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Chicxulub
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
Audiobook
First published January 1, 2004
101 people want to read
About the author
T. Coraghessan Boyle
156 books2,999 followersT. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twleve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is married with three children. Boyle has been a
Professor of English at the University of Southern California since 1978, when he founded the school's undergraduate creative writing program.
He grew up in the small town on the Hudson Valley that he regularly fictionalizes as Peterskill (as in widely anthologized short story Greasy Lake). Boyle changed his middle name when he was 17 and exclusively used Coraghessan for much of his career, but now also goes by T.C. Boyle.
Professor of English at the University of Southern California since 1978, when he founded the school's undergraduate creative writing program.
He grew up in the small town on the Hudson Valley that he regularly fictionalizes as Peterskill (as in widely anthologized short story Greasy Lake). Boyle changed his middle name when he was 17 and exclusively used Coraghessan for much of his career, but now also goes by T.C. Boyle.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 19, 2024
IM UPDATING AGAIN: on the grind for my writing class & i needed something to remind me that good literature does exist (i had been reading my own work too long). i read a review of this just now & it said the beauty of this story rests in the melodrama of it. i love that, because i think it's true. too often do we group melodrama in the "don'ts" of literature. i'm a proud user & enthusiast of melodrama, & i'm glad to have someone else admit it in boyle's work, too.
UPDATE ONCE AGAIN: you'll have to pry this story out of my cold dead hands.
UPDATE AGAIN: i’m quite literally just always reading this story. i was given it when i was 15 & now i am turning 18 in three weeks & i still think it is perfect. i don’t know why it means so much to me but it does.
UPDATE : so basically any time im in a writing slump i just read this and then im all good—i think this was like read four?? don’t know, don’t care. this story is perfect.
STOP WHY WAS THIS SO GOOD?! the separation of the meteor information and then the actual story... there was something so simple about it, but also so raw that just pulls at your heart. i would read this over and over again.
UPDATE ONCE AGAIN: you'll have to pry this story out of my cold dead hands.
UPDATE AGAIN: i’m quite literally just always reading this story. i was given it when i was 15 & now i am turning 18 in three weeks & i still think it is perfect. i don’t know why it means so much to me but it does.
UPDATE : so basically any time im in a writing slump i just read this and then im all good—i think this was like read four?? don’t know, don’t care. this story is perfect.
STOP WHY WAS THIS SO GOOD?! the separation of the meteor information and then the actual story... there was something so simple about it, but also so raw that just pulls at your heart. i would read this over and over again.
January 21, 2024
ever since i read and subsequently studied this haunting short story in a mixed levels fiction workshop in spring 2016, it has continued to live rent free in my mind
October 22, 2018
I really loved the reality vs the world catastrophe comparison. It was blaring obvious and it maybe could've been a bit more discrete so that the reader has to work a bit more to see the comparison going on. But that's pretty much the only little nitpick I would have for this story.
I loved the twist at the end. Yes, you can get plot twists in short stories. Yes, you can get plot twists in character driven books. Here's all the proof you need.
I also really love that because we get to see these characters going through all these emotions and such we can relate to characters we never meet in the story in person who might/may have gone through or have to go through the same emotions.
The writing is absolutely beautiful.
Time is very well constructed in the short story. You get the past, the main character's present and also the potential future all working together to tangle around the reader and complete the story.
What a bittersweet ending. It was perfect for the story.
I loved the twist at the end. Yes, you can get plot twists in short stories. Yes, you can get plot twists in character driven books. Here's all the proof you need.
I also really love that because we get to see these characters going through all these emotions and such we can relate to characters we never meet in the story in person who might/may have gone through or have to go through the same emotions.
The writing is absolutely beautiful.
Time is very well constructed in the short story. You get the past, the main character's present and also the potential future all working together to tangle around the reader and complete the story.
What a bittersweet ending. It was perfect for the story.
December 7, 2021
this was so good and sad and amazing and ugh i loved it stop
August 14, 2025
T.C. Boyle’s Chicxulub is an adept braiding of two different subjects melding into one visceral experience. Coming to this assigned reading, I was already aware of the Chicxulub crater and how it is likely to be what wiped out the dinosaurs eons ago. Though I was correct in my assumption that the crater would have something to do with the story, I did not predict the intensely frightening scenario of child loss alongside it.
Before I dive into the meat of the written work, I want to mention that I paused when reading the story to look up what the current odds are for a pedestrian dying in an automobile accident. Though I wasn’t able to quickly find the statistics in 2004 (when Chicxulub was first published), I was able to locate the odds as of 2022. Sadly, the odds of dying from being a pedestrian involved in an automobile accident has grown, assuming the 1 in 10,000 odds were accurate in 2004, to 1 in about 4000 two years ago. The odds of dying are even greater if you are in a vehicle in such an event (1 in 93 in 2022). Looking up the real-life numbers deepened my emotional response to the story, increasing the threat that this could happen to any one of us.
