T.C. Boyle: Older, still effortlessly cool

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:05:00 +0000

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including, most recently, After the Plague (2001), Drop City (2003), The Inner Circle (2004), Tooth and Claw (2005), The Human Fly (2005), Talk Talk (2006), The Women (2009), Wild Child (2010), When the Killing’s Done (2011) and San Miguel (2012). He received a Ph.D. degree in Nineteenth Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978, where he is a Distinguished Professor of English. His work has been translated into more than two dozen foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Finnish, Farsi, Croatian, Turkish, Albanian, Vietnamese, Serbian and Slovene. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus, Granta and McSweeney’s, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Prize for best novel of the year (World’s End, 1988); the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story (T.C. Boyle Stories, 1999); and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Curtain, 1997). He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.

Digesting “Hannibal”

Sat, 03 Mar 2001 20:07:00 +0000

We saw "Hannibal" on two different nights in two different cities. When we started exchanging e-mails about the movie, we realized that the critics had it all wrong. We began to think maybe we should try to get it right. We didn't, exactly, but we decided we'd share our e-mails in the hope that our dialogue -- which continues -- might at least advance the discussion from where it has been. Neither of us has read the Thomas Harris book on which the movie is based, and readers who have not seen the movie are advised that some pertinent plot points are discussed in detail below.

Frederick Barthelme: So I saw "Hannibal." Loved it. Thought it a sublime love story. It's the best Ridley Scott movie since "Blade Runner," which single-handedly defined the look and feel of "future" movies for the last 20 years, and which, like this one, managed to make a simple story hugely complex and defining. (Will anyone ever forget Rutger Hauer saying, "Time to die," releasing the bird, or telling Deckard the things he's seen -- "Troop ships on fire at the edge of Orion"? Answer: No.) And, as "Blade Runner" was in its moment, "Hannibal" is the best-looking movie in years, showing us new ways to see. The "Blade Runner" look was all cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth, I've been told, the future and rain and glitter and advertising that take your breath away. And here again the "look" of the film is a visual elaboration of the themes: "Hannibal" is all about the adoration of light, the elegance of shattered sound, the shadowed beauty of the world we live in but never really see.

Salon.com > Gary Percesepe

T.C. Boyle: Older, still effortlessly cool

Digesting “Hannibal”