SOURCE: "An Interview with T. Coraghessan Boyle," in Poets & Writers Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 1, January-February, 1990, pp. 29-34.

In the following excerpt from an essay based on an interview with Boyle, Stanton discusses Boyle's education and provides an overview of his career up to the publication of East Is East.

"A large part of what motivates a writer is a need to express oneself," Boyle says, "but you don't want to express yourself in a closet. You want to let the world know that you are alive in this time and age, and that you have something to say about it. And so the next largest part of what motivates you is to get [your work] out to the public and to have your ego stroked and to be gratified by that."

Boyle left his first publisher, Atlantic/Little, Brown, after two books because he felt the company was not...