September 21, 2004
Contact: George Yatchisin
(805) 893-3494
e-mail: yatchisin-g@ sa.ucsb.edu

Brilliant fiction writer T.C. Boyle will read from The Inner Circle, his new rollicking novel about sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, at UCSB Campbell Hall

Summary Facts:

• T.C. Boyle
• Boyle will read from his latest novel The Inner Circle
• Acclaimed fiction writer Boyle is also the author of Drop City, The Tortilla Curtain, Riven Rock and The Road to Wellville
• Tuesday, October 26
• 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General public $8 / UCSB students $6
• Tickets/Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535

T.C. Boyle, hailed by the Los Angeles Times as an “ironist and adventurer among the potholes and pratfalls of the American language,” will read from his latest novel The Inner Circle on Tuesday, October 26 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall.

The Inner Circle revolves around pioneering sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose Kinsey Reports shocked 1940s and ‘50s America with a frank examination of sexuality. The novel’s first-person narrator John Milk, a fictional assistant to Kinsey, becomes a fascinating prism through which to see this magnetic man of great hungers for both science and sex. In an interview with David L. Ulin in the LA Weekly Boyle explained what drew him to this subject matter, “I was coming out of the free-love notions of Drop City [Boyle’s previous novel set in the 1960s], so I decided to go back another 20, 30 years to find out about when we first began to talk about sexuality in society. Kinsey also plays into my eternal theme of our Darwinian existence versus our spiritual existence. Here, we have Kinsey saying he’s a scientist, and he can separate the physical act of sex from any emotional or spiritual context, and I wondered how that would play out. He was purely Darwinian, an empiricist who tried to make a science of sex. From the beginning of my career, I’ve been fascinated with our animal natures, as opposed to our minds. We pride ourselves on being more than animals when, in fact, it’s obvious that this is what we are. Also, I’ve always been fascinated by the larger-than-life gurus who are going to lead us to the promised land, if only we give ourselves over to them, fully and completely. And Kinsey certainly fits into that.”

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of sixteen books of fiction including the National Book Award nominated Drop City (2003), The Tortilla Curtain (1995), which was the Santa Barbara Reads book for 2002, Riven Rock (1998), a fascinating novel based on the life of the mentally ill Stanley McCormick of the grain harvester fortune and set at his Montecito estate, and The Road to Wellville (1993), which concerns John Kellogg of cereal and health spa fame and was made into a movie directed by Alan Parker. A prolific short story writer, Boyle is compiling the collection Tooth and Claw, which is tentatively scheduled for release in fall 2005. It follows other collections including the nearly 700-page long T.C. Boyle Stories (1998) that The New York Times hailed for its “overall inventiveness, flash and just plain entertainment value.”

Boyle 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. Boyle lives in Montecito. His books are available in a number of foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish, Lithuanian, Latvian, Polish, Hungarian and Bulgarian. 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. Among his many plaudits he has won five O. Henry Awards for his short fiction, a 1988 PEN/Faulkner Award for best novel for World’s End, and a 2002 Southern California Booksellers’ Association Award for best fiction for After the Plague.

Courtesy of Chaucer’s, books by T.C. Boyle will be available for purchase and signing at the event.

T.C. Boyle is presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Tickets for the event are $8 for the general public and $6 for UCSB students. They are on sale now and can also be purchased at the door, if still available.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.