Working Without a Net

Originally published in the Santa Barbara Independent, October 21, 2004

T.C. Boyle can talk and, never having seen him speak before, I find this astounding. Certainly, I knew Boyle could write. Nobody kicks out books like he does without being able to write, but often a writer's skill on paper is inversely proportionate to his skill with public speaking. Not the case with T.C. Boyle.

We meet at Joe's Café downtown and I'm sweating because (a) my tape recorder is AWOL so I'm going to wing it with my note taking, and (b) I haven't finished his latest book, The Inner Circle, for which he's touring (and doing this interview).

We shake hands, take a seat, and I opt for full disclosure, copping to both of the above and Boyle doesn't even blink. "Don't sweat it," he says, and begins talking immediately: Writing, writing as an obsession ("It's like an obsessive-compulsive disorder," he says), writing as an addiction and a reason to live; he talks about touring, speaking, meeting readers, running himself ragged to promote a new book, and swearing he'll never do it again, but then grabbing his carry-on as soon as the phone rings.

"I just got back from a solid month on the road," says Boyle, "on stage every night. That almost destroyed me. I keep telling myself, 'I'm going to tour less, I'm going to tour less.'"

"If you take a normal, healthy man," he says, "and put him in a fancy hotel for a month, he'll be dead by the end of it."

He claims to be exhausted, but I've been hammering on my laptop as quickly as I can while he speaks, have accumulated over 1,200 words from Boyle, and I haven't come close to catching everything.

Never, though, do I sense that Boyle is on cruise control. He's speaking to me, answering my questions (which are not about his new book), and having a two-way conversation. The reason is simple, I learn very quickly: T.C. Boyle can't afford cruise control. Boyle works with neither a net, parachute, nor helmet, so he's never on "cruise control," "autopilot" or anything else when it comes to his writing. His entire body of work, 10 novels and six short fiction collections, was written straight from his head to the page. His stack of pages at the end of the day is evaluated and reworked before moving on to the next.

"You're telling me you don't outline?" I ask. "You've got to plan ... something."

"No, I don't do any outlining," he says. "I don't do any architecture because I believe there's an innate architecture to every story and you have to find it. Remember, you have to build a story block by block. Day by day, I reread my blocks.

Boyle returns to the bricklaying metaphor several times, but I'm still dumbstruck that books of such scope are written with no outlining.

"I like to have a title and an epigraph, but I really don't find out what's happening until I start writing. I have a basic structure and ideas ... that's all you need. That's how I've always worked ... at the end of the day I'll read to my wife out loud, to give me an idea of what will happen next."

To give me an idea of what will happen next.

"The middle is always the hardest part," he confesses. "That's when you have to figure out what's happening."

I remember reading an early interview with the Coen brothers. I was in college and Blood Simple had just been released. Perhaps joking, perhaps not, they said that by not planning, there was no way the audience could outguess them, since they didn't know what they'd be shooting next. Boyle laughs, agreeing with the comparison.

"You can't impose a structure. I don't think great literature does that. How can it be predictable if it surprises me? You (the reader) have got to follow me, and I'm just doing what comes naturally.

"That's essentially the mystery of the artist, right there. We don't know where it comes from, but it has to be rigorously developed."

Boyle's craft is, indeed, rigorously developed. In his tenth novel, The Inner Circle (Viking, hardcover $29.95), Boyle brings us John Milk, a student at Indiana University in 1940, assistant to the legendary sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, and a virgin.

"It's my first 'I' narrative since Budding Prospects (1984)," says Boyle, though there's no rust anywhere on his "I" narrative.

"The reader can jump ahead and see where he's deluding himself," he explains, "and we're much more sophisticated - sexually - than him. He's also a very different narrator than Felix Nasmyth of Prospects, he's very formal so I can't do the kind of linguistic dance that I did with some of my other work."

As Boyle points out, we are much more sexually sophisticated than his narrator, in our day and age. Early in the story, John Milk is attending a lecture by Dr. Kinsey. The year is 1939; girls don't go wild and Hugh Hefner's just hitting puberty and has realized the really good magazines aren't hidden, they just don't exist. So, when John Milk and his (sort of) girlfriend, along with a couple hundred other students, first see the male and female genitalia magnified by the slide projector onto the auditorium screen, the effect is striking:

I can't overemphasize the jolt they gave me, the immediate and intensely physical sensation that was like nothing so much as plunging into a cold stream or being slapped across the face ...

Boyle's right. I can chuckle at Milk's innocence, at his innocent time, because those pictures that slapped him across the face are everywhere now. Still, Boyle managed to remind me of the shock, of the first time I saw such images, and that's a gift.

"No matter what's on the internet, a kid still has to see it for the first time," says Boyle.

As we wind down, the subject of touring comes up again, and I notice that Boyle refers to his speaking engagements as "gigs," a musician's term.

"Unlike most writers, I'm an extrovert. I like to give a performance, a show . . . a little monologue, a reading, then a Q and A. If they came for me, I'll stay there until they're happy. Those are my fans and some of them are very passionate. I put my heart into a gig and I pride myself on that.

"I've been lucky and I've been pushing it, getting the word out. Sometimes a high school student will say, 'I had to read your book for a class.' And I'll think, 'Did they manacle you to a chair?' I want to turn them onto reading because I was turned on to reading. Not all books are written by dead people."

Almost more than his own work, Boyle speaks of his readers. He's clearly appreciative of them, and he spends most of the time at Joe's telling me how much he loves doing "gigs," no matter how exhausting they may be.

"But," he says, "when I'm done with this tour, I'll disappear again."

During the hour at Joe's, Boyle's recited a litany of obligations: interviews, speaking engagements, multiple manuscripts, and forthcoming books, to say nothing of his teaching and the demands of his personal life. He shows no sign of slowing, no symptoms of his self-professed exhaustion. Still, I don't want to impose, so I wrap things up and walk him outside, where the Farmers Market is in full swing. We shake hands and I thank him for taking time out of his ungodly schedule to meet with me.

"My pleasure," he says, then walks into the crowd and disappears.