My reading streak continues! Woo Hoo! A lot of things in life seem to really depend on momentum... and, quite happily, reading is something that I have been able to keep at/up over the past couple of months. I recently read a quote that went something like "Reading is exercise for the mind"... now if I could only get the body back in motion and back to the gym... but that is a whole other post!
So the latest book was T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle... a fictional account of the group of men who assisted zoologist Alfred Kinsey gain fame for something quite different - sex. Our narrator is John Milk, a young and sexually inexperienced college student, who becomes Kinsey's first member of ... you guessed it... inner circle. So, at its base, this is pretty much a coming-of-age tale with Milk quickly falling into the world of sex research as both an observer and a participant.. and, along the way, falling in love, marrying, and having a child. Milk also falls under the spell of Kinsey. His devotion to "Prok" (Kinsey's nickname, short for "Professor K") often challenges the very love he has for his wife... mostly in the mental department, though part of the "job" does require (or at least highly encourage) sex (in this case, "H-behavior") with the boss.
While sex research may seem that it would be pretty... well... sexy... it's really not all that. Kinsey, portrayed as a control freak to the extreme, pretty much views sex as a bodily function, an animal instinct, that is pretty much devoid of emotion. This clinical vs. emotional take on sex is also another interesting part of the book. Surely there should be no shame in sex (a point the Kinsey is constantly driving home)... but in Kinsey's world there are no lines that can not be crossed... and this is where the internal debate stirs and churns for both readers and certainly John Milk. So a lot of fascinating stuff going on here.
As mentioned, Boyle is probably one of my favorite contemporary writers. He creates amazing worlds and his writing just crackles... however, I do find that his novels tend to start strong... get a little sluggish in the middle... and then bring it home in quick (dare I say, even abrupt) fashion. Personally, I think Boyle excels more in the short-story genre, surprising since that is not a form I read often or particularly enjoy.
So while, I certainly recommend and enjoyed this book I know Boyle, and this book in particular, may not be everyone's proverbial cup of tea.
In a nice case of good timing, I set up a TiVo wishlist and was nicely surprised to see that the 2004 movie Kinsey is airing on HBO over the next week or so... while the book is a work of fiction (though certainly based on factual accounts of Kinsey and his wife Clara/"Mac") I will still be interested to see the movie version of Kinsey's life.
So what's next up... likely a pretty quick read... Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay. After seeing the movie, I knew I had to get around to reading the short story by Annie Proulx...
While the story is available in other collections, what attracted me to this particular book was that it not only contained the original short story, but also the movie screenplay and essays by Proulx and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana (one essay each). So while I just mentioned I am not a big fan of the short story genre... and even a less of a fan of reading a screenplay or play... I think it will be interesting to read it all... how the original work was morphed into the screenplay and how those words/direction were visually transformed onto the big screen.
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