I'm sad to report that the literary community has lost two fine writers in recent weeks, Frank Conroy and Saul Bellow, and that I have lost a good friend of twenty years in Frank. We first became acquainted when he was running the National Endowment for the Arts and asked me to serve on the literature panel, along with Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O'Brien, John Edgar Wideman and others, and when Jack Leggett retired as director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop I promoted Frank for the job, knowing how good and dedicated he would be. In the fall of 1988, in Frank's second year as director, I had the pleasure of going back to Iowa City to teach a semester at his behest, and we got to hang out and indulge in hijinks together, along with Allan Gurganus and John Gillespie (who had been my fellow students in the seventies), the inimitable Griff Stevens and Mitchell Burgess (who blew into town for the sheer joy of it) and Beau Elliott and Chuck Aukema, true and enduring Iowa Citians. I arrived in hellacious August, in the middle of a terrible drought, got to sweat and complain and watch the days sweeten toward autumn and the leaf change and then the bitterness of the wind-swept winter until ducking out of town just as the first early December ice-storm hit. I was working on East Is East at the time, and probably wrote a good half of it then.
    The reading scheduled for this Thursday, which will feature John Irving and me, had been planned as a tribute to Frank on the occasion of his retirement, but it will now stand as a memorial to Frank, and several people will speak about Frank's legacy as well, including Tom Grimes and Marilynne Robinson. A huge crowd is expected and the Workshop people are trying to nail down the biggest venue on campus (but haven't yet). If you plan to come, be aware of this, and try to get there early if you want a seat.
    Now, as for happier news: Talk Talk is now finished and delivered and I will keep you all posted on developments regarding its progress through proofs to publication (which should be in the fall of next year, or even, depending on the depth and putridity of the waters, early the following year). This coming fall, as reported here in a previous installment, I will release three titles to keep you sated until that new novel appears: the new collection, Tooth and Claw; the YA title composed of previously-collected stories and one new one, The Human Fly; and the paperback of The Inner Circle, for which Penguin has very high hopes in terms of reaching a wide audience in the wake of sales and attention for last fall's hardcover release. The photo here, by the way—and who says I never smile?—will appear as the full back cover of Tooth and Claw.
    So what am I doing? Oh, just lazing about, taking in the sun, hanging at the beach, hiking along the swollen Santa Ynez River with the mutt-like creature, sucking down a beverage or two, that sort of thing. Once the upcoming tour dates are finished (Monday night in Santa Barbara at the Lobero, “Speaking of Stories”: I will perform “Chicxulub”; Jay Thomas will do my political satire, “The New Moon Party”; and Susan Keller and Julie Pearl will read stories by local authors Fran Davis and Linda Stewart-Oaten; there is the aforementioned Iowa City reading on Thursday and then my appearance on Sunday at the L.A. Times Book Fair, Schoenberg Hall, 1:00 P.M., and, of course, the German/Swiss/French tour, the dates and venues of which are posted on tcboyle.de), I hope to turn my hand to some new stories. Until then—yawn—I think I'll just sling the old hammock in the backyard and take a nap. Ciao.