- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part by the Alice
Kleberg Reynolds Foundation

and Hillco Partners, a Texas
government affairs consultancy

and by KLRU's Producer's Circle,
ensuring local programming

that reflects the
character and interests

of the greater Austin,
Texas community.

- I'm Evan Smith, he's an
award winning novelist,

short-story writer, and academic
who's 26 works of fiction

over an amazing four decades
include, World's End,

Tortilla Curtain, Tooth
and Claw, Wild Child,

The Harder They Come, and
The Road to Wellville.

His latest, The Terranauts,
has just been published.

He's T. C. Boyle,
this is Overheard.

Let's be honest, is this about

the ability to learn or is
this about the experience

of not having been
taught properly?

How have you avoided
what has befallen

other nations in Africa?

You could say that
he made his own bed,

but you caused him
to sleep in it.

You saw a problem and,
over time, took it on.

Let's start with the sizzle
before we get to the steak.

Are you gonna run for president?

I think I just got an -F.

(applauding)

T. C. Boyle, welcome.

- My pleasure.

- Congratulations on the book.

- Thank you so much.

I publish books all
the time, every year,

and I go out on the road
and every once in a while

somebody says, congratulations,

and I'm wondering, for what?

It's like going to war
when you publish a book.

- No, it's like giving
birth, here it is.

It was long awaited.

No, no, the thing about
this book that I thought was

especially great was it took
me back, truly took me back

to the mid and
early 90s, you know.

This is a novel
based on real events.

It's based on the
experience of Biosphere,

Biosphere 2 in Arizona
in the early 90s.

You have really drawn a
picture that is similar to,

but, in so many ways,
different from the real thing.

- Well, thank you.

When the Biosphere 2
experiment first happened in

91 through 93 northeast
of Tucson, I was
fascinated by this.

Like most of the public, I
clipped out all the articles.

I thought, this is right
up my alley because

as you know, Evan, I often
write about ecological concerns.

For those who don't know, a
friendly Texas billionaire--

- Ed Bass.

- Ed Bass put up the money
to create a new world.

3.15 acres, 3800 species
of plants and insects,

four men, four women, to be
sealed inside for two years.

This was the first
closure of a projected 50

so this would go
on for 100 years.

The whole point is, NASA is
still after this, by the way,

is could we create another
biosphere, other than the one

we live in here, in
the event that this one

should collapse, which
it sure looks like

it's happening right now--
- Honestly,

it's about 50/50 isn't it?

- Exactly, or a Mars
colony, or whatever.

- And the idea was that
they would be observed as a

laboratory experiment
or a laboratory
environment all along.

- Yeah, they were famous.

They were aping the
astronauts of NASA.

Now, NASA was congenial
with them but this was

a private enterprise,
a tremendous chutzpah.

I mean, build a new world?

Also, what the fun of it for
me is they had hundreds of

scientists helping
to build this thing.

I would think they would
put in maybe just one biome.

They did take a section
from a Florida Everglades,

for instance, for their marsh.

Instead, they had five biomes.

- You had savanna, you had
desert, you had marsh--

- And ocean.

- Ocean.

- Which with tropical
fish, and so on.

It was kind of a mix and
match world that they created

and they had galagos in there.

These are the bush babies
from Africa, these prosimians,

very cute, this big, they,
climbing through the trees

in the rainforest
that they built.

Why'd they put them in there?

For fun, for fun.

A fascinating thing is,
if it had go on 100 years,

by the way, it didn't,
the friendly billionaire

got into a fight with
the friendly creator

and bailed out six
months into the second--

- Second time, it
always happens.

We have big aspirations and
then it ends up not happening.

- Anyway, if it had happened
for 100 years, okay,

successively every two years
they put in a new crew,

but, imagine what that
world would be like.

There are so many
unforeseen consequences

when you try to be God.

For instance, it took
them a year and a half to

build it and enclose
it, and in that time,

some invasive species
came in, some volunteers.

They put in three species
of cockroach because they're

essential detritivores
to this world.

