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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad, and today it's my pleasure to have Bernard Cooper on the show.

His most recent book is a book of short stories called Guess Again.

When he began, he had written a book of prose poems

and poetic essays called Maps to Anywhere. It was followed by the novel A Year of Rhymes, a book of

memoirs and essays called Truth Serum, and as I said, the book of stories, Guess Again, published by Simon and Schuster.

Now, I'm aware from having read your work that even before you began writing fiction, there was

artwork you began as a visual artist. I believe you mentioned in

Truth Serum, a friend coming to read your poem, so there was poetry. Then there's a novel,

memoirs, a short story, and I gather that you've begun writing art criticism for Los Angeles Magazine.

In finding forms that you feel comfortable with, what causes you to make a change or move restlessly from one form to another? And have you found a favorite form?

I was very involved in the visual arts for most of my life.

And I studied conceptual art in the 1970s

at the California Institute of the Arts,

which was at that time the most avant-garde art school in the country.

People were doing things like falling asleep in the gallery as their graduate show, things of that nature. And I was using text in my visual

art. And what I began to realize more and more was that the imagery or the

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