its nonpareil emetic effect. As other reviewers have asserted you will need an unabridged dictionary of the normal sort, but also, it wouldn't hurt you to have a medical dictionary as well to cover all the diseases, infestations, degenerations, suppurations etc. to which our mortal coils are heir, not only the diseases that might afflict one in the African wasteland, but (perhaps) even more so, in Eighteenth Century London itself, where the streets reeked of excrement. You may be tempted by this onrush of man's inhumanity to man topped off my other critters' inhumanity to him (It is no accident that Boyle begins the book with a quote from Burns' "To A Louse".) to give up on the book in disgust, as I very nearly did. This would be a very serious mistake, gentle reader, because somewhere along the way, I'm not exactly sure where it happened for me, the book becomes VERY, VERY funny. You begin to notice how the chapter headings resemble titles or lines from your favourite books or poems. It is no mere sop to the book's title to say that you actually begin to FLOW along with the ribaldry, bawdiness, humanity, inhumanity and literary retakes - I, purposefully, do not call them send-ups because I don't think that's what Boyle's about here - of your favourite works. Rather, these constitute a rethinking of what your favourite works perhaps left out, in a very comic mode, yes, but also, it will strike you, in a very realistic manner as well. All this you will see typified toward the end of the book in Park's absurdly whitewashed account of what you know all too well to be a perfectly mad, afflicted, disease and disaster ridden affair. I think I knew I was immune to the gruesomeness of the book and more in key with its music, so to speak, when I merely chuckled when one of the explorers on the second voyage went mad and tore off the end of a four foot parasitic worm nestled in a vein of his leg, which he very well knew would kill said worm, causing gangrene and death. His body is unceremoniously dumped over the boat shortly thereafter.
No doubt, ahem, deeper things are at play here. But I'm not writing a dissertation. Water Music is fun, fluent, fissiparous. I'll just quote here from one of the more reflective passages:
"A year is nothing: a feather in the breeze, a breath of air. Turn around and it's gone. Ice, bud, leaf, twig. Geese on the pond, stubble in the field. Three hundred sixty-five mornings, three hundred sixty-five nights. Minor lacerations, a sprained ankle, runny nose, the death of a distant relative. There's a squirrel in the attic, a tree down in a storm. The clock in the hallway cranks round seven hundred and thirty times. Windows are raised, shades drawn, dishes, cups and spoons dirtied and scrubbed, dirtied and scrubbed. Thunder hits the hills like a mallet, snow climbs the fenceposts, sunlight burnishes the windows like copper. A year. One of how many: fifty? Sixty? The days chew away at it, insidious." P.187
So please read this book before the days gnaw you down.
This book rocks!.......2006-08-03
I think it may be the best of all Boyle's books. It's a little long, but (with the exception of a few unneccesary detours) it definitely holds your interest from beginning to end. Few authors have the talent to mix comedy and tragedy like T.C. Boyle, and "Water Music" is Exhibit A.
Sing me a river..........2005-03-09
Water Music by TC Boyle is about the songs of life. There are several melodious ways to get through life; rise above your less than ideal beginnings, navigate unknown territory, or spend your whole life waiting. Boyle brilliantly succeeds in portraying these lifestyles with his main characters and does it in a way that is darkly humorous and never dull. The reader will snigger their way through this uniquely creative tale.Outstanding!
Amazon.com
Skinny, earringed, satanically goateed, T. Coraghessan Boyle is the trickster figure of American letters. Part court jester, part holy fool, he slips in and out of various narrative disguises as it suits him. Nowhere is this more evident than in his short fiction, in which he bounces from psychological naturalism to giddy slapstick, dreamy surrealism to biting satire--sometimes within the space of a single tale. The sprawling and idiosyncratic T.C. Boyle Stories brings together his four previous volumes of short fiction, Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994), as well as seven previously uncollected stories, two of which have never before seen print. In both range and sheer heft, it's a remarkable collection, the more so since it represents an artist only midway through his career.