But, the cockroach that
some unfortunate people

watching this see under
the bathroom sink,

that one got in, too, and,
of course, took right over.

- Right, I mean, the law
of unforeseen consequences

is in effect here, and sort
of the arrogance of assuming,

you used to describe
it as playing God,

they were literally
in this case.

That's often used not literally.

This is literally
creating a world, right?

Playing God.

- Exactly.

I also thought, what if we
had 10 friendly billionaires

and we built 10 of these--

- 10 different ones at the

same time?
- Yeah, and they could be

a mile apart, and they
could even try put

the same suite of
creatures in each one.

After 100 years it be a
totally different world.

They were criticized because
it's not real science.

Science, you have a
theory and you test it.

This was more theatrical.

It was more like, hey, kids,

[Both] let's put on
a show. (laughing)

- And to the point
of being theatrical,

it really was as much
entertainment as it was science

in that you also had
these eight personalities

who were placed in
this experience.

Honestly, this was the
first reality show.

As I'm reading this book,
I'm reminded that this is

really a reality show
that was a precursor

to everything that's come.

- It remains, by the way,
a tourist attraction.

You can go there,
I've been there.

They'll take you through
it, it's just not closed.

Absolutely, again, these
people were on the front page

of all the newspapers, and
magazines, and everything else.

Everything they did, behind
the glass wall were tourists

who paid to come and see them--

- And gawk.

- And gawk, while they
were slopping pigs and--

- The book you've written,
instead of Biosphere 2,

it's Ecosphere 2, it's E2.

You have eight people, as
was the case back then,

they're all white, in fact, the
women are all blonde, right?

And to think, again, let's
just go back for a moment

to when this really occurred.

Could you imagine getting
away with this kind of

a public experiment where the
participants are all white?

Today, I mean, this
would be a protest,

you'd have this whole cry,
right I mean, this is a very

different world.
- This is part

of why I'm setting
this in the past.

To examine that and see what
those ironies are all about.

- Also, pre-technology.

- Yeah, they didn't--
- no social media,

no cellphones,
none of that stuff.

- The beauty of this is I can
take the original history,

all the details I've just
given you, or part of this.

The Biosphere has wrote books.

There's a whole
history of this full of

newspaper articles and so on.

- But, you had a wealth
of material to draw on.

- Of course, but then I can
project a second closure,

and in mine, it's even more
of a big brother sort of

atmosphere, just for the
fun of it, so they're not

allowed to communicate
with the outside world

except at the visitor's window.

It's like prison, you
have a little phone

and there's the window.

They would give a
handshake by putting

their hands to the glass.

And, of course, there's
a little simulated sex

going on, too, right
at that window.

In fact, I didn't realize how
sexy this was going to be.

Four men, four women,
locked inside--

- Yeah, how could
you have imagined?

- What are they
gonna do? (laughing)

- What could you have
been thinking about?

What I love, as well, about
the story is that it's told

in a series of alternating,
or rotating, narratives.

Two of the participants of
the eight, and one of the

people who hoped to be a
participant but was not chosen

and then ends up working,
essentially, on the outside

with the hope of getting
into a future one of these.

They're the three narrators.

One of the three, the
man, Ramsay Roothoorp,

is actually kind of a horn-dog.

That would be the technical
phrase, is that right?

- Yeah, that's the
typical phrase.

- PBS friendly phrase,
yeah, this is a guy

who is a bit of a sex-obsessive.

- Yes, so, you mention having
that, or three narrators.

I've never done this before.

I'm always trying to do
something new at every book.

- Right, mix up the structure.

- Mix up the structure.

So, they talk to you,
ultimately first person,

right at you, so it
becomes very intimate.

And, of course, as in
any group of people

trying to get ahead, they
have their conflicts.

The points of view might
cover the same territory,

but in a different way.

- Yeah, it's got a little
Rashomon quality to it, right,

how you tell the story
is how you see the story.

- Exactly, exactly, so one
of the ones who was excluded,

of the three narrators,
we have Dawn Chapman,

she is a very pretty blond.

Again, this is theater, so
they want a good-looking woman

who can look good in a swimsuit.

