The BURIED Book Club discussion

As always, I'll let the italics and links do most of the talking.

Kay Boyle has not received the wide attention and acclaim that her contemporaries assumed would be her due... In the face of intense continuing interest in the lost generation and the widening awareness that women's accomplishments in literature too often have been ignored, Kay Boyle is a prime candidate for "rediscovery". Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist

Some more links for those who are interested/curious:

Reexamining Kay Boyle’s Publishing Legacy

Help Us Tell Kay’s Story

Fifty Stories published by New Directions looks like a perfect introduction.

Yesindeed I'm on/in for this exhuming. Recent bookstore visit yielded all four of following lovelies.

Wow! Happy n Envious at the same time :)

Eric wrote: "Yesindeed I'm on/in for this exhuming. Recent bookstore visit yielded all four of following lovelies."

You don't need to be told this, Eric, so I'll say it anyway :: This is correct behavior.

Yes sir sir Barth sir.

"Being Geniuses Togther" by Robt McAlmon and Kay Boyle is a must-read for Paris in the 20s.

There is a lengthy consideration of ("neglected as a novelist and forgotten as poet") Kay Boyle's poem 'Poets' in The Outnumbered Poet, which I am reading at the moment.

I've had a few Boyle works sitting on a shelf since this thread was first created and finally got around to reading one of them. I found Crazy Hunter to be a spectacular work of short fiction. Now I need to find time to read both Death of a Man and Fifty Stories, both of which are also sitting on a shelf at home (along with at least one other, but I forget which).

Good to hear. I met her once briefly at a cocktailer yonks ago and, alas-alas, had NO ref. But her "presence" stayed w me.

No way? The Boyle in the flesh! Somehow I've procurt like 7 of her books. Her essays are fine. "Death of a man" is interestingly written - no complaints here. Still wanting to be wowed, and since "Crazy hunter" is in the collection that will have to be my next. Thanks for the rec Ronald.

In my 20s, no ideaaah, but I sensed ...this woman is a story. If only we had the internet then...

Doubly BURIED!!!

Process -- the manuscript of this the first Boyle novel was lost -- then found -- and published.

Also still in print, her Fifty Stories.

Many others available for that ubiquitous Red Cent.

Super update. Thanks.

That three star review for process contains references to High Modernism and the language being possibly "too difficult" = ordered

Jonathan wrote: "That three star review for process contains references to High Modernism and the language being possibly "too difficult" = ordered"

What Sketchbook says.

oh and I'm also seeing a biography from 1994 (US$0.01 at uknowhere) Kay Boyle: Author of Herself.

Just to let the growing Boyle fanbase know that there are quite a few signed (and often inscribed with dedications etc) first editions from Kay out there for Very Decent Prices. I just got hold of a signed and inscribed first of Year Before Last, for example, and it looks lovely...

A general tip, but it seems to be worth the effort to search on BURIED authors' names at imdb.com ::

Kay Boyle's six things that have been televised ::
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0102277/?r...

And youtoob of course ---

KB on Hemingway ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oFY4...
which is from a documentary-in-the-works ::
http://www.angryfilmmaker.com/dangero...
An excerpt ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4pzn...

Oh there's a bunch more ::
https://www.youtube.com/results?searc...

Never heard of her until reading about Sylvia Beach and her bookshop, Shakespeare and Company which focused on writers in the left bank of Paris during the twenties. KB was part of this and the bookshop milieu.
Along with the GR buzz I ordered and just received her, Three Short Novels, including The Crazy Hunter, Decision, The Bridegroom's body. Will report back. The excitement is building discovering a new writer who has been so highly talked about. Thank you in advance for uncovering her work.

Ran across the Kay Boyle archive at U of Delaware, case anyone needs to write up a dissertation anytime soon ::
http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/finda...

oh, and a bibliography which runs to 360 pages :: Kay Boyle: A Bibliography

Cheap at amazon & abe ::
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Searc...
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listin...

The Crazy Hunter is phenomenal. As are many of her short stories. My aunt studied under her at San Francisco State.

FYI Anyone interested in writing anything on Kay Boyle, I'm the editor of a lit mag that's about to do an issue focusing on her work and trying to bring her out into the light. Message me if you're interested in being involved in some capacity or want to pitch something.

Was just now reading a review of Francine Prose's new bio on Peggy Guggenheim and learned the salacious detail that PG's dirtbag of a first husband left her for Kay Boyle.

I hope he treated Kay better than he did Peggy!

Holy...!!! The Scofield's newest issue 100% Kay Boyle!! --

http://thescofield.com/

I'm reading Plagued by the Nightingale. So far, so good. Year Before Last is every bit as wonderful as Jonathan's review says.

Great to hear that Mariel (and wonderful to have you back).

This reminds me I have a couple of her books on my shelf waiting to be read that I really need to get to...

I own fifty stories and Process. I read Crazy-hunter first but it wasn't until "year" that I fell madly in love.

I went to her hometown of St Paul, Minnesota last year and looked for her books in every book shop I went into. None of them had any! It was Fitzgerald this and that (I saw his house and walked on his streets). Many of my cherished hip hop artists are from St Paul/twin cities area so the place feels extra special magical to me that Boyle is also from there (even if she was an expat). I imagined that I was seeing places written about in crazy-hunter.

I found quite a few nice second-hand books of hers in San Fran in Green Apple and other places.

Rarely anything here in the UK so I ended up buying online...I have a lovely first of Year Before Last as, like you, that was where I really fell in love.

I have Smoking Mountain to read next, as well as Gentlemen, I Address You Privately and Death of a Man.

If you have not read My Next Bride yet, that one is wonderful. Her letters are also really worth reading.

I went to London last June and didn't see any Boyle there either (I used to check music shops to judge them for not having my favorites in my snotty teen years and now I seem to be doing this with Kay Boyle). TF Powys, though, was everywhere (I regret not getting any after reading Paul's reviews). (They love Jane Bowles in Florida bookshops. Always, always see her. I wish I could go on a journey and then make a judgement of what people there had in their secondhand shops. "They got rid of this?!" vs "They didn't have this!" so I'd come off as a snot who was snotty no matter the outcome.)


I'm looking forward to your reviews of these Boyle books! I am going to order My Next Bride for next. Thank you for the suggestion. I'm happy to be excited for a book again.

I totally used to do the same re music shops, though ended up getting so frustrated that they never had anything I was looking for - which now seems to happen with bookstores - I rarely go to "new" bookstores these days as every passing moment seems to make the poverty of their stock more and more depressing.

Second hand bookshops in London on the other-hand are fantastic.

From the fancy ones around Leicester Square/Charing Cross to the odd little ones scattered around, we are spoiled for choice. I always assume the books ended up there because someone who loved them died and their mean old family just got rid of them ;-)

As for Bride - I think you will like it - is is dark as fuck in just the right way.

I think living in a university town for much of my life has ruined me. The selections are so often cast aside required reading (complete with ruinous yellow highlighters and baffling margin notes).


That sounds like my speed exactly!

Mariel wrote: "I own fifty stories and Process. I read Crazy-hunter first but it wasn't until "year" that I fell madly in love.

I went to her hometown of St Paul, Minnesota last year and looked for her books in ..."

I think Kay left MN at a toddler age and spent most growing in Cincinnati, Ohio. ~~ She was badly treated by that a/hole Shawn of the NYer....

Oh, well that explains a lot then. (I'll still go on romanticizing St Paul over Cincinnati, though. The "Cincinnati box" from Hot Tub Time Machine prevails.)