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T.C. Boyle

Author of The Tortilla Curtain

98+ Works 25,772 Members 604 Reviews 136 Favorited

About the Author

T. C. Boyle was born Thomas John Boyle in Peekskill, New York on December 2, 1948. He received a B.A. in English and history from SUNY Potsdam in 1968, a MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and a Ph.D. degree in nineteenth century British literature from the University of show more Iowa in 1977. He has been a member of the English department at the University of Southern California since 1978. He has written over 20 books including After the Plague, Drop City, The Inner Circle, Tooth and Claw, The Human Fly, Talk Talk, The Women, Wild Child, and When the Killing's Done. He has received numerous awards including the PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel of the year for World's End; the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story for T. C. Boyle Stories; and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France for The Tortilla Curtain. His title's Sam Miguel and The Harder They Caome made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) T. Coraghessan Boyle is the best-selling author of "T.C. Boyle Stories," "Riven Rock," "The Tortilla Curtain," "Without a Hero," "The Road to Wellville," "East Is East," "If the River Was Whiskey," "World's End" (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award), "Greasy Lake," "Budding Prospects," "Water Music," & "Descent of Man" (all available from Penguin). His fiction regularly appears in major American magazines, including "The New Yorker," "GQ," "The Paris Review," "Playboy," & "Esquire." He lives in Santa Barbara, California. (Publisher Provided) show less

Series

Works by T.C. Boyle

The Tortilla Curtain (1995) 3,678 copies
Drop City (2003) 2,420 copies
The Road to Wellville (1993) 1,663 copies
The Women (2008) 1,595 copies
World's End (1988) 1,370 copies
The Inner Circle (2004) 1,351 copies
Talk Talk (2006) 1,310 copies
Water Music (1981) 1,179 copies
Riven Rock (1998) 1,019 copies
A Friend of the Earth (2000) 959 copies
East is East (1990) 838 copies
T.C. Boyle Stories (1979) 746 copies
When the Killing's Done (2011) 731 copies
Budding Prospects (1984) 675 copies
The Harder They Come (2015) 590 copies
San Miguel (2012) 529 copies
The Terranauts (2016) — Author — 515 copies
If the River Was Whiskey (1989) 505 copies
Without a Hero (1994) 407 copies
Outside Looking In (2019) 223 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2015 (2015) — Editor — 223 copies
T C Boyle Stories II (2013) 119 copies
Talk to Me (2021) 118 copies
Blue Skies (2023) — Author — 108 copies
Wild Child {story} (2010) 66 copies
She Wasn't Soft (1996) 49 copies
Doubletakes (2003) 47 copies
Death in Kitchawank (2014) 32 copies
Good Home: Stories (2018) 16 copies
Praat met mij (2021) 10 copies
Der Admiral (2012) 9 copies
Tooth and Claw 7 copies
Sind wir nicht Menschen (2020) 5 copies
Dreizehnhundert Ratten (2011) 5 copies
Der Polarforscher (1998) 4 copies
Frage 62 (2012) 4 copies
The lie (2013) 4 copies
In der Zone (2012) 3 copies
Balto (2014) 2 copies
Grün war die Hoffnung (2012) 2 copies
T C Boyle Pack (2004) 1 copy
Chicxulub 1 copy
Anacapa (2013) 1 copy
Bulletproof (2013) 1 copy
La Conchita 1 copy
Histoires cruelles (2012) 1 copy
Parle-moi: roman (2023) 1 copy
1990 1 copy
1995 1 copy
Blue Skies 1 copy

Associated Works

Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 915 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2007 (2007) — Contributor — 825 copies
The Future Dictionary of America (2004) — Contributor — 627 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2008 (2008) — Contributor — 568 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2004 (2004) — Contributor — 556 copies
Points of View: Revised Edition (1966) — Contributor — 411 copies
The Granta Book of the American Short Story (1992) — Contributor — 368 copies
Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories (1984) — Contributor — 362 copies
The Best American Short Stories 1997 (1997) — Contributor — 351 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2014 (2014) — Contributor — 269 copies
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (2015) — Contributor — 263 copies
Press Start to Play (2015) — Contributor — 256 copies
The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007) — Contributor — 211 copies
The Secret History of Fantasy (2010) — Contributor — 199 copies
The Secret History of Science Fiction (2009) — Contributor — 196 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2017 (2017) — Contributor — 183 copies
Granta 85: Hidden Histories (2004) — Contributor — 170 copies
This Is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Work (2004) — Contributor — 159 copies
The Best American Short Stories 2020 (2020) — Contributor — 145 copies
Granta 23: Home (1988) — Contributor — 138 copies
Granta 63: Beasts (1998) — Contributor — 132 copies
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats (2013) — Contributor — 131 copies
Granta 36: Vargas Llosa for President (1991) — Contributor — 126 copies
Granta 44: The Last Place on Earth (1993) — Contributor — 125 copies
Prize Stories 2001: The O. Henry Awards (2001) — Contributor — 123 copies
The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction (2008) — Contributor — 122 copies
McSweeney's Issue 34 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) (2010) — Contributor — 110 copies
The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 (2018) — Contributor — 97 copies
I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet (2011) — Contributor — 89 copies
Baseball's Best Short Stories (1995) — Contributor — 79 copies
Year's Finest Fantasy (1977) — Contributor — 74 copies
Great Esquire Fiction (1983) — Contributor — 70 copies
Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest (2015) — Contributor — 49 copies
McSweeney's Issue 43 (2013) — Contributor — 48 copies
Granta 5: The Modern Common Wind (1982) — Contributor — 44 copies
Granta 9: John Berger, Boris (1983) — Contributor — 43 copies
The Killing Spirit : An Anthology of Murder for Hire (1996) — Contributor — 33 copies
The Road to Wellville [1994 film] (1993) — Original book — 33 copies
Ghost Writing: Haunted Tales by Contemporary Writers (2000) — Contributor — 32 copies
Beach : Stories by the Sand and Sea (2000) — Contributor — 32 copies
Birds in the Hand: Fiction and Poetry about Birds (2004) — Contributor — 32 copies
Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka (2011) — Contributor — 27 copies
The New Great American Writers' Cookbook (2003) — Contributor — 21 copies
The Playboy Book of Short Stories (1995) — Contributor — 11 copies
Exotic Gothic: Forbidden Tales from Our Gothic World (2007) — Contributor — 7 copies
Ten: A Bloomsbury Tenth Anniversary Anthology (1996) — Contributor — 7 copies
The Paris Review 84 1982 Summer (1982) — Contributor — 6 copies
Black Clock 21 (2016) — Contributor — 4 copies
Fiction International 12: Moral Fiction: An Anthology (1980) — Contributor — 2 copies
Playboy Magazine ~ November 1990 (Teri Copley) (1990) — Contributor — 1 copy
Schöne Ferien — Contributor — 1 copy
Antaeus No. 70, Spring 1993 - Special Fiction Issue (1993) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

