Bookworm

Lorrie Moore &quotBirds; of America" (Knopf) Lorrie Moore shows how her short stories compare with the ballads of Tin Pan Alley. That is: how do you give misery and lovesickness the bounce of a popular tune?

Part II of a two-part interview. An epic love story? From Salman Rushdie?! How and why Rushdie, the great cynic, surmounts the worn conventions of boy-meets-girl.

Gods and goddesses-from those of Greece and India, to the media pantheon of Rock and Roll-underlie The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Salman Rushdie on the uses of myth. (Part I of a two-part interview. )

Nathan Englander &quotFor; the Relief of Unbearable Urges" (Knopf)Jewish-American fiction takes a riveting new direction in the work ofNathan Englander, who was brought up Hasidic on Long Island. Thetwenty-nine year old writer breaks your heart when he reads from his story&quotThe; Tumblers."

Steven Watson &quotPrepare; for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism" (Random House) &quotFour; Saints inThree Acts" by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson was a modernistsneak-attack, the result of cunning and deliberation. Here's how they did it.

Sue Miller &quotWhile; I Was Gone" (Knopf) Sue Miller's new novel has an odd morality ? could it be that generations of preachers have influencedher thought?

Alex Garland &quotThe; Tesseract" (Riverhead) In this unusual interview, the popular young English novelist (The Beach) presents the secret purpose of his work: a closely reasoned defense of atheism.

Heads by Harry (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) Asian-American Lois-Ann Yamanaka evokes the melding of native traditions with tourist pop culture that characterized her Hawaiian childhood.

Amsterdam (Doubleday) Articulate and sinister Booker Prize-winner Ian McEwan discusses the role of pathology (and that poet of pathology, Sigmund Freud) in his work.

Thom Jones &quotSonny; Liston Was a Friend of Mine" (Little Brown) Thom Jones, famous for his short stories, brings his trademark dementia and wooziness to a discussion of his own writing.