Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Sloverblatt, and this is Bookworm. I'm here with Anne Beatt on the occasion of the publication of the big book, The New Yorker Stories.

It is the collection of the 48 stories that appeared in the New Yorker between 1974 and 2006.

It is said that Ann Beattie had more stories in The New Yorker than any other writer

during any 10-year period. And when these stories began to appear, I began to look forward to

their appearance. I couldn't get enough of them. And the New Yorker was very generous. Anne was publishing

stories sometimes every month in the New Yorker. And it was so exciting. It was such a fresh

new voice. I'm going to ask all the questions that no one ever has asked you.

Uh-oh.

How long had you been sending stories to the New Yorker before they started to accept them?

I was very prolific then. I think it was really about a two-year period, if I remember anywhere near correctly. And I always thought it was 22 rejections, but when Ben Yagoda was

researching his very wonderful book about The New Yorker, he did his homework, and apparently

it was only 17. 17 rejections. And then tell me the story of the day that the first one

got accepted. What were you doing? Well, everything disappears from that day except for

reading the letter from Roger Angel saying, yes, yes, yes. I couldn't believe I was really seeing

those words. And I called him after that, and he was just as full of joy as when he wrote the letter.

So he was very happy himself

...