Erstellt am: 25. 2. 2015 - 18:15 Uhr

T.C. Boyle: A Live Reality Check Special

Armed with a new book, T.C. Boyle, chronicler of a troubled America, has been live in the FM4 Studio to answer your questions and mine.

We are all, to some extent, prisoners of mythology – finding guidance in the rose-tinted stories of past heroes who we lionise and idol-worship.

When I was 20-years old, waiting tables by night in Paris and scribbling in cafés during the day, I was obsessed by the pre-lion shooting Ernest Hemingway of the 1920’s.

I trawled his books for every little detail of the hard-boiled writer’s life, even choosing my drinks off the menu according the tastes of my hero. I dragged my girlfriend to every bar in which old Ernest had even been seen drinking. It cost me my entire wages. I even thought about learning to box.

When Woody Allen released Midnight in Paris recently, I felt that someone had made a film about me.

What saves us from our obsessions, usually, is a healthy dose of self-irony: that part of your consciousness that is aware even as you order a Rum St James, 'smooth as a kitten's chin', that you are actually being a bit of a dick and that there is nothing more boring that a copycat.

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Wild West Nostalgia

Adam, the main character in T.C. Boyle’s new novel the Harder They Come, lacks that self-irony. Mentally disturbed, perhaps schizophrenic, he lets his obsession take over his life. Idolising an early 19th century trapper called John Colter, a member of the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition that first explored the American West beginning in 1803, Adam stalks the wild, mist-shrouded forests of northern California.

Only this isn’t the time of the pioneers, it is the 21st century, the woods are full of hikers and joggers not spear-wielding braves, and living by your wits, knowledge of berries and the power of a gun is no longer a viable socially acceptable way of life.
Armed with a norinco automatic weapon, a gun readily available to him despite a clear history of mental health problems, he even insists on being called “Colter” rather than Adam and sees all intruders into “his territory” as threatening as the Native American Black Foot warriors that once hunted his fur-trapping hero with spears. Deluded, anachronistic, and suffering from "the shits", Adam slips ever further out of reach of reality.

I’m not giving too much away when I say that that sounds like a recipe for disaster.

A Very Special Live Guest

On Thursday 26th February, T.C. Boyle the creator of this nightmarish narrative, appeared as a live guest on my Fm4 Reality Check show.

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Armed with a new book, T.C. Boyle, chronicler of a troubled America, was live in the Studio to answer your questions and mine.

Because while The Harder They Come sounds like an absurd drama it is tragically based on a true life story: a mentally ill, survival enthusiast really did roam the forests on northern California in 2011. “We are in his territory,” said real life sheriff Tom Allmann. “He knows the trails.
He knows the bushes. He knows the hiding spots.”

These things really happen.

The Origins of American Violence

The obvious theme we did explore on the show was how US gun laws allow this sort of nightmare situation to evolve. The ready access to guns is an issue that continues to baffle Europeans. But there are other issues here too that I find fascinating. For example, is US gun violence different to violence in other parts of the world? And how does this mythology of the pioneer time still haunt contemporary USA?

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Boyle speaks of America as young country, settled over the head of the Native Americans, by exiles from Europe who were determined to live in independence away from cumbersome restrictions and the heavy hand of the law. They wanted wide open spaces and the power to defend their patched of land by tooth or claw.

The Pioneer Spirit

Combined with mental illness, a rose-tinted nostalgia for this age can lead to tragedy, but in its milder forms it leads to the culture of anti-authoritarianism that has seen the Tea Party thrive in what Boyle describes as a “don’t tread on my toes” mentality.

And what about self-defence? It's meant to be a last resort, but has become troubling pro-active in the USA (look at the case of George Zimmerman) and those who had taken on the bad guys physically are treated like heroes.

An Unflinching Look

In our live show T.C. Boyle is taking a hard unflinching look at violence in the USA and beyond. How do you melt the heart of America? Is society getting more or less violent?