Boyle was born on December 2, 1948, inPeekskill, New York. He has noted that he never read a book until he was eighteen. In fact, Boyle never aspired to be a writer. In the 1960s, Boyle enrolled at the State University of New York atPotsdam as a music student. While in school, he took an influential creative writing course, and began reading literature. After graduating in 1968, Boyle taught English in a public high school, which, he has admitted, was mainly to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.

During this same period, Boyle began writing his own short stories and became a habitual user of drugs and alcohol. These two activities culminated in Boyle's short story, "The OD and Hepatitis Railroad or Bust," which was published in the North American Review. In 1972, looking to clean up his act—and confident in his abilities as a writer after his story...