(no subject)

I finished T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle this morning. It was a decent read, although it went on rather longer than it needed to. The subject matter was interesting, and not just for prurient reasons (although there is plenty in the book to satisfy the prurient), but also for the portrait of Kinsey. Boyle really captures his strangeness and the obsessive genius that drove him. I must say that I liked the first half of the book better than the second -- there was more humor, the plot was fun and a little bit racy, and the entire narrative was imbued with the innocence and idealism with which Kinsey began his project. It was enough to make me want to go back in time to Bloomington in the 1940s and give Kinsey my history, despite being a hopeless "low-rater," just so that I could have contributed something to such a grand and noble undertaking. As the book went on, however, all that idealism evaporated and with it went much of the energy of the book. It became a dark story of manipulation and monomania as Kinsey's obsessions became increasingly powerful and his need to control the lives of those around him became more overt.

All in all, I would say that it's a good book, but not a great one. It's certainly not Boyle's best work; both Drop City and World's End were better, although I suspect that his short stories are probably the best showcase for his talent. Anyone who's interested in Boyle is probably better off picking up If the River Was Whiskey (which includes the great story "Sorry Fugu"), and anyone who's interested in Kinsey or the Institute for Sex Research is better off just renting the movie Kinsey.

And that's it, folks. I'm off to Ireland tomorrow, and will be back in April with my attempts at travel writing.