These stories find Boyle partying like it's 1999. He zeroes in on our age's most uncomfortable obsessions, its late-capitalist fetishes and millenarian fears: nervous Los Angelenos suckered into buying a Montana survivalist's retreat ("On for the Long Haul"); a hygienically obsessed girlfriend who insists on wearing a full-body condom ("Modern Love"); a rich, guilty couple suffocating under the weight of a lifetime's possessions ("Filthy with Things"). Elsewhere, he updates Gogol for late Soviet times ("The Overcoat II"), retells the death of blues god Robert Johnson ("Hellhound on My Trail"), even goes clubbing with that hot '90s property, the author of Mansfield Park ("I Dated Jane Austen"). Boyle's comic range is unparalleled, his timing razor-sharp as he skewers everyone from burglar alarm salesmen to the Beats. Like all tricksters, the author uses our own vanity and hypocrisy against us--but with barbs as witty as those found in T.C. Boyle Stories, not even his victims will mind. --Mary Park
Book Description
Few authors in America write with the sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T. C. Boyle. His talent and range are manifest in this selection of sixty-eight tales that span his every theme, mood, and nuance, clothed in his hallmark virtuoso prose.
Mythical and realistic, farcical and tragic, these stories (written between 1972 and 1997) are grouped under the headings of "Love", "Death", and everything in between. Three of them are previously unpublished: "The Rapture Of The Deep." a galley chef's jaded and mutinous view of Cousteau's endless voyages; "Mexico," an intense tale about an American tourist and his amorous adventures with a tough female boxer; and the comedy and pathos of an old lady's frenzy to defend a houseful of stray squirrels, her "Little Fur People." Four previously uncollected stories include the mini-masterpiece "I Dated Jane Austen." Here is a definitive gift for Boyle fans and for every reader ready to discover the "ferocious, delicious imagination" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of a "vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society" (The New York Times.
Customer Reviews:
DARK SIDE OF AMERICA.......2006-11-07
This selection of Tc Boyle is brilliant being humerous and depressing at the same time. His ability to speedily describe personalities combined with the above gives an insight in to the darker mindsets of human, perhaps particularily american atitudes to life. Always wanting you to want to read another story.
Sometimes cynical and mean, always clever and well-written.......2006-07-20
I read the last short story in this collection (Filthy with Things) in a collection of short stories, essays, and excerpts that writers considered to be among their better work (called This is My Best -- recommended, by the way). That story caused me to put TC Boyle on my list of authors to read more from, so I was glad to see this giant volume of short stories from him!
The book is divided into three parts: Love, Death, and Everything In-Between. I have to say that overall, I liked the stories in the last part best. The stories in Love were often more about betrayal (and lots of physical stuff); in the stories in Death, it often seemed that Boyle would create characters just to torture them.
But even with all that meanness, I found most of the stories enjoyable on some level. Boyle is a brilliant writer, turning a phrase just so and showing that he's researched every subject very thoroughly. His wit is very dry and yes, often very mean, which can be fun, especially when his characters are unlovable, which they so often are. But they really just reflect the flaws in all of us, so we can see where the folly of our ways can lead. I like that some of the stories (well, most of them) are so absurd and over-the-top as to be almost believable.
Stories include: Lassie being conflicted over saving Timmy and falling for a skinny, shabby, dangerous coyote; a modern guy dating Jane Austen; Jack Kerouac as the "beatest" mama's boy ever; a highly disturbed boy and his bees; a flashback to when starlings were introduced to the US (featuring, I learned after Googling him, the real guy who introduced them, with the facts pretty much in agreement with the websites I found); an ingenious scheme to get around tariffs; a couple's experience with an "organizer," who helps them pare down their possessions; and many more too diverse to be believed.
As I said, the stories are all very smartly written, often exploring historical characters. I enjoyed most all of them very much, despite all the bloodshed and heartbreak, and look forward to reading more from Boyle.
An OK book to recommend to your (jaded) friends.......2005-06-26
The stories in the book run the gamut from boring and pointless (The Sinking House, Caye) to decent (The Ape Lady, Beat) to fairly entertaining (Little America, Green Hell). If you're into reading about negative, shallow, unlikeable people, this book is for you. This collection of stories is OK overall, but I'm glad I borrowed it from the library instead of buying it.
Excellent flow and playful with words.......2003-05-04
This is an excellent collection of varied stories. All come at some different direction like dreams and continue in a fast pace. The unexpected will arrive and thrill you, knock you over and make you think of endless possibilities. His descriptions are as good as anyone who has held a pen. Read these stories for the authors play with words and often thrilling movement.
