#212 King Bee-T.C. Boyle

#212 King Bee-T.C. Boyle

Wow, what a nightmare! A couple has trouble conceiving a child. They look to adopt but do not want to wait the many years it would take to adopt a new-born of their choosing. They get duped into adopting a 9 year-old boy named Anthony. He appears at first to be the Norman Rockwell archetype of the American male child, but things turn quickly.

“The smile was a regular feature of those first few months—He stopped smiling when the trial period was over, as if he’d suddenly lost control of his facial muscles. It was uncanny. Almost to the day the adoption became formal—the day that he was theirs and they were his—Anthony’s smile vanished.”

His calm demeanor turns to erratic behavior, foul language and an obsession with bees. He likes bees because they have no mercy, “You fit in or you die.” Nothing seems to rid him of his psychotic behavior and he goes in and out of institutions and youth prisons until he becomes an adult, scarier and even more bee-like.

There are obvious literary links here, from the Kafka-esque alienation insect references, or a twilight zone story arc. Personally, I see a lot of Stephen King in this story, which is something I wouldn’t have expected from Boyle. This is a fun outlier so far in this collection.

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30

#170- The Human Fly- T.C. Boyle

#170- The Human Fly- T.C. Boyle

With a name like the Human Fly, you’d expect Metamorphosis, and then when you get a Kafka quote at the head of the story, its from The Hunger Artist. Then you start reading it and it’s about a circus performer pushing the boundaries of his daring and you think about First Sorrow and the trapeze artist that wants to stay on his trapeze a all times. Cleary this is literary tribute to Franz Kafka.

This homage comes in the form of an inside look at the world of a low-level entertainment agent. At this moment, he had three clients: “A nasally infected twelve year-old with pushy parents…a comic with a harelip that did only harelip jokes; and a soft rock band called Mu, who believed they were reincarnated court musicians from the lost continent of Atlantis.”

That was until a man dressed in a red cape with a swim cap walked into his small back office. The man was Zoltan Mindszenty aka. La Mosca Humana, the Human Fly. He wanted to be famous. He had already gotten press for his public climbing stunts in Mexico, but wanted exposure here. He began by hanging himself 21 stories above the street in a sack.

“As it turned out he, stayed there, aloft for two weeks. And for some reason—because he was intractable, absurd, mad beyond hope or redemption—the press couldn’t get enough of it.”

Sounds like a familiar mix of modern reality TV and David Blaine. He survived the stunt, and a few more before taking one step too far. But he did become famous. Boyle, like many writers seem to have a love/hate thing for entertainment agencies. They can be

“…a mercenary, a huckster who’d watch a man die for ten percent of the action.”

While they always disdain the agency or the business, the agent themselves seem to be written with a more gentler pen, be it respect, empathy or just pity, who knows?

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30

#156 Sinking House- T.C. Boyle

#156 Sinking House- T.C. Boyle

After 50 years of marriage Murial buried her husband. She is relieved but unhinged. She needs to cleanse herself, she needs to wash away the bad years. So she turns on all the water faucets in her house. For weeks the water runs, and she sits and listens to the water pouring like she used to listen to her husband pouring his vodka:

“When it was quiet—in the early morning or late at night—she could distinguish the separate taps, each with its own voice and rhythm, as they dripped and trickled from the far corners of the house.”

Next door, a younger couple starts to notice flooding in their yard, and under their house. They confront Murial and demand she stop her foolishness. The man's actions and demeanor remind her of her dead husband, before he got violent. But his aggression shocks his wife who doesn’t like this new side of him:

“Sure there was a problem here and she was glad he was taking care of it, but did he have to get violent?”

The water eventually gets turned off but it doesn’t solve anything: “The place was deadly, contaminated, sick as the grave—after all was said and done, it just wasn’t clean enough.”

Meg sees her future in Murial, battered, dejected, wasted away: “Meg had felt like sinking into the ground.”

Clearly water is a powerful theme, as is the power of nature and time. Perhaps there are homage intentions here to Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, with the connecting theme of woman being trapped.

Rating: 8-7-8-9 Total= 32

#128 Hard Sell- T. Coraghessan Boyle

#128 Hard Sell- T. Coraghessan Boyle

An American PR man is hired by the Ayatollah to clean up his image. I remember a piece a few months ago I read by Jennifer Egan about a similar topic called Selling the General. Both kind of played on stereotypes and were a bit unbelievable, but I think this one was supposed to be a bit cartoonish. Thus I liked this one a bit better, it didn’t take itself so seriously.

To start with, this is the description of one of the Ayatollah’s body men: “…this guy with the face of a thousand fists.”

The problems start with an interpreter that warns the PR rep, Bob, about his tone. It seems that the interpreter was Harvard educated and sees right through the BS immediately and is generally offended by the American crassness. Bob, is the epitome of a loud mouthed, American had-talking, shit-slinging PR man. He is also completely tone-deaf when it comes to culture:

“What a joke, huh? They don’t have Tanqueray, Bob. Or rocks either. They don’t have Beefeater’s or Gordon’s—they don’t have a bar, for christsake. Can you believe it—the whole damn county, the cradle of civilization and it’s dry.”

He brings in his own interpreter to make sure what he says gets in the ear of the Ayatollah, and he believes he is making progress. However that is not likely, his advice to the Ayatollah is to take off his religious clothes, wear an Italian suit, shave his beard and remove his religious head garb.  Talk about not knowing your audience.

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#114 Modern Love- T.C. Boyle

#114 Modern Love- T.C. Boyle

A man and a woman go on a first date, Thai food, movie, late drinks. It all seems to go well until she tells him how freaked out she was.

“I can’t tell how much of a strain it was for me the other night…I got drunk from fear…blind panic. I couldn’t help thinking I’d wind up with hepatitis or dysentery or dengue fever or something.”

The woman was a germaphobe of the highest order (and a little agoraphobic as well). But, he liked her so he gave it a shot. For a month they went out to clean places, museums, vegetarian restaurants, etc. And all this without nary a kiss, physical contact was the germs playground.

“There was the look of the mad saint in her eye, the obsessive, the mortifier of the flesh, but I didn’t care. She was lovely, wilting, clear-eyed, and pure, as cool and matchless as if she’d stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, and I was in love.”

Finally, after she professing her love and deems him worthy, he gets an invite to het sterile abode for a macro-biotic dinner and a viewing from the plastic love seat of het favorite movie, Boy in the Bubble. “What a perfect life, Don’t you envy him?”

How far will she take her obsession? Pretty far it turns out, and even as far as he’s willing to follow for love, it still might not be enough, after all he works for a show company…and you know how dirty feet are!

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 33