The specific way this story is told to us through the narrator was new to me, at least in a written format. Verbs are in present tense and the voice chosen makes it feel as if the narrator is conversing with the reader in real time. Countering this, though, is how the narrator is bordering on omniscient, sharing details of scenes Ted is not present for or personally witnessing. Interspersed through the personal and emotionally charged portion of the short story are facts and musings about the cataclysmic event of space rock striking the earth. I imagined someone sharing their backstory in a movie with the cliché record scratch and cueing of images on a projector to help the audience make sense of what they’re about to witness. I came to the conclusion that Chicxulub is told to us after the fact and we are actually riding along with Ted trying to process the trauma. To do this, I think Ted is replaying the night chronologically for himself, retroactively inserting facts about the accident he acquired later on and identifying the emotions he felt by relating it to the closest-to-this-experience calamity he knows of. I’d like to share a couple excerpts that I think reinforces this idea that this is Ted reflecting with us.
Starting at the end of the story, we learn that Ted wrapped up the night (and morning) by recognizing that, like a coin toss, it was out of his control and up to chance who died from being hit by the drunk driver. Reading this story in a circular path and returning to the beginning, after knowing it was the Cherwins who were hit by the odds, Ted shares with us about the decimation of Tunguska, Russia and makes a point of mentioning that St. Petersburg (vastly more human casualties) would have been the unlucky recipients of fate if the meteor entered earth’s atmosphere 5 hours later. I think that this is Ted realizing that for both cases, a different (and more devastating-to-humans) outcome was only one variable away: time for Russia, and which girl was walking for the Biehn and Cherwin families.
Later on, when the Biehn parents are in the hospital, Ted expresses how he hates the “maddening clinical neutrality” there. He hates it so much, his anger builds to the point that he is aggressive with the nursing staff. One would think that this strong reaction to clinical and emotionally detached responses means he doesn’t speak that way himself, but we can see for ourselves this isn’t true. Ted gives readers descriptions and details about the drunk driver, his daughter, and his daughter’s friend in a clinical manner, too. I am guessing that when those factoids are dropped, this is indicating his processing after-the-fact, trying to close himself off from having an emotional response to the “characters” involved. I am also betting that when Ted thinks about this night in the future, he may reach an understanding that the nurses were trying to do their best and be present for all patients–fortifying themselves from being destroyed by intense emotional responses–just as Ted is now doing.
The next moment in Chicxulub I want to draw attention to is when Maureen and Ted are next to the gurney before the reveal. “Maureen moves in beside me till our shoulders are touching, till I can feel the flesh and the heat of her pressing into me, and I think of this child we made together…” I think that this last bit was retroactively added in his processing since it doesn’t line up with his real-time reactions: panic, fear, and anger. I think he was thinking about his child at that moment, but the emphasis on this child being one made together with his wife is a part of his processing his experience with a more tender-hearted perspective. I wonder if he is realizing here that the irony of the evening is that at the same time they were about to indulge in activities that brought her into this world, her life was on the line elsewhere.
Setting aside my theory about the timing when this story is told and why, I think Boyle did a fabulous job at relating the death of a loved one–specifically your child–to the world-ending disaster an asteroid strike was and will be. The heavy anxiety that comes with awareness it (meteor/ sudden loss) has happened before and will happen again, either to us or someone else, is always a constant threat that we are only saved from by chance. No matter if it hits us or not, if it enters our world (literal or relationship-wise), we are doomed to an eternal winter (literal weather phenomenon or figurative term for depression). I think this story ending with Ted’s understanding that his daughter being saved this time means the threat of calamity striking is renewed and only one unlucky “coin flip” away is an effective way for Chicxulub’s messaging to stick with the reader, to apply to our lives and relationships. Our squabbles, stress, and minutia filling our lives are inconsequential and may permanently cease for us at any given moment. Though it was left unsaid, I think there is a moral to the story that we may be meant to absorb. We only have the life we have right now, this very moment; it’s up to us whether we go forth with pessimistic nihilism or with optimistic stoicism.
