STORY
When asked about his switch from longtime publisher
Viking to a new label – Ecco – his response illustrates the
disparity between the writer’s personal image as firebrand
revolutionary versus his proclivity for order and reason. His
wildly elevated hair and neatly trimmed goatee make the
same point.
“I hate any change of any kind,” he says. “I’m the only writer
in history, for instance, who’s had only one wife. I don’t want
anything
to change.” His humor is dry, subversive.
“I’ve only had one agent – Georges Borchardt – since I
of selected short stories. “He and I will pick them,” Tom says,
“and maybe my fans will vote on them.”
The following chat took place on the patio while we sipped
wine, ate bread and cheese, and plucked grapes:
Q.
In your latest blog (tcboyle.com), you wax poetic over the
“music” you returned to after a longish road trip. You didn’t bring this
music with you?
A.
No, but I do miss music when I’m traveling. I have
music on all day long. Maybe while I’m working I’m listening
was in college; Georges is now in his eighties. I love him. He is
my heart and soul. And he told me it was time to move. I didn’t
want to do it, but Georges said we had to do it in order to get
fresh publicity. I think he was right, because
The Harder They
Come
(Tom’s most recent book) got a really great launch.”
T.C. says he is still close to his longtime Viking editor, Paul
Slovak, and vows to do at least another book with him, probably
to classical music, and the jazz of my youth – Miles Davis, John
Coltrane, that sort of thing. For fun, of course, I listen to rock
and roll. I’m turned on by music these days not by other people,
because we live in a closed society where we never see other
people, so my best friend in terms of music is, his first name is
Party and his last name is Shuffle. And, he has turned me on to
some incredible things.
CONVERSATIONS
28
summer
|
fall
