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.

This is Michael Silverblatt, and today my guest is Brad Gooch.

He's the author most recently of the Golden Age of Promiscuity.

It's published by Alfred A. Knopf.

He's the author as well, going in reverse order, of the biography of Frank O'Hara, City Poet, of a previous novel,

Scary Kisses, of a book of short stories, jailbate, and a book of poetry called The Daily News.

Well, now you've done one of everything.

No, this is two of something, though.

It shows I'm getting old.

The first novel, Scary Kisses, seem to have face to fate that this book is meeting two.

There's a certain attitude toward you that you are a gadfly and superficial and the writer of sensationalist books about modeling and now about promiscuity.

Do you counter this charge?

I don't know, but I notice that it's very out of control.

This time, it particularly is out of control.

I think what's really interesting about it

is that there's an idea which would be a compliment if it were true, that it's like a scam.

I mean, I know what to do, and then I set out to do it and to fool everyone. There's something

like the New York Observer about that, how that they'd uncovered that this was just like an attempt now to cash in on the game market.

...