The Modern Novel

Biography

T. Coraghessan Boyle (he now tends to use the name T C Boyle) used to write cool, hip, funny novels. He messed around with history, had decidedly weird characters and even weirder plots, played language games and generally subverted the novel form. His books were fun to read but also served a serious purpose, whether it to be satirise the bad guys and the bad things that they do or to play around with ideas in a way that Thomas Pynchon plays around with ideas.

T. Coraghessan Boyle was born Thomas John Boyle in 1948 in Peekskill, New York (it appears as Peterskill in his work). He changed his middle name to Coraghessan when he was seventeen, taking it from his mother’s side of the family. His father drove a school bus and his mother was a secretary. Both died from alcoholism-related diseases before he was thirty. He graduated in English and history from the State University of New York at Potsdam and then worked as a teacher. He wrote stories and was accepted into the University of Iowa Workshop. He later earned an MFA and Ph. D. He became a teacher at the University of Southern California. He has written a series of successful novels and short stories and is also known for his flamboyant appearance. This behaviour as well as his extensive use of humour, often black, literary and linguistic games and his shallow characters means that he did not always receive the credit he deserved for being a highly creative and imaginative writer, well worth reading. Sadly, though, in recent years, he seems to have somewhat lost his touch.

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