Longtime friend and editor of Bookworm, Alan Howard, returns to host this episode, the last of 10 shows to journey through Bookworm’s 33 years and offer a retrospective look at Michael’s accomplishments on behalf of writers and readers. For decades Michael has read almost all of a writer’s work, not just the book which has been most recently published. Howard has watched writers glow as they realize that they’ve been seriously witnessed by the ultimate Bookworm. All of the writers on today’s show have become friends of Michael’s and of Bookworm. We’ll hear from rock band Sparks (brothers Ron and Russell Mael), Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, Ann Beattie, Susan Sontag, and Dennis Cooper.

Close friend of Michael Silverblatt’s and Bookworm editor for 30 years, Alan Howard guest hosts this episode on grief and loss. When the two met more than 33 years ago, Michael’s first words were, “What are you reading?” It was a question that brought Howard back to literature. Over the years, Michael did the same for thousands of listeners. With Bookworm, he was determined to return literary fiction and poetry to the center of the zeitgeist. In the process, he faced the realities of loss and grief. In conversation after conversation with writers he was forging collegial friendships with, loss itself was a frequent topic of those friendships and conversations. We’ll hear from Marilynne Robinson, Joan Didion, Jim Krusoe, Steve Erickson, Dave Eggers, and Mary Ruefle.

Los Angeles-based author Michelle Huneven joins Evan Kleiman to discuss her latest book, “Search.” In this engaging and funny literary fiction novel, main character Dana Potowski writes a memoir that describes the steps of her Unitarian Universalist Church congregation’s year-long search for its new minister and the challenges they encounter.

Daphne Merkin discusses what normative means, the concept of a normal looking life, and her new novel, “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love”.

The Demon and The Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration (Harcourt) Duende is like -soul,- an inner essence that aligns the artist with demonic or angelic inspiration. Edward Hirsch traces the manifestations of duende from Spanish poetry to Action Painting, from Rilke to Jackson Pollack.

The Haunting of L.

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

At a certain point in this conversation, the author is referred to as "my ghost, Howard Norman..."

Iceland (Dalky Archive) Jim Krusoe pits his dear-but-doltish narrator against a surreal, disaster-prone universe, creating a unique comedy of the little man versus authorial imagination.

While writing Palladio (Doubleday) another of his complex novels of ideas, Jonathan Dee discovered his gift for creating complex human characters-and altered the course of his writing career.

In the Forest (Houghton Mifflin)

Edna O'Brien's predilection for darkness, Greek tragedy and the terrifying fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm achieves its riskiest manifestation in her new novel, In the Forest...

All Souls Day (Harcourt)
Although afternoon television talk shows have made us all too familiar with the stages of grief, Cees Nooteboom's philosophical novel offers a different perspective...

True History of the Kelly Gang (Vintage)
Peter Carey captures the fated life of the Australian outlaw-hero Ned Kelly in thrilling run-on sentences: the world looms up, sudden and alive in phrase after breathless phrase. Here, he talks about the evolution of this springing, spirited voice.

Claire Marvel

(Doubleday)

John Burnham Schwartz has written a contemporary romance, complete with obsession, nightmare and a life-altering vacation in a deserted French barn-but with a catch...

Number 9 Dream

(Random House)

David Mitchell, a radiant and gifted young writer, places his work at the center of a barrage of influences...

A Multitude of Sins (Knopf)
Richard Ford, finds in adultery, his most recent subject, traces of old Emersonian independence. But he still considers his newest heroes to be "hurtling to their doom."

From the archives: obliquely about Zadie Smith's "On Beauty", this intense, abstract conversation is about what a novel is.

Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa

(BlueHen Books)

This first novel by enterprising novelist Marc Estrin

introduces Gregor Samsa, Kafka's famous roach, to the monstrosities of the twentieth century....

Library of America (Geoffrey O'Brien, editor in chief and Max Rudin, publisher) Library of America is a publisher whose mandate is to keep American classics in print. To celebrate its 20th anniversary, we'll explore the Library's surprising new definitions of what is American and what is classic. Are crime novels, screenplays, song lyrics and the work of Russian -migr-s included? For more information about the publisher, go to LibraryOfAmerica.org.

Roscoe (Viking)

Truth, when it disappears from one's public life, also tends to be unavailable in one's personal life. Pulitzer prize-winner William Kennedy talks about his greatest rascal yet, a politician to whom the word truth is anathema...

Requiem

(Dalky Archive Press)

Curtis White has created comedy from degeneration by counterpointing Biblical stories, biographies of Classical composers, and the e-mailed sexploits of pornographic web-site users..

Just in Time: Poems 1984-1994 (New Directions)

On the occasion of a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, Robert Creeley discusses the many influences on his singular poetry: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky and Robert Duncan. In addition, he talks about the love of family and friends that has united his influences and his past into a "company."

For Rouenna (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Sigrid Nunez's books reveal the secrets of lives that have fallen through the cracks....

Geography of the Forehead (University of Arkansas Press) In the sweet mayhem of Ron Koertge's hilarious poems, a surreal vision collides with the sadness of daily life. Koertge talks about his transformation from a "smarty; pants" poet into a gentler wise-cracker.

The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (Norton)

We inaugurate Bookworm's Book Club with a celebration of the Russian master, Isaac Babel. We'll focus on the paradox of his disturbing laconic style: the lyric joy of a Jew describing Cossack violence...

