T.C. Boyle Overview

A master yarn-spinner, he is unabashedly, joyously (but never aggressively) descriptive, with muscular prose animated by a muscular sense of poetry. Not only are his stories in which things actually *happen* -- ships jumped, pot grown, gloryholes visited, bear traps sprung,... [more]

A master yarn-spinner, he is unabashedly, joyously (but never aggressively) descriptive, with muscular prose animated by a muscular sense of poetry. Not only are his stories in which things actually *happen* -- ships jumped, pot grown, gloryholes visited, bear traps sprung, dirt secreted by the pinchful on sandwiches by furtive terraphages -- but like Nabokov, he reminds you of how delirious and alive that perfect sentence can make you.. Yes, he cleaves shamelessly, sometimes ham-fistedly to standard techniques for building drama and tension, but then you hit another happy-making phrase and all is forgiven. For my money, I recommend anything before "World's End" (for which he won the PEN/Faulkner prize), but it's been years since I've re-read that stuff so I'll have to temper my enthusiasm accordingly. [show less]