Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today, I'm happy to have

as my guest, Andrew Sean Greer. His new book is The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, and it's published by Echo.

Now, Andrew, when I last saw you, you were on your way to New York.

You'd gotten a sinecure at the New York Public Library,

where you would have the freedom to do all kinds of research,

given an office, the opportunity to write your next

work there. Is this the product of that trip?

This, I can't believe, the timing of this. Yes, this is exactly the product of that trip.

It was literally an office within that big building with the lines out front where you had an assistant in full access

to the stacks and a special badge.

And you are

mostly a West Coast writer.

You live in San Francisco.

And this book is set in New York.

In fact, a New Yorker's New York. Much of it is set in New York. In fact, a New Yorker's New York.

...