Boyle, T. C.

Boyle, T. C.

(Thomas John Coraghessan Boyle), 1948–, American writer, b. Peekskill, N.Y., grad. State Univ. of New York (B.A. 1968), Univ. of Iowa (M.F.A. 1974, Ph.D. 1977). He published under the name T. Coraghessan Boyle until the mid-1990s. Influenced by such literary heroes as Evelyn WaughWaugh, Evelyn Arthur St. John
, 1903–66, English writer, considered the greatest satirist of his generation. Educated at Oxford, he was briefly an art student and a teacher but spent much of his time traveling. He served with distinction in World War II.
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, Gabriel García MárquezGarcía Márquez, Gabriel
, 1927–2014, Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Aracataca. Widely considered one of the great Latin American masters of narrative and one of the finest literary stylists of the 20th cent.
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, and Flannery O'ConnorO'Connor, Flannery
(Mary Flannery O'Connor), 1925–64, American author, b. Savannah, Ga., grad. Women's College of Georgia (A.B., 1945), Iowa State Univ. (M.F.A., 1947).
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, he is known for his wildly imaginative, simile-rich, manically jumpy yet highly polished polysyllabic prose and for his satiric bent and hipster-tinged black humor. Boyle's settings range from the historical to the contemporary, his subject matter and characters often edging into the quirky, strange, or bizarre. He first came to critical attention with his short stories in the mid-1970s; they and those that followed have been gathered in The Descent of Man (1979), If the River Was Whiskey (1990), After the Plague (2001), Tooth and Claw (2005), Wild Child (2010), The Relive Box (2017), and other collections. He also is a prolific novelist; his longer fictional works include Water Music (1981), World's End (1987), East Is East (1990), The Road to Wellville (1993; film, 1994), which lampoons the theories of John H. KelloggKellogg, John Harvey,
1852–1943, American physician, health-food advocate, and breakfast cereal developer, b. Tyrone, N.Y., grad. New York Univ. (M.D., 1875) and continued his medical studies in Europe.
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, The Tortilla Curtain (1995), Riven Rock (1998), Drop City (2003), The Inner Circle (2004), The Women (2009), When the Killing's Done (2011), San Miguel (2012), The Harder They Come, a powerful tale of American violence (2015), and The Terranauts (2016). Boyle has taught at the Univ. of Southern California, Los Angeles, since 1978.