I inhaled this one.......2003-04-12
T. C. Boyle is a master of short stories. In this 700 page tome, Boyle covers the gamut of subjects in a funny, witty, and satirical way. His writing style offers an amusing, introspective, and memorable view of American culture. This one is as entertaining as any book I have read.
Customer Reviews:
If the river was whisky -- let me drown! .......2006-06-23
Boyle is one of the best short story writers around today. His short stories are enjoyable and varied. This compilation of short stories contains some of the most perfect gems that I've ever read. First published in 1989, none of these stories feel dated. They could easily have been published last year.
So, they're good. They're really good. What's more, this is a great compilation to read if you're trying to write short stories. Many of them, especially the shorter ones like "Sorry Fugu" and "Hard Sell," have similar structure that worthwhile to consider when writing your own short fiction. I'm not suggesting that these are formulaic, anything but. However, if you read several of them, preferably in a row, you get a feel for Boyle's construction, which is that there is a situation with an antagonist, the POV character makes a decision to outflank the antagonist, and then a suggestion of what the outcome of that situation will be.
Stories in this compilation:
Sorry Fugu
Modern Love
Hard Sell
Peace of Mind
Sinking House
The Human Fly
The Hat
Me Cago en la Leche (Robert Jordan in Nicaragua)
The Little Chill
King Bee
Thawing Out
The Devil and Irv Cherniske
The Miracle at Ballinspittle
Zapatos
The Ape Lady in Retirement
If the River Was Whisky
TK
how can it be so funny and weird while the prose still sings.......2003-05-20
wow, this book will basically just blow your mind. it's so upseting and weird in Boyle's tradmark darkly comic way (think Coen Brothers wooing Flannery O'Conner) and yet -- hotdamn -- on the sentence level, this prose is just out of sight. Beautifully written and laugh-out-loud funny, too? It's the perfect cross of high and low culture, like the Simpsons or the Coen Bros, if you're a smart, engaged reader, there really is something on every level of funny and weird, but the focous doesn't eclipse tender or meaningful . . . no, instead this collection really does match the wickedness of the smart-..., knowing hipster with the empathetic tug of "literary fiction." The perfect kind of thing to turn people on to short stories, this collection ends each time with a knockout punch.
As a matter of justice, I must review..........2001-12-16
...I don't have time to write much here, but the average customer rating is WAY too low for this great book of short stories. In fact, I'm here right now buying it for a friend. T.C. Boyle has such a unique perspective on the world, and I read this book 3 years ago and I still remember many of the stories like I just read them yesterday. Particularly "Sorry Fugu," the unforgettable opening story about a chef and his critic coming together through food. I'll also never forget the story about the adopted kid obsessed with bees. That one will freak you out. Ok, well sorry for not being eloquent here but this is a great book...
Read it only once..........2001-04-08
This is a nice book with good stories, but I surely won't read it again. It lacks the "depth" that makes you come back to a book you read years before.
Made Me Snooze.......2001-02-17
When I picked up this book of stories it was the promise of something a bit crazy that attracted me. I should have known better. When ever people say something's a bit dotty I usually find the stories pretty bland, and this was no exception. It made me feel a bit creepy -- the way sitting in Creative Writing classes made me feel. There's this sort of precious, trying-too-hard, attitude that permeates this collection that reminds me of pink hair, unfiltered cigarettes and black clothes, but not of great writing. There's no enduring heart or grit about these stories. They're slick, fluent and trendy, but not the sort of thing I would ever read again. It struck me that Boyle is one of those writers who appeal to the folks who are worried about how "colorful" their adjectives are, and sound contrived as a result. To me, he just isn't that interesting.
Customer Reviews:
HE'S A WHIZ WITH A NARRATIVE !.......2005-10-08
In this, his ninth book and fourth collection of stories, T. Coraghessan Boyle is as satiric, offbeat, and laconic as ever. A whiz with a narrative, his stories are so well honed that there does not seem to be an extraneous syllable.
True to form, the author tackles improbable subjects and fleshes them out with bigger than life characters in unlikely situations.
A bored adman is spending his 30th birthday on a windy beach with only "a comforting apocalyptic tract about the demise of the planet" for company. There he meets Alena Jorgensen, a beautiful animal rights activist. He falls in love with her and placates her by eating unappetizing breakfasts, "...brewer's yeast and what appeared to be some sort of bark marinated in yogurt." He even joins in a Beverly Hills anti-fur march, challenging "A wizened silvery old woman who might have been an aging star or a star's mother," and is flattened by the woman's kickboxing chauffeur.
