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Letter to the editor

What's on your nightstand?

By Piper Castillo
Published July 15, 2007

We caught up with author and University of Southern California professor T.C. Boyle by phone from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., where he's completing The Women, a historical novel about Frank Lloyd Wright. Last month Talk Talk, Boyle's 11th novel, was released in paperback.

Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides. It's about Kit Carson and the expansion into the American West. Recently, on a trip to Paris, I read Monster of God by David Quammen. It's about wild beasts and man. Both were smooth reads.

Do you enjoy reading a particular novelist for recreation?

I don't read fiction while I am in the middle of (writing) a novel. It's important that I concentrate on the consistency of tone. But, I can also answer you this way: Flannery O'Connor inspired me to become a writer. In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, I saw how humor can take a tragic turn. I had known Shakespeare's comedies and slapstick, but O'Connor took comedy and made it bleak and tragic.

Piper Castillo, Times staff writer

[Last modified July 13, 2007, 11:20:21]