Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

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

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

Today, I'm really happy to have a writer who is just coming into his own.

It's his second novel.

It's called Panorama City.

It's by Antoine Wilson,

and it's published by Houghton Mifflin.

And it's a novel that says that it's about a village idiot

who wants to be a man of the world.

But at the same time,

it's about what used to be called a sacred fool who's trying to achieve wisdom.

Yes.

I think that's an excellent description.

And in the abyss between village idiot becoming man of the world and sacred fool trying to arrive at wisdom, the whole novel exists.

It's the world that we're traversing here, somewhere between imbecility, idiocy, stupidity, and sanctity, foolishness, loving kindness.

Yeah, and navigating a whole series of false goals, I would say, along the way,

not necessarily recognizing that he's a sacred fool,

...