A Study Guide for T. C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for T. C. Boyle's "Greasy Lake," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781535824217

Book preview

11

Greasy Lake

T. C. Boyle

1982

Introduction

Greasy Lake is an early short story by T. C. Boyle, one of America's most prolific and respected writers. It was published first in the Paris Review in 1982 and then in Boyle's second collection of short fiction, Greasy Lake, and Other Stories, published by Viking Press in 1985. Greasy Lake can also be found in the 1998 volume T. C. BoyleStories, which combines new stories with the best from the author's career.

Told with humor and frequent cultural references, the story concerns an unnamed narrator and his friends, young men recently out of high school, who struggle to see themselves as bad characters. They drink, smoke, and take drugs, driving aimlessly until all hours of the night in a borrowed car, looking for trouble.

At Greasy Lake, they find the trouble they sought. A brutal fight, an attempted rape and murder, and the discovery of a bloated, unidentified corpse make the protagonists question their thirst for danger. Boyle tells the tale in a way that shows exactly what it means to be young and filled with the belief that danger and power are the same thing.

Author Biography

Boyle was born in Peekskill, New York, on December 2, 1948. Born Thomas John Boyle, he officially changed his middle name at the age of 17 to Coraghessan, an approximation of the surname of one of his Irish ancestors. Boyle's mother was a secretary, and his father was a janitor. He graduated from Lakeland High School in Shrub Oak, New York, in 1964 and from the State University of New York at Potsdam with degrees in English and history in 1968. After graduating, Boyle returned to teach for four years at Lakeland High School before being accepted into the prestigious Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa, graduating with a master of fine arts degree in 1975. He stayed at the University of Iowa and received his Ph.D. in English literature in 1977. He won a National Endowment for the Arts award that year and began his long association with the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles, where he was teaching as of 2011.

Boyle's first collection, Descent