Then there's Ramsay
Roothoorp, who you mentioned

is the communications officer.

And the third narrator is a
woman who's been excluded.

She was part of the
sixteen, but wasn't chosen.

She's Korean, her name is
Linda Ryu, and she is now

promised that she'll
get in the next time

if she remains as support staff.

All of these people,
it's a kind of cult.

They want desperately to
be in, and so they will do

whatever mission control
tells them to do.

Linda is a little
bitter. (laughing)

- I love the characters
then, and I also love

the concept that
you've overlaid, you
eluded to Ed Bass's

involvement in the previous.

There is God, the creator,
GC, and then there is

God the financier, GF, who
are themselves relevant

players in this world
that you've created.

Honestly, as you think about
this, or as I think about

this book, it's got elements
of, as I said, reality shows,

but it also feels a little
bit like 1984, it feels

a little bit like
The Wizard of Oz.

There's actually elements
of stories that are

very familiar to us that
you've brought together in this

and I think that it ends
up being a very interesting

story as you tell it, and I
think people who have read

your books in the past know
that you're obsessed with

sub-cultures and you're
obsessed also with dominant

institutions and individuals,
whether it's a Kellogg,

or Frank Lloyd Wright,
or Kinsey, you know,

people you've written
about in the past.

You do well writing
about that universe.

- I don't trust, as an
American who has done and said

whatever he wants his entire
life and has been able,

in this great country, to
have a life as an artist,

I don't trust the
domineering leader who says,

whether it's in fundamentalist
religion or in politics,

who says, give yourself over
to me and I will guide you.

- I alone can fix it.

That phrase is running
through my head.

- Yeah, I wonder why.

- That's actually been a
consistent through-line

in a number of your books.

- Again, Evan, you don't
know what your themes are

when you start to write.

You can only see
this in retrospect.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm
fascinated by cults and groups.

A lot of you will remember
my novel from 2003,

Drop City, which goes back to
the Back-To-The-Earth movement

of the late 60s, hippies.

The whole proposition was
this wheel of capitalism

is destroying the world, can
we get off it, and go back

to nature, and live simply.

Well, of course, we can't,
there's seven billion of us.

- But, in some ways,
these two books, Drop City

and this book, are actually
married thematically.

I was amazed in going back
to look over your career

that really the only one
of your works of fiction,

this is the 16th novel,
there have also been 10 books

of short-stories, the only
thing that really has been

translated into an entertainment
vehicle that we would

recognize or remember was
The Road to Wellville.

- Right, Anthony
Hopkins, Bridget Fonda,
Matthew Broderick,

Alan Parker, the great Alan
Parker directed this film.

- I love the movie, I
love everything about it.

I don't participate in
films because, well,

the artistic reason is I
have to make my life's work,

this is it, it's a distraction.

There's another reason, too.

I couldn't imagine doing
anything creative with

somebody else's
opinion involved.

- Well, it's your book, but
when it becomes a movie,

it really becomes theirs, right,
I mean, you have to be able

to distance yourself from

that creative process.
- I met Alan

when he bought it and we had a
dinner, and it was very nice.

I realized, I'm a fan
of his, I love his work,

he had made The Commitments
just before this.

He's exactly like me,
he's pedal to the metal,

this is his project,
and I loved what he did.

The Terranauts, this is the
first time this has happened,

has been bought for TV by
Warner Bros. and Jim Parsons,

the actor, Jim Parsons--

- They think they wanna
make it into a series?

- They will make
it into a series.

- See, I wondered about
that because as I read this,

actually, my thought was,
it seemed like a play

because the setting is
effectively stationary,

not literally stationary, but
it's effectively stationary,

it's sort of one setting.

I thought it lent
itself almost to be

made into a stage play.

- And don't forget, I'm also
taking the reality of this

in which they did,
the Terranauts, where
the Biosphere ends,

did produce plays inside
as a way of bonding,

and also to perform for people.

Further, since there
are 50 2-year closures,

if this show were to
come and be successful,

our great-grandchildren
could be watching it still.

You know, anything could
happen because you have

eight new people
going in each time.

