You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal,

who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Mike Silverblad, and this is Bookworm.

We're here today with Anne Beatt, whose new novel picturing Will has recently been published

by Random House.

Anne Beattie hardly needs introduction.

From the time the chilly scenes of winter appeared, there was a new kind of book available, a book made out of

bits and pieces of collected rapture that started turning up in stories too. Her work appeared

everywhere and now appears between hard covers as picturing Will, this new novel. And it's a pleasure to have

you here. Glad to be here, Michael. Anne is a friend, and so we're beginning the first of what will be

a two-part interview, and if you tune in next week, you'll hear more.

Picturing Will, how did it start?

Well, it started with a contractor write a novel, and so I had that hanging over my head.

And I thought that it would be interesting to write a book about a child,

but it would even be of limited interest to me just to write a book from a child's perspective.

And so very quickly that child accumulated a small family around him. And when they got there, then there was some momentum to try to write a more complicated book

than my original idea had been to write.

When you have an original idea to write a book, was it just a book about a child and nothing more, or did it have a shape?

No, it didn't have a shape, and in fact, this book, as you know, has gone through years and years of rewrites, really.

It took a long time to find out what was going on in the book, partly because I didn't want

...