Trouble at the sex factory
Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy
THE INNER CIRCLE by T. C. Boyle Bloomsbury, £16.99, pp. 418, ISBN 0747575576 ✆ £14.99 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 Ishould perhaps declare, not an interest quite, or at least not only an interest, but an expertise. Ten years ago I spent seven months in Bloomington, Indiana researching a biography of Alfred C. Kinsey, the pioneer entomologist and sex researcher. The book appeared in 1998. T. C. Boyle has had the bright idea of writing a novel based on ‘Prok’, as Kinsey was called, and his ‘inner circle’: ‘Mac’ his wife, and his three assistants and their wives.
A bright idea fortuitously, since his novel is able to coincide with the film Kinsey starring Liam Neeson and just out. But bright also because it is in fact a dramatic and extraordinary story and there is of course a good deal of sex — handled by Boyle expertly and graphically enough, though, if I were Prok, I’d guess he isn’t all that keen on gay sex.
He follows the history quite closely. The young, good-looking protagonist John Milk, who tells the story, mild as his name (odd to British ears, but in America you can be called anything), is spotted by Prok and comes to work for him. Quite soon Prok, who is discovering his own bisexuality, seduces Milk (the film has it the other way round. No one knows, or is telling, but I suspect Boyle is right); after a while Milk asks if he can sleep with Mac who, after 15 years of marriage, is delighted. Milk learns Prok’s complex but hugely effective interviewing technique and sets out across America gathering sex histories — at first continually astonished. For example an extremely attractive young woman confesses to experiencing ‘maybe 10 or 12 orgasms’ on average. ‘A week?’ asks Milk. ‘Or is that a monthly approximation?’ Blushing she says, ‘That would be daily.’ And so the story builds. They see prostitutes, black dives; Milk marries attractive, self-willed Iris. Prok has to employ more interviewers — Corcoran, a highly sexed — highly bi-sexed — extrovert, who fancies Iris, as she him. Prok’s philosophy is that sex can be separated from emotion, from love, and should be — and should be enjoyed freely in the inner circle. He and Corcoran can do this; Milk and Iris can’t. Iris begins to fall in love with Corcoran, Milk is desperate; Prok has to step in and stop the affair — and from then on Iris hates him.
There are inaccuracies. Kinsey didn’t, as here, seduce his students, for instance, and his obsession with disgusting cocktails which he hardly drinks himself but inflicts on everyone else, a running joke in the book, didn’t develop till the end. But these and others such obviously don’t matter in a novel. And much is accurate — the orgasm anecdote above, for example, like much else in the book, was lifted straight from my biography. Milk is roughly based on Clyde Martin. I had lunch and spent a long afternoon with Martin. He was a gentle character, who clearly still worshiped Kinsey. He also wanted to protect him. I was myself beginning to discover Kinsey’s bisexuality. Martin became extremely evasive, thereby confirming what he hoped he was concealing. Milk seems to me a good approximation, and real.
But for much of the book Boyle’s triumph is his portrait of Prok. This driven, dominant, sometimes aggressive, controlfreak and workaholic of a man, a rigorous (and completely honest) scientist, has, as he did in life, sudden flashes of tenderness, of insight and even love. Pretty good hell to work for, he also inspires loyalty, particularly in Milk.
Yet it is this very triumph which is responsible for the single fatal flaw in the book — the denouement. The historytaking reaches 10,000. The Male volume comes out, and is an instant and astounding success. The sexual tensions among them all seem to have been resolved. Prok embarks on filming sex (though in life far less than here). Then suddenly one night he gathers them all together, the whole inner circle, feeds them Zombies and Planter’s Bottom, and leads them all to the top of his house. He wants them all to have sex together, to demonstrate their emancipation, and be filmed doing it. Iris refuses — except she will with Corcoran. ‘No’, says Prok, crouching naked and with an erection, ‘with me’. ‘I would rather die first,’ says Iris — and as Prok yanks her up and pulls her against him and as she fights him off, Milk jumps up and knocks Prok out.
Clearly, Boyle felt he needed a climax, but this incident is ludicrous. Not only did nothing like it ever happen, but given the character of the real Kinsey, and the invented Prok here, and the character of Milk, it never could have happened. Apart from anything else, Prok/Kinsey was always adamant that sex should never be imposed. It is the only time that Boyle’s characterisations, composed from the various biographies and his imagination, go completely off the rails.
They are back on them for the very end of the book. Iris runs off to her mother with her and Milk’s child. Once again, Milk is desperate. Prok takes him in pursuit — and he wins her back. It is affecting. Finally, Prok dies, and Boyle allows Milk a brief reprise. ‘This is how I want to remember him.’ Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy’s Kinsey: A Biography, which was used as the factual source for the film, has been reissued in a film paperback edition by Pimlico at £8.99.
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