T.C. Boyle Stories II: Volume II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle - Softcover

T. Coraghessan Boyle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408844575 ISBN 13: 9781408844571

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2013

Synopsis

paperback

About this title

About the Author:

T.C. Boyle is the author of fourteen novels, including Drop City, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and World’s End, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written nine short story collections. He lives near Santa Barbara, California.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* The first volume of this always exciting writer’s collected short fiction (Stories, 1998) drew refreshed interest in and admiration for his incontestable mastery of the short form. The second volume, containing 58stories written since the previous volume appeared, is poised to garner equal enthusiasm. Readers should not detour around the preface. It is a deft, passionate, colorfully detailed recounting of Boyle’s path to professional story writing as he unabashedly shares the various and fortunate influences on him while he sought self-clarification of what his life’s pursuit should be. His personal theories of story writing emerge, one of the most provocative being, “The professional dictum has always been to write about what you know, but I say write what you don’t know and find something out.” Evidence of this theory at work can be found in “Swept Away,” one of the most effective stories. The setting is far remote from most people’s personal experience: a dark, desolate island in hostile northern climes. During a particularly wild wind-storm, a romance flares between an islander and an American visitor; particulars of the affair are supported by the intense details of the dangerous environment—“Bicycles raced down the street with no more than a ghost at the pedals.” Was Boyle actually “on location”? The reader learns in the preface that these details were largely spawned by Boyle’s imagination, but regardless, the story drips with authentic atmosphere. The volume itself poses the question, Can every story by one author be a masterpiece? Boyle’s brilliant book submits itself as evidence for that possibility. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher will support this major publishing event with an author tour, lecture venues, and online and social-media promotional campaigns. --Brad Hooper

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408844575
• ISBN 13: 9781408844571
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 944