Mythic and realist, farcical and tragic, these fifteen “fables of contemporary life [are] so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written [for] Saturday Night Live” (The New York Times)—from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain.
“Boyle . . . owns a ferocious, delicious imagination, often darkly satirical and always infatuated with language.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review
In “The Hector Quesadilla Story,” T.C. Boyle writes of an aging Latin ballplayer, long past his best stuff, who on his birthday is put into an endless rotation in a game that goes on forever; in “All Shook Up,” he tells of the doomed affair between his narrator and the sweet, feckless wife of an aspiring Elvis Presley look-alike; in “On for the Long Haul,” he describes the grim scenarios enacted by a credulous survivalist and his family in their nuclear-holocaust-proof haven in the sticks; and in the title story, he portrays a terrifying and violent encounter between a bunch of late-adolescent layabouts and a murderous drug-dealing biker.
"Satirical fables of contemporary life, so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written by Evelyn Waugh as sketches for...'Saturday Night Live.' ...Indeed, the best of his stories not only make the reader see; they make the reader hear and smell and feel." --The New York Times
T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.
View titles by T.C. Boyle
Mythic and realist, farcical and tragic, these fifteen “fables of contemporary life [are] so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written [for] Saturday Night Live” (The New York Times)—from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain.
“Boyle . . . owns a ferocious, delicious imagination, often darkly satirical and always infatuated with language.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review
In “The Hector Quesadilla Story,” T.C. Boyle writes of an aging Latin ballplayer, long past his best stuff, who on his birthday is put into an endless rotation in a game that goes on forever; in “All Shook Up,” he tells of the doomed affair between his narrator and the sweet, feckless wife of an aspiring Elvis Presley look-alike; in “On for the Long Haul,” he describes the grim scenarios enacted by a credulous survivalist and his family in their nuclear-holocaust-proof haven in the sticks; and in the title story, he portrays a terrifying and violent encounter between a bunch of late-adolescent layabouts and a murderous drug-dealing biker.
Praise
"Satirical fables of contemporary life, so funny and acutely observed that they might have been written by Evelyn Waugh as sketches for...'Saturday Night Live.' ...Indeed, the best of his stories not only make the reader see; they make the reader hear and smell and feel." --The New York Times
Author
T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World’s End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.
View titles by T.C. Boyle