- Well, again, I come back
to, I'm embarrassed to say,

the low-culture reference
that came to mind

reading this book was
MTV's the Real World.

In some ways where it's like
a different cast of characters

every season and a different
location, I thought

that's basically
Biosphere 2 on MTV.

- I have to confess that
while I'm sitting here on TV

with you, the amazing
host of an amazing show,

I've never seen any reality TV--

- Is that right?

God, good for you, oh my gosh.

(audience laughing)

On behalf of America, thank you.

You're not part of the problem.

- As I say, I have inner
resources, I know how to read.

I don't need reality TV,
in fact, couldn't imagine

watching one second of it--

- What's remarkable is how
you've gotten everything

perfectly, instinctively,
without actually having seen it.

I mentioned 16 novels and
10 works of short-fiction.

I wonder which you prefer.

Your novels are not,
themselves, the extension of

the short-stories
that you write.

You don't start out to
write something in miniature

and then make it
into a full novel,

so you really are picking,
essentially, one or the other.

Do you have a preference?

- Each has its joys.

The novel, you know what
you're gonna do tomorrow

when you wake up, however,
you're locked into it,

so whatever you should tell
me, or my friends tell me,

or excites me that's
happening technologically,

I can't write about.

With a story, it's the opposite.

Anything that occurs to you,
you can just jam up a story.

However, once the story's over,
let's say it takes a month

from the initial idea,
two weeks of the writing,

a week to polish,
then you send it off,

then you're completely bereft.

You don't know what
you're gonna do tomorrow

and you have a period
where you have no ideas

and you twirl that gun on
your desk a lot, you know,

to kinda stimulate yourself.

It's very difficult, but
I think one of the reasons

I've been so productive is
I've been able to go from

one form to the
other, back and forth.

- Well, in fact, you've already
gone, as I understand it,

to your next creative output
will be a book of stories.

- Yeah, the book of
stories for next year,

I delivered it earlier and
I'm working on the research

for the next novel.

- I wanna go back to
your origins as a writer.

The first thing you published
was in fact a short-story,

was it not?

- Yes, and my first book
was a collection of stories.

- Talk about that time.

You grew up in
Peekskill, New York.

You went to college in the
Suny system, an undergraduate,

and then you had a
period of time when,

as they say, you were
younger and wilder,

right, you had kind
of a wild period.

As a musician--

- Well, shucks, who doesn't?

- Right, everybody
had one, I'm not

passing judgement,
it's an observation.

But, you eventually went on
to the Iowa Writers' Workshop,

got graduate degrees
there, and the short-story

that you first wrote and
published was actually

instrumental to pointing you
on that path, was it not?

- It was.

So, I was very lucky early
on to get a story published.

And then that gave me the
confidence to apply to

the only graduate program
I had ever heard of,

the Iowa Writers'
Workshop, where all

my heroes had gone, or taught.

By the grace of God,
they accepted me,

and I also did my PhD there.

- John Cheever was a
professor of yours.

- John Cheever, John
Irving, and Vance Bourjaily,

who had been John Irving's
teacher in the Workshop.

- It's like the very
best possible people

you could learn from, right?

- Yes, Evan, but as you
know, when you're an artist,

whether it's in music, or in
the literary arts, or painting,

you already know how to do it.

What you need is a guide or
coach to say, alright, kid,

you're on the right track,
which is essentially what

all three did for
me, very generously.

But really, no one can
teach you how to do it.

No one really
offered suggestions,

they just read it
and encouraged me.

- You've gotten better over
time in your own mind, right?

The T. C. Boyle of those days
in Iowa, who thought he knew

a lot and thought he could
do a lot, learned over time

what more he could
do and what was

right and wrong with his work.

- I think you grow.

You grow as an artist
if you're lucky.

And I have no restrictions,
I write in any mode

that occurs to me.

I think that allows me
to be very productive.

When I first began
writing, in my first

collection of stories, I
was much more interested in

humor, design, and
language than in character.

I didn't really
have much by way of

character in the stories.