Leash (Semiotexte) As always, Jane DeLynn leaves a trail of magnificent broken taboos behind her. Here, she confesses that she can go no further in her unbroken chain of transgressions. Hear this dark comic novelist at her turning point. Where do you go after the abyss?

Shopgirl (Hyperion)

When Steve Martin brought out his first novella, Shopgirl praise from the writing community (Salman Rushdie, for example) indicated that he can be taken seriously...

History, autobiography, travelogue—a hybrid form—"Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning", by Alex Halberst.

On Summer in Baden Baden by Leonid Tsypkin (New Directions)
Susan Sontag talks about the discovery of lost and forgotten masterpieces, in particular, this novel, never published in America, about an odd vacation in the life of Fyodor Dostoevski...

Little Lit: Strange Stories for Strange Kids (Harper Collins) Spiegelman and Mouly discuss their exciting treat for kids of all ages-the newest Little Lit, with weird illustrated tales by the likes of Paul Auster, Maurice Sendak and Jules Feiffer.

The Grand Complication (Hyperion) A genuinely odd discussion about the consequences of scholarly book-loving. That is, a conversation about manipulation, games-playing, sexual repression and sadism in the lives of Kurzweil's characters who continue their unwholesome adventures beyond the intrigues and enigmas of his first novel, A Case of Curiosities.

The Feast of the Goat

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

In Mario Vargas Llosa's brilliant novel about the Trujillo regime, the Dominican Republic stands for all tyrannized nations and the 1960's stand for any period of political domination and unrest...

Allan Gurganus talks intimately about the people who introduced him to art and literature during his childhood.

Isabel Allende on war, love, autobiography, patriarchy, feminism and sex.

Power, Politics, and Culture: Interviews with Edward W. Said (Pantheon); The Said Reader (Vintage)

A passionate conversation about exile, literature and critical theory. Palestinian-born Edward Said discusses his work: from his early philosophical criticism, through critique of imperialism, to his recent memoir.

The inventor of a new style of lyrical essay writing, John D'Agata talks about the classical traditions he draws upon and the special American loneliness that resonates in his unusual sentences...

 

 

The Soul of Rumi (Harper San Francisco)

Rumi's ancient mystical poetry swings between ideals of transcendence and destruction. Coleman Barks explores the extreme polarities that underlie the work...

When The Corrections appeared, it was immediately nominated as a candidate for The Great American Novel. Jonathan Franzen discusses his manner of writing, his method of construction, and the possibility that his book advocates a family values-based neo-conservatism.

Scott Spencer’s new novel, “An Ocean Without a Shore,” is about a life seeped in unfulfilled desires.

Austerlitz (Random House)
What Thomas Mann was to the 1940's and Albert Camus to the 1950's probably places the German writer W. G. Sebald in relation to our new century. In this conversation, Sebald describes the source of his rare prose tone and explores the invisible presence of the concentration camps in his work.

Political Fictions (Knopf)

We discover that the strategy underlying Joan Didion's essays also provides the foundation for her fiction. She rejects the human need for stories with clear resolutions and, instead, searches out the messy realities that stories conceal.

Death of a River Guide (Grove)

In this novel, a drowning river-guide in Tasmania relives his life as it recedes before him. Author Richard Flanagan insists that reality in his island homeland is stranger still...

David Means, the young winner of the Los Angeles Times Fiction Award discusses his interest in redemption, an impulse that transforms his tightly calibrated realistic fiction into a moral tightrope-walk.

Little America (Knopf)

Author Henry Bromell, the son of a CIA agent, discusses the traps, secrets and patricidal rivalries that can turn father-son relationships into metaphors for espionage...

Coming Soon!!! 

(Houghton Mifflin)

More on the spectacular fictional inventions of John Barth-including dual narrators, Muse-author collaborations, and stories so complexly interconnected that they mirror the spiraling structure of the universe. (Part II of a two-part interview)

Coming Soon!!! (Houghton Mifflin)

A full-scale celebration of the career of John Barth, one of America's greatest comic writers. His experiments with form, his crazy circumlocutions and contractions of language and, in particular, his creation of double-gendered narration are explored, explained, exhibited and exclaimed over.(Part I of a two-part interview)

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Houghton Mifflin) With the film of Lord of the Rings hard upon us, Professor Shippey recalls Tolkien and his interest in language and epic poetry. As a special treat, Shippey sings Tolkien's school song, which, disguised, makes its way into the Sagas of Middle Earth.

In part two of this interview with Salman Rushdie, we consider the wilder aspects of Fury: the influence of science fiction, surrealism and film. Special attention is paid to the blurring distinction between humans and machines and the painful irony implicit in the difficulty of making such a distinction. (Part one aired October 4.) 

In the first of a two-part interview, Salman Rushdie explores the politics, psychology and sociology of his first America-set novel, Fury.

The co-producer of Bookworm, Shawn Michael Sullivan, was able to rebroadcast one of his favorite shows, between Michael Silverblatt and Horacio Castellanos Moya, regarding Senselessness.

Book of My Nights (BOA Editions)

Li-Young Lee's poetry has moved beyond the details of his Chinese upbringing to an investigation of what he calls "primal silence..."

 

Dan Chaon, Among the Missing (Ballantine); Adrienne Sharp, White Swan, Black Swan (Random House) Marisa Silver, Babe in Paradise (Norton)
Three young writers, each publishing a first book with a major press, explore the terrain of contemporary short-story writing, from personal backgrounds to their desires to break with tradition...