Writing a Novel is Like Building a House: T.C. Boyle Visits the Martin House Complex

The Martin House was delighted to welcome novelist T.C. Boyle and his family for a tour of the complex during a recent visit to Buffalo.  Boyle is the author of twenty-three books of fiction, including the PEN/Faulkner Prize for best novel of the year (World's End, 1988); the PEN/Malamud Prize in the short story (T.C. Boyle Stories, 1999); and the Prix Médicis Étranger for best foreign novel in France (The Tortilla Curtain, 1997).

Novelist T.C. Boyle (right) with Martin House Curator Susana Tejada (left)

Boyle lives in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1909--the George C. Stewart House--located on the California coastal town of Montecito, a community just outside Santa Barbara.  "What is is like to live there?  It's pretty illuminating," states Boyle, "we'll never get tired of it."  The property is the architect's first California commission, his sole example of the Prairie style west of the Rockies, and a source of inspiration for Boyle's novel, The Women (2009)--a fictionalized story of Wright's life as told through the perspective of the four very different women who loved him.

At a reading that took place on February 12, 2009, at the Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington D.C., Boyle noted that "writing a novel--building a novel--is sort of like building a house." To listen to T.C. Boyle deliver an excerpt from The Women, or to hear his musings on such topics as "Writing and Architecture," "Living in a Frank Lloyd Wright House," and "Visiting Taliesin," click on the recordings on this section of the NPR website:

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=101170584&m=101343705