Boyle’s best-known story by far—due to being heavily anthologized and place into the English curriculum of probably every college in America—is Greasy Lake. It is a deceptively simple coming of age story about three guys at an indeterminate late 60’s/early 70’s time period who fancy themselves “dangerous” because they wear leather jackets, smoke pot and read Andre Gide. Over the course of less than an hour one day near a fetid lake, they nearly kill guy and rape his girlfriend and are in turn nearly killed themselves. They leave Greasy Lake a little older, a little wiser and in a car a lot more beat up than it was when they got there.
The Underground Gardens
An immigrant wanting to buy land in California for farming is duped into buying property on which nothing can be grown. So, he instead decides to build an underground home and hopes his labors will impress the woman he loves. She is mortified instead. Again, instead of disappointment, he decides to expand the underground home into an underground palace of sorts. The amazing thing is that this short story by Boyle is based on the true story of Baldassare Forestiere whose life passion is now a tourist attraction near Fresno.
The Descent of Man
The titular reference to the groundbreaking work on evolution by Darwin is only the start of the satirical allusions in this story of professor who loses his primate researcher girlfriend to a monkey. Her name is Jane Good (as in Goodall) and as the story progresses, Boyle also brings in Tarzan and his mate named Jane and Kafka’s absurdist tale of an ape giving “A Report to the Academy.”
The Big Garage
The long, dark shadow of Kafka looms large over “The Big Garage” as well. Here is a story in which Kafka’s pointless and imposing bureaucracy is translated a world much more familiar to American readers: dependence upon a mechanic to solve the mysteries of whatever terrible has led your car being to towed a garage.
Bloodfall
Seven young people living together must face the world alone when blood inexplicably starts raining from the sky, knocking TV and phone service. The bloody rain is so thick that even just trying to drive to the local fast food joint is an exercise in terror. Things become too much when the blood begins to stain the otherwise sterile world of these people who have been cut off from contact with humanity since long before the blood began to rain.
Stones in my Passway, Hellhound on My Trail
This story is another based on a real life person. In this case, the story is a rather significantly fictionalized imagining of the last night in the life of blues legend Robert Johnson. The legend grew around the actual Johnson that he sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his unique musical talent. From that legend, Boyle crafts a tale that becomes an examination of the notions of predetermination, free will and the clash between present choices and future consequences.
Two Ships
As teens, Jack and Casper run away from home amid dreams of becoming rebels. Jack gives up and comes back home two weeks before Casper. This episode is the rest of their adults lives in miniature as Jack leads a safe and conservative life while Casper’s rebellion seems to his old friend to verge on the dangerously lunatic. At least that is his justification for informing the FBI about Casper’s wild political beliefs.
The Hector Quesadilla Story
This that rare T.C. Boyle that is fairly devoid of corrosive irony and bitter social critique. Then again, it is a baseball story and there’s no room for irony in baseball. Actually, the story of the world’s oldest baseball player who refuses to retire and is only used for specific pinch hitting situations does include more than little irony, but Boyle is working in a more lighthearted vein and the title character is one of his truly lovable characters.
The Overcoat II
Rather than the sequel it might appear to be, this story is actually a rewrite of Gogol’s classic “The Overcoat.” Boyle updates the action to communist-era Russia where showing up with a stylish overcoat is at once a violation of Soviet principles and an item guaranteed to elevate your status in the eyes of others. Barely has the owner had the chance to show of the new apparel than he gets beaten up and the coat stolen. Adding insult to injury, the police fine him for receiving stolen goods.
Caviar
“Caviar” is a disconcerting little story about a fisherman and his wife who have trouble conceiving and agree to a doctor’s recommendation that they try a surrogate mother. The husband eventually discovers that the doctor has been deceiving him and the surrogate refuses to stay with him after they begin a sexual relationship. The husband winds up being arrested for assaulting the doctor and is locked out of his house by wife. The final image is of the fisherman back at work slicing into fish full of eggs.
Sorry, Fugu
Another corrosive bit of ironic satire takes on foodies, restaurant reviewers and restaurant owners willing to do anything to get a good review from a widely read critics.
Termination Dust
The setting is Alaska, where men outnumber women by an always changing but almost incalculable ratio. The centerpiece of this story is one small town’s solution to this serious problem: a charity auction in which women go to the highest bidder. Can romantic love overcome economic deprivation?
Peep Hall
Boyle, who often looks back to the past as the setting for his stories, here confronts the Age of the Internet in all its creepiest glory. After meeting 19 year old Samantha, a 41 year old man becomes hooked on obsessively watching the six young women living in a house down the street where their every movie is stream lived on the internet.
