Of course, as it evolved, Kinsey had a real passion for this subject, and it enabled him to get back a little bit at the society that repressed his sexuality, and to normalize it. He remains a hero of the gay community — and of me, too — because he normalized all sorts of sexual relations between consenting adults.
We see this in the letters he received, some of which you cite.
Kinsey was more than the Miss Lonelyhearts of his day; he was the authority. He received thousands of letters, which are now available to the public, and they are utterly heartbreaking. I put a slightly humorous spin on them, but you can see that these people are greatly disturbed — not so much in terms of sex and sexual function, but the emotions that go with it. People write as if they know him, and if only he were to answer, their lives would be redeemed in some way.
What’s fascinating is that they ask the most basic questions — about sexual positions or masturbation — and it’s like no one has ever talked about this before.
Kinsey must have been one of the most amazing, sympathetic, charismatic figures ever, which enabled him to speak to anybody on any level and get their sexual histories. He was a taxonomist. Without making judgments, he was interested in the full range of human behavior. He didn’t care if you fucked dogs in the alley; in fact, he found it kind of interesting. At the same time, he was stiff and formal with the rest of the world, absolutely the professor of science.
Of course, everyone makes judgments. Kinsey made judgments. And when his statistical analyses are criticized, it’s because, really, he does prefer the man with the giant penis to the man with the tiny penis. Or Mr. X, who had sex with everything, to the nun. So obviously his prejudices do come out in his books, which represent themselves as disinterested scientific documents.
Again, it comes back to the line between research and emotion. Which, in turn, speaks to fiction’s ability to contain or reflect real experience. Does a novel allow you to evoke a historical figure in a more three-dimensional way?
Absolutely and self-evidently, because even historians try to give a sense of what might have been said and what historical figures might have been thinking. But I have absolute freedom to invent anything. I like to use historical figures as springboards to talk about something that’s happening in society, or to show how we got here from there, or to remind us that every notion has been preceded by another. But I do like to keep these figures within the context of what I discover about them. Of course, I manipulate the character for my own purposes, but I don’t really know that as I’m doing it. I just let the character come to life.
THE INNER CIRCLE | By T.C. BOYLE | Viking 418 pages | $26 hardcover
T.C. Boyle will read fromThe Inner Circle at anL.A. Weekly–sponsored event on Thursday, September 2, 7 to 9 p.m., at White Lotus, 1743 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood.