Panning out from the narrative, I did find it interesting how Boyle chose to use American spelling for the majority of this work but chose to use the British spelling for kilometer (kilometre) and millimeter (millimetre). “Kilometre” appears when talking about Chicxulub, “If it is Chicxulub-size and it hits one of our landmasses, some two hundred thousand cubic kilometres of the Earth’s surface will be thrust up into the atmosphere, even as the thermal radiation of the blast sets fire to the Earth’s cities and forests.” Then Boyle wrote “The sheet draws back millimetre by millimetre, the slow striptease of death—and I can’t do this, I can’t…” in the section immediately following “kilometre.” Part of me wonders if this was intentional to put emphasis on Ted trying to distance himself from the entire situation, that it feels foreign, and further illustrates how he perceives his lived experience as an asteroid collision via a measuring system. The other part of me also accepts that this may have been a quirk that wasn’t caught by anyone before publishing and there’s no hidden meaning. Haha
Before I dive into the meat of the written work, I want to mention that I paused when reading the story to look up what the current odds are for a pedestrian dying in an automobile accident. Though I wasn’t able to quickly find the statistics in 2004 (when Chicxulub was first published), I was able to locate the odds as of 2022. Sadly, the odds of dying from being a pedestrian involved in an automobile accident has grown, assuming the 1 in 10,000 odds were accurate in 2004, to 1 in about 4000 two years ago. The odds of dying are even greater if you are in a vehicle in such an event (1 in 93 in 2022). Looking up the real-life numbers deepened my emotional response to the story, increasing the threat that this could happen to any one of us.
The specific way this story is told to us through the narrator was new to me, at least in a written format. Verbs are in present tense and the voice chosen makes it feel as if the narrator is conversing with the reader in real time. Countering this, though, is how the narrator is bordering on omniscient, sharing details of scenes Ted is not present for or personally witnessing. Interspersed through the personal and emotionally charged portion of the short story are facts and musings about the cataclysmic event of space rock striking the earth. I imagined someone sharing their backstory in a movie with the cliché record scratch and cueing of images on a projector to help the audience make sense of what they’re about to witness. I came to the conclusion that Chicxulub is told to us after the fact and we are actually riding along with Ted trying to process the trauma. To do this, I think Ted is replaying the night chronologically for himself, retroactively inserting facts about the accident he acquired later on and identifying the emotions he felt by relating it to the closest-to-this-experience calamity he knows of. I’d like to share a couple excerpts that I think reinforces this idea that this is Ted reflecting with us.
Starting at the end of the story, we learn that Ted wrapped up the night (and morning) by recognizing that, like a coin toss, it was out of his control and up to chance who died from being hit by the drunk driver. Reading this story in a circular path and returning to the beginning, after knowing it was the Cherwins who were hit by the odds, Ted shares with us about the decimation of Tunguska, Russia and makes a point of mentioning that St. Petersburg (vastly more human casualties) would have been the unlucky recipients of fate if the meteor entered earth’s atmosphere 5 hours later. I think that this is Ted realizing that for both cases, a different (and more devastating-to-humans) outcome was only one variable away: time for Russia, and which girl was walking for the Biehn and Cherwin families.
Later on, when the Biehn parents are in the hospital, Ted expresses how he hates the “maddening clinical neutrality” there. He hates it so much, his anger builds to the point that he is aggressive with the nursing staff. One would think that this strong reaction to clinical and emotionally detached responses means he doesn’t speak that way himself, but we can see for ourselves this isn’t true. Ted gives readers descriptions and details about the drunk driver, his daughter, and his daughter’s friend in a clinical manner, too. I am guessing that when those factoids are dropped, this is indicating his processing after-the-fact, trying to close himself off from having an emotional response to the “characters” involved. I am also betting that when Ted thinks about this night in the future, he may reach an understanding that the nurses were trying to do their best and be present for all patients–fortifying themselves from being destroyed by intense emotional responses–just as Ted is now doing.
The next moment in Chicxulub I want to draw attention to is when Maureen and Ted are next to the gurney before the reveal. “Maureen moves in beside me till our shoulders are touching, till I can feel the flesh and the heat of her pressing into me, and I think of this child we made together…” I think that this last bit was retroactively added in his processing since it doesn’t line up with his real-time reactions: panic, fear, and anger. I think he was thinking about his child at that moment, but the emphasis on this child being one made together with his wife is a part of his processing his experience with a more tender-hearted perspective. I wonder if he is realizing here that the irony of the evening is that at the same time they were about to indulge in activities that brought her into this world, her life was on the line elsewhere.
Setting aside my theory about the timing when this story is told and why, I think Boyle did a fabulous job at relating the death of a loved one–specifically your child–to the world-ending disaster an asteroid strike was and will be. The heavy anxiety that comes with awareness it (meteor/ sudden loss) has happened before and will happen again, either to us or someone else, is always a constant threat that we are only saved from by chance. No matter if it hits us or not, if it enters our world (literal or relationship-wise), we are doomed to an eternal winter (literal weather phenomenon or figurative term for depression). I think this story ending with Ted’s understanding that his daughter being saved this time means the threat of calamity striking is renewed and only one unlucky “coin flip” away is an effective way for Chicxulub’s messaging to stick with the reader, to apply to our lives and relationships. Our squabbles, stress, and minutia filling our lives are inconsequential and may permanently cease for us at any given moment. Though it was left unsaid, I think there is a moral to the story that we may be meant to absorb. We only have the life we have right now, this very moment; it’s up to us whether we go forth with pessimistic nihilism or with optimistic stoicism.
