KCRW's Bookworm
A 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.
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Toni Morrison, Part II
A Mercy (Knopf)In this second half of our two-part interview with Toni Morrison, the conversation continues in an attempt to discover the way a novel is built.
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Toni Morrison, Part I
A Mercy (Knopf)In this first of two conversations with Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, we explore the backgrounds of her novel, A Mercy.
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Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Ms. Hempel Chronicles (Harcourt)What is a middle-school teacher? Is Ms. Hempel the old-maid meanie we remember fearing in childhood? Or is she, as she believes, a barely-out-of-college young woman on the threshold of life?
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Amitav Ghosh
Sea of Poppies (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) With Sea of Poppies, a trilogy begins! Few know that the opium that fueled the Opium Wars was grown and processed in India...
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Marilynne Robinson, Part II
Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Marilynne Robinson's recent novels concern two ministers and their families. Here, we discuss her most-troubled character, Jack Boughton, a man who would have been called a ne'er-do-well when words like ne'er-do-well were common...
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Marilynne Robinson, Part I
Home (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)Marilynne Robinson had not published a novel in twenty years when she wrote Gilead, which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. How peculiar, interesting and lovely that she should follow it so quickly with Home...
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part V
Jerk, a play, from a story by Dennis Cooper, directed by Gisèle VienneOur series closes with American writer Dennis Cooper, who lives and writes in Paris. His work is believed to continue the French lineage of poète maudits (outlaw poets) a tradition that includes Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Sade.
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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.
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David Foster Wallace
The terrible and sad impact of David 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 charmingâ??and his death is an enormous loss to American literature.
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Sarah Vowell
The Wordy Shipmates (Riverhead)What brought the indomitable Sarah Vowell to write a book about the Puritans? A couple of Thanksgiving episodes of The Brady Bunch and Happy Days, to be sure, but also...
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part IV
Grégoire Bouillier The Mystery Guest: An Account (Farrar Straus & Giroux) and Report on Myself (Houghton Mifflin)Olivier Cadiot Colonel Zoo ( Green Integer)Marc Cholodenko Mordechai Schamz (Dalkey Archive)Finally at ease in Paris, the Bookworm encounters three French novelists and attempts to …
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Diane Johnson
Lulu in Marrakech (Dutton)Here's a conversation about ambivalence, ambiguity and judgment in a comic or satiric novel. Usually, we would know exactly where the author stands, but not with Diane Johnson...
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Francine Prose
Goldengrove (Harper)Francine Prose is full of surprises in speaking of her newest novel. It's narrated by a thirteen-year-old girl whose sister has drowned. It looks like a book...
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James Wood
How Fiction Works (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)This conversation is characterized by indirection. Critic James Wood seems to be responding to accusations made against him by other reviewers...
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part III
Pierre Alféri: Oxo (Burning Deck) and Natural Gaits ( Sun & Moon) Emmanuel CarrèreClass Trip & The Mustache (Picador) and The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception (Picador)In this episode of our ongoing series, the American Bookworm leaves philosophy and politics and makes hi …
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Art Spiegelman
Breakdowns (Pantheon)Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! is the subtitle of this new book, and we talk about the kind of young %@&*! Art Spiegelman was...
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Horacio Castellanos Moya
Senselessness, translated by Katherine Silver (New Directions)Castellanos Moya's first novel to be translated into English is a jet black tragic-comedy...
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David Markson
The Last Novel (Shoemaker & Hoard)David Markson has invented his own "personal genre." His novels present collaged panoramas of the travails of art and artistsâ??the bad reviews, the rivalries, the life-long neglect, the impoverished deaths. His juxtapositions can be comic or tragic.
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Annie Proulx
Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 (Scribner)Annie Proulx's new collection is a stew of tall tales, romantic sagebrush sagas, and genuinely affecting stories of survival on the range. * Language Advisory
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An American Bookworm in Paris, Part II
Camille de Toledo: Coming of Age at the End of History (Soft Skull)The young French critic, novelist and filmmaker Camille de Toledo tells the sad /exuberant story of young French intellectuals growing up at the end of everything.
KCRW's Bookworm