One would be hard pressed to select a favorite among the 16 sketches included in this collection. "Filthy With Things" is a mirror held to the face of greed, as a couple whose home is bulging with their possessions seeks the help of professional organizers to ease them into a "nonacquisative environment."
In "Big Game," Bernard Puff operates a big game preserve located just outside of Bakersfield, California. There, for a price, guests can shoot anything. Puff affects a phony British accent, and drinks quinine water although nary a malarial mosquito has been spotted.
"Without A Hero" speaks with an unconventional voice but, oh, how refreshing to hear it.
- Gail Cooke
Filthy With Fun.......2005-01-08
WITHOUT A HERO is a terrific collection of short stories by a highly inventive author. I recently enjoyed his novel INNER CIRCLE, and previously had noticed his imaginative, satirical stories in the pages of The New Yorker. Quite simply, T.C. Boyle is fun to read.
Short stories showcase Boyle's creativity and wit. Here we enjoy tales about over-monied California real estate moguls trophy hunting outside Bakersfield ("Big Game"); the astonomer and his collectibles-crazy wife who undergo reprogramming at the hands of a professional clutter organizer ("Filthy With Things"); the remarried, aged husband doting on his ridiculously demanding wife and his unpredictable reaction to her well-being in a hurricane ("Act of God"); the mud-splattered and half-crippled, never-say-die right guard for the Caledonia College football team ("56-0"); the beatnik who has hitchhiked across the US for a night of carousing with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs ("Beat"); and the young Irish-American boy sucking in both the carcinogenic fumes of bug-spray and prejudice ("The Fog Man"). The thriller of the bunch is the closer. In "Sitting on Top of the World" sexy ranger Elaine guards the forest from fire, splendidly isolated for days in the mountaintop station, enjoying her solitude. Until a stranger comes knocking....
Irony, Black Humor, and Satire pervade.......2004-03-17
I must confess that I feel guilty even writing a reveiw, let along giving 5 stars, for a book that I haven't read all of. I was only assigned six of the short stories in the book for my Satire class...and though I suppose I could have read more, I did not. However, that does not change the fact that the 6 stories I read were all brilliant in their own right.
BIG GAME- Trying to import African into Southern California, Bernard Puff learns too late the danger of trying to import one reality into another.
TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN- DDT leads to devastation of Borneo...but wickedly funny and ironic, "Every cloud has a silver lining"
56-0- Ray Aurther Larry-Pete Fontinot tries one last time to taste glory in football. Far far far from Rudy.
FILTHY WITH THINGS- Materialism has a hold on Julian...but the remedy may prove worse than the disease. Twilight Zone-esque, and I mean that as the highest of compliments.
BEAT- Buzz's hero and the Beat culture are not as glamourous as they seem
THE FOGMAN- Rasicm at its most heartbreaking...and the moral: nothing changes.
Even if all the other stories in this book are completely horrid and abominations to the English language, you should still pick up a copy of T. Coraghesson (what a helluva name) Boyle's book even if only to read these stories.
Bright spots galore in this story collection.......2000-09-06
If I were the author of The Road To Wellville, I don't think I'd print that on my books. I think I'd just coast on having a wonderful name like "Coraghessan" to throw around. In any case, 56-0 was sort of heartbreaking, and Top of the Food Chain barreled down a road I'd always wondered about, and Big Game I really liked, for being about Hemingway a little, and Filthy With Things scared the living daylights out of me, reminding me more than a little of the Stephen King story Quitters, Inc.
Customer Reviews:
Greasy Lake.......2005-05-17
In reading "Greasy Lake" what are we really experiencing? T.C. Boyle presents his observations of love and loss with the unclouded eye of a reporter. He captures these moments in time with exceptional prose. His lyrical use of language, the skill with which he presents the tale is fabulous, but in the end I felt that I had missed something. When I put the book down it was if I had had a delicious gourmet meal but still felt hungry. For when I closed the book, I forgot about the characters. I didn't think about what had happened to them - I didn't wonder, I didn't care. Despite that is "Greasy Lake" worth reading? Definately. TC Boyle's richness of description is worth every lucious moment.