Panning out from the narrative, I did find it interesting how Boyle chose to use American spelling for the majority of this work but chose to use the British spelling for kilometer (kilometre) and millimeter (millimetre). “Kilometre” appears when talking about Chicxulub, “If it is Chicxulub-size and it hits one of our landmasses, some two hundred thousand cubic kilometres of the Earth’s surface will be thrust up into the atmosphere, even as the thermal radiation of the blast sets fire to the Earth’s cities and forests.” Then Boyle wrote “The sheet draws back millimetre by millimetre, the slow striptease of death—and I can’t do this, I can’t…” in the section immediately following “kilometre.” Part of me wonders if this was intentional to put emphasis on Ted trying to distance himself from the entire situation, that it feels foreign, and further illustrates how he perceives his lived experience as an asteroid collision via a measuring system. The other part of me also accepts that this may have been a quirk that wasn’t caught by anyone before publishing and there’s no hidden meaning. Haha
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 17, 2016
This was recommended to me today by a lecturer and my God. The three years that I've known this woman, she finally recommended something that was... mindblowingly good.
I read this short story because she had sold it to me with "a man compared a meteor that destroyed the earth, with his daughter dying." This, to me at least, sounded brilliant. It got me imagining the thought of your own child dying and the event being as catastrophic as the world ending.
This was the epitome of brilliance.
I was hooked from the first paragraph and although the ending left me deflated, it gave me goosebumps several times throughout. I had to read it twice.
This short story was so moving and pure emotional torment. It is beautifully written.
I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.
I read this short story because she had sold it to me with "a man compared a meteor that destroyed the earth, with his daughter dying." This, to me at least, sounded brilliant. It got me imagining the thought of your own child dying and the event being as catastrophic as the world ending.
This was the epitome of brilliance.
I was hooked from the first paragraph and although the ending left me deflated, it gave me goosebumps several times throughout. I had to read it twice.
This short story was so moving and pure emotional torment. It is beautifully written.
I would highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.
January 2, 2022
The author of the short story “Chicxulub” by T. Coraghessan Boyle uses an interesting trick for presenting the plot: he alternates the sections between a meteor crash as scientific fact and a meteor crash as a metaphor.
The writer links artistic recreation with personal tragedy. Readers see here the reality vs world catastrophe comparison. It is a narration of emotions with remarkable credibility.
The point of the story is that anyone could die at any moment. Every second is an unpredictable spin of the roulette wheel.
The author continues to intrigue the reader throughout the story and leaves the twist all the way until the end. The story was published in the magazine The New Yorker.
Here is the link to the text of the story:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
The writer links artistic recreation with personal tragedy. Readers see here the reality vs world catastrophe comparison. It is a narration of emotions with remarkable credibility.
The point of the story is that anyone could die at any moment. Every second is an unpredictable spin of the roulette wheel.
The author continues to intrigue the reader throughout the story and leaves the twist all the way until the end. The story was published in the magazine The New Yorker.
Here is the link to the text of the story:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
April 3, 2020
I started this short story for my AP lit class like I do with most of them: wanting it to be over. However, this poetic and malevolent gathering of words blew me away. I highly recommend listening to this story, because apparently the audiobook version is exceptional, or reading it as I did. You will feel every emotion in a span of 20 minutes or less. You will be heartbroken, joyful, and possibly a bit tearful by page 14. But, it is all worth it.
May 11, 2020
I loved this story - while the comparison was obvious, I liked that because I knew there was going to be a solid connection in writing it kept me excited (while my heart was breaking) to find it. It's a bittersweet ending, a happiness that isn't really happy... and it's stayed with me all day repeating in my head.
October 15, 2020
I read this short story on The New Yorker’s website and found myself blown away by how big an emotional punch it packs in to so few words.
April 1, 2021
Disaster hurdles towards all of us, everywhere, all the time.
September 22, 2025
Proxy for ‘The Pool’ - New Yorker short story discussed w Ann’s book club. Primal, fear of adulthood.
February 1, 2016
Read and discussed by Lionel Shriver for the The New Yorker Fiction podcast. Great story, great discussion.
February 9, 2017
I've read this story at least three times over the years. Obviously one of my favorites of Boyle's.
I've also read his novel, Tortilla Curtain, three times.
I've also read his novel, Tortilla Curtain, three times.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews