KCRW's Bookworm Podcasts

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must for the serious reader, "Bookworm" showcases writers of fiction and poetry - the established, new or emerging - all interviewed with insight and precision by the show's host and guiding spirit, Michael Silverblatt. Primary Format : Public Radio Language : English Also Listed as: City : Santa Monica State/Province : CA Country : USA Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of KCRW's Bookworm Podcasts Methings.com listings of KCRW's Bookworm Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

Nick Laird Glover's Mistake(Viking)In this novel of love, manipulation and deception,Nick Lairdattempts one of the trickiest strategies in the novelist's tool kit. He structures a book so that readers come to understand things the characters remain blind to. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lorrie Moore A Gate at the Stairs(Knopf)Lorrie Moorehas written three collections of short stories and two rather short novels. Now, after eleven years of work, she has published a longer novel and survived to tell the tale... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carlos Ruiz Zafon The Angel's Game(Doubleday)Spanish writerCarlos Ruiz Zafónhas attracted an international audience with his series of metaphysical thrillers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Dennis Cooper Ugly Man(Harper Collins)Although we've followed the career ofDennis Copperfrom the ground up, in this conversation, he acknowledges a new influence?the master director of French film comedy, Jacques Tati. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Alvaro Uribe and Cristina Rivera-Garza Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction(Dalkey Archive) This new anthology makes clear that magical realism is only a tiny segment of what?s been happening in Mexican fiction over the last half-century. In this conversation with its editor,Álvaro Uribe, andCristina Rivera-Garza, one of the writers whose work appears in the book, we uncover a cavalcade of styles and influences, as well as a host of writers whose names will be new to American readers.   Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman Road Show, a recording of the musical (Nonesuch, PS Classics)Stephen Sondheimis right ? his new musical,Roadshow, is not gloomy. Sondheim and his collaborator, playwrightJohn Weidman, discuss the many revisions of the musical that has evolved in an extraordinary way, and may yet become an American classic... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Clancy Martin How to Sell(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Clancy Martin's first novel reads like a piece of sleaze, but it turnsout ? surprise! ? to be a philosophical novel about the problems ofappearance and reality... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin(Random House)Darkened by intimations of 9/11,Column McCann's generous extravaganza of a novelbrings together the lives of strangers who witness a high-wire artistdancing between the two World Trade Center towers... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Reif Larsen The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet(Penguin Press)Reif Larsen's T. S. Spivet, twelve-year-old genius cartographer, compulsively maps everything... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Glen David Gold Sunnyside(Knopf)What a charming raconteurGlen David Goldis, with his anecdotes about the movies, theories about identity and celebrity, and knowledge of World War I... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Eduardo Galeano Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone(Nation Books)Eduardo Galeanohas written a history of the world in brief chapters, each one devoted to an iconic incident... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website E. L. Doctorow Homer& Langley (Random House)In this comic and affecting novel based on the lives of the Collyer brothers ? one a blind pianist, the other a hoarder and inventor ? Doctorow creates an ironic allegory of modern America. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jim Krusoe Erased  (Tin House Books)In this wild and woolly conversation,Jim Krusoereveals thathis zany, unpredictable, hilarity-inspiring novels are, well,descriptions of the human condition (at least as how he sees it). Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anne Waldman Manatee /Humanity(Penguin Poets)Anne Waldmanguides us through this book-length poetry-and-prosemeditation on endangered species by describing an initiation ceremonydesigned to instill a deeper sense of compassion.... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Wray Lowboy(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)John Wray's novel about a schizophrenic boy's quest for sexand/or love flirts violently with the thriller form... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wells Tower Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Wells Toweris the most talked-about new story writer to emerge on theliterary scene. This conversation focuses on the weird details he usesto illuminate a mostly conventional narrative arc... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Matthea Harvey Modern Life(Graywolf Press)Like dangerous toys or perilous amusement park rides,Matthea Harvey'spoems careen into the unknown... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Brad Gooch Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor(Little, Brown)While we take a mini-tour of Flannery O'Connor's life and writing, biographerBrad Goochdescribes his difficulties in gaining access to the author's innerlife. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Matthew Dickman All-American Poem(American Poetry Review)Kate Tufts Discovery Award-winnerMatthew Dickmanwrites emotional and accessible poetry... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Geoff Dyer Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi(Pantheon)Geoff Dyeron the secrets that structure his new novel (whichmight, on the surface, seem like two novellas).... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gary Indiana The Shanghai Gesture(Two Dollar Radio)Out of fantasias of the past (Fu Manchu novels, exotic Hollywood films,documents of "friendly" imperialism from the twenties to the forties),Gary Indianaconcocts the nightmare present ofThe Shanghai Gesture.. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Elizabeth Alexander Praise Song for the Day: A Poem for Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration(Graywolf);American Sublime(Graywolf)WhenElizabeth Alexanderpresented Barack Obama's inauguralpoem, few of us had considered that in the history of the United Statesthere had been only three previous inaugural poets... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Yusef Komunyakaa Warhorses: Poems(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)The extraordinary part of this interview is the opportunity to hearKomunyakaa'svoice as he reads his poetry. These poems are about love and warsimultaneously, traumatic upheavals that may often be conjoined in thispoet's vision of life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joanna Scott Follow Me(Little, Brown)It has been said that life is like a river, and the river in this noveltwists and turns, changes direction and may even be inhabited by riverfairies... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Abdellah Taia Salvation Army(Semiotext(e))InAbdellahTaïa's family and in his native country, homosexuality is surrounded bysilence. All sorts of behaviors are tolerated if they are not spoken of, an intolerable circumstance for a writer... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website T.C. Boyle The Women(Viking)This richly layered conversation withT.C. Boylecenters on the subjects of art and arrogance.The Womenis a biographical novel, a fiction derived from the life of Frank LloydWright, focused particularly on Wright's up-and-down experiences withwomen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website A Whitman Tribute Eamon Grennan:Matter of Fact(Graywolf)Major Jackson:Hoops(Norton)Pattiann Rogers:Wayfare(Penguin)Three poets join us on Bookworm to celebrate Walt Whitman. They read fromLeaves of Grass,describe Whitman's influence on their work, read their own poems, and,in general, paint a raucous, friendly, informal portrait of the GoodGray Poet— America's greatest. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robin Romm The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks(Scribner)Fact and fiction.Robin Rommhas written a book of short stories and now a memoir arising from one central event: her mother’s gradual death by cancer... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Bidart, Part II Watching the Spring Festival: Poems(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)ForFrank Bidart, the act of reading poetry aloud involves the entire body... (Part Iof this interview aired March 12.) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Frank Bidart, Part I Watching the Spring Festival: Poems(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)The word most frequently used to describeFrank Bidart’s poetry is “intense.” (Part IIof this interview airs on March 19.) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Haskell Out of My Skin(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)An existential novel (think Camus’The Stranger) LA-style. Whena celebrity impersonator trains the hero in the art of impersonation, identity confusion ensues... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Rae Armantrout Versed(Wesleyan University Press)Rae Armantrouthas been associated with the Language-centeredpoets of the eighties, a group often accused of overly cerebral poetryderived from theory. Now, her work is found in the most widely readmagazines that publish poetry... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Micheline Aharonian Marcom The Mirror in the Well(Dalkey Archive)Micheline Marcom's works squeeze themselves between uncomfortable alternatives: Is her new novel,The Mirror in the Well, erotic or pornographic? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sparks: The Art of the Popular Song Kimono My House (Island Def Jam);Exotic Creatures of the Deep (Lil' Beethoven)After years of yearning, Bookworm talks with his favorite rock band about the art of writing pop songs.  Join us in this celebration of their 21st album,Exotic Creatures of the Deep. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Azar Nafisi Things I've Been Silent About: Memories(Random House)Azar Nafisiis one of the most powerful advocates literature has. After writingReading Lolita in Tehran,her memoir about reading forbidden books in a repressive culture, shehas taken on a new source of repression—the family.  Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Toni Morrison, Part II A Mercy(Knopf)In this second half of our two-part interview withToni Morrison, the conversation continues in an attempt to discover the way a novel is built. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Toni Morrison, Part I A Mercy(Knopf)In this first of two conversations with Nobel laureateToni Morrison, we explore the backgrounds of her novel,A Mercy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Ms. Hempel Chronicles(Harcourt)What is a middle-school teacher? Is Ms. Hempel the old-maid meanie weremember fearing in childhood? Or is she, as she believes, a barely-out-of-college young woman on the threshold of life? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sarah Shun-lien Bynum Ms. Hempel Chronicles(Harcourt)What is a middle-school teacher? Is Ms. Hempel the old-maid meanie weremember fearing in childhood? Or is she, as she believes, a barely-out-of-college young woman on the threshold of life? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)WithSea of Poppies, a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marilynne Robinson, Part II Home(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Marilynne Robinson's recent novels concern two ministers andtheir families. Here, we discuss her most-troubled character, JackBoughton, a man who would have been called a ne'er-do-well when wordslike ne'er-do-well were common... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marilynne Robinson, Part II Home(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Marilynne Robinson's recent novels concern two ministers andtheir families. Here, we discuss her most-troubled character, JackBoughton, a man who would have been called a ne'er-do-well when wordslike ne'er-do-well were common... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marilynne Robinson, Part I Home(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Marilynne Robinsonhad not published a novel in twenty years when she wroteGilead, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. How peculiar, interesting and lovely that she should follow it so quickly withHome... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Marilynne Robinson, Part I Home(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Marilynne Robinsonhad not published a novel in twenty years when she wroteGilead, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. How peculiar, interesting and lovely that she should follow it so quickly withHome... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Bookworm in Paris, Part V Jerk, a play, from a story byDennis Cooper, directed byGisèle VienneOur series closes with American writerDennis Cooper, who livesand writes in Paris. His work is believed to continue the Frenchlineage of poète maudits (outlaw poets) a tradition that includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Sade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Bookworm in Paris, Part V Jerk, a play, from a story byDennis Cooper, directed byGisèle VienneOur series closes with American writerDennis Cooper, who livesand writes in Paris. His work is believed to continue the Frenchlineage of poète maudits (outlaw poets) a tradition that includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Sade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonathan Carroll The Ghost in Love(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Although he would never want us to say so,Jonathan Carroll's novels are like metaphysical self-help books for the supernaturally inclined. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jonathan Carroll The Ghost in Love(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)Although he would never want us to say so,Jonathan Carroll's novels are like metaphysical self-help books for the supernaturally inclined. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Foster Wallace Web exclusive:The terrible and sad impact ofDavid Foster Wallace's suicide caused us to want to remember him as he first appeared in the KCRW studios, fresh from the publication of his breakthrough novel,Infinite Jest. He was brilliant and charming—and his death is an enormous loss to American literature. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Foster Wallace Web exclusive:The terrible and sad impact ofDavid Foster Wallace's suicide caused us to want to remember him as he first appeared in the KCRW studios, fresh from the publication of his breakthrough novel,Infinite Jest. He was brilliant and charming—and his death is an enormous loss to American literature. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates(Riverhead)What brought the indomitableSarah Vowellto write a book about the Puritans? A couple of Thanksgiving episodes ofThe Brady BunchandHappy Days, to be sure, but also... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates(Riverhead)What brought the indomitableSarah Vowellto write a book about the Puritans? A couple of Thanksgiving episodes ofThe Brady BunchandHappy Days, to be sure, but also... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Bookworm in Paris, Part IV Grégoire BouillierThe Mystery Guest: An Account(Farrar Straus& Giroux) andReport on Myself(Houghton Mifflin)Olivier CadiotColonel Zoo( Green Integer)Marc CholodenkoMordechai Schamz(Dalkey Archive)Finally at ease in Paris, the Bookworm encounters three Frenchnovelists and attempts to navigate the tangle of philosophy, artifice,intertextuality and hilarity that exemplifies the art of the new Frenchnovel.Note: More installments of anAmerican Bookworm in Pariswill air over the next few m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website An American Bookworm in Paris, Part IV Grégoire BouillierThe Mystery Guest: An Account(Farrar Straus& Giroux) andReport on Myself(Houghton Mifflin)Olivier CadiotColonel Zoo( Green Integer)Marc CholodenkoMordechai Schamz(Dalkey Archive)Finally at ease in Paris, the Bookworm encounters three Frenchnovelists and attempts to navigate the tangle of philosophy, artifice,intertextuality and hilarity that exemplifies the art of the new Frenchnovel.Note: More installments of anAmerican Bookworm in Pariswill air over the next few m ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diane Johnson Lulu in Marrakech(Dutton)Here's a conversation about ambivalence, ambiguity and judgment in acomic or satiric novel. Usually, we would know exactly where the authorstands, but not withDiane Johnson... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Diane Johnson Lulu in Marrakech(Dutton)Here's a conversation about ambivalence, ambiguity and judgment in acomic or satiric novel. Usually, we would know exactly where the authorstands, but not withDiane Johnson... