T.C. Boyle on the Women in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Life

04Aug09

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T. C Boyle sat down with the editor of the The New York Times Book Review, Sam Tanenhaus, to discuss “The Women,” his new novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, told from the point of view of the women who loved him. Mr. Boyle has authored more than twenty works of fiction and lives in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house in Montecito, California.

Taylor Antrim reviewed the book in The Los Angeles Times, highlighting the inherent irony of such a well-known author tackling a similarly famous architect:

On paper, T.C. Boyle’s latest novel, “The Women,” sounds like a prizefight: Swaggering fiction heavyweight takes on America’s greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Boyle has written about outsized historical personalities before — notably, cereal magnate and doctor John Harvey Kellogg in “The Road to Wellville” and midcentury sexologist Alfred Kinsey in “The Inner Circle” — but Wright’s eminence and notoriety towers over both. ” ‘The Women,’ ” Boyle has said, “is part of my egomaniacs of the 20th century series,” but surely this is the culmination, the apotheosis. As a study of self-regard, how do you top a novel about Frank Lloyd Wright? With one on Picasso? Or Donald Rumsfeld?”