Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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.

You know, for the drive show, I choose one of my favorite things, and I'm always happy

when my favorite of favorite people has a favorite thing. It's Art Spiegelman.

Well, you know him from Mouse.

Now you will know him from his new book, Breakdowns.

In 1978, he put together a sequence of his most intense cartoons.

They were everything he learned, but more than that. They were about trying to find the essence of what cartooning is and what a cartoonist is and who he is. These are extremely dense

and extraordinarily powerful strips that were brought together in a limited edition that quickly

disappeared. Now he has put them at the center of his book, breakdowns, or portrait of the

artist as a young, blankety-blank, published by Pantheon. Now, what is a blank-de-blank art?

Oh, it's the squiggles that appear above your head when you slip on a banana peel.

So it's the percentage Arabat Squiggle Star exclamation point

that can only be pronounced off FCC radio or seen but not said,

the set of marks that comics have at their core.

Now, I think that the young man who made breakdowns might not be found today.

At least I don't tend to meet him.

You were him. I was a version of him.

...