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T.C. Boyle

"The Inner Circle"

(Reviewed by Judi Clark DEC 12, 2005)

"But let me step back a moment, because I don't want to get off on the wrong foot -- this isn't about me, this is about Prok, and Prok is dead, and I'm sitting here in my study, the key turned in the lock, the sorry tepid remains of a Zombie cocktail at my elbow, trying to talk into this machine and sort out my thoughts while Iris paces up and down the hall in her heels, stopping on every third revolution to rattle the doorknob and remind me in a muffled shout that we're going to be late. Late for what, I'd like to know."

John Milk is our narrator for this fictional portrait. He is first introduced to Zoology Professor Alfred C. Kinsey or "Prok" as he later calls him, during a "marriage" biology class in the autumn of 1939, while a senior at Indiana University. It was Laura Feeney's idea, though a mere acquaintance, to fake a marriage engagment in order to enroll in the class. This class is the first of its kind and promises to reveal more than any other. The lecture hall is full to beyond capacity with those students reported to be engaged as well as many faculty members.

"Today we shall discuss the physiology of sexual response and orgasm in the human animal." With this opening line Professor Kinsey proceeds to explain how the male and female genitalia behaves and shows actual full color, close up slides of the circumcised phallus and the vagina awaiting it. When the lecture is over, "people collected their things in silence and moved up the aisles in a somber processional. There was none of the jostling and joking you would normally expect form a mob of undergraduates set loose after an hour's confinement." Instead their eyes are averted. Though at first John is afraid to look or touch Laura Feeney, he does break the ice. John and Laura, though shy about expressing it, sense the historical importance of this lecture.

By the end of the course, John Milk is a convert to Professor Kinsey's cause; he understands that the only way to know exactly what people do when they mate is to look at it scientifically, to do what Professor Kinsey is asking, for each to give up their "personal histories" so that they have enough data for case studies. Unexpectedly to John, he becomes Prok's first employee initially helping to statistically organize the data and then learning the techniques that help put people at ease so that they are comfortable giving up their most personal histories. Collecting data is Prok's main goal, "because, as Prok said, over and over, you could never have enough data."

Whereas John insists that his aim is to tell us about "Proc," the book can't help but be ultimately about John. He often leads off with the question, "And how did I feel about all this?" as he shares his initial sexual naiveity and the events that take place under Proc's encouragement. We learn about his sexual encounters both with Proc and Proc's wife, Mac; his courtship with Iris; the countless road trips -- first alone with Proc, and then as the "inner circle" grows with Corcoran and Rutledge. But mainly this is the story of how the beliefs and the activities of the "inner circle" affect him and Iris. Kinsey is a manipulative and charismatic man with a single minded goal. John is his apostle, faithful to the message. The tricky thing is that the "human animal" may be capable of much when it comes to sexual activity and its instinctual need but, for most, and as is the case with Iris, in real life, human sex is not completely just a physical event. Proc may have been one of the "great original geniuses of the twentieth century," as John calls him, but his clinical demands and consequential moral corruption were not without its price to John and Iris (and, in my opinion, the generations that followed).

T.C. Boyle is a fluid writer. He manages for our narrator to maintain a detachment (as required by Kinsey) as he reveals some of the more sordid dealings and case histories and yet to also show the cracks that unwittingly emerge as John tries to maintain the detachment. The story is a compelling read and of course, because it is about a sex researcher, at times racy. (I read this while on vacation, which turned out to be a good choice!) The actual research methods are also of interest -- statistically it is important to have a lot of data and to have that data represent every extreme as well as the norm. So how does one go about finding the variety of case histories required?

It is not easy to like our narrator and by the end of the book Dr. Kinsey is certainly more monster than genius. On the otherhand, the subject matter is intruiging. Perhaps one of the main thoughts I walked away with is how much my generation has taken the "human animal" theory of sexuality to heart. Whereas when Kinsey began his research sexuality was still in the closet, by the time the seventies rolled around (and thanks to birth control pills), we could easily and unconciously act out Kinsey's theories. Whether, T.C. Boyle meant to or not, I see The Inner Circle as outlining the pitfalls of the whole sexual revolution for the next few generations, beginning with that of John Milk's marriage. Yet, I suspect, Kinsey would insist that humans have always been like this and that he merely cataloged and published the natural activities. Certainly a good discussion for a book group would be if one can publish such research without effect.

And then, on the hand, I have to note that as much as we think things change, they really don't. Rather than catagorize humans as heterosexual or homosexual, Proc introduced a scale by which interviewees could rate themselves and their leanings in same sex relations. By far more realistic than a simple stigmatic label that is applied to people today. "Sex shy" was another favorite phrase that Proc used. In order for Proc and his inner circle to collect as much data as they did, an awful lot of people had to give up their sexual history whether they were "sex shy" or not. I have a hard time putting myself into this situation and wonder if I too would volunteeringly "give up" my history for the sake of the study. What is it about us human animals that would motivate us?

If this book had not been written by T.C. Boyle, I doubt I would have read it. As such, it did turn out to be one of my recommended books for the year.

  • Amazon readers rating: from 40 reviews

Read a chapter excerpt from The Inner Circle at author's website


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About the Author:

T. Coraghessan Boyle was born and grew up in Peekshill, New York in the Hudson Valley. He received a Ph.D. degree in 19th Century British Literature from the University of Iowa in 1977, his M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1974, and his B.A. in English and History from SUNY Potsdam in 1968. He has been a member of the English Department at the University of Southern California since 1978.

His books are available in a number of foreign languages, including German, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, Korean, Japanese, Danish, Swedish and Lithuanian. His stories have appeared in most of the major American magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, The Paris Review, GQ, Antaeus and Granta, and he has been the recipient of a number of literary awards.

He currently lives near Santa Barbara with his wife and three children.

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