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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 Silverblatt. This is bookworm. You know, it's not very often

to want to talk to a writer, wait to talk to a writer, suspect that you'll never get to talk to that writer,

and then one day be offered the opportunity. But a mere week before, when the writer has written a trilogy of approximately 1,500 pages,

and of course you want to reread it all before you have the conversation on the air.

That's the case for me today on this occasion of talking to be catling the author of a

trilogy the vor the second volume is the erstwhile the third volume is the cloven now

last week we began to talk about some of the madness and beauty that occupies this novel.

We've done what's possible, which is to scrape the surface of some of its ideas.

When people ask you, what is it about,

which you told me is one of your most dreaded questions,

well, what have you found to say that's less dreadful than some other things.

I say it's about the human condition to begin with, but it's also about the condition of the imagination.

It's essentially a book of the imagination.

It's driven by an imagination, and it's perhaps's perhaps you know if I want to make a

really big claim perhaps when I could never actually justify and it's only just occurred to me

...