TC Boyle Examines Frank Lloyd Wright in The Women

I didn’t really know the extent of what I’ve presented… I knew he was extremely dynamic, as many powerful men are, but I didn’t understand that… unlike me who likes to have peace to work, he loved to work in the midst of turmoil. He had to feel his back against the wall… being sued, being the object of ridicule, in order to work.

Why do you think he needed that kind of opposition?

Well, everybody’s different. His motto was “Truth against the world.” He always liked to see himself as an embattled [person] who really knew what everything was about and everyone else was against him. Maybe he had to feel that way to motivate himself. As for me, I like to feel that everyone’s on my site and everything is great. If anything is worrying me from outside… it’s real difficult [to create].

Why do you think that so much tabloid attention was paid to Wright? Because of his architecture, or his personality?

Remember, this happened in an era before rap stars, before movie stars, before anybody was in the public eye other than figures like novelists and architects… or politicians and their scandals… Any public figure of any dimension was fair game. Soon there would be a movie industry, but they didn’t have the kinds of figures that we have to revile [back then].

The book is organized in a sort of backward chronology. Why did you choose to order it that way?

As an artist, I don’t like to repeat myself and I’m always looking for the perfect form for whatever I’m doing. To tell the story this way would give me a way to cover Wright’s entire life and what he did without using biography style. In traditional biography, it starts with the great-grandfather and so on and by the time you get to the birth of the artist you’re already comatose.

The most dramatic incident [in the book] is the murder of Mamah and that gave rise to Miriam. Going backwards through the relationships successively… enabled me to talk about relationships in general. Just about everyone has had the experience of being in love and completely absorbed with someone, and then [experiencing] at some point a breakup with that person.

In this regard, you see Olgivanna and how wonderful she is and how attractive and exotic and so on, and you see Frank Lloyd Wright dodging this miserable harpy from hell, Miriam. Once we conclude that story, we come back to when he first met Miriam. That was [more] intriguing for me rather than to tell it chronologically.

Why narrate the story through the eyes of Tadashi?

Tadashi is a nod to literary heroes, like Nabokov and Borges, who are always questioning the authority of a given narrative. In the footnotes, we see Tadashi going through the story, and we wonder even how much English he knows. O’Flaherty has taken great liberties and novelized what he has recollected, and it gives the reader a chance to ask questions of what the truth is of biography or history and who has that truth and how it is delivered and… who creates it. For example, in another book of mine, Riven Rock, it’s said that Stanley McCormick never consummated his marriage, and that’s based on documentation—but how do you know?

Tadashi’s presence also provides a playfulness. I had a lot of fun with it, especially with the footnote. Some of them just provide information, but I think you should laugh out loud at some of them because of Tadashi’s reaction to the telling.

Do you have a favorite character from Wright’s life?

Miriam. All of the stuff that you’re getting from her is true to the record. Some of the things she’s said are quoted from newspapers. The fascinating thing with historical novels is that I find some elements of the past so intriguing as they are that I just want to dramatize and present them for you. We often wonder where did we come from… some of this stuff, it’d be impossible to invent, it’s so bizarre. I liked the fact that [Miriam] was so difficult and so in need of attention in the same way that Wright was.

What was most surprising to you in your research?

Frank Lloyd Wright is such an object of cult devotion. I hadn’t realized to what degree until I began research. It’s so cold in Chicago right now but I guarantee people are lined up, in every language, for Frank Lloyd Wright tours. People come all the time to look at this house, too. They’ve very aggressive and assertive. They’re like birdwatchers who have a list of birds to see, but they have a list of houses. There’s tremendous devotion.

How did you end up living in a Frank Lloyd Wright house?

Pure accident and serendipity. We were looking to escape from Los Angeles and I still wanted to be within striking distance of USC, where I continue to teach... We liked older houses, not these stucco boxes that they’re throwing up on a hill… No one really wanted [the house], it was up for sale for a while. People coming through the neighborhood wanted to build their own grandiose things and rip things out… We were interested in an historic house and preserving it and by some amazing miracle this was available and we’ve been restoring ever since. It hasn’t been stripped down—we are only the fourth owners. It’s really just as it was when it was designed.

Are there limitations to what you can to do the house? Is it historically protected?

The county has tried to make it a landmark, but I have resisted. Maybe after I die it will be a landmark. I don’t really want to go to a committee to interfere with what I need to do to the house. We had to replace the roof, for instance, the house didn’t have the proper foundation, we had to pour foundation. I trust myself—and my wife, of course, she is a genius with this sort of thing. We’ve done everything with great care to the original detail. I don’t really want to petition a committee to do anything with the house. But it’s the only California house, the only prairie style one, the only one made entirely of redwood. Eventually it will become a landmark.

In your next book, When the Killing’s Done, you talk about our relationship with nature. How do you think architecture fits into this relationship?

The book is about us as an animal species in a finite environment. I think Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture was quite extraordinary in its day. It was radical because it was anti-Victorian. Victorian homes were vertical, had great lots with big lawns, grand entrances. They dominated nature. Everything was intricate and full of claptrap. Frank Lloyd Wright made horizontality part of his credo. He used native materials. He called it organic architecture. It grew up from the earth and a house had to be right for its site. It was something that blended with nature as opposed to dominating it. But you only have to look at Cormac McCarthy's The Road to see what’s coming for us.

Are there any current architects that interest you?

I don’t know much about current architecture, but I do like the idea of the New Urbanists, who want to fight suburban sprawl by creating small individual villages in which people work and are surrounded by greenspace. Frank Lloyd Wright was an advocate of suburban living, but in his time the population of the earth was a quarter of what it is now. I do like the idea of trying to live closer to the earth. In Drop City I write about hippie movements in this vein. That sort of approach certainly works, so that you don’t have to get in your car all the time, which is why we left Los Angeles to begin with. Now I hardly ever have to drive anywhere. I walk to the grocery store, the bank, the post office, bars, restaurants. People just don’t understand how much that improves your quality of life just to be able to walk and have interactions with people and be outside.

Image of Taliesin (not Boyle's house) from Wikipedia. "Truth Against the World" written in Dustbowl Clementine.