The Inner Circle (novel)
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- For other uses, see inner circle.
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| US edition cover | |
| Author | T. C. Boyle |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Released | 9 September 2004 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 418 p. (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-670-03344-8 (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | Drop City |
| Followed by | Tooth and Claw |
The Inner Circle is a novel by T. C. Boyle first published in 2004 about the development of sexology in the United States and about Alfred Kinsey's rise to fame during the late 1940s and early 1950s as seen through the eyes of one of his loyal assistants.
This assistant, however, John Milk, is a fictional character rather than a historical person. Boyle makes it unmistakably clear in the "Author’s Note" that The Inner Circle "is a work of fiction, and [that] all characters and situations have been invented, with the exception of the historical figures of Alfred C. Kinsey and his wife, Clara Bracken (McMillen) Kinsey".
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[edit] Plot introduction
The Inner Circle revolves around the tensions that are bound to arise if a small group of people deliberately abandons the traditional moral values with which they were raised in favour of an unconventional outlook on love, marriage and sex. While Kinsey preaches that sex is nothing but a "hormonal function" devoid of emotion, John Milk has extreme difficulty adjusting to this concept where his own wife — the young and beautiful Iris — is concerned.
[edit] Plot summary
Milk's sexual coming of age starts in 1939 when he is a student at Indiana University in Bloomington and attends Kinsey’s “marriage course”, a lecture in which the renowned zoologist propounds his theories and his plans for the first time in front of a large audience. Still a virgin, he makes Kinsey’s acquaintance when the latter interviews him in order to take his “sex history”. Kinsey makes Milk his personal assistant despite his inexperience, but he turns out to be a quick learner, and thus the young man becomes the first member of what will be “the inner circle”: a handful of men (and, up to a point, also their wives) who furiously collaborate under Kinsey’s dictatorial rule towards the publication of the two volumes later referred to as the Kinsey Report.
Kinsey’s methodology includes interviewing tens of thousands of Americans from all walks of life, and at one point in the novel Milk remembers the day when he interviewed a female subject for the first time:
[…] The woman I was to interview—and I’m going to assign her a fictitious name here, for confidentiality’s sake—was a young faculty wife of twenty-five, as yet childless, Mrs. Foshay. Let’s call her Mrs. Foshay.
[…]
In the doorway, peering into the room as if she’d somehow fetched up in the wrong place, was a very pretty young woman dressed in the height of fashion—dressed as if she’d just stepped out of a nightclub on Forty-second Street after an evening of dinner, dancing and champagne. She gave me a hesitant smile. “Oh, hello,” she said, “I wasn’t sure if I was in the right place—”
[…]
Was this her first marriage? Yes. Had she experienced deep kissing prior to the time she was married? Yes. Had she experienced petting? Yes. Had she fondled the male genitalia, experienced mouth-to-genital contact, engaged in coitus? Yes, yes and yes. How many partners had she had, excluding her husband? Somewhere, she guessed, around twenty. “Twenty?” I repeated, trying to keep my voice neutral. She couldn’t say, really, it might have been a few less or even as many as twenty-five, and her eyes went dreamy a moment as she tried to recollect.
[…]
And here was where I found myself in deep water again, because I asked this conventionally pretty and very likely pampered professor’s wife, this elegant blond jewel of a woman dressed in impeccable taste, the next question in the sequence, that is: “How many orgasms do you experience on average?”
[…]
She looked at me. Gave a little smile. I had been continuously—and unprofessionally—hard for the better part of two hours now. “Oh, I would guess maybe ten or twelve.”
My face must have shown my surprise, because even few of our highest-rating individuals would have approached that numerical category. “Per week?” I asked. And then, stupidly, “Or is that a monthly approximation?”
Now it was her turn to blush, just the faintest reddening of the flesh under both cheekbones and around the flanges of her nostrils. “Oh no,” she said. “No. I’m afraid that would be daily.”—T. C. Boyle, The Inner Circle
[edit] Characters in "The Inner Circle"
- Alfred Kinsey – protagonist
- Clara Bracken Kinsey – Alfred's wife
- John Milk – Kinsey's assistant
- Iris Milk – John's wife
[edit] Literary significance & criticism
While the novel garnered generally favorable reviews, some reviewers and readers consider The Inner Circle to be one of Boyle’s lesser novels. The criticisms generally cite slow-moving and somewhat predictable plotting, as well as an overly-linear storyline.
The German translation of the novel bears the more lurid title Dr. Sex.
[edit] Book information
The Inner Circle by T. C. Boyle
- Hardcover - ISBN 0-670-03344-8 (2004, First edition) published by Viking Press
- Paperback - ISBN 0-14-303586-X (2005) published by Penguin Books
[edit] See also
- Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)
- Kinsey Reports — Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)
- Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction
- Kinsey, a 2004 semi-biographical film starring Liam Neeson as Alfred Kinsey and Laura Linney as his wife Clara — seen by some as a companion piece to Boyle’s novel
- Free love
