Daily Trojan USC.edu

Issue date: 3/11/08 Section: Lifestyle

Media Credit: Jonelle Thorpe | Daily Trojan

Media Credit: Jonelle Thorpe | Daily Trojan Talkative | English professor T. C. Boyle is known for his eccentric style. His novel,"Talk Talk," tells the story of a deaf woman whose identity is stolen.

"[Writing] is like sex; it's a dirty secret. You never mention it."

These words were uttered after an elegant lunch of smoked salmon, white wine and red velvet cake, all of which were served upon spotless table linens in a finely furnished room full of people who would not look an inch out of place at a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution.

Standing before the polished guests in his banana-yellow sport coat, black jeans and dress shoes emblazoned with red flames, the source of these words looked as if he just came from a rock concert, stumbling into the luncheon on accident.

His hair, a red darker than the flames on his shoes, stood in tufts and swirls on top of his head. A metal earring cuffed the flesh halfway up his left ear. And though lanky, his body held no sign of recently hitting the gym.

Writers are an unusual breed, and T.C. Boyle is no different.

The Friends of USC Libraries featured the distinguished fiction writer and USC professor of English in its Forty Seventh Literary Luncheon.

Since 1988, the Friends of USC Libraries have invited many well-known writers, such as Ray Bradbury, Fannie Flagg and Sue Grafton, to discuss their work over a catered lunch in the Doheny Library.

Boyle's "obsessive compulsive disorder of creative writing" has made him one of the preeminent American writers in contemporary literature.

His impressive résumé includes a Ph.D from the University of Iowa, 11 novels and eight short story collections.

Boyle has also won numerous accolades for his work, such as the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN/Malamud Award and six O. Henry Awards for short fiction.

The luncheon recognized "Talk Talk," Boyle's most recent novel on bookshelves.

The compelling and fast-paced "Talk Talk" follows the protagonist Dana Halter, a deaf woman who becomes the victim of identity theft.

After running a stop sign, she is mistakenly arrested for passing bad checks, assault and auto theft. When the police fail to come to Dana's aid, she and her boyfriend, Bridger, decide to take matters into their own hands. The couple tracks down the thief, and a riveting cross-country chase ensues.

While the novel goes into extensive detail about the inner workings of identity theft, Boyle himself has never been a victim.

"I worry about everything, all the time," Boyle said. "A few years back, I began to worry about identity theft … What does it mean? Why do people do this? Why does it hurt you so much? And I began writing about it."

On why he chose his protagonist to be a deaf woman, Boyle described how he was interested in exploring this whole new culture.

"Dana is especially protective of her identity. She comes from a different culture, with a different linguistic system," Boyle said. "My heroine has to struggle even more to define herself in the hearing world."

Those present at the luncheon were lucky enough to be the first to hear Boyle's brand-new short story, "The Lie." The story will grace the pages of "The New Yorker" in the following months.

Boyle's prolific body of work has many to believe that he began this process at a young age. Yet Boyle admits that he never wrote as a child.

"Creative writing wasn't so pervasive as it is today," Boyle said. "I thought [novels] were only written by dead people hundreds of years ago."

It was a series of events in college that led Boyle to find his writing career.

He enrolled at SUNY Potsdam with the intent of being a music major, yet flunked his audition. After taking an English course and immersing himself in American stories, Boyle decided to double major in English and history.

Boyle said, "My junior year, I wandered into a creative writing classroom and discovered that was what I wanted to do."

A true man of his word, Boyle kept his distance from the consumer-oriented culture of Hollywood.

While several of his books and short stories have been translated to the silver screen, notably "The Road to Wellville," Boyle claims that he will never get involved with writing for the film industry.

"Studios called, and I went to lunch because I needed it," Boyle said. "But my life is to do what I want to do. To be in complete control."

Boyle speaks like a true artist, unwilling to compromise his art in any way, shape or form.

"All my work is organic," he said. "It's a slow, unfolding process … but it's such a thrill to see it come together [in the end]. "

As his latest piece of slightly outrageous, slightly raunchy prose managed to keep an audience of sophisticated stuff-shirts laughing heartily every 30 seconds or so, no truer words could have been spoken.

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