20th century (155) 21st century (91) Alaska (117) American (322) American fiction (178) American literature (495) anthology (968) Boyle (121) California (299) collection (137) contemporary fiction (116) ebook (90) essays (127) fantasy (106) fiction (4,797) first edition (181) Frank Lloyd Wright (132) Granta (162) hippies (102) historical fiction (393) humor (227) immigration (116) literature (480) McSweeney's (218) non-fiction (150) novel (595) own (117) read (310) Roman (179) science fiction (150) short fiction (128) short stories (2,049) short story (100) signed (204) stories (169) T.C. Boyle (205) to-read (1,314) unread (299) USA (285) writing (104)

Common Knowledge

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Group Read, April 2015: Drop City in 1001 Books to read before you die (April 2015)

Reviews

Not his best. Subject not all that interesting, characters so-so.
 
Flagged
jsolar | 26 other reviews | Jan 22, 2024 |
Whatever point this book seeks to make was squandered, alas, on my pea brain and blinkered imagination.
 
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Mark_Feltskog | 23 other reviews | Dec 23, 2023 |
This is a rather exhausting story about the struggles of an illegal immigrant man and a sanctimonious upper-middle-class Californian after the immigrant is run over by the Californian and badly injured. It might be a more enjoyable read for people who feel a bit less existentially exhausted already; I was relieved when the book was over. The Californian family is the sort who moves into those fancy estate homes in the middle of once beautiful nature preserves. They start out by enjoying the scenery and then start eroding away at it until all the wildlife is gone and the countryside is 'tamed', and seem to feel personally insulted if wildfires and other natural events dare threaten their attempts at encroaching on these natural areas. Delaney, the sort of writer who provides light columns for very middle class outdoorsy magazines, thinks he is not racist, but he really very obviously is. Meanwhile the immigrant, Candido, has landed himself and his underage 'wife' (the youngest sister of his wife in Mexico, apparently) in a patch of California where they are completely out of place. Instead of falling into place with other Spanish speaking immigrants and finding out about private charities and other options that might help them, they wind up camping by a trash-littered creekbed. Everything is pretty dismal, black and white and nearly hopeless in this book. I'm sure that real illegal immigrants have stories like these, and real yuppie Californians too, but most of the sorts of people I know in real life never appear in the world of this novel.
… (more)
 
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JBarringer | 101 other reviews | Dec 15, 2023 |
Identity theft where the victim is a deaf woman who won't let it go and move on. She goes off with her boyfriend to find the thief and bring him to justice.
 
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JBarringer | 39 other reviews | Dec 15, 2023 |

Lists

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Justin Bigos Contributor
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Ben Fowlkes Contributor
Sarah Kokernot Contributor
Denis Johnson Contributor
Louise Erdrich Contributor
Maile Meloy Contributor
Julia Elliott Contributor
Laura Lee Smith Contributor
Kevin Canty Contributor
Joan Silber Contributor
Shobha Rao Contributor
Sjaak Commandeur Translator
Bascove Cover artist
Rachel Ake Cover designer
Werner Richter Translator
Tex Rubinowitz Cover artist
Silverman Illustrator
Muniz Matito Gonzalo Cover designer
Ulrich Imig Herausgeber
Ettore Capriolo Translator
Gideon den Tex Translator
Dirk van Gunsteren Übersetzer, ÜBersetzerin, Translator
Mieke Lindenburg Translator
Fred Marcellino Cover artist
Tilly Maters Translator
Joy Osmanski Narrator
Lynde Houck Narrator
Jim Tierney Cover artist
Florian Lukas Sprecher
Anette Grube Translator

Statistics

Works
98
Also by
73
Members
25,772
Popularity
#812
Rating
½ 3.7
Reviews
604
ISBNs
760
Languages
15
Favorited
136

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