

Bookworm
KCRW
Intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Feb 22, 2001 • 16min
Thomas Lynch
Bodies in Motion and at Rest (Norton)
As a result of his two professions (poet and funeral director), Thomas Lynch has an unusual attitude toward tradition, decorum and memory...

Feb 15, 2001 • 29min
Eduardo Galeano: Upside Down
Eduardo Galeano's denunciation of our multinational globalized future is characteristically brilliant, whimsical-devastating.

Feb 8, 2001 • 30min
Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan
The comic book, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (Pantheon), is Bookworm's nominee for the past year's most interesting novel!

Feb 1, 2001 • 30min
Gore Vidal
The Golden Age (Doubleday)
With the completion of his American Empire series, author Gore Vidal reflects upon our national destiny...

Jan 25, 2001 • 30min
William T. Vollmann
The Royal Family (Viking)
William Vollmann's growing sense of mystical Christianity is bringing him closer to Dostoevsky...

Jan 18, 2001 • 29min
Joy Williams: The Quick and the Dead
In Joy Williams' The Quick and the Dead, bleak and wicked comedy hides the book's religious mission, demonstrating how God and Devil can be mistaken for one another...

Jan 11, 2001 • 9min
Myla Goldberg
Bee Season (Doubleday)
This is Myla Goldberg's haunting first novel, about a Jewish family torn apart by manias born of spiritual mysticism on the one hand, and fear and silence on the other....

Jan 4, 2001 • 30min
Ha Jin
The Bridegroom (Pantheon)
Ha Jin, a Chinese writer who came to America in 1985, has published seven books of fiction and poetry in English. What are the consequences of giving up a native language? Can writing transform the anger generated by the Cultural Revolution into art?

Dec 28, 2000 • 30min
Heidi Julavitz: The Mineral Palace
This remarkable first novel offers an occasion to pay tribute to its late editor, and to salute its young author, whose imagery and vision promise an unusual career.

Dec 21, 2000 • 29min
Tony Earley
Jim the Boy
(Little Brown)
Tony Earley has been hailed as a new American master, and, indeed, he has written a classic rite-of-passage novel...