My wife would always
say, well, you know,

your women characters are
really flat, and I would counter

by saying, yeah, well,
so are my men. (laughing)

- Yeah, there's an
equal opportunity.

- Then I wrote, Water
Music, my first novel.

You can't write a novel without
creating great characters.

That taught me something.

Cheever taught me
something, too, in this,

when I met him, he was
sort of on the run,

he was drinking a lot, and he
seemed impossibly old to me.

He was 62 at the time.

I had read his stories some
years before but they were

more in a conventional mode
and I was an experimenter

and he was just this old
guy, you know, who cared.

Then, he published his
collective stories which I read,

probably every decade,
I read through that--

- You've cited this as
actually one of your favorite--

- It's a touchstone for me.

And he taught me to expand
in another direction,

towards realism.

I'd never been interested.

Also, at that time, Ray
Carver was living in town

and I became friendly
with him, and, of course,

I was under the spell of his
magnificent fiction, which is

primarily in a realistic
mode, so I adopted that, too.

I can go from a kind
of folk-tales, or
to surreal stories

like the one that
you've just mentioned

that's in the New
Yorker this week.

And the previous New Yorker
story, three months ago,

The Fugitive, is
straightforward realism,

and it's about something
that's happening

in Santa Barbara, where I live.

A guy has multiple
drug-resistant tuberculosis.

He's a transient, he
didn't take his meds,

so his body is a furnace for
creating new strains of TB

that will kill us all.

He was being pursued
as a criminal.

He hadn't committed any crimes.

What are the ethics of that?

Did it mean, do we have the
right to lock somebody up

who has not committed
a crime because they're

a threat to public health?

I wrote the story to
kind of investigate that,

but it's in the same
book as Are We Not Men,

and another story that
hasn't been published yet,

Warrior Jesus, about
a cartoonist who
creates a superhero.

It's great that I can move
from one to the other.

- Where do these ideas
for the short-stories

or an idea like the, I mean,
I think there's an obvious

basis for this book, and
I know that you've said

previously that at the time
that Biosphere 1 was going on,

and even Biosphere 2 was
going on, you were thinking

to yourself, boy, I should
write about this, right.

The idea for this actually
goes back to the origin.

- Right, but, like most
of the public, I became

disenchanted with this
because the hook was

absolute material closure.

They had sealed that
thing so that there was

less transference of air from
there to the outside world

than even in the space shuttle.

So this is exciting,
they can't get out.

In fact, it is true that
with the real Biosphere

that somebody put your
extra-large pepperoni pizza

outside the airlock to
see if they would open it.

- Right, tempt them.

- So, 12 days in, and again,
I have the real history,

I can tell the story.

One of the Biospherians cut
the tip of her finger off--

- She was working like
a rice hulling machine.

- So, one of the eight, of
course, has to be an MD,

for obvious reasons, and
he sewed it back together

and did his best, but it
wasn't looking too good.

It was kinda looking like
blood sausage, you know.

So, she held her
hand up to the window

and they got the best
hand-man in Pima County

to come and look at it, he
said, you gotta come out

of there or you're
gonna lose that.

She came out into our
world, 12-days into this,

for five hours only.

They even estimated how
many lungs-full of our air

she breathed rather than
the inside the Biosphere.

She went back in and she was
carrying two bags with her,

two shopping bags, that
nobody knows what was in them.

But, still, if it was
Mars, they'd be dead.

The public began
to lose interest

because they broke closure.

In my telling, of course,
now I'm positing a second of

49 more closures, and
this crew is determined,

even if somebody should
die inside, no matter what,

they're not gonna break
that, because that

killed the deal the
first time around.

It's wonderful for me to
have this real history

and then project.

- In that respect, the
real history is the impetus

and it's also the, it's
the basis, but I'm saying,

in the case of other
things you've written,

or the short-stories, are you
collecting ideas as you go?

Do you have a list of
things that you wanna

get to eventually--

- Right now--

- I wanna understand
the creative process.

- Right now, already, just
talking with you, Evan,

I have 20 new ideas, I
gotta scribble them down

when I go offstage.
- I'm mortified.

