Fiction writer T.C. Boyle reading from
his latest book The Harder They Come at the Tattered Cover on April
30, 2015. Wonderful, once again, to give a listen to—as well as to
speak briefly with—the prolific, provocative, and
profoundly-entertaining author, whose love of literature always
proves infectious.
I have a background with Boyle: I
conducted feature interviews with him, published by High Times in
1989 and Salon in 1990. (I also appreciated his words of
encouragement when I was finishing up my novel A Western Capitol Hill;
Boyle wrote of the early chapters that I sent off to him, “This is
beautifully done.”)
Given that Boyle's early work was
primarily satire—although he's written his fair share of dramatic
literature, since then—I gave myself the assignment to ask him the
following at the Tattered Cover:
*
What are your thoughts on satire, and
the P.E.N. recognition of Charlie
Hebdo?
BOYLE: You know I'm known a lot as a satirist
and my natural play on the world is to make crazy sick jokes to keep
from crying. This is what satire does for me...
[The Charlie
Hebdo killings are] an attack on our democratic society and on
our ability to live together. I stand for absolute freedom of
expression--no matter what it takes. I don't know if I would have had
the courage of the editor of Charlie
Hebdo, but I think if a group, any group—and we go back to
Salman Rushdie and the Ayatollah—starts to dictate what we can and
cannot say in our country, we're doomed. So, I admire the courage of
[the editor of Charlie Hebdo]:
a kind of fatal courage, a kind of suicidal courage. But, I've said
here before to you, I'm proud to be part of a democracy and able to
be who I am and say anything I want and do anything I want without
having to care about anything: I mean, that's our essential freedom.
*
United we stand up for satire.
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