Boyling Mad with Fun.......2005-03-01
What? You weren't aware that Eisenhower had a top-secret affair with Khrushchev's wife? Perhaps you need the vivid details of blues impresario Robert Johnson's death? And have you availed yourself of the former President's plan to snag two terms in the White House...by building a new moon? Yes, this lunacy and much more fun awaits in this file of T.C. Boyle short stories. These pieces, penned for a host of magazines (Antaeus, Antioch Review, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Iowa Review, Oui, Paris Review, TriQuarterly, and others,) were written earlier in Boyle's career, between 1979 and 1985. These are entertaining sketches of whimsical, off-beat protaganists and moments in time. An Elvis impersonator, a yuppie asparagus-crepe eater and his haunting rebel shadow, the survivalist who moves his family to Montana, a loyal Communist fighting to "hold public property sacred" in the cold Moscow winter...Boyle unfailingly delivers rare specimens in story after story.
"There was a time when courtesy and winning ways went out of style, when it was good to be bad, when you cultivated decadence like a taste. We were all dangerous characters then." These opening lines from the first story "Greasy Lake" could describe most all of the zany, complex characters who color these fifteen stories. A quick, entertaining read.
my favorite short story collection.......2003-04-19
unforgetable characters, thrilling plot, shocking humor, and a richly involving, rewarding reading experience where I cringed, and encouraged as if I were shouting at a movie screen. This book totally rules, because the author is so fearless. TCB tackles issues and characters without flinching, and he really takes care of his readers. Fast-paced, and with a stunning prose-style, this guy can do no wrong.
T.C. Boyle is one weird hombre!.......2003-02-03
If a writer of fiction can be believed, then T.C. Boyle's description of how he begins his writing routine is psycho crazy! According to him he cuts a chicken's throat, bleeds it into a bowl which he places under his desk, immerses his bare feet in the bowl and then writes until the blood feels cold. You certainly won't find this advice in any writer's how-to manual at your local library! If this is the price of new, fresh and contemporary fiction, then some might argue that a few chickens being sacrificed for art is worth the price. One of Boyle's gifts is that he is always interesting and truly original. How many contemporary authors can you really say that about today? Anyway, this collection is in my opinion one of his best. From the title story to a short sketch about the bluesman Robert Johnson, he keeps you on your toes from one short piece to the next. You never quite know what to expect with regard to Boyle's style. Another of his gifts is that he takes society's norms and conventions and manages to turn them upside down in a very entertaining fashion. With Boyle, you as the reader are always in on the joke. Many of his pieces despite their non-conventional nature have appeared in conservative men's magazines like GQ. Go figure....If you like to explore new authors, then you could hardly do better than picking up anything by this one. He is like a modern-day cross between Gogol and Kafka, but on some serious hallucinogens. If he and Dr. Hunter S. Thompson aren't friends, then they definitely should be. See for yourself why Boyle is one of the only exciting voices in contemporary fiction.
wicked and delightful.......2002-06-26
there's a playfulness in this collection that I haven't seen anywhere else. the language and the plot are like being winked at -- Boyle lets you in on the joke and he trusts that his readers are as sly and smartass as he is.
most people were probably introduced to Boyle in high school English with the title story, "Greasy Lake," and if, like my entire class, that was your favorite story all year long, you won't be disapointed. these other stories are just as accessible, bleak and funny in the coen-brothers way that only Boyle delivers.
Book Description
Hailed as one of the best short story writers of his generation, T.C. Boyle presents sixteen stories--nine of which appeared in The New Yorker--that highlight the evolving excellence of his inventive, modern, and wickedly witty style. In After the Plague, Boyle exhibits his maturing themes through an amazing array of subjects in a range of emotional keys. He taps today's headlines, from air rage ("Friendly Skies") to abortion doctors ("Killing Babies"), and delves into more naturalistic themes of quiet power and passion, from a tale of first love ("The Love of My Life") to a story about confronting old age ("Rust"). Combining joy and humor with the dark, intense scenarios that Boyle's audience has come to love, After the Plague reveals a writer at the top of his form.
Customer Reviews:
Classics of American short stories.......2006-09-28
To begin with, I usually don't read short stories - with exception of some classic (London and O'Henry almost sum it up). This collection reminded me of the best stories by O'Henry, mainly because the endings are surprising at the same extent.