I can't imagine what those are.

Lame talk-show host
asks questions.

(laughing)

That's a story.

No, seriously, obviously,
every author approaches

these things differently,
and I'm just interested in

the creative process
where you fit yourself

into that.
- It's a miracle,

which is why I will do nothing
but make fiction until I die.

It's a kind of miracle.

A musician can tell you this,
a painter can tell you this.

Once you open up
the unconscious,
and it's hard to do,

you don't get there
every day, you're in some

other world and it makes
itself, it just happens.

My ideas come from many sources.

I write an awful lot
about ecology and science,

and the new technology,
this, Are We Not Men

is about Crispr Cas 9 technology
in which we are now able,

quite quickly and easily, to
make trans-genic creatures.

Is this a good idea?

Well, I write a
story to find out.

Sometimes I would write a
story that is autobiographical

in content, very rarely, but
once in a while, why not.

So, that, all you have
to do is find an incident

and try to see what it means.

- You read a lot of
other people's stuff.

You mentioned that you read
Cheever, but, of course,

Cheever is another generation,
or another era of stuff,

you read a lot of
contemporary fiction?

- I do read some contemporary
fiction and only when

I'm writing short-stories.

The problem with reading a novel
when you're writing a novel

is the voice will
creep into your head.

You don't want this.

The hardest thing with a
book like this is the middle,

and sustaining the energy, and
finding out where it's going.

The voice has to remain
consistent and I,

distracted by the voice.

- In some ways, you can't
break the lock, right?

It's comparable to this,
you have to stay completely

contained and sealed.

- It's like this, I have
never written anything

without music playing
'cause it's rhythmic.

Rhythm and reading it aloud
is so important to me.

But, the music I'm playing
can't have vocals in it

unless they're in a
language I don't understand,

like German opera
or Italian opera.

- You're a big jazz fan, right?

- A big jazz fan, jazz is fine.

- Coltrane, miles--
- Coltrane, J. S. Bach,

all of this sort,
I'm listening to,

but I can't listen to anything
with lyrics in English

because it's a distraction.

The same thing obtains for
reading another novel when

you're writing a novel.

- Yeah, it'd be like
listening to somebody else's

lyrics.
- Exactly.

- We have about a minute left.

So you have another novel
in the can or coming?

- I do, I'm just starting
to do research on it.

I don't wanna tell too
much about it, but it's

going to be set
in the early 60s.

It has to do with a certain
chemical that got widespread

use in that period of the
60s, and I don't wanna

give anything away, so I'll
just tell you the initials, LSD.

(audience laughing)

- Well, we only have 30 seconds,

I could guess, but, excellent.

It's a treat to get to see you.

Like I said, I think this book
is terrific and if, in fact,

it becomes a television
series, I'll be the first to

program my DVR to see it.

- We can only hope,
my dear fellow.

- And good luck with the
short-story collection,

and that is called?

- It's called the Relive
Box after the story

that was in the New
Yorker two years ago.

- [Evan] Relive box,
and it'll be out soon?

- About a game, gaming,
it's about gaming

and what does it mean.

- Very good, well, I wish you
continued success with this

and everything else you do.

T. C. Boyle, thank you very much

- Thanks, Evan.

- Great seeing you.

(audience applauding)

we'd love to have you
join us in the studio.

Visit our website at
KLRU.ORG/OVERHEARD

to find invitations
to interviews, Q&As
with our audience

and guests, and an
archive of past episodes.

- I'm not coming out of a
journalistic background so,

I like Tom Wolfe, for
instance, who's books I love.

I don't want to reproduce
how many spots are on

the dalmatian at the
firehouse and how they talk.

I want to have my imagination
run free, so I'm using

these real facts to then
create an entirely different

set of characters that have
nothing to do with them.

- [Narrator] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith

is provided in part by the Alice
Kleberg Reynolds Foundation

and Hillco Partners, a Texas
government affairs consultancy

and by KLRU's Producer's Circle,
ensuring local programming

that reflects the character
and interests of the

greater Austin, Texas community.

(dynamic music)