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Francine Prose Goldengrove(Harper)Francine Proseis full of surprises in speaking of her newestnovel. It's narrated by a thirteen-year-old girl whose sister hasdrowned. It looks like a conventionalcoming-of-age-through-emotional-hardship book... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Francine Prose Goldengrove(Harper)Francine Proseis full of surprises in speaking of her newestnovel. It's narrated by a thirteen-year-old girl whose sister hasdrowned. It looks like a conventionalcoming-of-age-through-emotional-hardship book... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website James Wood How Fiction Works(Farrar, Straus& Giroux)This conversation is characterized by indirection. CriticJames Woodseems to be responding to accusations made against him by other reviewers... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jim Krusoe Girl Factory(Tin House)InJim Krusoe's strange and funny new novel, six women are being preserved in acidophilus in the basement of a frozen yogurt shop. The innocent hero's attempts to save these kidnapped beauties are disastrous. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Peter Carey His Illegal Self(Knopf)The excitement ofPeter Carey's new novel is rendered through aspecific stylistic choice: He integrates two wildly different voicesinto the sentences, creating a vibrant stereo-effect. The result isamazing--the novel's action seems to be taking place about six inchesfrom your face. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ariana Reines Coeur de Lion(Mal-o-mar);The Cow(Fence Books)This astonishing young poet�still in her twenties�is surely destined to be one of the crucial voices of her generation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Colm Toibin Mothers and Sons: Stories(Scribner)Colm T�ib�ncandidly describes the inspirations for the stories in his first collection. Sometimes a landscape is enough to trigger a story, sometimes an anecdote or a bit of family lore. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Anne Enright The Gathering(Grove)InAnne Enright's Booker Prize-winning novel about a family wake, the narrator remembers, lies, invents and imagines with equal ardor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Arnon Grunberg The Jewish Messiah(Penguin)Unsettling, profane and goofy,Arnon Grunberg�s novel takes politically incorrect risks with contemporary Jewish culture. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William T. Vollman Riding Toward Everywhere(Ecco)William Vollmandecided to spend as much time as possible viewing the stars from the flatbed of a moving train. He�s a �fauxbo� not a hobo, and he movingly describes his need to find freedom by hopping a train�without any destination in mind. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website David Rieff Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir(Simon& Schuster)David Rieffaccompanied his mother, Susan Sontag, through the medical ordeals that led to her death. We explore the death of this great writer, a woman who resisted consolation and maintained�to her last days�an enormous appetite for life. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Geraldine Brooks People of the Book(Viking)The art of detection unravels the secrets of the Sarajevo Haggadah. What does the miraculous survival of this medieval codex tell us about the survival of both culture and history? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lewis Hyde The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World(Vintage)How does the creative person function in a market culture? In the 25 years sinceThe Giftwas first published, this question has become increasingly more difficult to answer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Cees Nooteboom Lost Paradise (Grove) In this duel of interpretations, Dutch writer Nooteboom (who has been repeatedly shortlisted for the Nobel Prize) shows the whipper-snapper Michael Silverblatt that there are simpler, clearer, realer reasons for the angels in Lost Paradise than the over-interpreting Silverblatt wants to believe. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Oliver Sacks Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Knopf) Oliver Sacks explores the brain's affinity for music by examining the extraordinary ways our brains adapt in response to musical aberrations. Sack's wisdom and deep love of music are palpable in this vibrant conversation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Edmund White Hotel de Dream: A New York Novel (Ecco)Here's a literary historical enigma: Did Stephen Crane attempt to write a gay companion piece to his Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Literary rumor says he tried. At any rate, now Edmund White has written it for him. It's Edmund White on Hotel de Dream and the "underground" history of classic American fiction. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Carol Muske-Dukes Channeling Mark Twain (Random House)This novel revives the belief that poetry has a close connection to personal and political liberation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ron Padgett Joe: A Memoir of Joe Brainard (Coffee House) Joe is Ron Padgett's intimate and affectionate biography-memoir of his friend of four decades, artist-poet Joe Brainard.Note: This interview will not air on KCRW as it will be pre-empted by special holiday programming. It will, however, be available online. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website William Gibson Spook Country (Putnam)Along with the most sophisticated future-predictions, speculations about the sociology of cities, and adventures in virtual post-realities, William Gibson has finally learned how to get his characters from one room to another. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Richard Flanagan The Unknown Terrorist (Grove) Richard Flanagan felt that his last novel, Gould's Book of Fish, widely acclaimed a masterpiece, had burnt him out. Here, he discusses the things he did to reenergize. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kiran Desai The Inheritance of Loss (Grove) Booker Prize-winner Kiran Desai says she prefers "messiness" to perfection--it's more human, and it fits her subject better. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Lydia Davis Varieties of Disturbance (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Lydia Davis writes elegant prose pieces in which basic confusions are described with authority and clarity. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joanna Scott Everybody Loves Somebody (Back Bay Books)Joanna Scott claims her collection of stories is a history of love, from World War I to the present. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Stone Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (Ecco)Robert Stone has written novels that are said to be the best descriptions of the American 1960's. In this memoir, he travels back to revisit those troubled times. Now stripped of a novelist's resources--the invention of character, the ear for street talk--he recreates and reevaluates the sixties through the lens of a new century. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Colum McCann Zoli (Random House)Zoli, a Romani poet, is the latest heroine in Colum McCann's ongoing quest to understand the function of art. Gypsy women are not supposed to be taught to read and write. What's more, because Zoli's poetry is thought to betray her people, they exile her. Can an artist, as a rebel, have a home. Further, does art have a home. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Martin Amis House of Meetings (Knopf)Martin Amis has written a Russian novel--not just a Russian novel but a novel about the Gulags. More than this, it is a love triangle set in a prison camp, told by a survivor who is now, in the process of self-accusation and self-condemnation. How dare Amis write such a book. He did it because he could. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Francine du Plessix Gray Them: A Memoir of Parents(The Penguin Press)After an affair with the great Russian poet Mayakovsky, Francine du Plessix Gray's mother married a man who became a kingpin in the Cond- Nast fashion magazine empire. All the high fashion and social elite of New York are discussed, but they pale beside the evocation of true genius. Mayakovsky and poetry triumph over commerce. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Salman Rushdie Shalimar the Clown(Random House)Although the history of Kashmir provides the backdrop of Rushdie's new novel, it is a larger-than-life romance with larger-than-life characters--a version of Romeo and Juliet and theRamayana. In this conversation, he describes the ways in which an historical conflict can determine the course of love.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Lahr Honky Tonk Parade: The New Yorker Profiles (Overlook) The theater critic for The New Yorker explains the autobiographical origins of his profiles. His father was the great clown Bert Lahr--but the cowardly lion tended toward silence at home. Lahr follows his subjects from stage to living room in order to understand the strange impulse to perform. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Tim Winton The Turning (Scribner's) Tim Winton has been declared a National Treasure in his native Australia. His characters are ordinary people defined by narrow economic choices, by the facts of weather and geography, and by their addictions. We talk about how, as characters recur in story after story, they acquire the spiritual dimension that is the hallmark of Winton's fiction. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Myla Goldberg Wickett's Remedy (Doubleday) The author of Bee Season tiptoes toward an acknowledgement of her dark vision. She has written a novel in which almost every character dies in the 1918 influenza epidemic--and their ordinary lives, in general, are no picnic. Since Goldberg is a hopeful person, how did her work turn so grim? Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website John Carlin and Art Spiegelman Masters of American Comics (Hammer/MOCA/Yale)Curator and comics expert John Carlin joins Art Spiegelman in a lively discussion of this sumptuously illustrated volume that contains essays by Jules Feiffer on Popeye, Matt Groening on Gary Panter, Jonathan Safran Foer on Art Spiegelman, and more.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Hispanic Identity in Writing (Part 8 of 10) Sandra Cisneros and Nina Marie MartinezThe two Hispanic women explain how they've been put into the cage of multiculturalism, sometimes by the way they view themselves, but primarily by publishers and readers--to the extent of being expected to read only certain kinds of literature. When the names Thomas Pynchon and Marguerite Duras come up, the conversation takes a turn, and the satisfactions of broad, deep reading are embraced.You can read anoverview of the seriesor excerpts from:Sandra C ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Beyond Identity--A Dark Vision (Part 9 of 10) Tom Wolfe, Margaret Atwood and John BanvilleTom Wolfe discusses neuroscience and its view that there is no such thing as identity--a powerful computer might be able to predict human behavior. He speculates on the coming of a vast psychological depression. Margaret Atwood talks about the coming threat to identity by cloning and genetic experimentation The Irish writer John Banville rails that identity does not exist. You can read anoverview of the seriesor excerpts from:Tom Wolfe'sI Am Ch ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf) How does a writer handle personal tragedy? In this conversation, Joan Didion explores the possibility that writing about her husband's death and her daughter's illness was an essential activity, enabling her to both grieve and mourn. Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Annie Proulx Brokeback Mountain (Scribner)Annie Proulx expresses her passion for accuracy of detail and truth of character. She is one of the lucky few writers to see those qualities brought to the film adaptation of her work. We discuss Ang Lee's film Brokeback Mountain and the ways in which it reflects the author's vision. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Mary Gaitskill Veronica (Pantheon) Michael Silverblatt confesses that he is frightened by Mary Gaitskill's intensely forward work. Gaitskill confides that sometimes she is frightened by the world she writes about. In this exploratory conversation, they attempt to arrive at an understanding of the deceptive role that point-of-view plays in transgressive writing, such as hers. Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Ted Thompson, Jonathan Safran Foer and Kelly Link Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs and Some Other Things... (Mc Sweeney's) McSweeney's has assembled a sublimely playful anthology of stories for YAs (young adults as they're called in the booksellers' trade). Here, we'll talk to editor Ted Thompson and some of the writers (Jonathan Safran Foer andKelly Link) about how the stories were chosen, who the target audience is, and how it feels to be associated with the very hip folks at McSweeney's. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bookworm Series Finale (Part 10 of 10) Maya Angelou believes that a writer who tells the truth can be read by anyone. James Baldwin, for example, can be enjoyed by black, white, Moslem or Jewish readers -- indeed by anyone who values reading the truth. Great literature takes us out of the limiting cage of identity politics -- into the realm of truth.You can read anoverview of the seriesor excerpts from:Maya Angelou'sI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Stanley Crawford Petroleum Man(Overlook)In this satire of corporate greed, a"gas-guzzling" super-magnate writes a loving description of every car he has ever owned. What is more, he intendsto leave this chronicle of automotive ownership to his (largely indifferent) grandchildren. This, it is implied, is our great American Heritage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Robert Coover, Part 1 of 2 A Child Again(McSweeney's)Robert Coover, a reigning master of experimental narrative, gives a two-part interview for this, his long-anticipated first visit to Bookworm. In part one, Coover offers an overview of his career, revealing that even from the first his themes, intentions and methods were fully imagined. He then worked on these retold fairy tales and comic political allegories sometimes for a decade or more before completion and publication. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Jane Smiley 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel(Knopf)Join us for an informal conversation in which two novel-lovers share their deep passions for reading. Jane loves the realists (Austen,Trollope); Michael the Bookworm loves the inventors (Kafka,Cervantes). But more than anything, they love"a lengthy written narrative with a protagonist"the novel.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Bret Easton Ellis Lunar Park(Knopf)Beginning as an autobiography, Lunar Park turns into a classic horror novel. The haunted house, however, is spooked by Bret Ellis- personal demons, and the past comes alive increepy ways that go way beyond autobiography. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Umberto Eco The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana(Harcourt)The loss of memory is Umberto Eco-s subject here. After a stroke, an antiquarian bookseller remembers every book he's read--but he remembers nothing about himself. In this conversation, Eco talks about the difference between memories"made of paper" and vital memories--those transformed by the experience of love.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Nicole Krauss The History of Love: A Novel(Norton)Memory is the subject of many novels, but Nicole Krauss'subject is the transmission of memory: how do you tell another person about the things that are no longer there? We discuss how writing serves as the great transmitter of memory. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Christopher Sorrentino Trance(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)Sorrentino takes the Patty Hearst saga as the springboard for an exploration of the mass hypnosis of American culture. A funny thing though: this novel about intergenerational warfare is written by the son of formidable avante-gardiste Gilbert Sorrentino. How did Chris write about the young fighting the old establishment and still pay tribute to his dad? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Louise Erdrich The Painted Drum(Harper Collins)This beautiful short novel emerged over a period of ten years, after an older story suddenly suggested deeper meanings. Erdrich wrote the novel in layers, gradually, like a painter working with oils. Choosing texture over simple narration is our subject.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Kazuo Ishiguro Never Let Me Go(Knopf)Ishiguro never tells more than he has to--his stripped-down narratives are filled with absence and mystery. In this science fiction derived narrative, he refuses to follow convention-he doesn't invent a complete world. Instead, he wants us, as readers, to fill in the gaps while he clobbers us with sinister surprises.Read an excerpt from the book. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website