The collection is a little bit dark, so not everybody will like it, but the stories are witty, have interesting twists and real-life (even though not always likeable) characters.
5 stars - this is a really good book, and I will recommend it to all my friends.
Every story is a potboiler .......2005-04-25
TC Boyle knows how to get inside his characters, and he does it quickly so that you feel involved with each story from the outset. His stories in this collection are at times dark and macabre, other times moving, but almost always deeply human and richly satisfying in their telling. He has the ability to turn sympathetic characters into sinister ones within the turn of a page - Killing Babies is one such example, with a seemingly normal pair of college kids committing the unthinkable.
I liken TC Boyle's style to that of early Ian McEwan, with a California twist. We get the seamy side of human behaviour, while never departing from the characters' central humanity. Desperate human beings find each other, others find a loneliness at their core that they hadn't given voice to, still others give in to their dark voices.
These are not necessarily cautionary tales. I don't believe Boyle has any such agenda, and I am thankful for that. What he simply does is explore the human psyche and the oddities of human behaviour. For that reason, this is definitely a worthwhile collection of stories.
Men-- And Women Acting Badly.......2005-04-24
I know many lovers of fiction who won't touch short stories. Their complaint usually is that the stories go nowhere and are little more than vignettes or character studies. To them I cannot recommend this volume enough. Mr. Boyle tells stories that grab you from the first sentence-- "They wore each other like a pair of socks"-- and do not let you go until the roller coaster ride is finished, some 20 pages or so later.
The author has collected here 16 stories, most of which have been published previously in EQUIRE, GQ, GRANTA, THE NEW YORKER and PLAYBOY as well as collections of best short stories including The O. Henry Awards, an honor that is certainly apropos since this author is every bit as good at surprise endings as Mr. O. Henry, himself. ("She Wasn't Soft" and "After the Plague" are just two excellent examples.) Many of these stories are about men and women acting badly-- very badly. A young man throws his girl friend's unwanted newborn child into a dumpster, a young drug addict working at his physician brother's abortion clinic goes ballistic and starts shooting protestors, one of a handful of survivors of a global plague in a fit of jealously vandalizes another survivor's home. But Mr. Boyle also writes about the way some people react with gutsy courage to violence. An airline passsenger saves herself as well as everyone else on a plane by attacking an out-of-control fellow passenger who is trying to open the rear exit door of the plane by attacking him with the steel fork given with the awful flight food; and an elderly widow takes on a robber with a can of Mace, for example.
Mr. Boyle has an endless reservoir of creativity. Who else writes stories about a tour of women from Los Angeles going to Alaska to meet eligible men? ("There were a hundred and seven of them, of all ages, shapes and sizes, from twenty-five- and thirty-year-olds in dresses that looked like they were made of Saran Wrap to a couple of big-beamed older types in pantsuits who could have been somebody's mother--and I mean somebody grown, with a goatee beard and a job at McDonald's. . .") Or two wealthy single sisters, one who wears only black, the other only white, who live in a black and white house and hire only black or white workers, wearing only black and white clothes-- no brown-skinned people, that is, Mexicans need apply? Or a house full of young pretty women in an upscale neighborhood where voyeurs can go online and watch their goings-on twenty-four hours a day? Or an elderly couple where the husband suffers a stroke and his wife falls and breaks her hip as she searches for him?
Although not for the fainthearted, these Molotov cocktails are as good a collection of stories as you will find.
Hate the characters, love the stories.......2005-02-26
I hate most of the characters in these stories, and still can't put the book down. Boyle gets into the characters' heads, and no matter how weak-willed, whiny, self-centered, or just plain brutish the characters are, from their point of view their actions make perfect sense. Read these stories to see the world through some very flawed persons' eyes as they go through some truly traumatic events. The reader will often recognize that the characters bring these events upon themselves, while the characters remain without self-awareness. It is also worth reading just to try to figure out how Boyle can convey the characters' thoughts so clearly without being didactic.
Cure for Writer's Block!.......2004-09-19
Boyle is an even better writer of short stories than of novels. There is no "time delay" as you struggle to get used to a new protagonist and a new world; like Updike his sentences draw you right in and you're hooked.
