You may come to love short stories by T.C. Boyle.
Dave Goldsmith
The Cleveland Plain Dealer 6/1/94

Again, again I say: This is the golden age of the American short story.

Sure, the '20s were great-they had Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner-but they also took seriously Irvin S. Cobb, James Oliver Curwood and Elinor Glyn. Today, a list of outstanding practitioners would take all the room left in this review, and I'd be sure to leave off your favorite.

T.C. Boyle, one of our best, now offers his fourth collection, following "Greasy Lake," "Descent of Man" and "If the River Was Whiskey." It is full of the same witty, slightly offbeat, word-charged narratives that have made his reputation.

There is the sport story, "56-0," a hilarious parody of the football hero subgenre that is in its own wacky way as insightful as Irwin Shaw's "The 80-Yard Run." There is the animal tale - four actually - all dealing with the biosphere from different perspectives.

"Top of the Food Chain" cleverly shows the housethat-Jack-built consequences of spraying DDT in Borneo by having the sprayer justify his action to a Senate panel. "Hopes Rise" is about the worldwide disappearance of frogs, and "Carnal Knowledge" is a funny put-down of animal rights activists who liberate a farm full of turkeys just before Thanksgiving.

And, best of all, is "Big Game," in which Boyle parodies Hemingway's "The Short, Happy Life of Francis Macomber" by having a crass real estate magnate and his beautiful wife hunt lions in a phony game preserve outside of Bakersfield, Calif. After the magnate runs from a lion, and the "white hunter" with the ersatz British accent begins making eyes at his wife, the final confrontation-not with a cape buffalo but with Bessie Bee, a 52-year-old ex-circus elephant-takes place, in witty, fitting fashion.

A movie version of Boyle's novel "The Road to Wellville" is due out this fall. I hope the director exploits the touches of Alfred Hitchcock found everywhere in his work. For in Boyle's world, like Hitch's; ordinary people are constantly faced with extraordinary situations. Hey-isn't real life like that?