Boyle, T. C.

Boyle, T. C. (Thomas John Coraghessan Boyle), 1948–, American writer, b. Peekskill, N.Y., grad. State Univ. of New York (B.A. 1968), Univ. of Iowa (M.F.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1977). He published under the name T. Coraghessan Boyle until the mid-1990s. Influenced by such literary heroes as Evelyn Waugh, Gabriel García Márquez, and Flannery O'Connor, he has become known for his wildly imaginative, simile-rich, manically jumpy yet highly polished polysyllabic prose as well as for his satiric bent and hipster-tinged black humor. Boyle's settings range from the historical to the contemporary, his subject matter often edging into the quirky, strange, or bizarre. He first came to critical attention with his short stories in the mid-1970s; they and those that followed have been gathered in such collections as The Descent of Man (1979), If the River Was Whiskey (1990), T. C. Boyle Stories (1998), After the Plague (2001), and Tooth and Claw (2005). He is also a prolific novelist whose books include Water Music (1981), World's End (1987), East Is East (1990), The Road to Wellville (1993; film, 1994), The Tortilla Curtain (1995), Riven Rock (1998), Drop City (2003), The Inner Circle (2004), and Talk Talk (2006). Boyle has taught at the Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, since 1978.