Love Him or Hate Him but You Can’t Ignore Him Thomas John Boyle, or as we now know him, T. Coraghessan Boyle, is an American novelist and short story writer. Raised as an only child of 2 happily married, blue collar, Westchester county New Yorkers, some would argue Boyle has an inordinately ominous outlook on life due to the graphic content of his writings. Since the 1980’s there has been a general consensus that Boyle’s work can be very disconcerting, but upon further review, one would be pressed to find any reputable correspondents who truly object to his work, only to find the majority of the literary community continuously praise it or less commonly, are indifferent to it. Hugo Lindgren of the New York Times wrote an article about Boyle in late 2013. The piece starts off as a review of Boyle’s latest publication, “Stories II”, but rather than focusing purely on the material of the book, he goes on to tell everyone about his personal history as a fan and ultimately the distancing of himself from Boyle’s later works. Lindgren starts off by praising Boyle’s early work, using phrases like, “knife edge prose” and “cutting edge intensity” but quickly changes the tone when he talks about the lull he encountered in the mid 1990’s when he claims Boyle was inauthentic, even stated, “like a ventriloquist”. One could ascertain this meant Boyle was not in control or just simply lost his mojo. However, Lindgren never gave up on Boyle, being one of the more influential writers of his youth it was hard to replace the escape from monotony that came with the territory of an English major, so he checked in on him from time to time and when his last book was released, was actually excited to jump into the 900+ page task that lay at hand. Ultimately, he said there would always be a place on his bookshelf for Boyle but he was more interested in his evolution as a writer and if he could regain a spot back at the top of his favorite authors list. Not much praise, but hardly any criticism either, Lindgren went the safe route and classified the stories in the 10-10-80 rule, 10% great, 10% bad, the rest were average. Around the same time 3,000 miles in sunny Southern California, David Ulin of the Los Angeles times gave readers a more straightforward and unambiguous look into Boyle’s works and the Author himself. No reminiscing or emotional ties, just facts. The tone of the article and phrasing sets readers up to think it will be a public flogging and harsh criticism of the writer, but
