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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm pleased to have as my guest, Ann Patchett.

She's the author most recently of a novel run published by Harper Collins.

You've heard her here on Bookworm when her book

Belcanto came out. She's the author as well of a memoir, Truth and Beauty. I think her first

novel was the patron saint of liars. She also wrote Taft and the magician's assistant.

When Anne was here last, we found ourselves talking about the way in which both a writer and an inveterate reader loves solitude as a condition both for writing and reading, in which to create an alternative

world, not necessarily a realistic one, but one in which, say, the terrorists of Belcanto,

can end up turning out to be rather surprisingly solicitous and engaging

people, that the novels are not obligated to a level of ferocity that we've become accustomed to,

but rather it's the imagination playing in a vicinity that realism and reality,

more to the point, may make too painful. Is that a good description of the way you think of

this? I think it is. I'm willing to say that I believe the reality that I set forth not only could

exist, but does exist. I have a lot of people tell me my characters are too nice, and yet most

of the people I know, frankly, all of the people I'm very close to, are very, very nice good people

who would always try to do the right thing. So it doesn't seem insane to me to represent those people

in novels. I think the ferocity is well represented. If I was writing the only novel of the decade, maybe I would think I

needed to include a little more murder and mayhem, but I'm just a little chip, just a tile and a big

...