The After-Dinner Payback

I’m a little late on this one, but it’s worth a mention: David Milofsky talks to T.C. Boyle, who was in Denver on Wednesday to accept the fourteenth annual Evil Companions Literary Award, which recognizes “authors who were either from the West or wrote about [the] region.”

… [D]espite his East Coast roots, Boyle claims to have particular fondness for Denver and is pleased to have won the Evil Companions Award. “It’s a pretty impressive group of winners,” he says. “And I’m honored to be part of it. But I’ve always liked Denver. I’ve been through there on virtually all of my book tours at the Tattered Cover and other stores, and I’ve really enjoyed performing there.”

He makes a point of saying he performs rather than simply giving a reading as most writers do. “Calling it a reading to me has this kind of half-baked academic quality,” Boyle says. “As if everyone is simply going to sit quietly and listen to me read out loud. Not very interesting. When I come to Denver I’m going to act out what I read and really give you a show. Literature isn’t like trigonometry, after all. The whole idea is to entertain. It’s a delight, subversive, free.”