Bookworm

New Directions, the press that began by publishing Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Tennessee Williams and which today gives us Roberto Bolaño, W. G. Sebald and Anne Carson, deserves celebration. Editor in Chief Barbara Epler takes us on a guided tour of American’s pre-eminent literary publisher...

Silk Parachute (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) John McPhee, our nation’s premier essayist—the man who helped raise creative non-fiction to an art form—speaks about the intricacy of his writing process...

Just Kids (Ecco) In the second of this two-part interview we hear about Patti Smith as a bookworm. You probably know about her love for Rimbaud, but did you know she worships the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and his great novel, The Master and Margarita? A voracious reader, Smith has written three unpublished novels and has created hundreds of visual pieces. She speaks of her unbounded appetite...

Just Kids (Ecco) Poverty and insanity are terrible things—but then there is bohemian poverty and insanity, and these are infused with the romance of becoming an artist. In the first of this two-part interview, Patti Smith speaks of her youth in New York, when she and Robert Mapplethorpe sought to manifest their artistic ambitions...

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (New Directions) Our conversation with Javier Marías continues. What if ten minutes of espionage took a hundred pages to fully describe? Here we explore time and consciousness in what will possibly be the greatest trilogy of our new century.

Your Face Tomorrow, Volume 3: Poison, Shadow and Farewell (New Directions) What if Henry James — the patron saint of convolution — could be resurrected? What if he wrote a novel of espionage so complex it became a trilogy? Spanish writer Javier Marías has stepped in and taken on the epic task...

Sonata Mulattica (Norton) Beethoven once dedicated a sonata to a half-African musician—then revoked the dedication. Why? In her book-length poem, Rita Dove attempts an imaginative historical reconstruction of what happened.

The TOON Treasury of Classic Children's Comics (Abrams ComicArts) TOON Books and Raw Books co-editors Spiegelman and Mouly tunneled through archives and private collections to create this perfect anthology of classic children's comics, the spunky kids and sassy animals you may envision at the edges of your memory. Walk down memory's backs streets with us when we explore the golden age of someone e...

Chronic City (Doubleday) Jonathan Lethem began his career with Philip K. Dick-inspired science fiction, then he turned to writing the more realistic books that brought him to prominence. Here, we discuss the fusion of the two...

Nog (Two Dollar Radio); Flats / Quake (Two Dollar Radio) When Flats and Quake were published, the sixties were ending, and these novels can be said to chronicle the death of a dream. (Part I airs January 14)

Nog (Two Dollar Radio); Flats / Quake (Two Dollar Radio) In this first of two interviews, Wurlitzer takes us time-traveling back to the late 1960's when Nog was published and his first screen plays ( Two Lane Blacktop, Glen and Randa ) found their way onto the screen... (Part II airs January 21)

The Lacuna (Harper) What do Leon Trotsky, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have to do with an invented author of Mayan and Incan historical romances?

Wallace Shawn ’s newest play intermingles fact and fantasy in such a bizarre and original way that one would have to see (or even read) the play two or three times to get things (relatively) straight. Shawn discusses innovative theater in relation to his political beliefs as expressed in his new collection of essays.

The Museum of Innocence (Knopf) The Nobel Prize helped to set the fiction of Orhan Pamuk (and Turkish literature in general) in a contemporary global frame. Our conversation centers on the problem of national versus global literatures...

The Museum of Innocence (Knopf) Infidelity and adultery are two of the great subjects of the novel tradition — think of Anna Karenina or Madam Bovary . In this conversation, Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk discusses his own stunning contribution to this tradition.

The Children's Book   (Knopf) As the vast array of subjects presented in A.S. Byatt' s The Children's Book parades past — puppetry, women's rights, Fabianism, Peter Pan, education, children's fiction, the history of pottery glazes — one can't help but wonder: how does it all hold together?

Though he’s had five books published, Tao Lin is not yet thirty. Yet, for all his industriousness, he expresses the apathy and emptiness felt by many of his generation.

Practical Water ( Wesleyan) Brenda Hillman 's work has been described as difficult and experimental, but we beg to disagree. Here, we hear some of her most accessible poems; discuss her work with Code Pink, a feminist activist group; and try to describe the way to read a so-called "difficult" poem. The live broadcast of this interview will be pre-empted by special holiday programming, but will be...

Margaret Atwood thinks she has done something new: her novel takes place simultaneously with Oryx and Crake — her nightmare novel about the biotechnological future...

As Is   (Copper Canyon) One of our most tender poets (tough but tender), James Galvin , investigates his growing tendency toward poems that express his bitterness— toward politics, environmental despoilment, big business. Still he affirms, in poems that breathe with sweet relief, the ongoing possibility of love.

The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster) The polymath Nicholson Baker has been able to create a version of himself in the figure of accomplished poet Paul Chowder...

Glover's Mistake (Viking) In this novel of love, manipulation and deception, Nick Laird attempts one of the trickiest strategies in the novelist's tool kit. He structures a book so that readers come to understand things the characters remain blind to.

A Gate at the Stairs (Knopf) Lorrie Moore has written three collections of short stories and two rather short novels. Now, after eleven years of work, she has published a longer novel and survived to tell the tale...

The Angel's Game (Doubleday) Spanish writer Carlos Ruiz Zafón has attracted an international audience with his series of metaphysical thrillers.

Ugly Man (Harper Collins) Although we've followed the career of Dennis Copper from the ground up, in this conversation, he acknowledges a new influence—the master director of French film comedy, Jacques Tati.