But Boyle doesn't, like some contemporaries, write a "slice of life" that's all language and no story! His stories have plot and often twists, including a likeable narrator who morphs into a killer before out eyes, a pair of teenage lovers who kill their baby, and the title story, set in a California following a devastating plague. But the point is always the insight Boyle demonstrates through his vivid, compassionate writing.
Some of the stories are macabre and wickedly funny (Black and White Sisters, about a pair of eccentric women who have turned their whole world the color of old movies and spare no lengths to complete it; The Death of Cool about an aging tv producer), others are more poignant (Killing Babies, set in an abortion lab, Captured by the Indians, about a young grad student-wife struggling to come to terms with her husband and her future)-- all are inspiring.
Boyle's writing somehow makes the idea of writing accessible. Like Fred Astaire, he makes it look easy. He makes you want to sit down at the keyboard! So it's a must not only for readers but for all writers, too.
Average customer rating:
- Eccentric, witty, and delightful stories aimed for a younger audience
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The Human Fly and Other Stories
T.C. Boyle
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T.C. Boyle Stories
ASIN: 0142403636 |
Book Description
His many and varied novels are part of the American literary landscape—but one of the best ways to appreciate T. C. Boyle is through his richly imagined short fiction. Boyle's kaleidoscopic humor and wit, his keen, unforgiving take on American life, and his all-too-human protagonists all contibute to making his a unique voice. Here is a collection of classic Boyle stories about teenagers (including the O. Henry Award-winning "The Love of My Life") that will speak directly to them, as well as to anyone who was once a teenager too.
Customer Reviews:
Eccentric, witty, and delightful stories aimed for a younger audience.......2005-11-18
New York Times bestselling author T.C. Boyle is known for his outrageous wit and cadenced writing style, with many of his sentences jumping off the page like lyrics to a jingle or the syrupy smooth notes to a song. His novels for adults (DROP CITY, THE TORTILLA CURTAIN and THE INNER CIRCLE, to name a few) and various short story collections (including TOOTH AND CLAW, AFTER THE PLAGUE and DESCENT OF MAN) have garnered much critical acclaim and amassed quite a cult following among the literati. Thankfully, the smattering of stories compiled over the last 25 years that make up THE HUMAN FLY AND OTHER STORIES are now available so that younger readers can go batty over Boyle's gift for storytelling just as much as adults do.
The stories in THE HUMAN FLY range from giggle-inducing outlandish to tear-jerking poignant. From a story about losing a football match ("56-0") to a glimpse into the life of a man who chases after fame by courting death doing daredevil stunts ("The Human Fly") to a record-setting tale of two men battling it out in gargantuan eat-a-thon contests (The Champ"), the choices in this collection offer a little something for everyone --- and every mood. Unlike other anthologies on the shelves, Boyle's stories are consistently enjoyable and well-written, with characters who snap to life as though they're sitting right next to you.
A few stories that stand out above the rest:
"The Fog Man" and "Beat" poke fun at adolescence, each in their own way --- suburban youth in "The Fog Man" and hipped-out counterculture in "Beat." Teens will especially like "Beat" for its Kerouacian feel and subject matter (the story is set in Jack's mom's house; William Burroughs, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg all make their own riotous cameo appearances). Begging to be read aloud, this story sings with attitude, charm, and raucous, bee-bopped rhythm throughout.
"Juliana Cloth" and the O. Henry Award-winning "The Love of My Life" (which also ran in The New Yorker a few years ago) are surprisingly hard-hitting and should give the more mature readers pause to think about the consequences of their actions. "Juliana Cloth" addresses AIDS in a tribal village and one girl's urge to have sex, despite the consequences. "The Love of My Life" is based on a story in the news about a young couple who abandons their baby in a dumpster --- Boyle reveals both the incessant love and naïve stupidity behind their actions. Expect lasting impressions from these two tales.
Also included in the collection is an Afterword --- an explanation, of sorts, of what Boyle himself intended when writing these stories. Some purists might feel that knowing "the inside scoop" ruins the magic, but others (including teachers who might use the book as a reading assignment for class) will appreciate having access to Boyle's brain and writing process.
Without a doubt, THE HUMAN FLY AND OTHER STORIES will both delight and tickle youngsters for its content and its sassy, "Looney Tunes" style. So, too, will burgeoning writers appreciate Boyle's change in voice over the years and learn from his willingness to tackle a variety of topics, paces and techniques.
