Bookworm – Details, episodes & analysis

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...