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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

Go to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Often in Latin America, the great political and cultural thinkers aren't journalists, they're novelists.

Carlos Fuentes, whose work is required

reading in Mexico schools, is that kind of novelist. Last week, we discussed his most recent

work, destiny and desire. Today, we focus on what drives culture in general, and in particular

where it's headed in Mexico, a country that finds itself in turbulent times.

Now, Carlos, you have taken as your central place, Mexico City, much as Joyce took Dublin, much as Bolzac took Paris.

Take me to Mexico.

What is the state of culture that you perceive?

Mexico as well, and I would generalize as well as Latin America, has a thriving culture,

a continuity of culture, in comparison with a dearth of politics and economics.

The political life is way, way, way behind the cultural life of the country.

Mexico has had an uninterrupted culture since the time of the Nahuatl orastic regime

before the conquest.

Then became a Spanish colony, an independent country, and the culture has had no breaks.

...