--- Reviewed by Alexis Burling
Book Description
Since his first collection of stories, Descent of Man, appeared in 1979, T.C. Boyle has become an acknowledged master of the form who has transformed the nature of short fiction in our time. Among the fourteen tales in his seventh collection are the comic yet lyrical title story, in which a young man wins a vicious African cat in a bar bet; “Dogology,” about a suburban woman losing her identity to a pack of strays; and “The Kind Assassin,” which explores the consequences of a radio shock jock's quest to set a world record for sleeplessness. Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best. BACKCOVER: “A dazzling new collection from a writer of “roaring intelligence and a curiosity that has led him to develop a masterly range of subjects and locales”
—Annie Proulx, The Washington Post
“In T.C. Boyle's fierce, funny new collection, men are fools, women hold the sexual cards, and nature is full of surprises, few of them pleasant.”
—Entertainment Weekly
Customer Reviews:
(3.5 stars) Boyled Over.......2007-06-30
T.C. Boyle is so prolific it's insane.
This is both a blessing and a bane.
Boyle works on his craft constantly, so he can put out a quality story in no time; but this is a problem, because I don't feel like he takes the time to fully form his characters. Often different characters in different stories seem like the same person: they all speak in SAT words, they always seem to go to movies alone, they often speak with irreverent interjections while thinking to themselves. These drawbacks, especially in the stories with weak plot, produce a variable overall output, which is indeed also seen in this particular collection. TOOTH AND CLAW has some gems, but also some losers. Four of the fourteen stories I couldn't even make it through.
Another four I rated 7/10 or above -- they all had engaging plots, well-formed characters, and ringing metaphor. The best story of the collection was "Chcxulub," a tale of a teenage girl's night out and her parents' worry over her safety, with the parallel telling of the history of tragic meteor impacts on the earth. Another masterpiece is the title story, "Tooth and Claw." A young man's quest for a girlfriend is symbolized by his win of an exotic wild cat in a bar bet. When he loses one he loses the other. This is classic Boyle. (Yet, this young man, despite his participation in such a symbolic and well-told tale, goes to the movies alone. Couldn't he just do something different? Doesn't Boyle remember he used that personality trait in a different story? I guess not.)
Overall, a nice addition to one's library.
Boyle fan.......2007-06-04
I am always a fan of TC Boyle. Sometimes I wish there were more happy endings for his characters but I keep reading him so it must not be an issue.
Hit and Miss.......2007-02-02
I greatly enjoyed some of the stories and only a few (very few) were disinteresting to me. I suppose that is the problem with all short story collections, there's an uneven mix of quality and topics of interest to the reader. For that reason alone I gave it only 4 stars.
Boyle can suprise you.......2006-08-15
Boyle has a fondness for male characters, often young, who drink a lot and make bad mistakes in judgment through a callousness which reflects lack of maturity more than a lack of virtue. But Boyle can surprise you, with stories which don't fit the mold at all.
I particularly liked the account of a journey from Boston to New York in 1702 by a middle aged widow who is not particularly brave or resourceful.
Boyle also is quite capable of prose like "it was a dark and stormy night", and metaphors that don't really help, but he does this kind of thing almost tongue in cheek, or maybe I am imagining that. He also sent me to the dictionary a number of times, with words that turned out to be entirely appropriate.
dark humour plus deep turmoil.......2006-07-19
The sheer contrast of these stories made the collection creative and artistic. Most stories entailed animal behaviour vs. reasoning; pain/joy, love/hate, and reality/escapism. I was impressed by the mixture of dark humour, intricate details, and emotional turmoil that lies in these pages: the title fits perfectly, and one cannot help but consider that some of the stories are semi-autobiographical. Ideas for the stories are bizarre, brilliant, refreshing and sometimes finish with unexpected twists of fate. Despite each character's repeated dance with diverse forms of substance abuse, one feels empathy for him as he struggles for his identity even if he's as desperate and pathetic as they get. It was a film-noir of story-telling, and a most enjoyable read.
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- Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems (Caldecott Honor Book, BCCB Blue Ribbon Nonfiction Book Award)
- Star Wars Complete Cross-Sections: The Spacecraft and Vehicles of the Entire Star Wars Saga
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- Striking the Balance (Worldwar Series, Volume 4)
- Test of Time: A Novel Approach to the SAT and ACT (Harvest Original)
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